[miiiiiike]

Don't underestimate how anti-AI the tabletop community is. This could have been entitled: "Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable."

I don't do much with crypto/NFTs/AI, because I don't find any of it useful yet. But I get so much "with us or against us" heat for not being zealously against the the idea of them. It was NFTs, NFTs, NFTs at the table for months until it became AI, AI, AI. My preference is to talk about something else while playing board games.

One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it."

A minority are conflicted about this position.

When I talk to technical people at game nights we almost never talk about tech. The one time our programmers all played RoboRally the night kind of died because it felt too close to work for a Saturday night.

If GW was going to use AI they would probably start with sprue layouts. Maybe the AI could number the bits in sane way? I would be for that.

[wk_end]

> while they 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it."

Three things:

1. People simply don't respect programming as a creative, human endeavour. Replacing devs with AI is viewed in the same way as replacing assembly line workers with robots.

2. Somewhat informed people might know that for coding tasks, LLMs are broadly trained on code that was publicly shared to help people out on Reddit or SO or as part of open-source projects (the nuance of, say, the GPL will be lost). Whereas the art is was trained on is, broadly speaking, copywritten.

3. And, related to two: people feel great sympathy for artists, since artists generally struggle quite a bit to make a living. Whereas engineers have solid, high paying white collar jobs; thus, they're not considered entitled to any kind of sympathy or support.

[DrewADesign]

I've been a professional artist, designer, and developer. Mostly a developer, and working in academia throughout the late teens meant being privy to the development of neural networks into what they've become. When I pointed out the vulnerability of developers to this technology, the "well maybe for some developers but I'm special" stance was nearly ubiquitous.

When the tech world realized their neato new invention inadvertently dropped a giant portion of the world's working artists into the toilet, they smashed that flusher before they could even say "oops." Endless justification, people saying artists were untalented and greedy and deserved to be financially ruined, with a heaping helping of "well, just 'pivot'."

And I did-- into manufacturing because I didn't see much of a future for tech industry careers. I'm lucky-- I came from a working class background so getting into a trade wasn't a total culture and environment shock. I think what this technology is going to do to job markets is a tragedy, but after all the shit I took as a working artist during this transition, I'm going to have to say "well, just pivot!" Better get in shape and toughen up-- your years of office work mean absolutely nothing when you've got to physically do something for a living. Most of the soft, maladroit, arrogant tech workers get absolutely spanked in that environment.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Harsh, but some people just gotta hear that.

... although it's a bit unfair to the many tech people who never wanted to throw artists down the loo or indeed anyone else. E.g. when I was fiddling with language generation during my MSc it never occurred to me that someone would want to use it to replace writing, let alone coding. What would be the point in that?

[DrewADesign]

I mean, I know that — I was a developer. Generally, something doesn’t have to be universally true to be true enough to matter.

[bayarearefugee]

> Whereas the art is was trained on is, broadly speaking, copywritten

The overwhelmingly vast majority of the code you're talking about (basically, anything that doesn't explicitly disavow its copyright by being placed in the public domain, and there's some legal debate if that is even something that you can do proactively) is just as copyright protected as the art is.

Open Source does not mean copyright free.

"Free Software" certainly doesn't mean copyright free (the GPL only has any meaning at all because of copyright law).

[krainboltgreene]

> is just as copyright protected as the art is.

This is lost on a lot of people, thats' why there's a special phrase every FOSS person knows by heart.

[avadodin]

> there's some legal debate if that is even something that you can do proactively

Public Domain in the US is the only factor that truly matters on the Internet today, but people who care do both.

Release into the Public Domain and provide a 0-type license.

[seanmcdirmid]

> 1. People simply don't respect programming as a creative, human endeavour. Replacing devs with AI is viewed in the same way as replacing assembly line workers with robots.

It is about scarcity: art is a passion; there is a perpetual oversupply of talented game designers, visual graphic artists, sculptors, magna artists, music composers, guitarists, etc...you can hire one and you usually can hire talent for cheap because...there is a lot of talent.

