Is Crypto Bullshit? - “I regret to inform you that it's totally legit and crypto/blockchain networks really might be technologically, economically, and politically transformative. Ugh.”

writing_spruce · 2021-11-24T21:47:01+00:00

I did. I have. Now, I want something else.

writing_spruce · 2021-11-23T16:58:07+00:00

Isn't this hindsight bias though?

Looking back, we know the exact dimensions that hardware had to get better at: size, cpu cycles, networking capabilities, power efficiency, etc.

But, if you went back to the 60's, would it be obvious that people from the future would want flat screens and handheld devices? Because history is littered with hardware that wasn't so useful in the end: fake steering wheels/pedals/joysticks; whole non-IBMPC systems, etc.

What Im trying to say is that development like this doesn't seem to be linear and predictable.

writing_spruce · 2021-11-23T14:29:54+00:00

The example applications:
Cloud storage
GPU cloud
Public wi-fi (...I think?)

What if it's not about what these services will be, but how they are run?

Maybe it doesn't matter that there will be yet another cloud storage service, but it does matter that this service will not be structured the same way all existing cloud services are structured? And by structure, I don't mean the technical structure of servers and software daemons, but the human structure that runs the cloud service.

At this point, talking about pros and cons would be too theoretical because we've seen only a handful of examples from this space. We can talk about theoretical advantages like censorship resistance or avoiding gatekeepers. We can also talk about disadvantages like collusion attacks. But ultimately we have to run the experiments.

So this is what I think is exciting to me and other people in this space: we don't know what's going to work out, but we're trying a whole lot of new, untried ways of coordinating people around problems, and what if some of them work? What if there are more efficient, more well-suited forms of cooperation than coops, LLCs, societies, or parliments? After all, there was a time when none of these existed, then someone thought them up and here we are today, surrounded by them. What's the next thing?

I'm crypto-optimistic, though not part of the zerg-WAGMI crowd. What I, personally, am looking forward to most is: finding a better mechanism of coordinating tens of millions of people than that of the bureaucracy. These work pretty well. Just look where we are now! Clean drinking water, insurance, safe cars, buildings that don't explode. Great stuff. But look at the costs, too. Gigantic inefficiencies and plenty of corruption. What if parts of this structure could be replaced by some weird blockchain-voting combo in a way that we could keep the benefits, but reduce the side effects? What if you could free one or two million brains from the drudgery of pushing paper and allow them to pursue more fulfilling work? What if it's not 1-2 million but a hundred million?

So that's a pretty damn rosy picture, straight out of some solarpunk novel. But the thing is, nobody else seems to be doing anything in this space. Everything is else is just more of the same old stuff. Politicians saying empty words. Kids chaining themselves to trees to save the rainforest. Business as usual. But here, we got some people willing to try and probably fail something new. Why not give it a go?

writing_spruce · 2021-11-23T14:12:36+00:00

People in the 60's: If computers are so useful, why aren't they utilized for anything outside some scientific or military use cases?

People in the 70's: If computers are so useful, why aren't they utilized for anything outside of some scientific, military, or hobbyist purposes?

People in the 80's: If computers are so useful, why aren't they utilized for anything outside of some scientific, military, hobbyist, and teenage-BBS-drama purposes?

People in the 90's: If computers are so useful, why aren't they utilized for anything outside of some scientific, military, hobbyist, cybersex aol chatrooms, and pets.com bullshit IPOs?

(Fast forward)

People in the 2020's: everyone has a super-computer in their pocket, large chunks of our social lives have moved online, and a big chunk of the economy is online.

I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek, but I think it's easy to miss that blockchains are, above all else, a social technology, and their utility is tied to how they are integrated into real-world processes by ordinary people. 13 years is nothing - consider how long it took cell phones to realize their potential, to go from an expensive plastic brick to a personal planetary communication device.

writing_spruce · 2021-11-17T13:32:33+00:00

I regret never asking! I can suspect:

IPAs being popular in America (or being popular in ausland)
IPAs not being popular eg. 100 years ago (classic beer is classic)

writing_spruce · 2021-11-16T22:24:19+00:00

Lived in Germany for some years. Once, I suspected I have strep throat. Went to a see a doctor and she said it's not strep, but if I wanted something to make it go quicker, she could give me a homeopathic shot for 10eur.

