Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[silverspawn]

So to spell this out more, it seems to me like ridiculing NFTs and being consistent necessarily implies ridiculing all sorts of other things, and also that the vast majority of people clearly do not do this. People talk about purely symbolic acts all the time and this is respected. Even throwing a dollar into a magical well seems to me in the same category if you don't believe that it does anything.

[scolapasta]

On NFTs, I'm curious what y'all think about this aspect that I read somewhere. Not related to NFTs as art / "unique" items, but more so on digital ownership.

So for example, before I bought a physical DVD of a movie, I could choose to give it away or sell it and transfer ownership. With digital movies, there doesn't appear to be a current model for this. But NFTs could make each digital copy unique, which then does allow me to give or sell my unique copy and transfer its ownership (in a confirmable way).

This seemed to make sense to me, but my guess is I'm missing something.

((Not sure if this is obvious)) you could do that, but it wouldn't protect the movie from being pirated. Anyone can just make a copy of the original and watch that. It seems to me like this is exactly identical to what regular NFT's do, which is have this purely symbolic thing

Sure, but I think the idea is to provide a legitimate way for those who wanted to. I mean, even in the physical world, you could make a copy and sell the original. What NFTs also allow here is "protection" for the buyer to prove they did not pirate, that their copy is legitimate. (I think)

[silverspawn]

oh that's what you're after. That sounds like it would work but be can be achieved more easily by attaching a unique code to each movie, like games do with activation keys.

[Awaclus]

On NFTs, I'm curious what y'all think about this aspect that I read somewhere. Not related to NFTs as art / "unique" items, but more so on digital ownership.

So for example, before I bought a physical DVD of a movie, I could choose to give it away or sell it and transfer ownership. With digital movies, there doesn't appear to be a current model for this. But NFTs could make each digital copy unique, which then does allow me to give or sell my unique copy and transfer its ownership (in a confirmable way).

This seemed to make sense to me, but my guess is I'm missing something.

You can quite often sell software licenses you've bought. The only reason why you can't do this with digital movies is that the way the agreement usually works between you and the company "selling" you the movie, you're practically just renting it, not buying it.

[silverspawn]

So here is what I'm talking about when I talk shit on the quality of people's criticism:

https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/sbszdo/why_nfts_are_a_scam_is_obviously_bullshit/

Just made this thread. I predict it to remain at negative karma with between almost and literally no non-stupid counterarguments.

[silverspawn]

I mean I wish people weren't just completely illogical and stupid but they so obviously are

[silverspawn]

I mean look at how stupid these replies are

[silverspawn]

LOL MY ETH ALREADY INCREASED BY LIKE 30$

this is enough to cover the fees of sending it to my wallet. Instant win.

[Awaclus]

So to spell this out more, it seems to me like ridiculing NFTs and being consistent necessarily implies ridiculing all sorts of other things, and also that the vast majority of people clearly do not do this. People talk about purely symbolic acts all the time and this is respected. Even throwing a dollar into a magical well seems to me in the same category if you don't believe that it does anything.

I don't ridicule the concept of NFTs, I ridicule the idiots who get into it while completely misunderstanding the concept even though it isn't even a difficult concept. But the thing with everything that has no real value besides what people arbitrarily decide to assign to it, whether it's NFTs, regular cryptocurrencies, classical art or money, is that if people collectively don't assign any value to it, it won't have any value. On a more objective meta level, there might not be any fundamental difference between NFTs and classical art besides that people irrationally feel like they're different, but that feeling is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and as a result, they really do end up being different.

This is falsified every time someone goes into an art museum. You're paying to see originals when you can't tell the difference between them and copies.

As someone who visits art museums, I am actually paying to see the exhibition. I don't care if the paintings I'm seeing are the originals or indistinguishable copies, I care about the fact that people have chosen a theme or themes for the exhibition that goes well with the architecture of the building the exhibition is in, picked the appropriate works to be displayed and where in the building to display them (which is especially important with a lot of more modern works that interact with the space they're in e.g. by using light, UV light, reflections, audio, etc), thought of all the transitions between the more immersive works, placing chairs where it's intended for people to take a longer time to appreciate certain works, etc. A properly done art exhibition is super worth experiencing independently of the fact that sometimes the works cost a ton of money.