Programmers are (or were?) expensive because, at least in recent times, talented ones are expensive because they are rare enough.

[ronsor]

A good artist is just as expensive as a good programmer. Commissioning art is expensive. Outsourcing to third world countries is cheaper (just like programming!).

[seanmcdirmid]

> A good artist is just as expensive as a good programmer.

Let's look at industry, and just go look at what video game artists make compared to programmers with a similar amount of experience. Now, are you just claiming that they just aren't very good artists, so they aren't paid well? Because I've seen their work, and its not shabby at all.

[ronsor]

Video game companies are a special case (even for programmers). They work people to the bone for lower pay because people are passionate about video games, but the common denominator there is gamers wanting to get into the industry—not being an artist or programmer.

[danaris]

But if you want a finished artwork, chances are it's going to take an amount of time worth $50-150.

If you want a finished (nontrivial) program, chances are it's going to take at least an order of magnitude more than that.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Programmers are (or were?) expensive because, at least in recent times, talented ones are expensive because they are rare enough.

In all the years I worked in the industry, I never knew anyone trying to hire "talented" programmers. Only trying to hire people, usually inexperienced juniors, willing to work twice the time they're paid for if you tell them how smart they are.

[seanmcdirmid]

Ya, there is that also. But sane orgs will want to hire programmers with some level of talent, at least. Not just some kid out of bootcamp, they will have to show that they can actually program something first.

[CyberDildonics]

> In all the years I worked in the industry, I never knew anyone trying to hire "talented" programmers

I think this says more about the places you worked.

[throwaway2027]

Most of the code that was publicly available to be trained on is written by people in their spare time, not directly making any money off of it though. Personally I think if you are fine with AI used to generate code you should also be fine with it being used to generate art. That doesn't mean that I think that big companies just scraping the entire internet and training on large amount of portfolio pieces from ArtStation or people making open source projects is good either.

[heavyset_go]

> Most of the code that was publicly available to be trained on is written by people in their spare time, not directly making any money off of it though.

So what? The code is offered under specific licensing terms. Not adhering to those terms is just as wrong as training on a paid product.

[Groxx]

There is the nuance that much code that is available publicly (which includes a GIGANTIC amount of that "written by people in their spare time" stuff) is put there for the explicit goal of showing other people all the details so they can read, reuse, and modify it. Open-source licenses in some form are incredibly popular, though the details vary, and seeing your side project in a product that 100k people use is usually just neat, not "you stole from me".

Artworks have their relatively-popular creative-commons stuff, and some of those follow a similar "do whatever" vibe, but I far more frequently see "attribution required" which generally requires it at the point of use, i.e. immediately along-side the art-piece. And if it's something where someone saw your work once and made something different separately, the license generally does not apply. LLMs have no way to do that kind of attribution though, and hammer out stuff that looks eerily familiar but isn't pixel-precise to the original, so it feels like and probably is an unapproved use of their work.

The code equivalent of this is usually "if you have source releases, include it there" or a very few have the equivalent of "please shove a mention somewhere deep in a settings screen that nobody will tap on". Using that code for training is I think relatively justifiable. The licenses matter (and have clearly been broadly ignored, which should not be allowed) but if it wasn't prohibited, it's generally allowed, and if you didn't want that you would need to choose a restrictive license or not publish it.

Plus, like, artists generally are their style, in practical terms. So copying their style is effectively impersonation. Coders on the other hand often intentionally lean heavily on style erasing tools like auto-formatters and common design patterns and whatnot, so their code blends cleanly in more places rather than sounding like exclusively "them".

---

I'm generally okay with permissive open source licensed code being ingested and spat back out in a useful product. That's kinda the point of those licenses. If it requires attribution, it gets murky and probably leans towards "no" - it's clearly not a black-box re-implementation, the LLMs are observing the internals and sometimes regurgitate it verbatim and that is generally not approved when humans do it.

