Top all-time · #526
Unenumerated
Personal blog · unenumerated.blogspot.comeconomicsphilosophy
Unenumerated is a personal blog at unenumerated.blogspot.com about economics and philosophy. Since 2007, 111 different Hacker News readers have linked it 139 times, most often “Bit Gold (2008)”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 15 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for Nick Szabo's essays on bit gold and Bitcoin's origins, money, social scalability, and unpredictable elections. Mostly cited as background.
- Recommended for · 15 comments
- Called 'great', 'interesting' and 'a good explanation'; told to read it; originals said to be clearer than the hype.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
An unending variety of topics
Most-linked posts?
- Bit Gold (2008)11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2008-07-23
- Bitcoin, what took ye so long? 8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2011-05-29
- /7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2008-08-31
- Money, blockchains, and social scalability6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-02-09
- Some hard things are easy when explained well4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2009-07-29
- The many traditions of non-governmental money4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-03-24
- Pascal's Scams (2012)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-07-23
- The many traditions of non-governmental money4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-03-25
- Money, Blockchains, and Social Scalability3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-27
- /2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-07-23
What Hacker News says?
> Given that bitcoin isn't a medium of transaction anymore and a store of value Due to that, I think Bitcoin has failed and I no longer see it surviving long-term, simply due to the fact that there is much better tech out there now in the form of "alt" coins. (Not going to shill any specific coin here.) What do I mean by "failed"? I got the impression from what I've read from Satoshi that they wanted Bitcoin to be a…
Comment linking /2005/12/bit-gold.html
on “Ending Bitcoin Support”Submitted Why the Internet is creating more value than jobs as a story · 87 points
HN discussionYes it's Bitcoin is inefficient, but in exchange we get social scalability. https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2017/02/money-blockchains-...
Comment linking /2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html
on “Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index”Submitted Pascal's Scams (2012) as a story · 65 points
HN discussionNot at all. It's just inconvenient for most of the Windows-using world, as the characters are not accessible. It's ALT+[whatever] or Google-it-and-ctrl+V. Hence an awful lot of internet writing didn't really use any of that stuff properly. See, e.g., Boss Szabo's blog: https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-many-tradition... Two chained hypens, as was pretty much the norm back then. And did you just call me a…
Comment linking /2018/03/the-many-traditions-of-non-governmental.html
on “How to Use Em Dashes (–), En Dashes (–), and Hyphens (-)”Submitted How to succeed or fail on a frontier as a story · 38 points
HN discussionUMG, Warner, Sony and Spotify cannot share bills for running a common database on AWS today without creating yet another corporation and relinquishing power over the data to it. Blockchains are not the next big thing in databases. They are here to revolutionize how existing organizations co-ordinate, enter into contracts with each other, and even allow individuals themselves co-ordinate directly with each other with…
Comment linking /2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html
on “Spotify hit with $1.6B copyright lawsuit”Submitted The Dawn of Trustworthy Computing as a story · 31 points
HN discussionThis stratfor article discusses the natural capital afforded to the US: https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-... both in terms of transportation networks and being removed by an ocean from the costly power struggles of Europe (which I'll add can be seen in the numbers of casualties for Americans in the first and second world war relative to our European counterparts and realized gains from tho…
Comment linking /2014/10/transportation-divergence-and.html?m=1
on “Warren Buffett's Annual Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders [pdf]”Submitted Nick Szabo: "The Singularity" is an incoherent and religious idea as a story · 31 points
HN discussionHa, I don't think this has any value as evidence, but it's kind of funny that in a comment on one of the eventually-postdated blog posts (originally April 2008), Nick explained that the mechanics of the bit gold market would be nonobvious to most people and therefore the idea could use a demonstration project, and asked, "Anybody want to help me code one up?" http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets…
Comment linking /2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html
on “Satoshi Nakamoto is probably Nick Szabo?”Submitted How to succeed or fail on a frontier (2006) as a story · 30 points
HN discussionI was recently (Thanksgiving) discussing this with the owner of a small tech company. Our consensus was that if Satoshi was not Szabo, Satoshi at least read Szabo's works. The article doesn't spend as much time on the similarity of Szabo's ideas to those of the Bitcoin whitepaper, but I encourage anyone who is interested in this topic to read some of Szabo's stuff. His website, http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ is currentl…
Comment linking /
on “Satoshi Nakamoto is probably Nick Szabo?”Submitted The Hourglass: An underrated invention (2013) as a story · 30 points
HN discussionThat's a good point about taxes. I wonder how the tax structures of the future will evolve if cryptocurrencies reach full swing. It could be reasonable to expect elaborate tariff systems that skim off the channels bridging wet and dry worlds[0]. With what we have today, there is already slightly less to tax[1], and with the ideas of today, there could be even less. You can't siphon tax if it's not in the contract co…
Comment linking /2006/11/wet-code-and-dry.html
on “China orders Bitcoin exchanges in capital city to close”Submitted Collecting Metal as a story · 29 points
HN discussionNick Szabo's take on it: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-greek-financial...
Comment linking /2015/07/the-greek-financial-mess-and-some-ways.html
on “Greece”Submitted Money, blockchains, and social scalability as a story · 22 points
HN discussionMoney in a broad sense is as old as anatomically modern humans, so, no. 80,000 year old grave goods have been discovered, consisting of shells of a consistent size, with holes drilled in them, a few hundred kilometers from the ocean. We know from ethnography of societies which existed until very recently that these collectibles served the same purpose as money. A good complement to Graeber's book is the work of Nick…
Comment linking /
on “A Victoria man has gone two decades without money”Submitted Wet Code and Dry (2008) as a story · 15 points
HN discussionHere's more about the URL detective work and gwern: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/361niw/decoding_the... Szabo wrote a little about gwern here: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-y...
Comment linking /2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html
on “Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin”Submitted The Sandglass, A very underrated invention as a story · 14 points
HN discussionBy the way I recommend the essays by Szabo: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ ! Also his blog: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin”Submitted Money, blockchains, and social scalability as a story · 9 points
HN discussionCrypto in this case does mean cryptographic currency, and it is indeed part of an Cypherpunks wet dream, which is a movement since the 80s to 90s[0][1], and Bitcoin was largely enabled by people of this movement[2][3]. They basically strive to build society with cryptographic methods. Cyberpunk on the other hand is just a science-fiction genre, which mostly play in futuristic orwellian dystopias and people like to d…
Comment linking /2005/12/bit-gold.html
on “Libra, a Cyberpunk Nightmare in the Midst of Crypto Spring”Submitted Pulsars are a secure time source as a story · 9 points
HN discussionStandardizing, gridifying and quantiazing it's what allows our modern huge world to exist. > Social scalability is the ability of an institution –- a relationship or shared endeavor, in which multiple people repeatedly participate, and featuring customs, rules, or other features which constrain or motivate participants’ behaviors -- to overcome shortcomings in human minds and in the motivating or constraining aspect…
Comment linking /2017/02/money-blockchains-and-social-scalability.html
on “The Metrics of Backpacks”Submitted Conflict and collectibles among the Yurok as a story · 8 points
HN discussionOne option: Abolish Congress and the presidency. I mean, what have they done for you lately? Can you name a single good deed they've done in the past 30 years? Use some sort of board of trustees to select the Supreme Court justices and the Joint Chiefs. Perhaps this board of trustees would be selected by existing trustees, or perhaps we could use something like the Venetian lottery system ( http://unenumerated.blogs…
Comment linking /2007/05/juritopia.html
on “Let's End Adolescence”Submitted Bitcoin, what took ye so long? as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
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