WOW AlphaGo beat lee Sedol!
lee was ahead most of the game but the computer beat him in the endgame I think.
Ander
Karma: 503
Diversification is good.
8 months later, price still in the same range of around $200-300 all year.
Transaction rate has continued to rise steadily throughout the year, though a spike occurred this summer due to stress testing of the network, but has not experienced the rapid growth needed to sustain the late-2013 enthusiasm.
Bitcoin is suffering a bit recently with the Core vs XT debate. If it can make it through this and get to a state with a better block size, without forking and splintering the community, then it will be in better shape.
As time goes on and blockchain technologies continue to be worked on, the likelihood that Bitcoin eventually becomes surpassed/replaced by a useful 2.0 altcoin rises, imo. By ‘useful’ I mean something that could be a useful real world application of the blockchain, and be profitable to holders of the crypto token, rather than just have a value fueled by speculation.
So not something like Dogecoin or Litecoin, but projects that are actually trying to do something cool with the blockchain, such as smart contracts, prediction markets, financial stock/bond/forex exchange, decentralized web, etc. The era when you can just copy bitcoin, and change parameters like block time or switch to scrypt or whatever are past. For a blockchain project to be interesting/promising now, it has to be useful.
However, there is not yet any clear successor. There are a number of promising projects, but most of them are really still in alpha stages of development right now (Ethereum, Bitshares, Maidsafe, etc). They are really at the stage where only super users can do anything with them yet. Ripple is the most advanced and highest market cap, and is being used by a some financial institutions, but it is still extremely centralized, and the value proposition of its coin (XRP) is questionable in my mind, given that multiple companies have cloned the technology, stripping out the XRP token from the network because it really isnt necessary. Still, I own a bit.
Given that I now have the majority of my crypto funds into about 8 or so different 2.0 projects, most of which are in the top 20 market cap of crypto projects.
I think there are a lot of people out there who were told by someone ‘buy bitcoins’, and they did, and they either got in early enough that they made good money, or they bought in Nov 2013 or later and have a loss, and they either bailed since then or they are sitting there, and they dont really know much about the technology. That might have worked in 2011 when barely anyone knew of bitcoin, but at this point it got enough media attention that plenty of people have heard of it, and its going to be hard to make more order of magnitude gains unless it becomes highly useful and adopted.
The real money left to be made in the sector is in picking what 2.0 blockchain projects (either existing or yet to be made) have a future, and buying into them before they become well known. Diversifying among all the most promising ones is probably the best idea, because you only need one to make it big and give you a 100x or more return, and it can cover you even if every other one goes to zero. However, most people find out about cryptos when they are in a hype/pump phase, so if you just buy them at the time you find out about them, you will be looking at a huge loss, every single time. You have to either research every project and determine which ones are both promising and currently low prices relative to their price over the last year or two, or you have to wait until whatever coin you just found out about has a large correction. For example, Ethereum just came out and got a lot of hype this month, but its priced at around 5-10x the IPO price right now, (the price investors bought it for in early 2014). If you buy now there is a good chance youre buying the hype bubble, better to wait until it has corrected and stabilized in a price range first.
One very neat thing about cryptocurrencies to me is that its like an entirely new venture capital market ,that is open to everyone on earth, not just to wealthy ‘accredited investors’ with a $1M+ net worth. Anyone can help to fund IPO crypto startup projects, and has the chance to be their own venture capitalist and try to pick something that will succeed. Its so much better than funding a kickstarter for something you like, and then having no equity at all in the project you helped make possible.
I still think there is probably a place for Bitcoin as the store of value coin, at least if it can be forked with community approval and become more useful (larger block size). Most other proof of work coins are pointless in my mind, though coins that try to improve on the anonymity features could have a place (dash/bytecoin/monero are the main contenders there).
Most of the useful blockchain 2.0 projects that are trying to do something other than being a store of value have discarded proof of work, or are in the process of doing so (Ethereum), because its too expensive to secure a network that way when your goal is to, for example, provide smart contracts or prediction markets. Also, other security algorithms don’t waste lots of electricity to run a bunch of ASIC miners, which would be a huge problem for the earth if bitcoin actually became the primary currency.
Disclaimer: I own at least some of every crypto I mentioned in this post. Except Litecoin, because its pointless. Doge is pointless too, but I still own a little because its fun, even though I think it will probably eventually die.
I don’t want Cryonics companies to focus on selling fantasies, I want them to focus on making the technology work.
The value of giving people ‘peace of mind’ is low, and there are already tons of religions out there that do that. The value of actually letting people live again after death would be immense.
Focus on reality.
Please no spoilers from people who have read past this point in the books.
The event that occurred in the show hasn’t even happened yet in the books. So there are no additional spoilers for a reader to give.
