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Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

> The problem with blockchainers

It's hard to take any of what you say seriously when you start a comment with such a blanket statement.

Also, I think I've already seen your type of "argument" so many times, I think I am able to just play the whole tape by just pointing out to previous comments I've made:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31195939 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31545427 (trustlessness is not about "eliminating trust")

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463534 (Yeah, you are right that there is no such thing as an "ideal" world. What you are missing is that also applies to the anti-crypto mentality, who think that just because they were born in a place with functional institutions, they think that is the natural state of things. It's good when institutions work, but they are not perfect and we need to prepared for the times when they fail.)

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Then fix your institutions. Do you believe you can solve a human problem by forcing a technical solution? Don’t you think you will have to end up duplicating the very same institutions (possibly with more friction, less oversight and ways to appeal)? And if you go full freedom and anarchy, then drop into chaos until command economy next door eats you for lunch?

Besides, we are talking about attitudes very much in countries with more or less functional institutions.

Also, edited first paragraph to be less dogmatic. This is my subjective opinion.

See, I know that I can keep up this by simply linking to previous comments. This one is from one year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25906731 (Tell me how a dissenting Russian or Chinese would go around "fixing their institutions")

Edit: Though I do agree that BTC has failed and I now think that Ethereum (the blockchain, not saying anything about Ether as a "currency") is more suited to this, here is something from 8 years ago!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8413908

Personally, even if my opinions have not shifted at all (which barely ever happens), I practice having to express them again so that I find more eloquent ways of doing so. Once they solidify enough, I might write an essay I could mention I wrote, but in most scenarios I wouldn’t refer someone to my own quotes out of respect.

I hold others to the same standard, so for the record I’m not reading links to your own comments.

Imagine people talking by a water cooler; yes I know roughly your view, and you know mine, but it doesn’t mean you should mandate me to hear quotes of yourself recorded at this same water cooler in the past instead of responding.

> I might write an essay

Even if I went through all the trouble of writing an essay, it would be a simple collage of all these arguments, maybe organized in some more coherent form. For what? Those "in favor" would just not see anything new, those "against" it would just use it to nitpick and create strawmen in an attempt to keep their worldview intact.

I'd rather keep the discussion focused on the parts that can be addressed directly to avoid this.

> I practice having to express them again so that I find more eloquent ways of doing so.

I've gotten to the point where I discussed this with so many people that I ran out of ways of conveying the same idea. I am not putting the links out of snark. I am putting them because they already express the same idea that I would've typed out anyway. Would you feel better if I simply copied-and-pasted these responses?

> Imagine people talking by a water cooler; yes I know roughly your view, and you know mine.

I am not telling you to listen to all the battle cries or the "put downs" that have been recorded. I was using these links as a way to advance the conversation to a point where we can actually establish the differences. Can you imagine if everybody only wanted to debate something if they re-hashed all their priors?

> See, I know that I can keep up this by simply linking to previous comments.

As long as you don't mind that nobody but you is convinced at the end, perhaps

You are missing the point. I know the people arguing based on these old misconceptions are not going to be convinced anyway. I am linking to previous comments to avoid having to re-hash the same pointless argument every time.

Sometimes I dream of a argument recogniser that just maps out an argument on an argument map and hashes it out more or less like you just did. With the goal of not endless rehashing of the same iteration like some stuck genetic algo in a local optima, but rather moving forward as some kind of warm start.

I made an argument and asked questions at the end, leaving it for someone objecting to provide a constructive answer.

Oh yes, I think you made an excellent contribution by pulling up past arguments and trying to continu the conversation. I was just observing it and noting how nice itd be in general if this were automatic

I think there's something to this and have been thinking about this for a while too. Just today tried to see if diff.me was available, sadly it's not.

I was thinking something like a git repo with a flat file in it. You list your beliefs / opinions / things you think are facts in a structured way (maybe a tree like structure) going all the way back to some "root". Then you can easily diff this file with someone else and see where you agree and differ. Changing someone's mind could just be a pull request :)

It's easy enough to have a discussion about you which you don't take seriously

An anti-vaxxer might respond the same way to "the problem with anti-vaxxers," hoping to make sure that nobody discusses the very real problems with them

It's generally okay if people being criticized don't want the people speaking about them to think poorly of them.

It's generally okay if a person being criticized believes that what's said to them can be rebuffed with canned content.

You go ahead and tell everyone that the reason you're polluting with a dysfunctional casino is "you weren't born with functional institutions" if you like

Every notice how anti-vaxxers have canned responses that they think landed, but nobody else does?

Did you notice your rhetoric is so poor that you could not address any actual argument? You did nothing except (a) resorting to throw false accusations hoping that this is enough to discredit your "opponent" and (b) "othering" via an absurd analogy?

If you only tried to reason properly and read at least part of what has been discussed before, you'd find out that:

- I am not in favor of BTC. I think it worked as a proof-of-concept for a system to transfer value without intermediaries, but it has failed as a currency - no privacy, too expensive, too volatile and its fixed supply makes it unworkable as money.

- I am not in favor of PoW. There are cheaper and more efficient ways to secure a blockchain and we are close to make a switch.

- I am not in favor of all these token projects that create opportunities for speculation but are not connected to real economic activity.

My "thing" is using crypto for payments and small-scale banking as an alternative for the global financial system [0]. So, unless you think that the status quo is "good", you will have a better shot at changing my mind if you show me a superior solution to the problem we are trying to tackle. Trying to dismiss me and my work with self-righteous, sophomoric rhetoric does not help anyone and does not solve anything.

[0]: https://hub20.io/about

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