[bennyg]

Cryptography is learnable by anybody. Maybe not practiced up to state-of-the-art standards by just anybody, but to say that's unreachable is bad form. I'm an art major turned software developer who has been reading about cryptography and paying astute attention to cryptography articles here (as well as trying to objectively gauge the comments), for the better part of the last half-year. I'm not saying I'm good at it, but to say that I can't comprehend a hash function, padding oracle attacks and public-key cryptography is pretty dumb. The beautiful thing about cryptography is that, theoretically it's nice and simple - the less moving parts that add up to the more robust system, the better. The problem lies in real-world implementations, as it always does with theoretical -> real systems. If I, as a liberal arts major with only a few years of practical software (and thus tangential computer subsystems of hardware) experience can grok the basics no problem, then surely an electrical engineer with years of practical experience can understand it too. Creativity knows no bounds - sometimes the right circumstances and accidents lead to an idea that actually makes perfect sense.

[declan]

Yep, that's largely true, though I'd say there's a very very big difference between understanding hash functions and public-key crypto and designing, coding, debugging, and deploying a system like Bitcoin.

The number of people who could do the former would be pretty much every freshman CS student who took the relevant classes. The number of people who could do the latter is a far smaller fraction.

In any case, the burden on proof here is on Newsweek. I don't believe, given the evidence we have, that they've met it. Strong claims require strong proof.

[bennyg]

I agree with what you're saying completely. Sometimes people like to think intellectual pursuits are only for the highly intellectual, instead of those that happen to be interested with a different mindset than those in the upper tax brackets of IQ.

[drjesusphd]

> but to say that's unreachable is bad form.

Hear here! I think there's something profound here. Not to put words in your mouth in what follows, of course.

As a physicist, I'm really tired of the attitude that some things are just too complicated for the "common man" to understand, and I can easily see how crypography is similar with respect to public perception. This idea that "not everyone can understand" is propaganda put forward by the most intellectually insecure among us, and it does us damage in the long run.

Inevitably, someone comes by that sells the public a load of snake oil under the cover of being "too complicated". When they're eventually proven wrong, public trust erodes. Eventually, the very idea that expertise exists is in jeopardy.

Thank you for calling out the bullshit, even though you might not have meant it as such. These "technical" topics are open and understandable by everyone that cares, and I'm convinced that anyone who suggests otherwise is not worth their salt.

(edit: No offense intended whatsoever to declan. This is just something I've been meaning to get off my chest for a while and bennyg just reminded me of it.)