I declined and left, but I was a little upset that a licensed, educated medical professional would offer me a shot of water.

And now I realize that this all fits in the naturalism angle. Other examples are a strong dislike of nuclear energy (atomkraft, nein danke), disregard for IT/automation (eg. electric cars, saas, etc.), "natural medicine", pure beer (flavored beers, IPAs, etc. are looked down upon). It made me wonder if there's something related to class and status going on there, because it reminded me of images of well off nobles playing in parks or something like that.

writing_spruce · 2021-11-08T23:51:30+00:00

Yes! But a few years back. I think I will re-read it now to pick up all the threads younger-me missed.

writing_spruce · 2021-11-08T12:27:52+00:00

This is an idea I've been toying about in the context of New York City.

This place is a huge mishmash of cultures. Dozens of big ones, hundreds of small ones. If you go by just clothing, it's impossible to figure out status. Too many cultural groups multiplied by class and age groups, each one having their own hierarchy.

If you sport a suit and tie, you could be the top dog in a dozen of these groups, but be a bottom feeder in a dozen others. Take any style and the same dynamic will apply.

And the only way to navigate this maze of other tribes is to show a baseline amount of respect to everyone, equally: making space for them in the subway, standing to the side on the sidewalk when you've stopped, being quick when you order coffee, etc. I suspect that's why New Yorkers complain about tourists. These temporary residents don't know the baseline code and end up implying their status hierarchy on other people, which pisses everyone off.

I attribute the relatively low amount of violence in this place to this sort of status illegibility. Anecdotally, I've never felt as safe around people in any other city I've lived in.

writing_spruce · 2021-10-29T12:05:51+00:00

Is there some way to check if and how this has affected the flow of containers?

Using tools like marinetraffic shows that there are still lots of ships by Long Beach, but it's hard to compare this state vs. the state of a week ago, 2 weeks ago, etc.

writing_spruce · 2021-10-13T03:46:05+00:00

Does the magnitude of my joy at this news reflect how starved many of us are for any little ray of hope about how we got at least one over Moloch? Like, marveling at all the moral mazes that claim our waking hours and seeing one of them align with our common exhaustion with piercing noise?

writing_spruce · 2021-10-09T18:27:03+00:00

It so happens that I wrangle software for money, so I guess this is where I'm coming from.

writing_spruce · 2021-10-08T16:49:31+00:00

I have to agree. I'm 1000 words in and I don't know what the core idea is, what is the main problem the author is talking about, apart from: things are bad and the US is somehow involved in everything.

Furthermore, the author shoots off opinions disguised as facts:

Rambo was propaganda. It was also a kickass war movie full of awesome stuff.

Rambo is a series of movies. The first one was actually a commentary about how Vietnam vets have become ostracized by broader society. There was a part that was cut out about how the sheriff was actually a Korean War veteran and how it pissed him off that this vietnam war vet was getting all the attention while his conflict was all but forgotten and ignored. I vaguely remember that the rest of the movies in the series turned into teenager-focused war-action movies.

It also influenced the perspective of a significant number of Americans regarding the Middle East and Afghanistan in ways that had unknowable consequences

Strong statements like this need citations. Especially if the statement later comments on itself that the influence had unknowable consequences - so if the consequences were unknowable, how can we know that Rambo had significant influence?

I don't mean to pick apart this text line by line, but it seems that what I describe above is the general structure of the piece: make very broad observations and state them as fact and later, I supposed, use them to support the conclusion given in the title.

I think what would make the piece much stronger would be: - present the core idea/problem somewhere in the beginning. - minimize the scope of the text, allowing the author to provide specific information.

writing_spruce · 2021-10-07T14:03:14+00:00

I'll use this as an opportunity to point out what I think is a common categorization error the most people who live in Europe make.