Do I think the biggest LLM companies are staying within the more-obviously-acceptable licenses? Hell no. So I avoid them.

Do I trust any LLM business to actually stick to those licenses? ... probably not right now. But one could exist. Hopefully it'd still have enough training data to be useful.

[eli_gottlieb]

Yeah people clearly think "creatives" are a class apart from white-collar workers.

[bartread]

> 1. People simply don't respect programming as a creative, human endeavour. Replacing devs with AI is viewed in the same way as replacing assembly line workers with robots.

Very reminiscent of the "software factory" bullshit peddled by grifters 15 or 20 years ago.

And I think, frankly, a lot of agile practice as I've seen it in industry doesn't respect software development as a creative endeavour either.

But fundamentally I, like a lot of programmers/developers/engineers, got into software because I wanted to make things, and I suspect the way I use AI to help with software development reflects that (tight leash, creative decision-making sits with me, not the machine, etc.).

[oytis]

> People simply don't respect programming as a creative, human endeavour.

Because it's not? Programmers' ethos is having low attachment to code. People work on code together, often with complete strangers, see it modified, sliced, merged and whatever. If you rename a variable in software or refactor a module, it's still the same software.

Meanwhile for art authorship, authenticity and detail are of utter importance.

[jakelazaroff]

That's no different from any art. It's like saying that woodworkers' ethos is having low attachment to screws, or guitarists' ethos is having low attachment to picks. Code is a tool; the creative, human endeavor is making an artifact that people can perceive and interact with.

[oytis]

So UX is art, not programming? Don't know enough about it to have an opinion. My code almost never interacted with people

[abakker]

People don't respect the salary premium software developers have received and expect relative to other creative, human endeavors.

You lay it out perfectly in your answer, and I'll add that the entire non-tech world generally feels that if tech jobs lose their shine due to AI, its actually a welcome reversion to the mean. Software has likely depressed wage growth in many other jobs.

[sensanaty]

Which is unfortunate, because the thinking people should be having is that we should bring everyone else up to our level, and not trying to bring down the lucky few that are well compensated in this world full of leeches in the form of CEOs and middle managers.

[heavyset_go]

It's not "anti-AI" to acknowledge the fact that when your job is to create work for hire in order to build up your employer's IP portfolio, being paid to use AI to create work that isn't IP isn't doing your job.

Your job is to create IP. As per the US Copyright Office, AI output cannot be copyrighted, so it is not anyone's IP, not yours, not your employer's.

That's not "anti-AI", that's AI and copyright reality. Game Workshop runs their business on IP, suddenly creating work that anyone can copy, sell or reproduce because it isn't anyone's IP is antithetical to the purpose of a for-profit company.

[rpdillon]

> As per the US Copyright Office, AI output cannot be copyrighted

I'm glad you mentioned this. It's true. But AI output as part of a larger pipeline of work to generate something is copyrightable. So I'm not sure how this is going to play out in a practical sense. I don't think we've tested this legally yet.

[pkaye]

If a person holds a camera and clicks a button, the output can be copyrighted. But if I write a few pages worth of prompts and click enter, it cannot be copyrighted?

[heavyset_go]

Copyright protects human creations.

It's no different than spending years training a chimp to paint like Van Gogh, its output are not human creations and thus cannot be copyrighted, no matter how much effort you put into training that chimp.

[ronsor]

This basically reflects my observations.

> Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable.

Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them.

> One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it."

This is because they don't view programming as a "creative" form of labor. I think this is an incorrect view, but this knowledge is at least useful in weighting their opinions.

The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. Their stated preference is they don't want any AI anywhere, but their revealed preference is they'll continue to spend money as long as the product is good. Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap.

[miiiiiike]

That’s the thing. One day everyone is going to just stop caring about being anti-AI. Already I’ve noticed that most people are only against other people’s use of AI. Their use is justified.

I actively don’t use AI because the results are unreliable or ugly. I’m just not against AI in principle. It’s funny that my position is considered contemptible by people who regularly use AI but are hard hardliners against it on moral grounds.

