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0 pointszajd9y ago0 comments

I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial system that we've collectively built over the past millennia. Which actually does (at least attempts to) enforce some level of fairness. Why should I sign up to have the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm" that is built on a technology (non-quantum crypto) that could be dead in less than 50 years?

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EdHominem9y ago

> I don't trust the goodness of human nature, I trust the legal and financial system that we've collectively built over the past millennia.

I don't like X, I love X.

Your distrust of human nature has caused you to double-down on trusting human nature. Those elaborate systems to counter human nature are built on, get this, more human nature.

> the future of the financial system be controlled by an "algorithm" that is built on a technology (non-quantum crypto) that could be dead in less than 50 years?

Well, it's only one coin, with one algorithm, and people are pricing that into its value. But show me a better system. Not even the USD has a 50-year guarantee. Not only are your dollars likely worth 10% of their current value in fifty years, but there's an even chance that something has wiped their value out completely.

You're just irrationally afraid of crypto risk and irrationally accepting of human risk.

> Why should I sign up

Oh, I see your issue... Don't worry, nobody wants your permission any more than they do with USD. You don't need to, and can't, do anything.

Mickydtron9y ago

Regarding the trustworthiness of social institutions, there are mechanisms for creating more trustworthy systems on top of less trustworthy parts. A simple example is TCP. It is a leaky abstraction at times, yes, but it is more trustworthy in the face of adversity than UDP is.

This is not to say that our current batch of social institutions are even as trustworthy as TCP, just that it is possible to build institutions that are, and that we have a lot more experience as a civilization with debugging social institutions than we do debugging software. Thus, I do not think it is paradoxical to lean on social institutions to reign in raw human nature.

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