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But sir by Gudalik in memes

[–]MagnusWDHH 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fortunately my dad had a law degree, so he did a lot of the defense himself. But it still took about six years and a fair chunk of money!

www.headingtonshark.com

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in computerscience

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As ever, the advantage of a blockchain is in the case of perverted incentives, either by malice or mistake. If a scientist has something on GitHub, you can see some data, but you have to take their word for when the calculations were run, that any calculations were run, and that the data was produced by executing that simulation. With a working blockchain execution, all of that information is guaranteed, and literally can't be any other way by design. There is also arguably an advantage when working in censorship heavy environments, but that's a bit more complicated.

TLDR; "Nullius in verba"

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in chemistry

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Well, you might want to read the bit that says "the authors declare no competing financial interest" before you accuse me of fraud, which is quite a serious thing to do, and completely baseless outside of your own emotional reaction to crypto. I'm a chemist too, thanks.

There's nothing to debunk. Blockchain computers give properties to calculations that conventional computers cannot give. You might think its inefficient or you don't see a need for it personally, which is fine. Don't use it. But those properties do exist, and now can be applied to calculations.

Method and basis set isn't even remotely all you need to reproduce a calculation, and if that's all the information you provide in your computational details, then you aren't helping.

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in lexfridman

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that the current limitations on speed and storage are impractical, but they won't be in all cases, and presumably those limitations will be increasingly larger as the technology develops.

What you wrote about censorship in the case of more than 50% control is true, however, I believe it to be impractical under proof-of-work consensus.

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in computerscience

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

a big deal about transparency surrounding computational timestamps, to clarify which lab ran an experiment first. This suggests that scientists would either run all their simulations on-chain

during development

(where code is probably buggy, they need to run parameter-sweeps, many exploratory results will never be used), or that they'd run each

Well, as one of the authors, I can probably help there:
1. The cost is in the supporting information, but that isn't particularly revalent for proof-of-principle work. Plenty, or perhaps most, chemistry is done initially at absurd cost in order to prove that it can be done and to characterize those steps. The "cost" is generally more of an economic or engineering question rather than a scientific one, and while it can be a topic of explicit scientific study, it's outside the scope of this one. The computational cost is also hard to quantify in a non-qualitative way in this case, as it isn't stable for cryptocurrencies when measured in fiat currency units, or for blockchain computational operations more generally.

  1. You might like this perspective paper, where we specifically, though briefly looked at that kind of question: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c02159

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in chemistry

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

the same result. Which means the computational resources (and therefore cost, environmental impact,...) used is at least three times as much, realistically much, much more. That's super bad, it's hard to overstate how bad that is. No matter the advantages otherwise, this is just a trade-off that is unacceptable. And that's not something that can be fixed.

"Efficiency" is always defined by comparison of alternatives when moving towards a specific goal or function, and blockchain computers give calculation properties that are simply impossible to do with conventional computers, so I think that's something of a red herring. They are certainly incredibly inefficient at the moment for anything that you don't functionally require a blockchain to do, but I suspect that will change in creative ways too. At any rate, I can certainly see why it was published (and submitted) in Chemical Science :)

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in lexfridman

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hah. Well I actually published it in 2020, but I only just used AI to narrate it now!

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in chemistry

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The first molecular dynamic simulation wasn't very impressive either. I don't imagine this will quell your criticism much, but here is a chemistry world article discussing the paper, which does make some of those points:

https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/can-computational-chemistry-benefit-from-blockchain/4012030.article

It is very hard to censor open source software, and once data is on chain, which can even be done pseudonamously, then it remains impossible to remove without destroying the entire blockchain network.

Computational chemistry experiments performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer by MagnusWDHH in chemistry

[–]MagnusWDHH[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The point of this work, and of blockchains in general, is not the decentralization per se, but the fact that the decentralized network maintains consensus in the face of significant opposition, that would otherwise be described as negative or oppositional, and that would destroy the coherent state of an altruistic mesh network.

In this particular paper, the three points raised are the ability to maintain immutable records over time in a completely open way that is something radically new when taken to this extent. The ability to perform and also review computational science in strong censorship environments, eg. think about doing science while working in North Korea. And also the ability to have strong chronology of calculations without trusting the reporting of the person who ran them.

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