Remember when everything wasn’t a religious war? Actually, I don’t. It was always like this and it’s always going to be like this. Just one forever crusade after another.

[NewsaHackO]

I am going to sound cynical, but I strongly believe that everyone's view on AI is contaminated by ulterior motives, and a lot of people are not truthful with themselves about their positions on AI. For instance, I feel as though topics such as copyright, environmentalism, water use, etc., that have been thrust into the limelight are being pushed by people who didn't care about these issues 5-10 years ago, but decided to start clutching their pearls about it now. Particularly copyright; everyone was so okay with pirating movies, apps, music when it benefited them, but now they are the vanguard in enforcing other people's copyright on data they don’t even own.

[a4isms]

> everyone was so okay with pirating movies, apps, music when it benefited them, but now they are the vanguard in enforcing other people's copyright on data they don’t even own.

You do not mention the perception of asymmetric legal and market power. Many people think that file sharing Disney movies is ok, but Google scraping the art of independent artists to create AI is not ok. That is not the same dynamic at all as not caring about copyright, and then suddenly caring about copyright.

[casey2]

Suddenly people change their tune, what gives? All we are talking about is the forced wealth transfer of trillions of dollars to the richest megacorps on the planet.

Most people didn't choose to be part of your moon shot death cult. Only the people at the tippy top of the pyramid get golden parachutes off Musk's exploding rocket.

They never changed their position, corpos shouldn't get any money! That's always been the position. They are inherently unethical meat grinders.

[StrLght]

> Indeed, companies will always start using something if it makes financial sense for them.

I agree that this is often the case. I still see Games Workshop as an exception. They could have moved plastic production to a cheaper region (e.g. China), but they haven't done so. Financials are obviously important to them, but they're being very careful and thoughtful about their actions. This AI ban is just another showcase of that.

[miiiiiike]

The UK production is mostly about speed (turnaround from 3d prototype, to mold, to finished sprue, and ‘Eavy Metal painted promo images) and quality control for the models. All of their paper and hard plastic products (books, dice, etc) are produced in China.

[doctorpangloss]

> The most interesting observation is that regardless of how "anti-AI" most people seem to be, it isn't that deep of an opinion. ... Most products produced with AI, however, are still crap.

how can you go and generalize about these people, calling them idiots (that's what "deep of an opinion" means, even if you don't say that), and then breathlessly engage in the exact same rhetoric?

[wduquette]

I took him to mean "deep" in the sense of "strongly felt", not as a comment on how sensible or well-informed the opinion is.

[ronsor]

This is the right interpretation

[neutronicus]

Yes, anyone with an art-adjacent hobby like tabletop gaming is militantly anti-AI.

Shelling out to support artists is seen as virtuous, and AI is seen as the opposite of that - not merely replacing artists but stealing from them. There's also a general perception that every cost-saving measure is killing the quality of the product.

So you've got a PR double-whammy there.

[rpdillon]

I play a lot of solo RPGs (4AD, Riftbreakers, Ker Nethalas, Kal-Arath, Al-Rathak, and just picked up Ironsworn: Starforged last night!) and I find AI to be amazing at filling in scenario and campaign details. I might roll and find out I'm investigating a burial ground, and I'd just left the shore where my boat ran aground. My local GPT-OSS 120B is fantastic at generating the scene, descriptors for the environment, and small details I can cue on and ask my oracle questions about. It's like an automated GM-lite that can embellish a scene.

It's also really good at suggesting complications to situations in games like The Sprawl (based on WoD), where, as a GM, I want to ratchet up the tension.

AI is super-cool, and has the potential to transform a lot of areas. I get that people are threatened by it, but letting that overshadow its utility seems...short sighted? Not to be procative, but, how do folks think this will play out over the next 20 years? Doesn't it seem like AI could be used to make the gaming experience better, not just cheaper?

[neutronicus]

To be clear, I think the quality angle is secondary, and thirst for the approval of artists is primary.

