{"id":23824,"date":"2022-09-16T21:56:12","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T21:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=23824"},"modified":"2022-09-28T21:11:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T21:11:01","slug":"vitalik-buterins-philosophical-essays-theyre-not-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/09\/16\/vitalik-buterins-philosophical-essays-theyre-not-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitalik Buterin\u2019s philosophical essays: they\u2019re not good"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\"><i>Programming note:<\/i> I\u2019m going to Nashville this weekend, to hang out with financial regulators! That\u2019s what people flock to Nashville for, right? It\u2019s the <b>North American Security Administrators\u2019 Association (NASAA) Annual Meeting<\/b>, 18\u201320 September. I\u2019m on the panel \u201cProtecting Investors and Consumers in the Age of Digital Assets\u201d on Monday 19 September at 1:45pm. [<a href=\"https:\/\/register.nasaa.org\/imis\/Events\/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=2022Fall\"><i>NASAA<\/i><\/a><i>;<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/learn.nasaa.org\/2022-nasaa-fall-annual-meeting-3\"> <i>NASAA<\/i><\/a>] <strong>Update:<\/strong> here&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/09\/22\/nasaa-nashville-protecting-investors-and-consumers-in-the-age-of-digital-assets\/\">the tour diary!<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As well as leading the Ethereum project, Vitalik Buterin writes essays of his thoughts on the future of society \u2014 as powered by Ethereum. Some around the Ethereum project actively market Buterin\u2019s blog as important reading from a great thinker, that you should be keeping up with. [<a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6158182\/vitalik-buterin-ethereum-profile\/\"><i>Fortune<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>With <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/08\/20\/proof-of-stake-is-better-than-proof-of-work-but-ethereums-merge-wont-fix-any-other-problem-with-cryptocurrency\/\">the Merge<\/a> having gone through successfully, I\u2019ve got journalists asking me if there\u2019s anything to these essays. They\u2019re &#8230; odd.<\/p>\n<p>The short answer is: no, it\u2019s not worth treating Buterin&#8217;s essays as saying anything useful.<\/p>\n<p>Far be it from me to say that people shouldn\u2019t post any brainfart they feel like to a blog. I have a Twitter, after all. But.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/05\/25\/the-prehistory-of-nfts\/ethereum-promo\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-22869\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-22869\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/ethereum-promo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/ethereum-promo.jpg 680w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/ethereum-promo-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/ethereum-promo-348x215.jpg 348w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>I must be understanding it wrong<\/h3>\n<p>Ethereum is best understood as a tech startup that succeeded wildly and made a bundle for everyone involved. Mostly Joe Lubin of ConsenSys, but the others too.<\/p>\n<p>Vitalik was Joe&#8217;s front man \u2014 he was, and is, marketed as a magical boy wizard you can\u2019t expect social skills from, beyond any mortal understanding.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re talking about a wealthy 28-year-old technocrat here, to be clear.<\/p>\n<p>For a worked example, look at this bilge from Wired in 2016: \u201cThe Uncanny Mind That Built Ethereum.\u201d Buterin as mysterious infantilised child genius. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2016\/06\/the-uncanny-mind-that-built-ethereum\/\"><i>Wired<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Buterin blogs extensive essays full of great thoughts on how to reorganise the world, and how Ethereum will be the basis for this once they add amazing new functionalities that will only require <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/04\/04\/if-you-want-a-scalable-ethereum-blockchain-then-pnp\/\">solving P=NP.<\/a> [<a href=\"https:\/\/vitalik.ca\/\"><i>vitalik.ca<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>With Buterin\u2019s tech startup having elevated itself to being one of the two main cryptocurrencies, onlookers think: perhaps his other ideas might be worth a look!<\/p>\n<p>Buterin comes from a long tradition of Silicon Valley special smart boys, who have had it hammered into them that domain expertise \u2014 <i>i.e.,<\/i> actually knowing stuff \u2014 pales into insignificance compared to pulling ideas out of your backside by virtue of your superior intelligence and upbringing and social position.