
Yet Another Rant About Blockchains - elvinyung
https://www.notion.so/Yet-Another-Rant-About-Blockchains-ece6657d0a3b491bb39dd8002055a5af
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wpietri
I'd like to address this bit:

> The classic rebuttal against blockchains and other distributed technologies
> goes something like this: there's nothing a blockchain can do that a plain
> old SQL database can't do cheaper and more efficiently. That's true, but
> it's also missing the point, and I'll leave it at that.

That is definitely not missing the point when it is raised in response to
things that are sold as "OMG blockchain!" but do not need (or often, even make
use of) what makes blockchains unique. Which is, IMHO, at least 95% of the
things that I come across marketed as involving blockchains.

~~~
darawk
It's missing the point in the sense that plain SQL has properties that are not
desirable for blockchain's (valid) use cases. Consider Git. Git could be
implemented using plain SQL, but it's not. It's not implemented with SQL
because SQL would be centralized. One entity would have to own the truth of a
codebase. This is an unacceptable property for many open source projects,
which is why Git was created.

The essential use case of a blockchain is when you have something where you
want an immutable history, and where, for whatever reason, it is either
undesirable, or difficult to converge on a single entity to own that history.
This arises in many, many places. Financial assets, source code, legal
documents, etc..

It is not that you _can 't_ implement say, legal document version control
without a blockchain. You absolutely can. But to do so, you have to trust a
single entity to warehouse that truth for you. Blockchains are a way of
solving that problem, just like Git was a way of solving it for open source.

~~~
hobs
> It's missing the point in the sense that plain SQL has properties that are
> not desirable for blockchain's (valid) use cases. Consider Git. Git could be
> implemented using plain SQL, but it's not. It's not implemented with SQL
> because SQL would be centralized. One entity would have to own the truth of
> a codebase. This is an unacceptable property for many open source projects,
> which is why Git was created.

Huh? "SQL would be centralized"

At no point is git required to use anything over a network or somehow is more
decentralized than a database you pass around and insert data into.

A push request is a request to push the same data I pushed into my database
into yours, whether its SQL or not makes no meaningful difference.

~~~
darawk
Sure, you can use sql that way. But it's not designed for it. Git is, and so
are blockchains.

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el_cid
But that's exactly how SQL is used?

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darawk
You push and pull incremental changes between sql databases in a history-
preserving way?

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hobs
If you want to, yeah, pretty much every SQL database supports replication.

~~~
darawk
Yes, but not in a history preserving way, which is why people don't use SQL
for version control.

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beaner
One of the author's points seems to be decentralized technologies tend to have
large points of centralization, so why does it matter that they're
decentralized?

For me, the answer is the ability to opt out. When it comes to crypto currency
specifically, it doesn't matter to me if 99% of users store their money on
coinbase, as long as I individually have the ability to remove myself from the
system.

The point isn't to force decentralization on everyone, it's to provide an opt-
out ability to those who want it.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
You can opt out of baking with cash far easier than away from exchanges with
crypto.

~~~
beaner
I don't know what you mean. Baking?

~~~
schrodinger
I think it was a typo for banking.

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pdimitar
This is why I am very hesitative to accept a job in the "blockchain area", and
I am still not convinced that I should.

 _Every single time_ I asked the question "how do you guys make your money?"
it has been evaded ("we work in the finance area", thanks, that explains
everything!) or has been paraphrased into "is my job secure?" which was then
answered positively. I mean yes, my main motivation to ask is indeed about if
my job is secure for at least a year -- in an area where people secure
investor money by promising basically thin air, but I am also asking the
question to gain an understanding of the company's business culture. And I
haven't got the slightest idea of that after 7 interviews in the last 5
months.

I simply cannot wrap my head around this mass halucination. How are investors
even agreeing with giving several million bucks to an enthusiastic young
person with zero business planning? And zero ideas how will they repay the
investment? The pitchers (future CEOs) are just like "we are totally gonna
revolutionize area X with blockchain!" and then money starts rolling in.

I am sure I am over-simplifying but still, can somebody explain this process
to me? I am still baffled to this day.

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fernly
He quotes Scott Alexander on "Moloch" (an essay I haven't read yet), "In some
competition optimizing for X, the opportunity arises to throw some other value
under the bus for improved X. Those who take it prosper. Those who don’t take
it die out.... The process continues until all other values that can be traded
off have been – in other words, until human ingenuity cannot possibly figure
out a way to make things any worse."

Is this not a fancy way of describing what's usually called the Tragedy of the
Commons?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)

~~~
wycs
It is about the tragedy of the commons and what it implies when self-
modification becomes possible, such as genetic engineering in humans and
recursive self-improvement in potential future AIs.

That essay is a hell of a piece or writing. It didn't so much change my
object-level policy opinions for the here and now, but it ripped the heart out
of my Libertarianism. I've always found markets and selection beautiful and
fascinating and powerful, which is all true. But I also thought they had a
teleology that was humanistic. This is false.

To the extent this seems true now, it is only because humans are the current
hardware markets are running on. Fundamentally, they are not our side in the
long term.

I have found few pieces of writing more powerful:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

Nick Bostrom explores similar themes in The Future of Human Evolution:
[https://nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html](https://nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.html)

~~~
sooheon
Loved this rabbit hole. Thanks!

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legionof7
Off topic but doing blogs on Notion seems like a really good idea. I like the
format.

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rajekas
I was thinking the same thing. If only Notion allowed custom domain mapping -
I will be the first person to shift my public content to Notion, having
already done so with much of my private content.

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bipvanwinkle
I'm likely guilty of being a naive technologist. I appreciate this different
perspective.

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keyle
Huh someone is typing in that post as I read it. Pretty cool, but confusing.

~~~
elvinyung
sorry :P

