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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

I read through this thread and I can't help to feel reminded of the discussion about cryptocurrencies. So many people that want to believe, rational people that try to explain why it has to work when there is just not enough information right now. As if we believing it will change the outcome of the replication everybody that doesn't believe is shunned and called a heretic. Suddenly people that studied social sciences try to explain to me (a certified electrical engineer) why this is a big deal, because they saw a few videos on youtube about it, with theories of how this solves all energy problems that are so far removed from practical reality that this can only become a let-down.

Note: I am cautiously optimistic myself, but damn, just wait and don't overhype it.

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> I read through this thread and I can't help to feel reminded of the discussion about cryptocurrencies.

Same. Some people are simply wired to be perma-skeptics / perma-bears / perma-negative. This community is still full of people who truly don’t grasp how world changing bitcoin is. They are in complete denial, most often parroting unoriginal talking points that they’ve been handed from others.

It’s easier to bypass deep thinking and deep learning and just imitate being an expert. It takes courage to admit being ignorant.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert in superconductors. I doubt most people in this thread are. But they are parroting and making ignorant predictions - just like crypto.

I'll not take a personal stance on crypto in this comment, but it's really a stretch to try and compare the two.

No one debates that there are significant and important uses for RTAPS. Lots of people debate if there are significant and important uses for cryptocurrency.

As I said I feel reminded of the discussions, I did not compare this scientific finding to crypto-assets per se. What I did however compare is the way this finding is being discussed in comparison to how crypto-assets have been discussed at a certain point in time.

More specifically I was comparing a specific trait of some actors in both of these discussions (the "I want to believe"-type). I stand behind that observation, although I see how people can read more into my comment, depending on where they are coming from.

As for crypto, tgere is nothing to believe in - it’s doing well after 14 years.

You mean cryptography? Yeah, thanks to let's encrypt we are now reaching widespread adoption of TLS. You barely see any http websites anymore thanks to that.

You know perfectly well that's not what they meant.

Cryptocurrencies on the other hand don’t seem to be doing all thar well. Their hype-phase is definitely over and not many actually useful use cases remained.

Sure, but I am against the idea that from now on "crypto" has to be forever referenced to some ponzi schemes that provide no actual value.

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