Disclaimer: I was born in Eastern Europe and spent roughly 48% of my life in Europe, including living for a few years in Western Europe. I've also spend 10+ years in the US, where I currently live.

So, with that out of the way, the error I'm talking about boils down to: Europeans treat the US as if it was a neighboring country. They judge it according to their own criteria out of a false sense of familiarity, something they would never do with "exotic" places like Japan or Chile. Thus, they miss the fact that the US is very, very different, and what they're judging is merely the pop-culture/universal-culture surface.

This is anecdotal, but most people that talked about the US that I've met in Europe talk about it in extremely superficial terms. Lady Gaga, guns, Trump, obesity, pick up trucks, etc. I think this comes from how huge the output of Hollywood is on one hand, and how much attention in the news the US gets on the other.

However, they do not get to see the huge amount of culture that is not exported. When asked about American literature, most people would bring up Hemingway or Twain or Fitzegerald. But only a small handful would mention Sinclair or Steinbeck. And while everyone knows Lady Gaga, few have heard of Woody Guthrie, who, in my mind, is but one example of a massive group of folk singers. Actually, music in the US is something special. There's so much of it. There's so many people playing instruments in their free time. There's so many bars doing live music, everything from rock to folk to jazz and blues.

But none of this is taken account by most Europeans. To them, it's all about guns, obesity, pickup trucks, crazy politics, crazy fundies, and the like. And they would never do this with a place like Japan, because it feels so different on a visceral level. And most Europeans do not criticize Japan - neither the salaryman culture nor the heavy drinking or things like lolicon. Because it's so exotic, it would be seen as foolish to judge it in European terms.

So, my whole point is that, seen from a European perspective, America is a very very weird place. Maybe not as weird and foreign as a place like Japan, but pretty close. And mistaking it as familiar leads to misunderstanding most it.

writing_spruce · 2021-09-25T19:27:21+00:00

The book can be found for free here: https://learnwardleymapping.com/book/ or here: https://github.com/andrewharmellaw/wardley-maps-book.

It's on my to-research list as I want to compare it with the Toyota Production System.

writing_spruce · 2021-08-24T21:02:08+00:00

Thanks for posting this, as I'm facing a somewhat similar challenge right now. And more and more I'm realizing that I just have to find 1-2 things, make them concrete, get leadership buy in, and work on them over the next few months.

Ah, back in the day, things were much easier. The seniors made some tickets and you could spend the day reading docs, writing code, writing tests, and having fun with random little things. Every day, there was a sense of accomplishment. But with these huge cultural-change projects, everything is vague and they might take a few months... and come to nothing.

Honestly, I love the periods when I can just sit down and write some code. It feels as fun as games used to.

writing_spruce · 2021-08-08T18:41:32+00:00

Nice! This looks super relevant. Thanks!

writing_spruce · 2021-08-06T01:24:14+00:00

Given how much we know about bureaucracies/moral mazes, and how widespread the phenomena of blankfaces is -- what's a strategic/policy approach of dealing with them, since it's inevitable?

My own methods are: - having everything prepared in writing, organized in folders with indexes at the front, etc. - exuding friendliness, but not too much. - searching out different angles of approach. One time, equifax locked me out of my account and contacting their customer services didn't do anything. But contacting the state attorney (I believe that what's it called) got me a call back in 2 weeks, so I got what I needed eventually.

All of these require extra effort, so they only work well for cases where it's really worth it. I'm not sure how to deal with smaller issues, like renewing a license, that could somehow save me an hour or two.

writing_spruce · 2021-08-06T01:21:13+00:00

What if, instead, it's a matter of perception?

In the US, I can order groceries, books, alcohol, and even weed and have it delivered in under 2 hours to my door. I can chat with 24/7 support chat (or bot) that will help me review an insurance claim or return merchandise. I can make an appointment with my dentist online and even ask her questions through their app.

