Topic: 2012-08-28 huffingtonpost.com - Chomping At The Bitcoin - The Ups And Downs Of C (Read 5739 times)

So when is this book coming out?

yes, deathandtaxes, time will help. but I'm impatient and the fiat system might collapse sooner than later. We better be ready to jump in.

The above features of bitcoin I quoted are secondary properties (I removed opensource) that can be derived from the fundamental properties (what's in satoshis paper). Satoshis short paper alone is sufficient to figure these out.

I think it's much better to try to explain these "dry math fundamentals" and let people figure out the implications for themselves.  That's much more effective in my mind than yelling at them: "but, but, it's decentralized therefore no govt. can shut it down!". Maybe the specific individual targeted doesn't even put much weight on this (or any other) particular feature.

If only it wasn't so damn hard to understand! We're so deeply involved ourselves that we don't even appreciate how hard it is.

Like the mathematics professors usual answer when asked some comprehension question ("I don't understand this or that"): "What exactly don't you understand? It's all right there... trivial to see.". There's nothing "exactly" that isn't being understood by the confused student, it's the big picture he's missing. He's missing it because he doesn't see how the cogs and wheels all work together in concert because his mind doesn't yet have the capacity to hold all the detail info at once. He can see this cog driving that wheel or whatever and all the little details one at a time, but in the end, he understands exactly nothing. He doesn't see the woods for all the trees and it doesn't help to yell at him: "look: the woods, all the animals that thrive in it, isn't it beautiful?!".

He has to figure it all out by himself, in quiet mind, only then he will have his heureka moment and be able to appreciate the beauty and really trust the "secondary properties" that derive from the "boring" technical details.

I think time will also help.  When Bitcoin is still around 10 years after genesis even those who don't understand exactly how it works but first heard about it in a CNBC snippet 7 years prior will have a little more confidence it isn't some pyramid scheme or HYIP.  SR also helps.  It is an "must have site" for some users and the only way they can pay is Bitcoin.  Not saying Bitcoin should rely on SR but having things that people want which require Bitcoins is useful.  People are more likely to try somethng new if they "have to" rather than just because "it isn't PayPal".

Yes, it's funny, this happens to me also, the damn thing is too brilliant.  It's a great floor wax and a delicious dessert topping, simultaneously.

I guess a better way to go about it would be to ask people a single question: what do you hate the most about your bank (or credit cards, or the financial system).  Then, depending on the answer, zero in and describe how Bitcoin solves that particular problem, without mentioning all the other benefits.

My problem with explaining it is that it is too revolutionary. It has so many properties that I don't know where to start.
-Decentralized
--No central authority
---No central point of failure
---No inflation at said authority's whim
---Can't be taken down

-Relies on cryptography
--Can't be stolen no matter how good the excuse

-Pseudonymous
--Can be totally anonymous if done correctly

-Near-instant transactions
-Near-zero fees

-Open Source
--Tested by a large number of people
--Anyone can audit it or submit bugfixes

-Distributed fairly to those who help secure the network against attack
-Created at a predictable rate

-Blockchain enables many cool things like SatoshiDICE's provably fair gambling

Etc etc. That's a lot of meaningful points, and it's hard for people to get their heads around all of it.

Exactly the same situation here. I have 2 close friends and I talk to them about bitcoin a lot. It's fucking hard to explain to someone with close to no background. They only "trust" bitcoin because they know me for a along time and trust me. This gets them excited enough to acquire 50 or 150 bitcoins (I don't know their exact balances). I'm pretty sure if they had the same level of understanding that I have, they would try to get their hands on a lot more bitcoins.

Interestingly these 2 friends greatly differ in understanding money and the powers around it: the one just stubbornly holds on to his "real money" (fiat), the other one buys metal and even some survival stuff, wants to buy land. As different as their perception is about monetary issues in general, as united they are in not fully trusting bitcoin. Why? Because they do not understand it and I think the possibility that bitcoin is a huge well-done scam that even screwed over their close friend molecular still lurks in the back of their heads.

I think we might have use for an much longer "weusecoins" video that explains how bitcoin works in detail.

If only I knew how to explain it without losing people on the way.

+1 molecular

I had to read a lot of crypto-freaks before I trusted bitcoin. It always takes so much explaining, and people are still skeptical. I usually go for the "open-source, vigorously and academically tested" route. I have no way of proving to anybody that it's secured by the laws of mathematics. I have gotten a lot of people very interested in bitcoin, but I haven't gotten anybody to actually buy some yet. I found out about it on my own, and once I decided it wasn't some elaborate scam, I HAD to buy some because I thought they were so revolutionary.

Bitcoin doesn't have that luxury. It has to earn the trust. Earning it by "usualness" (I just looked that up for lack of a bette word) takes way too long and I don't think that's how the US dollar initially earned it's trust. It might be how it retains it, but it's not how it gained it in the first place. We need something else to support widespread trust and I don't think "this crypto-freak I know said it's safe and many people already use it" is quite sufficient.

I don't think most people fundamentally understand what it means to say that the US dollar is only backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States government." Yet, people still trust it because it has worked for them in the past.

Of course, past performance is not an indicator of future success...

Why so disgusting and sexist? I don't have a clear picture of your overall post quality but this post alone is worth an ignore.

Oh Janet....
I would drink a gallon of her pee, just to see where it came from.

The standard disclaimer of social engineers everywhere to preemptively explain why their policies always seems to make everybody (except them and their friends) worse off.

This statement does not parse into something comprehensible unless "hoarding" is understood to mean, "retaining purchasing power earned by deferred consumption" and "unstable" is understood to mean, "impossible for the issuer to counterfeit in large quantities without attracting pitchforks and torches".

Economics is not an exact science. You can't isolate humans with some soil and resources into a laboratory.  

It's a social science. And I'd say for a regional currency demurrage is essential,
* because it encourages spending this currency instead of the national, thus boosting the local economy, and
* because otherwise in such a small economy, some will hoard too much, distribution would become too uneven and the money supply would become unstable.

But I'm for something like Ripple for a regional economy anyway, we don't need monetary systems with centrally managed supply anymore, as we're living in the information age.

And in the global scope, like intended with Freicoin, demurrage still doesn't make much sense for me. As many on this board would say, it's the production and not the consumption that matters.

Another quote from the German Wikipedia: "Nach Androhung von Armeeeinsatz beendete Wörgl das Experiment im September 1933."
(After threatening to use the military, Wörgl terminated the Experiment in September 1933.)

With scientific data I did not mean clear signs of the experiment having been a success by the banks sending the cavalry. Rather a repeated experiment with today's scientific standards.

that's scientific (observational) data enough for me.

and our Chiemgauer you can observe all the time. 

thanks for chipping in relevant bits ("Wörgl"). You think it might work? Did it work out in Wörgl?

+1, too bad she wont be at the conference.

this!!, couldn't agree more.


I've been "trying to invent" "online money" back in the nineties. So maybe I'm pre-supplied with necessary bits of knowledge... but I still think understanding how bitcoin works is possible for anyone sane, even for 7 million individuals.

If you are referring to the "original" experiment conducted in Wörgl, this I am aware of. I would like to see an experiment of this scale being repeated and well documented. It's really hard to get scientific data on the Wörgl experiment.

there has been a "big" experiment in some village in austria or switzerland, I don't recall... (someone chip in!). I think it only works at gunpoint and more valuable (storable) currencies will eventually take over.

I'm not sure about the ethical implications.