<\/p>\n<p>He was taught this by other Silicon Valley special smart boys. Peter Thiel literally <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thiel_Fellowship\">paid Buterin not to go to college any more,<\/a> based on this theory \u2014 that one special smart boy reasoning from first principles will surely beat the accumulated experience and wisdom of mere humanity.<\/p>\n<p>There are a million of these guys, and they all have long and wordy blogs.<\/p>\n<p>Buterin has spent his life being told he&#8217;s smart and has important ideas. But I am deeply unconvinced any of the ideas in Buterin&#8217;s essays are worth anything \u2014 because they&#8217;re concocted without reference to anything that people who aren&#8217;t weird cryptocurrency anarchocapitalists want.<\/p>\n<p>People read Buterin&#8217;s social essays, then they have to bridge the gap between the assumption that all of this <i>must<\/i> make coherent sense because it was written by an acknowledged genius wonder boy, and the undeniable fact that the stuff in front of you looks &#8230; stupid.<\/p>\n<p>The fancy promises, the essays, the wild ideas that sound like they&#8217;re stupid but must have <i>something<\/i> to them, surely &#8230; it&#8217;s all marketing for Ethereum.<\/p>\n<p>Ethereum makes more sense if you first assume it never mattered if the fancy promises ever worked out \u2014 even if Buterin believed they were supposed to. The purpose was to sell you their ether. And it worked.<\/p>\n<p><em>*taps the sign again*<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2021\/05\/29\/news-bitcoin-mining-leaves-china-chia-sues-blog-about-chia-warhol-nft-bitconnect-charges-ban-crypto-to-stop-ransomware-fca-and-crypto-firms\/bitcoin-it-cant-be-that-stupid\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-19556\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19556\" src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/bitcoin-it-cant-be-that-stupid.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/bitcoin-it-cant-be-that-stupid.png 838w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/bitcoin-it-cant-be-that-stupid-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/bitcoin-it-cant-be-that-stupid-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/bitcoin-it-cant-be-that-stupid-768x768.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>The Torment Nexus as a Service<\/h3>\n<p>Buterin is an interesting writer, and his essays are amazing science fictional ideas \u2014 but they\u2019re nerdbait, not applicable programmes for society.<\/p>\n<p>Remember that Buterin spent <i>years<\/i> working on a sharding plan for Ethereum that, had he done Intro to Theory of Computation, he might have realised was <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/04\/04\/if-you-want-a-scalable-ethereum-blockchain-then-pnp\/\">probably impossible.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Buterin&#8217;s essays posit Ethereum as the technological foundation of all our lives. This will never happen, because blockchains don&#8217;t scale.<\/p>\n<p>He touts decentralized governance \u2014 based on Ethereum \u2014 because he\u2019s spent his entire life steeped in anarchocapitalism, first from his parents and then from his venture capitalist friends, and thinks of it as normal, and not as the <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/the-conspiracist-gold-bug-economics-of-bitcoin\/\">bizarre conspiracy theory economics<\/a> that it is.<\/p>\n<p>Buterin&#8217;s essays have slightly less redigested LessWrong these days \u2014 the people who worry that an artificial intelligence will turn into <a href=\"https:\/\/rationalwiki.org\/wiki\/Roko%27s_basilisk\">Roko\u2019s Basilisk,<\/a> so you should give them money \u2014 so that&#8217;s good. His pet cranks are no longer embarrassing mathematical cranks who think they can <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/Buterins-quantum-quest\/\">simulate a quantum computer on a classical computer fast enough to hack bitcoin mining.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Buterin&#8217;s pet cranks are now social cranks \u2014 <i>e.g.,<\/i> Glen Weyl, with his Radical Markets theory, which is more or less <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Georgism\">Georgism<\/a> with a concussion. Everything is a land tax, you set the price of your house, and anyone who\u2019s rich enough can buy your house out from under you at any time, whether you like it or not! Everyone wants that, right?<\/p>\n<p>Weyl and Buterin&#8217;s latest hit is their Soulbound Tokens essay. Being weird ancaps, they don\u2019t trust governments to do identity \u2014 so you\u2019ll have your social credit score tracked on a blockchain. It\u2019s an implementation of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fifteen_Million_Merits\">\u201cFifteen Million Merits\u201d<\/a> episode of <i>Black Mirror<\/i> \u2014 except they think this is a desirable state of being, and not a horrifying dystopia. They also crib from Vitalik&#8217;s Dark Enlightenment friend Balaji Srinivasan on \u201ccancel culture.