[silverspawn]

to be clear, the reddit post was super low effort rant that I wrote without even checking once for spelling errors and while not even understanding NFTs, and there could be many things wrong with the argument. But this should actually make it *easier* to write an intelligent reply (as you just did).

I totally think it's possible that I'm wrong about NFTs in important ways. Not so much about people being stupid.

[silverspawn]

On the object level, this doesn't seem to me to justify 'scam' label. And "people who buy them are stupid", I mean sure, but like the same is true for a gazillion other things? Like so much of what people buy is done under totally incorrect expectations for how useful it is.

[silverspawn]

The other problem with paying for the exhibition is that this doesn't justify having originals in the museum. You could do the same while having a museum full of copies. The fact that we don't have this indicates your preference is unusual... or that people would,in fact, visit such museums and people leave money on the table by not building them.

[Awaclus]

On the object level, this doesn't seem to me to justify 'scam' label. And "people who buy them are stupid", I mean sure, but like the same is true for a gazillion other things? Like so much of what people buy is done under totally incorrect expectations for how useful it is.

I agree it would be incorrect to say that NFTs are fundamentally a scam, but currently, it seems pretty easy to take advantage of the idiots, which is a scam. And sure, a lot of other things that people pay for are scams as well.

[silverspawn]

On the object level, this doesn't seem to me to justify 'scam' label. And "people who buy them are stupid", I mean sure, but like the same is true for a gazillion other things? Like so much of what people buy is done under totally incorrect expectations for how useful it is.

I agree it would be incorrect to say that NFTs are fundamentally a scam, but currently, it seems pretty easy to take advantage of the idiots, which is a scam. And sure, a lot of other things that people pay for are scams as well.

Is it though? Is it really a scam to not inform buyers about the reasons why they are ill-informed about the purchase?

Like, afaik anti virus software is generally overvalued for security, and keeping your software up to date is more important. (At least I heard a security person say this, and it rings true.) Assuming this is correct, presumably most people who pay for anti virus software are misinformed about the nature of the product. I don't think I would accuse the people selling the software of being scammers, even if they know this.

[silverspawn]

Also, is it actually true that an army of people are buying NFTs believing that they will grow in value? I don't particularly doubt it, but everyone just says this without ever providing evidence

[Awaclus]

The other problem with paying for the exhibition is that this doesn't justify having originals in the museum. You could do the same while having a museum full of copies. The fact that we don't have this indicates your preference is unusual... or that people would,in fact, visit such museums and people leave money on the table by not building them.

Well, the museum doesn't need to own all the works it displays, it can just rent or borrow them for the duration of the exhibition, which is often much cheaper than hiring a skilled artist to put in the insane amount of effort it takes to create an indistinguishable copy. Also a lot of the more recent works are still copyrighted so they couldn't just make copies as they pleased anyway. I guess museums do usually have collections of authentic historical works, but the point there is not just to have a valuable thing so that people will pay for seeing it, but to preserve history.

I do believe that people would pay for an art exhibition with indistinguishable copies of works. People pay to see movies in theaters. In fact I vaguely remember seeing copies in exhibitions sometimes, but I might be mixing that up with seeing copies elsewhere like churches.

[Awaclus]

On the object level, this doesn't seem to me to justify 'scam' label. And "people who buy them are stupid", I mean sure, but like the same is true for a gazillion other things? Like so much of what people buy is done under totally incorrect expectations for how useful it is.

I agree it would be incorrect to say that NFTs are fundamentally a scam, but currently, it seems pretty easy to take advantage of the idiots, which is a scam. And sure, a lot of other things that people pay for are scams as well.

Is it though? Is it really a scam to not inform buyers about the reasons why they are ill-informed about the purchase?

Like, afaik anti virus software is generally overvalued for security, and keeping your software up to date is more important. (At least I heard a security person say this, and it rings true.) Assuming this is correct, presumably most people who pay for anti virus software are misinformed about the nature of the product. I don't think I would accuse the people selling the software of being scammers, even if they know this.

I would say so, yeah. Antivirus software is not entirely a scam, it has its legitimate use cases, but 99.0-99.3% of the time it's just selling an unhelpful or even actively harmful product to people after convincing them they wouldn't survive without it, which is absolutely a scam. And so are e.g. homeopathic treatments.

