This is a great article. For more background on this growing industry, I recommend a recent academic study on the use of surveillance technology at the Los Angeles Police Department. The book documents the LAPD's use of data brokerage firms that collect and aggregate info from public records and private sources (e.g., Palantir), as well as automatic license plate readers (ALPR’s) which record vehicles are they move around the city, and Suspicious Activity Reports from police and civilians, which include reports of mundane activities such as using binoculars, drawing diagrams, or taking pictures or "video footage with no apparent aesthetic value." All this data ultimately gets parked in Fusion Center facilities built after 9/11 where federal, state and local law enforcement agencies collaborate to collect, aggregate, analyze and share information. As the author observes, "The use of data in law enforcement is not new. For almost a century, police have been gathering data, e.g., records of citations, collisions, warrants, incarcerations, sex offender and gang registries, etc. What is new and important about the current age of big data is the role in public policing of private capitalist firms who provide database systems with huge volumes of information about people, not just those in the criminal justice system."
Sarah Brayne (2020) "Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing," Oxford University Press
For a contrarian argument, it is worth considering the advice of Michael Porter in his seminal study "Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors" (published in 1980):
> Some argue that firms should not choose competitive positions at all but concentrate on staying flexible, incorporating new ideas, or building up critical resources or core competencies that are portrayed as independent of competitive position. I respectfully disagree. Staying flexible in strategic terms renders competitive advantage almost unobtainable. Jumping from strategy to strategy makes it impossible to be good at implementing any of them. Continuous incorporation of new ideas is important to maintaining operational effectiveness, but this surely is not inconsistent with having a firm strategic position (xv-xvi)... A strategic position is a path, not a fixed location (xiv).
In other words, there is no such animal as a "fully diversified" entrepreneurial business (unless your business is simply investing money in a diversified stock portfolio). The very concept of a (non-financial) capitalist enterprise implies some degree of specialization. Even YC, to some extent, specializes and focuses their investments in certain high-tech industries.
Here are some classics in cognitive psychology with direct quotes that illustrate some of the main themes:
Richard Rhodes (1986) Making of the Atomic Bomb
"In scientific work, creative thinking demands seeing things not seen previously, or in ways not previously imagined; and this necessitates jumping off from 'normal' positions, and taking risks by departing from reality. The difference between the thinking of the paranoid patient and the scientist comes from the latter's ability and willingness to test out his fantasies or grandiose conceptualizations through the systems of checks and balances science has established – and to give up those schemes that are shown not to be valid on the basis of these scientific checks. It is specifically because science provides such a framework of rules and regulations to control and set bounds to paranoid thinking that a scientist can feel comfortable about taking the paranoid leaps. Without this structuring, the threat of such unrealistic, illogical, and even bizarre thinking to overall thought and personality organization in general would be too great to permit the scientist the freedom of such fantasying." (p. 151)
Daniel Kahneman (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow
"In the current view of how associative memory works, a great deal happens at once. An idea that has been activated does not merely evoke one other idea. It activates many ideas, which in turn activate others. Furthermore, only a few of the activated ideas will register in consciousness; most of the work of associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves. The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to our experience, but it is true: you know far less about yourself than you feel you do." (p. 52)
Thomas Kuhn (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions
"One suspects that something like a paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself. What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see. In the absence of such training there can only be... a 'bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion'" (p. 113)
In the early days of crypto, this is what kept me away: the clear use case for illegal purposes (Silk Road anyone?). What I didn't realize was the big early driver was to transfer wealth out of China. China has strict capital controls and China's wealthy don't want their entire wealth to be at the behest of the CCP. There are limited reasons you can move money out of China. Bitcoin mining was a way around this.
That's technically illegal too but not in the same category as, say, ransomware, drugs, etc.
Anyway, I don't think the illegal use cases really matter. After all, cash can be used this way too. Sure cash can't be used for certain things crypto can be but crypto isn't fundamentally immoral any more than money is.
You can think that, but you are looking at the wrong side of the equation.
The path down this thought process is being a bully -- "I don't want you to use electricity in that way".
