(X-posted from my FB post: https://www.facebook.com/alexei.andreev.3/posts/1403550339754401)

Reply to Eliezer's post on crypto: https://www.facebook.com/yudkowsky/posts/10156147605134228
Which itself is a response to Scott Alexander's post: https://www.lesserwrong.com/…/Ma…/a-lesswrong-crypto-autopsy

One thing I haven't seen discussed in either of the posts is the social aspect. When Bitcoin was created, LW was a hub for a lot of pretty smart contrarians. Just with that info alone, I'd give any crazy-seeming idea that surfaced there and wasn't immediately debunked pretty good odds of being vaguely correct and likely ahead of its time. (I think there is a good chance LW 2.0 might become that again.)

So I agree with Scott, the tragedy is that our very smart peers brought this idea to the community, and the community vaguely agreed that it's a good idea, but failed to execute. (Just like our community mostly agrees that cryo is a good idea, but also gave birth to the term cryostination.)

Eliezer's counter-claim about efficient markets seems weak to me. It was clear at the time that this was a very niche idea, and that not a lot of people have looked into it. It was also a difficult idea to digest: it required a solid understanding of the economics and the technical parts. Many people who care about making money are not technical, and can't evaluate cutting-edge technical ideas. I think Bitcoin was very clearly out of reach of efficient markets. (By Eliezer's reasoning, AGI would be a bad idea around 2010, and so would be cryo even now. Because if they were as good as they seemed, surely people who were interested in power/money would be putting way more effort into AGI, and people who were interested in not dying would be doing cryo right now.)

I don't think I saw those early Bitcoin posts on LW. My own story was that my brother asked me around 2012: "Hey, have you heard about this Bitcoin thing? I just read about it on Reddit. Seems cool, we should buy some!" And I laughed and said it was the dumbest thing ever.

Less than a year later he brought it up again, and it was clear by that time that I made a mistake. That's when my rationality training kicked in. "Ouch, I though. He was totally right, and I completely dismissed this idea. I should not make the same mistake again!" By that time my soc...

@chrisrice

@chrisrice