straw man. I was responding to the statement that the computation is doing nothing, and not arguing one way or another that the energy used is reasonable for the benefits gained.
Try this as a habit: If in response to something someone else has said, you find yourself thinking, "That would be ridiculous! Who would think that?", then follow up by answering your own question: "That would be ridiculous, so the person I'm responding to probably doesn't think that."
Pondering how ridiculous it would be for you to choose to believe that someone else actually believed the first ridiculous thing is an exercise you can pursue at your own option.
Yes, the end result is a secured ledger. The path to that secured ledger is entirely wasted computing. Bitcoin is wasteful solely based on this fact. How can you consider Bitcoin wasteful as I do and also claim people who point this flaw out are naysayers who don’t get it? Your argument makes no sense.
It's not doing nothing. It's searching - searching for a hash that can be used to protect the ledger from attacks.
Saying it's doing nothing is like saying Dijkstra's algorithm is doing nothing until it finally finds the shortest path. That's just plain wrong. Sorry.