Personally, I haven't used AI to generate prose like you, but I do appreciate delegating "remembering dusty corners of the rules" to Claude, especially in a narrative campaign where you really just want an answer vs settling a dispute.

[tstrimple]

Just naming things in a world consistent way would be an amazing tool. Naming things is one of the most difficult parts of programming and writing and world creation I guess.

[cthalupa]

> One thing I've found when talking to non-technical board gamers about AI is that while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites the response is almost always something like "Programmers are expensive, I can't afford that. If I can use AI to cut programmers out of the process I'm going to do it."

I had a conversation with an artist friend some time back. He uses Squarespace for his portfolio website. He was a few drinks in, and ranting about how even if it's primarily artists using these tools professionally at the moment, it'll still lead to a consolidation of jobs, how it's built on the skillset and learning of a broader community than those that will profit, etc. How the little guy was going to get screwed over and over by this sort of thing.

I started out doing webdesign work before I moved more to the operations and infrastructure management side of things, but I saw the writing on the wall with CMS systems, WYSIWYG editors, etc. At the time building anything decent still took someone doing design and dev work, but I knew that they would get better over time, and figured I should make the change.

So I asked him about this. I spoke about how yeah, the people behind Squarespace had the expertise - just like the artists using AI now - but every website built with it or similar is a job that formerly would have gone to the same sort of little guy he was talking about. How it's a consolidation of all the learnings and practices built out by that larger community, where the financial benefits are heavily consolidated. I told him it doesn't much matter to the end web designer whether or not the job got eliminated by non-AI automation and software or an LLM, the work is still gone and the career less and less viable.

I've had similar conversations with artists before. They invariably maintain that it's different, somehow. I don't relish jobs disappearing, but it's nothing new. Someday, maybe enough careers will vanish that we'll need to figure out some sort of system that doesn't involve nearly every adult human working.

[rainsford]

The idea of being anti-AI for art or game design vs pro-AI for software or websites is interesting because it presumably reflects the fact that those people value art and game design more than they do software or websites. Their view of AI is as a means to an end for stuff that's necessary but low value to them while preserving the human touch for stuff that matters more.

This actually doesn't seem that unreasonable or inconsistent with how most people treat technology or similar conveniences. Many if not most people value a human component for things they think are important, even if it costs more or has other tradeoffs.

[seanmcdirmid]

> "Games Workshop elects not to experience multi-year headache. Will use AI when profitable."

They will definitely start using AI when their competitors do to the point that they gain a substantial competitive advantage. Then, at least in a free market, their only choices are to use AI or cease to exist. At that point, it is more survival bias (companies that used AI survived) rather than profit motive (companies used AI to make more money).

[bigstrat2003]

If GW couldn't drive their customers away with:

* deprecating people's models so that they have to buy new ones

* making any number of rules changes that were widely hated

* making lore changes that were widely hated

They aren't going to lose customers because some other company is using AI. They effectively don't have any competition, because people love the Warhammer settings and want to play games set in them.

[kryptiskt]

Games Workshop is more entrenched in their niche than any of the FAANGs. They can do what they want, because nobody else can do WH40K.

[seanmcdirmid]

I can guarantee you that there are more than a few small producers in Guangzhou that can, and are using whatever advantage they can leverage (including AI, like the rest of China's industry).

[tstrimple]

It's a license and IP issue. Nothing technical otherwise 3d printers should have put GW out of business overnight.

[raincole]

It's like saying because even the newest Pokemon game has shitty textures which anyone can do better than with AI, you can compete against Pokemon.

People don't buy merchs of these well-established IP for their astonishing production value. And especially not for how cheap they are.

[mattmanser]

GW don't have competitors, it has an absolute monopoly on the 40k and Fantasy worlds it has built up. It's like saying there's competitors to LOTR or Star Wars or DnD.

Their worlds are their monopolies. Worlds that now have multi-decades worth of lore investment (almost 50 years now I think).