\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4105763\"><i>SSRN<\/i><\/a><i>, PDF<\/i>]<\/p>\n<p>Weyl and Buterin&#8217;s stuff is crank economics and crank social theories straight from the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Californian_Ideology\">Californian Ideology,<\/a> with little to no reference to anything actual people think or want.<\/p>\n<p>The best source for the current thinking of the Silicon Valley rich ancap cluster on &#8220;decentralised governance&#8221; is Balaji Srinivasan\u2019s recent book on the subject: <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/07\/25\/news-whats-the-tory-crypto-story-us-stablecoin-bill-facebooks-libra-even-deader-the-ignominious-death-of-singulardtv-and-breaker\/\"><i>The Network State<\/i><\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3opr1yD\">US<\/a>,<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3opzZvF\"> UK<\/a>)<i>.<\/i> It&#8217;s bloody awful, and you need a decoder ring to understand the buzzwords and euphemisms. Fortunately, I wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2020\/08\/08\/balaji-srinivasans-plan-to-save-journalism\/\">Balaji\u2019s ineffable genius<\/a> previously, and I helped Elizabeth Sandifer write <i>Neoreaction a Basilisk<\/i> (the decoder ring), so I can save you the effort on this one:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">what if <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2021\/09\/21\/news-bitcoin-miners-cant-sell-their-bitcoins-sushiswap-theft-coinbase-lend-crypto-seasteading\/\">seasteading<\/a><\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">on the blockchain<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">also we&#8217;re all neoreactionaries and race-and-IQ theorists, and we want our blockchain seasteads to have Kings.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Here&#8217;s Vitalik&#8217;s review. He describes Balaji&#8217;s loud and explicit reactionary politics as any variety whatsoever of &#8220;liberal.&#8221; This is not a writer who knows what words mean. [<i><a href=\"https:\/\/vitalik.ca\/general\/2022\/07\/13\/networkstates.html\">vitalik.ca<\/a><\/i>]<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re mapping out tech dystopias and thinking they&#8217;re architecting heaven. They are not.<\/p>\n<p>The job should surely not be to propose new iterations of the Torment Nexus and say they&#8217;re a good idea.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale<\/p>\n<p>Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don&#39;t Create The Torment Nexus<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Alex Blechman (@AlexBlechman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AlexBlechman\/status\/1457842724128833538?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 8, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Memento stultus<\/h3>\n<p>Buterin&#8217;s essays are science fiction advocating a particular politics. This is not about technology. It never was.<\/p>\n<p>Even Ethereum was never about technology. Blockchain tech isn&#8217;t that complicated. The fancy stuff is <i>financial<\/i> engineering, not software engineering. If it works as a platform for penny stock scams, all is right with the crypto world.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no reason for anyone to put any store by Buterin\u2019s other ideas, and there never was. Ethereum is a successful tech startup with really dubious politics attached.<\/p>\n<p>And none of that matters \u2014 because Buterin and the Ethereum crew are set up for life after the stupendously successful tech startup called Ethereum, and are much richer than you or I are.<\/p>\n<p>But I would suggest that financial success is not a reason to take any of the essays seriously.<\/p>\n<p>Smart people need the ghost of Socrates to follow them around as a Memento Stultus. &#8220;Remember: you too are a dumbass.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<br><br><div align=\"center\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\"><img src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/become_a_patron_button.svg\" alt=\"Become a Patron!\" title=\"Become a Patron!\" width=217 height=51><\/a><br><p style=\"align:center;\" class=\"patreon-badge\"><i>Your subscriptions keep this site going. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\">Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smart people need the ghost of Socrates to follow them around as a Memento Stultus. \u201cRemember: you too are a dumbass.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1919,82,3130,911,264],"class_list":["post-23824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-balaji-srinivasan","tag-ethereum","tag-glen-weyl","tag-joe-lubin","tag-vitalik-buterin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/ethereum-promo.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23824"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23925,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23824\/revisions\/23925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}