Comment by dspillett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dspillett | Hacker News Reader

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> But I get that people here prefer

For many of us it isn't that we think the status quo is the RightWay™ - we just aren't convinced that crypto as it currently is presents a better answer. It fixes some problems, but adds a number of its own that many of us don't think are currently worth the compromise for our needs.

As you said yourself:

> The crypto ecosystem is shady, I know, but the tech is great

That but is not enough for me to want to take part. Yes the tech is useful, heck I use it for other things (blockchains existed as auditing mechanisms long before crypto-currencies), but I'm not going to encourage others to take part in an ecosystem that is as shady as crypto is.

> Thanks everyone for all the downvotes.

I don't think you are getting downvoted for supporting crypto, more likely because you basically said “you know that article you are all discussing?, well I think you'll want to know that I didn't bother to read it”, then without a hint of irony made assertions of “angst and negativity”.

And if I might make a mental health suggestion: caring about online downvotes is seldom part of a path to happiness :)

The main problem with blockchain is identical to the one with LLMs. When snake oil salesmen try to apply the same solution to every problem, you stop wasting your time with those salesmen.

Both can be useful now and then, but the legit uses are lost in the noise.

And for blockchain... it was launched with the promise of decentralized currency. But we've had decentralized currency before in the physical world. Until the past few hundred years. Then we abandoned it in favor of centralized currency for some reason. I don't know, reliability perhaps?

> And for blockchain... it was launched with the promise of decentralized currency.

Cryptocurrencies were launched with that promise.

They are but one use¹ of block-chains / merkle-trees, which existed long before them².

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree#Uses

[2] 1982 for blockchains/trees as part of a distributed protocol as people generally mean when they use the words now³, hash chains/trees themselves go back at least as far as 1979 when Ralph Merkle patented the idea

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain#History

But if you put it that way neural networks were defined in the 70s too :)

Very much so. Is there a problem with that? To what time period would attribute their creation?

In fact it is only the 70s if you mean networks that learn via backprop & similar methods. Some theoretical work on artificial neurons was done in the 40s.

The point is whatever you said in defense of blockchain/crypto applies or does not apply to neural networks/LLMs in equal measure.

I for one fail to see the difference between these two kinds of snake oil.

> Some theoretical work on artificial neurons was done in the 40s.

"The perceptron was invented in 1943 by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts. The first hardware implementation was Mark I Perceptron machine built in 1957"

> whatever you said in defense of blockchain/crypto

You seem to be labouring under the impression that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are one in the same. The point you seem to be missing is that I'm saying they are not the same. Blockchains (usually actually trees like merkle trees) are a thing that has existed long before cryptocurrencies which are one application of technique.

> I for one fail to see the difference between these two kinds of snake oil.

The gaggle of quackish sales people with miracle cures based on LLMs is pretty much the same sort of quackish sales people that touted miracle cures based on crypto currencies, yes. But LLMs are one use of neural networks and crypto/proof-of-work is one use of blockchains.

This all started with me correcting “And for blockchain... it was launched with the promise of decentralized currency.” — which is the incorrect equivalency of blockchain/cryptocurrency writ large.

> > Some theoretical work on artificial neurons was done in the 40s.

> "The perceptron was invented in 1943 by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts.

Exactly. You've just repeated my sentence with a little more detail.

40s: theory

50s: attempts at practical implementation

early 70s: backprop methods (as we currently mean the term wrt neural networks, backpropagation as a more general concept existed before that) first published, starting that decades' big excitement over the potential for neural networks.

Gold is and has been a decentralized currency for a very long time. It’s mostly just very inconvenient to transport.

> Then we abandoned it in favor of centralized currency for some reason. I don't know, reliability perhaps?

The global economy practically requires a centralized currency, because the value of your currency vs other countries becomes extremely important for trading in a global economy (importers want high value currency, exporters want low).

It’s also a requirement to do financial meddling like what the US has been doing with interest rates to curb inflation. None of that is possible on the blockchain without a central authority.

> Gold is and has been a decentralized currency for a very long time. It’s mostly just very inconvenient to transport.

Even precious metal coins became endorsed by one authority or another (the cities/banks/little kingdoms stamping the coins). Because you as a normal person don't have the resources to validate every single piece of gold/silver you are paid with.

There has also been a short period when every 3rd bank had its own paper currency. That seems to be gone too. Perhaps because as a normal person maintaining a list of banks you could trust was too much.

I don’t think having a centralized validation authority makes a currency centralized. Centralized currency usually implies the means to control that currency. While the monarch may control the supply of gold minted into coins, they don’t control the supply of gold itself.

It would have been an inconvenient currency for small transactions, but it’s still a currency.

The bank currencies were weird. Iirc, some of that was wrapped up in the Civil War and the Confederate currency being “official” but also basically worthless towards the end of the war. I think the Great Depression killed them, when banks became insolvent and their currencies became worthless.

> The main problem with blockchain is identical to the one with LLMs. When snake oil salesmen try to apply the same solution to every problem, you stop wasting your time with those salesmen.

+100

Rule in blockchain: Whenever there is money beyond paying for services/infra like AWS, there is a problem.

> I don't think you are getting downvoted for supporting crypto

Still, every of my post that is more or less supportive of crypto gets downvoted. And I am the first to tell the ecosystem is one of the worst in tech so that's always mild support.

But yes, you're right it's probably sem web people overreacting to _my_ rant :)

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