Hacker News Reader

Comment by yawnr | Hacker News Reader

I’m skeptical about NFTs too but trying to keep an open mind, because at the end of the day, while you or I personally don’t need the 100M to enjoy the impressionist art, you can’t ignore the fact that someone out there is in fact willing to pay that for the original. And that’s kind of the same weird authenticity bragging rights situation.

View on HN

while you or I personally don’t need the 100M to enjoy the impressionist art, you can’t ignore the fact that someone out there is in fact willing to pay that for the original.

There are people who happily pay $10,000+ for an Italian purse. There are people who are happy with a $10 Chinese knock-off.

There are people who happily pay $2,000 for an Apple laptop. There are people who are happy with Linux on a $100 machine from Goodwill.

There are people who go outside to feel the breeze. There are people who are happy with a fan.

I don't understand NFTs at all. But I have to remind myself that often value is subjective.

You should also account for how early NFTs are. If you've been following blockchains for a while, you may recall that in 2012 and 2013 there were an ocean of Bitcoin knock offs that distinguished themselves by changing things like the difficulty adjustment algorithm, or the hashing function, or the total coin supply. All of these "altcoins" to experts seemed to be completely useless and many chalked the entire category up as worthless. Eventually of course a lot more interesting altcoins were invented, and it turned out to be a great source of innovation, it just had a hurdle to cross first.

I feel like NFTs today are roughly where altcoins were in 2012. Lots of good fundamentals to the ideas, but most of the implementations are really missing the mark. Whatever the NFT equivalent of Ethereum, Zcash, Sia, etc is... it's not here yet. And it may yet be a year or two until it first appears.

I feel your take is the correct one. I'm old enough to remember when home video recorders were criticized because porn, but porn was just the kick off to the wider world of video uses and purposes.

That comparison is really the opposite, the open question on the morality of porn does nothing to damage the usefulness of home video recorders.

On the other hand, the morality of NFT's is already mainstream while the usefulness is an open question that's leaning toward "not really".

At the time, people were buying video players and recorders just to watch porn because people hadn't figured out and weren't in the habit of time shifting their video viewing. Porn was really the only thing they seemed good for. That was my point.

> There are people who happily pay $2,000 for an Apple laptop. There are people who are happy with Linux on a $100 machine from Goodwill.

This is the weirdest sentiment that I see all the time on HN, but enough people express it that I have to accept it as both widespread and genuine.

However, I think that if you think $2000 US for an Apple laptop isn't the best value for money you can get on the laptop market, then you're either very good at finding bargains or completely bonkers.

Yes, macOS is no longer for developers. Yes, for extreme workloads I use my linux ryzen7/2080ti or the cloud rather than the MBP. Yes, they had a strange couple of years with the keyboards.

But honestly, they're the best hardware hands down. Not just the best absolutely, but the best per dollar. And personally I love macOS, but I'm just a manager these days so I guess I would, right?

I'm not disputing that a Mac laptop is the best hardware out there. I'm stating that not everyone needs it. They're happy with a $100 Goodwill laptop. I've always been someone who believes in using the best tool for the job at hand.

FWIW, I used my Trump Bumps to buy a new MacBook for my wife, and I plan to use my Biden Bonus for a new MacBook for me. (Assuming Apple releases one with a large enough screen in the next six months.)

I have a sager (Taiwanese) laptop i7-9750 9th gen intel 4.5ghz, RTX 2060 with full on CUDA support for deep learning, 1Tb NVMe SSD, 32 GB ddr ram, and a 16" 144hz screen that cost me about $1300 a year ago. It also has plenty of IO connections (3 USB type-a ports, a single type-c USB port, smart card reader).

It's rock solid running win 10 pro, has extremely low DPC/ISR latency for ASIO music recording with Ableton, can chew through blender modeling with cycles, and I can do all my dev work in vs2019 and intellij with zero hiccups.

I challenge your assertion that you can't find equivalent if not superior hardware per dollar as what apple offers. Maybe you're just not looking hard enough.

I worry about the weird effect on society of massive lopsided wealth encouraging hucksterism (from all levels of wealth) just because people don't know what to spend their too-much-money on.

There's a big practical difference between owning an original and owning a print. People have discovered secrets behind paint or canvas before. New technologies often allow us to introspect qualities of the art that we previously didn't know (chemicals used, techniques, tools, lifestyles, etc.). An original is a snapshot of history that includes tons of unique information that is simply not available in prints or nfts.

Well there's also the allure of the physical object that the artist created by hand. People done go see the Mona Lisa rather than a replica for bragging rights. That's not there with digital goods.

I think art is different in some ways though. Far be it from me to tell others how to spend their money, but at least with physical art it is preserved. The art may mostly be traded by the ultra-wealthy, but at least it still exists for the good of society.

An NFT is really just a digital autograph. Not even really an autograph, isn't it a cryptographic signature? Which would surely need to be random by nature, so the artist can't even do something unique with that. It's external to the work itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com