[Awaclus]

Also, is it actually true that an army of people are buying NFTs believing that they will grow in value? I don't particularly doubt it, but everyone just says this without ever providing evidence

I'm not so sure about that, I just keep seeing people being butthurt over the realization that the NFT they've bought doesn't actually do anything.

[faust]

so faust, in what sense if at all are NFT's less reasonable than classic art?

People pay millions for paintings that are indistinguishable from copies. With NFT's, people pay money for originals which are exactly identical to copies. The difference between indistinguishable and perfectly identical may in fact matter to some people (I just had an argument about this, and I suspect it does), but it doesn't make the paintings any better. It's just [deluding yourself & valuing scarcity for the sake of itself] vs. [valuing scarcity for the sake of itself].

I'm not saying NFTs are less reasonable than classic art. In general I do not think art should be available to everyone as much as possible.

I at least understand how the classic art market developed though. It used to be pretty expensive to get those paintings, even copies, and so there was scarcity. In a historical context, it makes sense that things got to where they are today even though they should change.

With NFTs it's exactly opposite. We have a perfectly good way of dealing with these digital media and now people come in and feel they need to own something just for the sake of owning it.

So to spell this out more, it seems to me like ridiculing NFTs and being consistent necessarily implies ridiculing all sorts of other things, and also that the vast majority of people clearly do not do this. People talk about purely symbolic acts all the time and this is respected. Even throwing a dollar into a magical well seems to me in the same category if you don't believe that it does anything.

This is just whataboutism. No person is ever fully consistent, that doesn't excuse you from engaging with their arguments.

[faust]

I guess what bothers me most is this weird late-stage capitalism obsession with buying and owning stuff.

[silverspawn]

With NFTs it's exactly opposite. We have a perfectly good way of dealing with these digital media and now people come in and feel they need to own something just for the sake of owning it.

It's funny because it's true; but I sort of applaud this because it's like owning paintings but without the BS of pretending that it's really about the infinitesimal changes between the original and the copy or whatever.

So to spell this out more, it seems to me like ridiculing NFTs and being consistent necessarily implies ridiculing all sorts of other things, and also that the vast majority of people clearly do not do this. People talk about purely symbolic acts all the time and this is respected. Even throwing a dollar into a magical well seems to me in the same category if you don't believe that it does anything.

This is just whataboutism. No person is ever fully consistent, that doesn't excuse you from engaging with their arguments.

It is as so often just a matter emphasis then. To me, the big story here is that a legion of people is shitting on this thing for fairly odd reasons, and I'm wondering why that is. But sure, any individual point is not affected.

But there doesn't seem to be all that much disagreement on individual points. It's not like I think investing in NFTs is a smart thing to do

[silverspawn]

Also, is it actually true that an army of people are buying NFTs believing that they will grow in value? I don't particularly doubt it, but everyone just says this without ever providing evidence

I'm not so sure about that, I just keep seeing people being butthurt over the realization that the NFT they've bought doesn't actually do anything.

and I don't even know anyone who owns an NFT

[silverspawn]

Well, the museum doesn't need to own all the works it displays, it can just rent or borrow them for the duration of the exhibition, which is often much cheaper than hiring a skilled artist to put in the insane amount of effort it takes to create an indistinguishable copy. Also a lot of the more recent works are still copyrighted so they couldn't just make copies as they pleased anyway. I guess museums do usually have collections of authentic historical works, but the point there is not just to have a valuable thing so that people will pay for seeing it, but to preserve history.

I thought you could buy copies of originals for some pretty trivial price.

[Awaclus]

Well, the museum doesn't need to own all the works it displays, it can just rent or borrow them for the duration of the exhibition, which is often much cheaper than hiring a skilled artist to put in the insane amount of effort it takes to create an indistinguishable copy. Also a lot of the more recent works are still copyrighted so they couldn't just make copies as they pleased anyway. I guess museums do usually have collections of authentic historical works, but the point there is not just to have a valuable thing so that people will pay for seeing it, but to preserve history.

I thought you could buy copies of originals for some pretty trivial price.

Well, you can buy prints and stuff, but those are pretty far from indistinguishable. I don't know how you could create a copy that could be actually mistaken for the original without doing it manually and skillfully.

[silverspawn]

ok that's interesting. maybe the museum case isn't that clear cut.