Where emissions can be reduced with a reasonable effort, then absolutely, there is every reason to do so. However, I disagree with efforts that are disproportionately expensive.
It's also a smart move to transition away from fossil fuels before they get too expensive.
It did more than winning. It took 40 days of self-learning, starting from zero, using just the rules of the game, to eclipse thousands of years of human study.
So you're saying we should wait until China has passed us with actual achievements, like the Russians did with the Sputnik, before starting a program to catch up ?
It costs the same to send 25 lbs of gold as 25 lbs of bricks, so long as you don't care about security
Who sends 25 lbs of gold without caring about security ?
And US currency has the added advantage that it can actually be used to buy things
I agree. Fiat money is an excellent way to buy things, but a rather poor way to save your wealth. I don't think Bitcoin will ever replace regular money, but it can provide a very useful parallel system with some unique and useful properties.
Industrial use of gold only uses up 10% of the amount that's mined. The other 90% has been stockpiled for many years, so we have a huge surplus. Yet, the price is still very high.
There are many cheap materials that are just as pretty to look at, including gold plated jewelry, but people still prefer the solid kind. Not because it's pretty, but because it's valuable. The idea that you can always sell your gold ring in times of need is very powerful.
As for secure, it is only as secure as your wallet
Which can be as secure as you want it. You can keep your private keys off-line, for instance.
FDIC backed account
Only good for $100k or so, and only if there aren't too many problems. Ask the people in Cyprus how it went.
Gold has value, but the value doesn't wildly fluctuate from month-to-month
For a fair comparison, you should look at the price of gold in the first 9 years of its existence, not the price after it had a chance to settle down after 6000 years of mining and trading.
BitCoin, as transfer mechanism, would have the same utility regardless of the price on an individual BitCoin.
No, because there's only 16 million coins in existence, the utility is related to price.
So you freely admit that the only use is a money laundering scheme
It's just a single example. It's not the only use. And if I've already paid taxes on the money, I'm not laundering anything. I'm just transferring my legally acquired assets.
you still depend on local currency to pull it off. How do you buy that laptop? How do you buy pay for the internet connection?
Of course you depend on local currency. I'm not sure why you think that's a flaw.
In order to replace just some of the uses of fiat currency, it needs to gain a lot more value. You can't take over the world with a measly $100B market cap.
Well me personally I am not interested in trading constantly like that
I know several people who tried trading. They ended up selling most of their coins for a few hundred $$, making a decent profit, and are still waiting for the price to drop so they can buy back.
It's a secure store of value that can be easily transferred across the globe. You can put some of your wealth in a bitcoin wallet, memorize 12 words, walk across the border empty handed, buy a laptop, download some software, enter the 12 words, and restore your bitcoin wallet with all the coins intact.
Transaction costs are through the roof if you can't wait forever for a transaction to be processed.
What are the transaction costs of sending a 25 pound bullion bar of gold across the world ? And how does that compare with sending the equivalent amount in bitcoin ?
By your logic, fundamentals for gold should be laughable.
Yep, there was a transition period of a few decades, before everybody profited from the increased productivity. That doesn't sound like a good reason to stop progress.
That's what happened last time: the 80's AI bubble popped
The Apple Newton from the 80's also flopped. A few decades later, with better tech, the Apple iPad became a hugely successful product.
The same thing is happening with AI. In just a few years, the field has progressed more than in all the decades before, and people are developing real products that are making real money.
Tesla was worried about our oil supplies when it came to petrol driven cars. The American founding fathers were worried about being wasteful with our natural resources.
The difference is that the metals used in a car battery aren't consumed. The batteries can be recycled at the end of their life, unlike the oil and other natural resources that are burned away.
Slashdot Mirror
Where emissions can be reduced with a reasonable effort, then absolutely, there is every reason to do so. However, I disagree with efforts that are disproportionately expensive.
It's also a smart move to transition away from fossil fuels before they get too expensive.
Computers are very good at that
No, before AlphaGo came along, they all sucked at it.
A machine played "GO" and won!
It did more than winning. It took 40 days of self-learning, starting from zero, using just the rules of the game, to eclipse thousands of years of human study.
I have released a book a month back (UTOPAI) which looks at the social and economic effects of a benevolent AI.
You should write a book about the effects of hostile/weaponized AI.