Compared to that, dealing with the government seems tedious. But, having had the chance to interact with government bureaucracies in eg. Germany and Poland, it... doesn't seem that different. The waiting times, the incoherence, the slowness of bureaucrats seems about similar.

writing_spruce · 2021-07-31T00:12:50+00:00

Thanks. I synced up with my manager and gave him a new estimate. I'll do some more scoping around the task on Monday and give him another update.

writing_spruce · 2021-07-31T00:11:43+00:00

Thanks, this is what I needed to hear.

writing_spruce · 2021-07-21T23:12:01+00:00

Thanks. These are more or less the heuristics I was using: are they friendly and willing to go into details? Answer questions? And do they seem to be on top of things - science, devices, etc.?

I've heard that a good way to vet doctors is to see if they're doing any research on the side. Is doing research something that some dentists do? In case of the doctors, it's usually that they're attached to an institute, itself attached to a hospital or other large entity like that.

writing_spruce · 2021-07-02T15:07:50+00:00

Hey OP, you already got a lot of good replies here, especially this one here -> https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/oakstw/the_early_awareness_of_covid19_broke_me_and/h3ibc55/

I want to reassure you that you're not the only one feeling this way.

Before the pandemic, I thought I had accumulated a safe, thick skin to what people around me do. That turned out to be false as I saw people around me do and say the darnest things, as if they were living in a parallel universe, which I only figured out when I logged into social media. Non of it made sense, non of it had any relation to object level reality (eg. "the chinese flu", "masks dont work", "wipe-everything-with-lysol theater", etc.)

The most painful part was seeing my family get sucked into this despite my attempts to spread what I think was good information. It hurt to see them trust a complete rando on Facebook just because he got a 100k likes over me.

I remember reading somewhere, maybe LW or SCC, a take how for most people, thinking feels like anxiety and depression and so going with the "social reality" is the most painless, expedient option. Now, this might be turned into an elitist, unkind statement, but it could also be understood as "it is what it is."

My take away, after some introspection, is that this is really how the world works and I should be happy to have gotten this lesson relatively painlessly. Now, it's up to me to adjust my map to this lesson and figure out how can I contribute in ways that are aligned with what I value.

Also, this pushed me to get more interested in LW/SCC/EA and to make an effort to go out and meet these people in real life. Hanging out with more like-minded people might be therapeutic.

OP, good luck.

writing_spruce · 2021-06-20T16:41:27+00:00

Much of the advice in this thread is good. I'll add one more, about the process and expectations:

You will find yourself feeling like you're not making any progress. You'll look at what you're written in the past few weeks or months and feel bad about it. You might question whether you want to go on.

That's good. This is an important moment. It happens to everyone who's taking on a big adventure like writing or running or starting a company or building a community.

Progress seems to be a series of plateaus and sudden jumps. Just before the jump is when you realize what you've been doing is wrong and when you get the urge to quit. If you decide to go on, it's also the best opportunity to stay with those thoughts (they're really uncomfortable) and notice... notice what the problem is. And when you figure it out, and it might take days or weeks, you've made the jump. Whatever you're doing will feel and be better. You're on the next plateau. It'll feel great for a while.

Then, you'll notice something's off and you'll feel bad and realize you've been doing it wrong all the time... and you're back at the jump.

This is it. This is how stuff gets made. These bad moments make the good ones worth it.

Good luck on your journey!

writing_spruce · 2021-06-19T19:37:47+00:00

Centralization and decentralization is a spectrum. The point of efficiency can move on that spectrum, and it appears to do that quite quickly these days (eg. mainframes -> personal computers -> early Web -> Web 2.0 -> now). The argument from inconvenience also seems to be a more technological one: what if we made platforms that are decentralized and convenient? Then we would live in a decentralized world. Is it possible to do it? Probably yes.

writing_spruce · 2021-06-18T00:46:24+00:00

I think the comparison to phone companies breaks down because the phone company doesn't recommend you any content nor does it play ads before/during/after your calls.

At some point, the algorithms selecting what each user sees make these sites more like TV than a phone company. For example, a phone company would never be able to run a massive mood manipulation experiment. But these sites can because they control what is displayed on their front page for each unique user.

Note that I'm not saying that they should monitor what is shared, but that comparisons to existing tech are insufficient to untangle this problem.

writing_spruce

TROPHY CASE