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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2893 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 26, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus. I feel kind of stupid for realizing this so many chapters in but the guy is a fool. I noticed he was using petabits in the context of data storage where really it should be petabytes and passed that off as an error. But then there's a part where he says 'blockchain has been hailed as being democratic since 51% of users control the outcome - but actually one person can control many users so a govt could take over 51%'. That is so not how 'blockchain' works. He's misinterpreting proof of work which can be vulnerable to 51% attacks (where the key thing is hash power not users) but there is also proof of stake and other validation models which can have stricter requirements for transactions to become canonical. There is forking, there are so many ways in which you can't just laugh off 'blockchain' in 2 paragraphs. Certainly not in this simplistic and incorrect way.

How did this guy ever become famous? I was given the book as a gift and he's thought to be an intellectual - and sure his primary ideas are believable from a certain point of view. But he's a real midwit and clearly can't be bothered to do proper research. Worse still, he's charismatic and pretty believable. Probably there are many more errors I've missed.

Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus. I feel kind of stupid for realizing this so many chapters in but the guy is a fool.

I don't know if it's a refutation of the Flynn Effect, or just a sign of the regime's decline, but they don't make public intellectuals like they used to. I occasionally watch these supposedly high-brow mainstream interviews and debate panels, and I can only compare the experience to the feeling of your IQ dropping in real-time while watching TikTok reels. You're literally better off following Substack anons, and not by a little.

I was gifted a copy of Sapiens, and I didn't make it in very far because my overhwelming impression of the guy was that he takes little to no evidence and from that spins a yarn that flatters his preexisting world-view.

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