So you're saying we should wait until China has passed us with actual achievements, like the Russians did with the Sputnik, before starting a program to catch up ?
It costs the same to send 25 lbs of gold as 25 lbs of bricks, so long as you don't care about security
Who sends 25 lbs of gold without caring about security ?
And US currency has the added advantage that it can actually be used to buy things
I agree. Fiat money is an excellent way to buy things, but a rather poor way to save your wealth. I don't think Bitcoin will ever replace regular money, but it can provide a very useful parallel system with some unique and useful properties.
Industrial use of gold only uses up 10% of the amount that's mined. The other 90% has been stockpiled for many years, so we have a huge surplus. Yet, the price is still very high.
There are many cheap materials that are just as pretty to look at, including gold plated jewelry, but people still prefer the solid kind. Not because it's pretty, but because it's valuable. The idea that you can always sell your gold ring in times of need is very powerful.
As for secure, it is only as secure as your wallet
Which can be as secure as you want it. You can keep your private keys off-line, for instance.
FDIC backed account
Only good for $100k or so, and only if there aren't too many problems. Ask the people in Cyprus how it went.
Good. It's not a bubble until you can pay the shoeshine boy in bitcoin.
Gold has value, but the value doesn't wildly fluctuate from month-to-month
For a fair comparison, you should look at the price of gold in the first 9 years of its existence, not the price after it had a chance to settle down after 6000 years of mining and trading.
BitCoin, as transfer mechanism, would have the same utility regardless of the price on an individual BitCoin.
No, because there's only 16 million coins in existence, the utility is related to price.
So you freely admit that the only use is a money laundering scheme
It's just a single example. It's not the only use. And if I've already paid taxes on the money, I'm not laundering anything. I'm just transferring my legally acquired assets.
you still depend on local currency to pull it off. How do you buy that laptop? How do you buy pay for the internet connection?
Of course you depend on local currency. I'm not sure why you think that's a flaw.
In order to replace just some of the uses of fiat currency, it needs to gain a lot more value. You can't take over the world with a measly $100B market cap.
Well me personally I am not interested in trading constantly like that
I know several people who tried trading. They ended up selling most of their coins for a few hundred $$, making a decent profit, and are still waiting for the price to drop so they can buy back.
It's a secure store of value that can be easily transferred across the globe. You can put some of your wealth in a bitcoin wallet, memorize 12 words, walk across the border empty handed, buy a laptop, download some software, enter the 12 words, and restore your bitcoin wallet with all the coins intact.
Transaction costs are through the roof if you can't wait forever for a transaction to be processed.
What are the transaction costs of sending a 25 pound bullion bar of gold across the world ? And how does that compare with sending the equivalent amount in bitcoin ?
By your logic, fundamentals for gold should be laughable.
If you want mine your own bitcoin, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots
No, the only way to make money mining bitcoin is to use a state of the art ASIC, specifically designed for it.
As a result, there's not much backing the current value other than rarity
Rarity is good enough for a bunch of different assets, like precious metals or gemstones.
But in addition to being rare, bitcoin is also secure, easy to transact, and easy to divide/recombine.
Anybody would be insane to use it as a currency
Nobody's using gold bullion bars as currency either, but I hear people are people good money for them.
Yep, there was a transition period of a few decades, before everybody profited from the increased productivity. That doesn't sound like a good reason to stop progress.
That's what happened last time: the 80's AI bubble popped
The Apple Newton from the 80's also flopped. A few decades later, with better tech, the Apple iPad became a hugely successful product.
The same thing is happening with AI. In just a few years, the field has progressed more than in all the decades before, and people are developing real products that are making real money.
It is different this time because the AI applications are actually providing useful solutions that are making money.
Tesla was worried about our oil supplies when it came to petrol driven cars. The American founding fathers were worried about being wasteful with our natural resources.
The difference is that the metals used in a car battery aren't consumed. The batteries can be recycled at the end of their life, unlike the oil and other natural resources that are burned away.
Or we can just accept a declined standard of living.
Just like after the first industrial revolution ?
Here's a demonstration of a neural net doing temporal interpolation (increase framerate of source video by adding realistic intermediate frames)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If folding@home would help find a cure for cancer, they should reward people for doing it.
It needs to be reasonably close to ASIC miners, otherwise the electricity cost will be higher than the reward.