That is just your preference. Let the miners use power how they like, cleanly. Issue as many carbon taxes as you like to the producers if you feel it needs a finger on the scale. The miners don't tell you to stop wasting power on xmas trees.
Using energy is fine. Producing unclean energy is immoral. So is driving an internal combustion vehicle. We must get our power generation efficient and clean as possible.
> We must get our power generation efficient and clean as possible.
The thing is that, even if, it is not going to happen soon. And Energy for Bitcoin is out of proportion if you compare it with anything you have mentioned. Bitcoin wants to replace something with less efficient way. Bitcoin is backward thinking.
Not understanding Bitcoin is backward thinking. Bitcoin is an incentive to move to clean power.
You can't stop it, you can't stop people mining it, you can't stop people using it. Complaining about the energy is like complaining about the moon. Nothing you say or do can make it go away. So get people to generate it cleanly.
Virtually all electricity has externalized environmental cost. Even electricity used to power a hospital. I agree this externality is immoral, not the hospital or PoW itself.
You don't see any ethical difference between powering a hospital versus thousands of video cards to solve a useless puzzle? None? Not even a little tiny bit?
What about the fact that those video cards use HUNDREDS of times more power than even a relatively busy hospital?
> illicit transactions making up less than 0.5% of Bitcoin’s yearly volume in 2020
No adding required.
[1] throws a lot of numbers including/excluding different categories of drugs/etc. You can squabble about 7% or 12%, but the point is it's an order of magnitude higher than 0.5%.
When I studied economics in college, statistics was taught as a math course with virtually no straightforward explanation of the main concepts. Later as a graduate student in sociology, I helped teach statistics to undergraduates using an introductory textbook that featured an intuitive and conceptual presentation of statistics, and for the first time I really grasped the main ideas. By then it was no longer necessary to manually perform the advanced mathematical operations for statistical analysis, because the students were encouraged to use SPSS and other software tools. If you are looking for an outstanding introduction to statistics, I highly recommend the following textbook:
Healey, Joseph (2014) Statistics: A Tool for Social Research, 10th Edition
For those seeking a good conceptual knowledge of statistics based on real-world examples, including criticism of the limitations of statistical analysis, I would suggest these excellent studies:
Lewis, Michael (2010) The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Paulos, John Allen (1988) Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
Silver, Nate (2012) The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail, but Some Don't
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2005/10) Fooled by Randomness, 2E; Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2E
There is an interesting documentary film, "City 40" (2016), about the people who live in Ozersk, the town near the location of the Kyshtym disaster. The documentary features archival and hidden camera footage (because the area is heavily guarded and mostly closed to foreign journalists), as well as interviews with a number of local residents, including Nadezhda Kutepova.
> Christofi, also a novelist, describes "Dostoevsky in Love" as less a biography than a “reconstructed memoir”. His method, he explains, has been to “cheerfully commit the academic fallacy” of eliding Dostoevsky’s “autobiographical fiction with his fantastical life.”
Although I have not read Christofi's book, I am willing to admit that this could be a potentially fruitful method of interpreting the writer and his work. But for those interested in authentic history, I would recommend Joseph Frank's magnificent study "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" (2010), a fascinating yet critical biography that examines Dostoevsky's life, letters and philosophy.
> the Andantino of D959 is on a different plane of alienation. It is all the more aberrant in a work which is generally so warm-hearted and affirmatory... “desolate grace behind which madness lies.”
Schubert's Sonata D959 Andantino was also featured in a remarkable film, "La Pianiste" (2001), which explores many of the same themes described in the article:
Attention value investors: recall Warren Buffett's aphorism that "A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable, problem" (quoted from Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, Security Analysis). Considering the current economic environment, with a massive stock-market bubble and historically low interest rates, as well as the obvious demand for network security products and services, Solar Winds could be an excellent investment prospect - that is, once the shares get beaten down and the scandal begins to fade.
Sarah Brayne (2020) "Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing," Oxford University Press
https://www.amazon.com/Predict-Surveil-Discretion-Future-Pol...