Just because someone else can make cheaper little plastic models doesn't affect GW in the slightest. Or pump out AI slop stories.

The Horus Heresy book series is like 64 books now. And that's just a spin-off. It's set way before when 40k actually is set (10,000 years).

With so much lore they need complicated archiving and tracking to keep on top of it all (I happen to know their chief archivist).

You can't replace that. I only say all this just to try and explain how off the mark you are on understanding what the actual value of the company is.

I live in Nottingham where GW is based, another of my friends happens to have a company on an industrial estate where there are like 3 other tabletop gaming companies. All ex-gw staff.

You could probably fit all their buildings in the pub that GW has on its colossal factory site.

You used to know people who worked at Boots, which used to be the big Nottingham employer. Now days, I know more people who work at GW.

[cthalupa]

BattleTech is somewhat of a competitor, and a variety of smaller games have some niches.

Plenty of people use proxies, too. There's places that do monthly packs of new STLs that could be an entire faction army, and there's long been places that sold "definitely not Space Marines and Sisters of Battle" minis too.

They don't have a threat of anyone overtaking them at current, but AI making alternatives in this vein even cheaper could eat away at portions of their bottom line.

[_carbyau_]

As a Battletech lover, the phrase "somewhat of a competitor" is a bit vague. I see Battletech as a 3%er - one of a few 3%ers - compared to the near-monopoly of WH40K (and fantasy WH).

As an aside, I am somewhat disappointed that Battletech's appeal to the mainstream is largely down to the Mechwarrior games which have minimal lore.

There is so much more that could be done. But the current owners seem to be pretty poor at translating all their paperwork stories for the modern crowd.

[techpression]

Does GW have competitors? Feels like they own their niche (with the IP associated) completely with extreme amounts of content. Similar to how Magic rules their segment of the market

[tstrimple]

Magic has competition in Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon. I think Pokemon outsells MTG now. Warhammer doesn't have anything else in their league. The other games are a very tiny percent of an already small niche.

[mcmcmc]

> Then, at least in a free market, their only choices are to use AI or cease to exist.

That is a false dichotomy. Eschewing AI may actually provide a competitive advantage in some markets. In other words, the third choice is to pivot and differentiate.

[rsynnott]

> They will definitely start using AI when their competitors do to the point that they gain a substantial competitive advantage

I mean, I really doubt that making tabletop games with AI slop would grant anyone a substantial competitive advantage.

[venndeezl]

Don't assume your experience is uniformly distributed. I know tabletop gamers addicted to AI and 3D printing their own game pieces.

I would describe them as anti-corporate IP/copyright cartel. They understand things like automobiles and personal computers require organized heavy lifting but laying claim to own our culture and entertainment, our emotional identity is a joke.

Just rich people controlling agency, indoctrinating kids with capitalist essentialism; by chance we were born before you and survived this long so neener neener! We own everything!

Such an unserious country.

[numpad0]

> ... while they’re 100% against using AI to generate art or game design, when you ask them about using AI tools to build software or websites ...

And this is not complicated at all. It's the quality of output.

Users appreciate vibecoded apps but developers are universally unfazed about vibecoded pull requests. Lots of same devs use AI for "menial" tasks and business emails. And this is NOT a double standard: people are clearly ok when generative AI outputs may exist but aren't exposed to unsuspecting human eyes, and it's not ok if they are exposed to human eyes, because the data AIs generate haven't exceeded the low-side threshold of some sort. Maybe SAN values.

(also: IIUC, cults and ponzi scheme recruitment are endemic in tabletop game communities. so board game producers distancing from anything hot in those circles, even if it were slightly irrational to do so, also makes sense.)

[jasonlotito]

So, stuff generated from AI is copyrightable now?

[danielbln]

> I don't do much with crypto/NFTs/AI, because I don't find any of it useful yet.

Throwing AI in with crypto/NFTs from a pure utility perspective is an odd take.

[JeremyNT]

I doubt a random internet commenter can persuade you, but LLMs and tools built around them are fundamentally different from NFT/crypto.