Indeed, Surface Detail was an excellent book, one of the best Culture novels, imo.
Yes, technology which made immortality possible could also making torturing/punishing people forever possible, but this does not mean that death is good, rather it means that its important for people to have empathy, and that we need to evolve away from retributive justice.
I usually find articles like this from the deathists annoying, and this wasn’t an exception.
They need it, therefore if it randomly happens, they will keep the outcome.
Yes this. Of course it is not a given that something that would be a useful adaptation will develop randomly.
Great analogies with the hand of cards.
Welcome to LessWrong, and thanks for posting!
Regarding the evolution of emotions, consider this:
Imagine a group of life forms of the same species who compete for resources. Lets say that either they are fairly even in power level, and thus it is superior for them to cooperate with each other and divide resources fairly to avoid wasting energy fighting. Alternately, some (alphas) are superior in power level, but the game theoretically optimal outcome is for the more dominant to take a larger share of resources, but still allow the others to have some. (This is superior for them to fighting to the death to try to get everything).
If life forms cannot communicate with each other, then they suffer from a prisoner’s dilemma problem. They would like to cooperate in the prisoners dilemma, but without the ability to signal to each other, they cannot be sure the other will not defect. Thus they end up defecting against each other.
We can thus see that if the life forms evolved methods of signalling to each other, it would improve their chances of survival. Thus, complex life forms develop ways of signalling to each other. We can see many, many examples of this throughout a broad range of life.
The life forms also need to be able to mentally model each other now to predict each other’s actions. Thus they develop empathy (the ability to model each other), and emotions, which are related to signalling. If each of the members of the species have similar emotions, that is , they react in similar ways to a given situation, and they have developed ways of expressing these emotions to each other, then it greatly improves the abilities of the life forms to model each other correctly. For example, if one life form then tries to gain an unfair distribution of resources (defecting in the prisoners dilemma problem), the other will display the emotional response of anger. They are signalling ‘you cannot defect against me in such an unfair way. Because you are attempting to do so, I will fight you’.
Because the emotional responses occur automatically, they act similar to a precommitment. Essentially, the life form having the emotional response has been preprogrammed to have this response to the situation. This is a precommitment to a course of action, which can help the life form to achieve a better game-theoretic result.
(For example, if we are playing ‘chicken’, driving our cars toward each other on a road, the best strategy for me to win the game is to visibly precommit to not swerving no matter what. Thus, the optimal strategy would be to remove my steering wheel and throw it out of the car in a way that you can see. Since you now know that I CANNOT turn, you must turn to avoid crashing, and I win the game. This shows how a strong precommitment can be an advantage).
If we think of emotions as precommitments in this way, we can see that they can give us an advantage in our prisoner’s dilemma problem. The opponent then knows that they cannot defect against us too much, or else we will become angry and will fight, even though this gives a worse outcome for us as well, it is an emotional response and thus we will do it automatically.
We can see that emotions are thus an aid to fitness, and life forms that evolve them will have a genetic advantage.
Now imagine that the problems that the life forms need to signal about become much more complex. Rather than just signalling about food or mates, for example, they need to signal about group dynamics, concepts like loyalty to a tribe, their commitment to care for young, etc.
Under these circumstances, we can see the need to develop a much greater range of emotions to deal with various situations. We need to display more than just anger over an unequal distribution, or fear, or so on. We also need to have emotional responses of love, loyalty, and so on, and be able to demonstrate/signal these to each other.
This is my understanding of how emotions should evolve among complex life forms that are at least remotely close to humans. Perhaps for extremely different life forms, emotions would not evolve. Or perhaps in pretty much all complex forms of life which are communicating with each other, some form of emotions would evolve, I don’t know. I don’t see the need for a magical sky-father to have desired emotions to exist, who then guided reality to this point.
Also, I am not sure how the universe-creator would accomplish this. If the degrees of freedom they have are to create the underlying fundamental laws of physics, and the initial conditions of the universe, how would they be able to compute out what sets of laws/initial conditions would lead to the physics which would lead to the chemistry which would lead to the biology which would lead to the life forms which would have these emotions? And why would that be the goal of the universe-creator? In the absence of evidence which would distinguish this hypothesis from others, I don’t see why we should privilege this hypothesis to such an extent, when it is pretty clear that the real reason for “believing” in it is actually “I want it to be true”. (And also “A strong meme which many people believe in is threatening that I will be harmed if I do not “believe” that this is true, and promising to reward me if I do “believe” it is true).
If anyone can correct my thoughts regarding evolution and emotions, or can point to some studies or scientific theories which either support or refute this post, I would love to read them!
SPOILER ALERT:
Here is the solution I just came up with.
