[antifa]

It really doesn't go both ways.

It's "I didn't find any evidence for God, so I stopped believing." vs "I believe God is real but I can't prove it".

When somebody is telling me they think God is real, they're trying to sell me something, or they think it's important to tell me.

When I tell people I'm an atheist, I probably didn't want to have to tell anyone, and I genuinely don't care what you believe unless you're using it to hurt others.

[mattdesl]

it’s all relative, depends on your vantage point.

just look at the OP thread that led to these discussions: the author is vocally decrying blockchains. if you view anti-crypto as the atheists in this analogy then they sure do make a lot of noise on HN (these kinds of posts routinely make the front page).

[antifa]

> they sure do make a lot of noise

What, you mean like randomly, unprompted? For no reason? What are they trying to sell you?

[mattdesl]

basically: adherence to centralized systems of value transfer, rejection of decentralized alternatives.

[CRConrad]

> rejection of decentralized alternatives.

Assumes facts not in evidence. Show me a "decentralized alternative" that doesn't a) reek to high heaven of Ponzi scheme evangelism or b) burns resources like there's no tomorrow, and I'll be all ears.

But that's not what's being touted here. The current Crypto-"currency" fandango has quite enough downsides as is; notice that it's usually its proponents who claim that any arguments against it are about its "decentralized alternative"-ness.

[mattdesl]

there are many non-PoW chains and applications built on top of them that meet your criteria, and are already benefiting from the decentralization of these networks. I wrote about one case here:

https://mattdesl.substack.com/p/hicetnunc-and-the-merits-of-...

[CRConrad]

From your post:

> experiment in decentralization

Not very, AFAICS (cont. below).

> and distributed design in the ethos of “web3,” a poorly-termed yet novel paradigm

Half right, half wrong, IMO. (Guess which is which ! :-)

> This marks the death of the website, and perhaps the end of Rafael Lima’s involvement. Yet, the overall community spirit, as well as its tokenized assets and media files, appears largely unaffected. A suite of forks and competing platforms have sprung up in its wake

If the death of one particular Web site lead to "forks and competing platforms"... Then it can't have been very decentralised at all, right? Because if it were truly an "ecosystem" that shouldn't have mattered at all, AFAICS.

But then, later:

> these pillars of decentralization seem to be working.

> These tokens, cryptographically signed by me (the artist) and pointing to a particular generative artwork of mine, have been completely unaffected by the website’s shutdown. The records of ownership and provenance continue to be upheld by the distributed public ledger of the Tezos blockchain, and each token still sits comfortably in their respective owner’s wallets.

OK, so my original interpretation of your preceding paragraphs was overly pessimistic. Or perhaps you're actually underselling it in those.

But that all still leaves me with a question: WTF is this all supposed to be good for?!? What do these distributed high-tech ultra-cool über-Web-3.0 "tokens" actually do?

Is this supposed to be like, say, litography: "This is one of five identical copies signed by the artist. They're only genuine if presented in conjunction with the artist's signature"? Because they each represent only the "rights" to (display, or something?) one copy of the artwork; not the actual copyright or anything, right? But do they really even do that... I mean, OK, sure, they may "represent" that right -- but AFAICS they don't do that better (and arguably worse) than any other, non-blockchain-based, system; they sure don't protect any possible "rights" better than some (horrible) traditional DRM system. Owning a self-proving "token" only proves that you own that token, not the file that it represents. So how, exactly, does the token actually "represent" the file?

If I wanted to rip off your art I'd just take the actual art, without giving a fuck about any "tokens". I would just download the actual graphics file, for instance from the link you so graciously provided. (And, hey, spanning tree sketch 01 is really quite pretty!)

So, to sum up: You make computer art, I get that. But what's all the Web 3.0 Crypto Blorkchain Token foofaraa around the art goood for? I'm not seeing any usefulness at all, any justification for the whole opera.

Oh, and finally (back up top):

> Since it’s early beginnings in 2021

"Its".