NFTs/Crypto are just ways to do crimes/speculate/evade regulations. They aren't useful outside of "financial engineering." You were right to dismiss them.

LLMs are extremely useful for real world use cases. There are a lot of practical and ethical concerns with their use: energy usage, who owns them, who profits from them, slop generation, trust erosion... I mean, a lot. And there are indeed hucksters selling AI snake oil everywhere, which may be what tripped off your BS meter.

But fundamentally, LLMs are very useful, and comparing them to NFT/Crypto does a disservice to the utility of the tech.

[oconnor663]

> They aren't useful outside of "financial engineering."

Without disagreeing with your overall point in 99% of cases, we did actually have a good use for pinning things in the Bitcoin blockchain when I worked at Keybase. If you're trying to do peer-to-peer security, and you want to prove not only that the evil server hasn't forged anything (which you do with signatures) but also that it hasn't deleted anything legitimate, "throw a hash in the blockchain" really is the Right Way to solve that problem.

[wizzwizz4]

The property that makes the blockchain useful for this, though, is that it's widely-distributed. "Throw a classified in the national newspaper" is just as good. Nowadays, we have better solutions (appendable BitTorrent comes to mind), with most of the advantages of blockchain but few of the disadvantages.

[oconnor663]

It's important to think about the exact procedure you want to use for verifying something. Running with your thought experiment, let's say we publish "the root hash of the whole world" (not too far off from what Keybase did) each day in the Times. Now I open my phone to read some messages from Billy Bob, and my phone needs to get that hash somehow. This is just a thought experiment, so let's say for the sake of argument that it tells me to walk down to the convenience store, buy a copy of the day's paper, and scan a QR code on page 12. The problem with that arrangement (even in thought experiment land, where I'm happy to perform these steps every day) is that all the evil server needs to do to trick me is to put a doctored copy of the Times in that one newspaper stand. That's not the level of security we were hoping for. To get real security here, I'd need to do some sort of random sampling of newspaper stands distributed across the country, to build confidence that whatever QR code I'm seeing is the same one that everyone else is seeing. And the kicker is, everyone has to do this. We can't just pay one guy to sample the papers every day and tell us what the QR code was, because now our security depends on trusting that one guy, and the whole point of peer-to-peer security is avoiding that kind of centralized trust.

I think this is actually a great way to talk about the difficulty of the problem that Bitcoin solved, and why so many nerds were so interested in the whitepaper, long before all the real money got involved.

[wizzwizz4]

> The problem with that arrangement (even in thought experiment land, where I'm happy to perform these steps every day) is that all the evil server needs to do to trick me is to put a doctored copy of the Times in that one newspaper stand.

Your analogy is analogous, and that's exactly the same problem as with the blockchain! Unless you're maintaining your own Bitcoin full node, your integrity comes from the provenance: "my lightweight client trusts this full node not to lie to me". This is the same as your "one guy to sample the papers".

All you need to do is grab a copy of the day's paper from your local convenience store, and compare your results with the Times website and two randomly-selected peers (selected from a distribution carefully chosen to ensure that each day's graph is connected). Any discrepancy will be obvious, and undeniable (since you have the physical artefact as a certificate of duplicity), so anyone who discovers a discrepancy can blow the whistle. If no whistle is blown, then either there was no discrepancy, or there is a big conspiracy (i.e., one large enough that blockchain wouldn't have saved you either).

The problem is not all that difficult. The main advantage of Bitcoin is that it's a good enough solution that many people don't feel the need to think about the problem any more – even though it's a marginal improvement over the prior art, with major downsides of its own.

[blibble]

> If you're trying to do peer-to-peer security, and you want to prove not only that the evil server hasn't forged anything (which you do with signatures) but also that it hasn't deleted anything legitimate, "throw a hash in the blockchain" really is the Right Way to solve that problem.

and it only requires the same electricity as a medium sized country to do it

continuously, forever