1) Albert says “I don’t know when Cheryl’s birthday is, but I know that Bernard does not know too.”
If the birthday had been May 19 or June 18, then Bernard would have known it immediately after being told the day, because those days only appear once. In order for Albert to know this about Bernard’s knowledge, he must know that the month is not May or June. (Becuase if the month was either may or June, Bernard might know the birthday right away). Therefore the birthday is not in May or June.2) Bernard says: “At first I didn’t know when Cheryl’s birthday is, but I know now.”
After Albert gives Bernard the information that it is either July or August, Bernard learns the exact date. This indicates that the day is not the 14th, because the 14th is present in both July and August. In order for Bernard’s information to not remain ambiguous, it must be one of July 16, August 15, or August 17, because those three have a unique day value out of the remaining possibilities.3) Albert says: “Then I also know when Cheryl’s birthday is.” This indicates that for our three remaining possibilities, the month is not ambiguous, and therefore it must be July. (Because August had two possibilities left, while July had one). Therefore the birthday is on July 16.
I found it fairly easy, but I am experienced with logic puzzles, including those where characters in the puzzle use their knowledge about the knowledge of others in the puzzle in order to solve it. If someone wasn’t experienced with these kinds of logic puzzles it would probably seem very hard. (The first time I encountered one of these I think I agonized over it for many hours).
This seems significantly shakier than even the idea of quantum immortality.
Lets call your idea “Boltzmann Brain Immortality”. That is, the idea that “because a Boltzmann Brain version of me might possibly pop into existence somewhere in the multiverse at some point in time, ever, I am immortal”.
I have two main objections to this: 1) Boltzmann Brains are generally considered a problem in theories of physics which allow them. That is, if a model of physics allows Boltzmann Brains to be possible, with non vanishing probability in comparison to ‘real’ intelligent life, this is considered generally considered a flaw in the theory.
2) I wouldn’t consider a Boltzmann Brain version of me to qualify as ‘life’ or ‘immortality’, since there si no continuity of experience—the Boltzmann Brain just vanishes again an instant later.
Regarding 51% attacks, proof of work algorithm and alternatives: https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/new-pos.pdf
This is a good technical article that describes the mining/consensus algorithm of bitcoin, (but maybe not very readable to non-technical people). It also discusses the main current alternative, proof of stake, and shows that an issue with proof of stake which is not present in proof of work is that anyone who is new to the network or goes offline and then is reconnected is required to trust some entity / community / etc, that the blockchain they are using is the ‘correct’ one, and not one which was reforged over a period of time using old private keys purchased from former holders, etc.
“This is not a distributed consensus! It is a different sort of consensus, which may be formed amongst always-online peers in a decentralized way, but depends on trust for new users and temporarily offline ones. It is correspondingly vulnurable to legal pressure, attacks on “trusted” entities, and network”.
On the other hand, Bitcoin’s proof of work algorithm is expensive and energy consuming, while Proof of stake is low cost.
Depending upon the purpose you are using the blockchain for, this is a tradeoff that might be acceptable. If the goal of the blockchain is to be the ultimate store of ALL value, then I think Bitcoin’s Proof of Work algorithm is probably required. If the goal is to utilize blockchain technology for various other applications, where you might not need to pay for absolute security and merely being ‘very difficult’ to attack might be sufficient, the lower cost alternative might be superior, imo. There is more of an element of human consensus and trust in PoS than in PoW, for example, you might have to trust a developer team, the reputation of a company, or the collective community of users.
However, large mining pools also are a threat to decentralization, as you noted. If a few or even a couple mining pools control enough hash power to launch an attack, then you have to trust the mining pool operators in PoW just like you have to trust a developer / community / company / whatever who you are downloading a blockchain snapshot from in PoS.
I don’t think there are yet any definitive answers on these issues yet, which is why I favor diversifying among different experiments. Of course, many others believe they have the answer, so they either only want Bitcoin, or only want . If the Bitcoin maximalists are correct, they save themselves the ~10% cost of diversifying among the different experiments right now. I’ll pay the uncertainty tax and diversify in order to not be wrong.
I do have an idea for a distributed public ledger in which attacks are possible but always negative-sum. I have little experience with cryptography so its probably rubbish. If it looks to not be terrible I will probably post it here for comment.
Feel free to post your idea. No one expects you to revolutionize an industry in one post. Its fun to throw ideas around.
The necessity for each wallet to contain the entire block chain.
This isn’t actually an issue. Lite wallets exist.
Governments have never seemed keen to give up their monopoly on the money supply.
