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Comment by iblaine | Hacker News Reader

It’s unfortunate that what started out with altruistic motives, a method for decentralized anonymous asset exchange, is being derailed by opportunists. There was a time where a 51% attack was the biggest concern.

All that said, I’m not surprised at where we are today.

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> It’s unfortunate that what started out with altruistic motives

Are you actually buying into SBF’s pathetic ideologies? Or are you more referring to Satoshi’s white paper when you refer to “altruistic motives”.

I can’t understand how anyone would take SBF seriously. He’s a smug charlatan who converted funny money to real money so that he could dump it into politics for his own aims, all while calling his actions “altruism”. Biggest false virtue signaler of all time.

Parent mentions decentralized anonymous asset exchange being the goal and 51% attacks being the biggest concern. That tells me he's talking about Satoshi. Those topics don't apply to SBF.

> Or are you more referring to Satoshi’s white paper when you refer to “altruistic motives”.

There's little altruistic about an emission that allocates half of all supply (first four years) going to early miners including Satoshi himself, and leaves only crumbs for later generations.

Satoshi picked that model probably because it's easy to divide by 2 (x >> 2). He didn't want to prematurely optimize or overthink anything because it was a simple experiment and nobody could have predicted that Bitcoin will become the mammoth it is now.

Shifting by two is dividing by four. Not so easy, after all!

This was my biggest “a-ha” realization around crypto, that the distribution model is utterly and irreparably broken for the most popular currencies. Whenever I bring this up with BTC/crypto maximalists their counterpoint is that fiat is also unevenly distributed and that it’s not a novel problem. The disconnect is truly puzzling.

It's not a novel problem, but nearly all cryptocurrencies exacerbate it by concentrating the majority of emission on the first few years. Non-pow coins even start with the creators holding 100% of supply.

When they could instead minimize the problem (or limit it to the pre-existing fiat inequality) with a pure linear emission, i.e. fixed block subsidy.

The resulting high supply inflation rate (1/n after n years) would have the side benefit of deterring speculation, and keeping prices (and hence environmental impact) low.

It's not so puzzling when you realize most people are perfectly fine about something if they get paid by it, or think they might one day get paid by it.

Less fine if they won't and someone else will.

Agreed. IN particular, William MacAskill[1] is worth particular interest. Closer to abstract low tier cult than serious philosophy. The fact he changed his name (his real name is William Crouch) to sound more like a marketable philosopher should be indicative enough to anyone with an ounce of sense that one should be guarded engaging with this supposed philosophy.

That so many people at FTX called themselves "EAers" or "subscribe to the philosophy of EA" screams charlatanism to me. That it became entwined with the Crypto community is no surprise to me.

It reminds me of the many many "churches" in Africa that tell people great fortune will come their way if they are loyal to this particular preacher or whatnot. [2] It is obvious to me those are a scam. Perhaps more akin to Scientology - creation of a VIP club - the less sense it makes the better?

I've tried to read about Effective Altruism and my conclusions are that it is immature gibberish and these proponents are not fully formed emotionally intelligent adults. [3]

> SBF ended up hanging out a lot with his younger brother Gabe, who was living in an EA commune on nearby Stuart Street.

Communes - but it isn't a cult right?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_MacAskill

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/13/world/africans-fill-churc...

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20221027180943/https://www.sequo...

I hear a lot of critiques around effective altruism that boil down to attacks on people who practice it as being immature, naive, or cult like.

At its core, EA asks what the most effective way to contribute to humanity is. Some of the thinkers are mature and have produced amazing projects, givewell being an obvious example.

There are definitely some weirdos affiliated with the movement, but I don't think that that discredits its approach or philosophy.

It's performative in exactly the same way I grew up among with evangelical extremists. You can't reduce moral decisions and ethics to some sort of karmic account balance. Functionally EA allows its promotors to rebrand self interest as actually altruism. It becomes an all purpose end to justify any means. A thought ending cliche to avoid engaging with the actual complexity.

And yet no one ever seems to be able to actually define a better moral decision making process or describe what the argument defeating "complexity" actually is. Just a longer way of saying "I disagree."

What is the evidence that we actually truly know what is most effective in a lot of situations? If "effectiveness" is just a hypothesis then the whole thing becomes quite shaky in terms of resource allocation.

I think the OP is being unfair to Will and EA, but your statement is pretty outrageous. No one's ever come up with a moral or political philosophy other than utilitarianism - are you serious?

Didn’t he change his name when he was first married (to some more distant family name) instead of only one spouse changing name?

I think it is his ex-wife’s name?

No, it isn't.

Most of the rules of civilization are centered around preventing the 20% predators from devouring the 80% normal people.

Most? That's an understatement.

The rules that aren't are so few they may as well be rounding errors lost in noise.

most are about 10% of predators trying to devour the other 10% of predators while preventing being devoured by the 80% of normal people

And here I sit, thinking those rules were so that the 1% could take all the value the 99% produced.

Nuclear weapons made this a bigger issue since it closes the option of last resort, which is war. See North Korea…

Not sure what you mean. After what was done to Libya after they gave up nukes, North Korea learned it can't disarm without subsequently being invaded and destroyed.

Heh. The 1% are mostly the very successful predators and their heirs.

They buy/make a lot of rules, but there's still (currently) a ton more to constrain predation.

(The more money you have, of course, the easier it is to game a more complex system...)

There's a line describing this in a failed US version of the cop drama Prime Suspect... I forget the exact wording but it's some grizzled cop talking about how their job is to protect the herd from the carnivorous sheep in it.

https://slate.com/culture/2015/01/american-snipers-wolves-sh...

In times like this I often find comfort in the expression "The Purpose of a System is What It Does"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Doesn't this make all forms of bureaucracy (and hence, civilization) parasitic ? (Or are you just supposed to regularly "drain the swamp" ?)

No. Seems like a non sequitur to me.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." from (supposedly) Oscar Wilde

Survival of the fittest to survive, from Charles Darwin

(This is a serious question, I have been pondering it for years now...)

> what started out with altruistic motives, [...] is being derailed by opportunists.

See: all human history.

The essential trust anchor will always be transparency that directly affects a person in society. Anonymous money and anonymous power will be exploited.

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