Hacker News Reader

Comment by heroiccocoa | Hacker News Reader

Then you should be opposed to most basic (theoretical computer) science and mathematics research too that doesn't have any immediately apparent application.

The scientific research to engineering pipeline is the backbone of our rapid technological progress. Basic research can target unexplored areas in a more organized fashion, allocating resources properly instead of industry's ad-hoc approach. Sort of like breath first instead of depth first. Industry will waste resources solving just their own individual instances of a mini-problem one by one resulting in a total resource consumption that is greater than what academia would have used in solving the overarching problem.

View on HN

General mathematics and computer science don't require burning energy on the scale of nations just to function

Neither do consensus protocols not based on proof of work. How many times do people have to comment that bitcoin is not the only crypto?

PoW is what makes Blockchains of BTC truly permissionless and decentralized. It's a solution to the 51% attack. Yes PoW is resource hungry and expensive but it's a feature not a bug.

If we remove PoW to reduce cost and stop wasting energy, it just makes it another centralized system. PoS or FPoS is centralization in the hands of a few whale coin holders.

Many other VC backed blockchains like Solana are not even decentralized. And to talk about enterprise blockchain like Corda or Hyperleger, I don't know if it's even correct to call them blockchain.

Your comment makes no sense technically. PoW is not a solution to the 51% attack, 51% attack is an attack on PoW.

Furthermore your analysis of PoS makes no sense as well. I guess you have a lot of BTC?

Talk to us when there are no major blockchains on a massively-energy-hungry technology, and then maybe we'll believe that your complaint is relevant.

As it stands, the only blockchains that are relevant are just colossal energy sinks, and it's devastating.

I couldn’t care less :) if you want to pretend the rest of the ecosystem doesn’t exist it’s up to you. But it’s a bit like China looking at democracies in the west and only looking at the US and being “democracies don’t have universal healthcare, what’s the point lol”.

>> the only blockchains that are relevant are just colossal energy sinks

> I couldn’t care less :) if you want to pretend the rest of the ecosystem doesn’t exist it’s up to you.

Eh... You're the one defending a system that doesn't give a shit about the ecosystem. You know, the real actual ecosystem, the one POW[1] blockchain so immensely contributes to destroying. It's almost as if you guys are all pretending it doesn’t exist.

___

[1]: And what an apt acronym that is, in this context.

Pour the same amount of money into math as people poured into cryptocurrencies then.

How can I buy math?

By pouring money into universities who do math.

...Just be aware that when you're investing in math, it's not an "investment" that pays out for you personally. It's an investment in all of humanity.

That's the point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com