Indeed, they would prefer not to give up this monopoly. Earlier attempts at creating things similar to Bitcoin such as e-gold failed because they lacked the decentralization component, and could be attacked by governments. However, it is extremely difficult for Governments to kill bitcoin. They can make it dangerous to use in their localities, but thats about it. At the present time it seems that most governments are not even attempting to take this action. Bitcoin has been legitimized sufficiently in the US, and has hundreds of millions of dollars of VC funding poured into its infrastructure now, so it would be difficult for the government to now do a 180 and try to ban its use.
The computing power wasted by mining.
Or as you noted, ‘used inefficiently’. I agree this is a problem. The question is: is there actually a better answer out there which does not require this. If a solution existed which was equal in ability to secure the network but required less computaiton power (energy), then it would clearly be superior. There are a number of other methods being experimented with in altcoins. I don’t think there is a clear answer right now. (But there are definitely lots of people who believe strongly that proof of work is the only way, and some people who believe strongly that it is nothing but a waste of energy).
After reading about BC and 51% attacks, I am beginning to think “the network effect is the mind killer” might be a more general expression of “politics is the mind killer”.
If you mean that lots of people tend to become devoted to one blockchain, and start treating it like a religion where it is the only true blockchain and all others must die, then yes there are people who do that. (Both for bitcoin and for others). It can be mind killing for many. Tribalism is the mind killer!
That said the size of the network of adopters of a blockchain ledge is probably the most critical measure of its success. Bitcoin has grown significantly over the years in this regard which is why it is valuable. So when people quote network effect as being a big deal, they are correct.
You still have to account for the probability of Bitcoin holders seeing the change coming and deciding to modify the Bitcoin codebase to adapt the new desirable features, but still use the Bitcoin ledger (aka current ownership of Bitcoins).
I don’t know how to evaluate the probabilities of these various outcomes happening, however it only costs about 10-20% more to go from ‘buy X bitcoins’ to ‘buy X bitcoins, and also diversify by buying an equivalent percentage stake in all other promising blockchain technologies’.
If you do that you can change the equation from Bitcoin winning and continuing to have value, versus the blockchain technology succeeding and some instance of it continuing to have value.
Not just that. Being only a store-of-value is a poor functionality set. The Indian gold jewelry doesn’t just sit in a vault—it is worn on big occasions and serves a major status display.
I would say the property of Bitcoin to be both a store of value and easily transferable anywhere in the world extremely quickly far exceeds the value of Gold to “look pretty when you wear it”.
Also, if by “Bitcoin”, we mean “Bitcoin and/or any future blockchain technology that replaces it” (such as Ethereum or others), then features can be developed using the blockchain technology which would have immense value, such as prediction markets, assets (stocks, etc) tradeable in the blockchain, voting, website naming, smart contracts, escrow, and many others. While also being a store of value, these features would have immensely more value than Gold’s “looks pretty when you wear it”.
Good answer. :)
I’m not sure what a better term would be. Maybe ‘lottery tickets’, but that is still too low probability/high reward for what we are talking about.
Also, Bitcoin has an advantage over gold in terms of security. Guarding a lot of gold in a vault is expensive, but keeping a Brainwallet is not.
Which brings up another hilarious Bitcoin Pascal’s Mugging scenario: “What is the probability that you die, are cryopreserved, and are resurrected at some point in the future. But this future world is a dystopia, and cryoresurrected people are indentured servants of the company that revived them until they are able to pay back their debt. Since most jobs have been automated it is extremely difficult for you to get the money to ever earn your freedom. However, if you had created a Bitcoin brain wallet, you would be able to access it (because the cryoresurrection process is very good), and you would have something of value with which to pay off your debt and live comfortably in the new world”.
Good luck trying to come up with numbers for the probability and value of that scenario. :)
Measuring Bitcoin against “gold market cap” is dangerous because gold has uses which Bitcoin cannot replace. For example, traditionally most of the wealth of Indian families (those who have wealth, of course) have been kept as gold, specifically golden jewelry. Bitcoin will not replace that use. Another big advantage of gold is anonymity which Bitcoin will not be able to replicate either.
I don’t think its unreasonable. Bitcoin competes for best-store-of-value status with Gold. Indian families and many others store wealth in Gold, which indicates that Gold has a strong network effect: a large network of people who highly value it as a store of value. For Bitcoin to capture X% of the market of Gold, it would mean that it captured some fraction of that network size.
Bitcoin has one massive advantage over Gold, which is its capacity to be transported quickly anywhere in the world, which makes it possible to use as a convenient means of payment.
Anonymity is debatable, and its also debatable whether it is a positive or negative, but it is quite possible that other blockchain technologies will develop or have already developed better anonymity features, which means that potentially these could be incorporated into Bitcoin.
18 months later its worth about 3x this price. You could sell 1⁄3 and have no risk, and let the rest ride.