They want to create a smart contract that people can put money into and then vote on what the money is invested in. The specific type of smart contract they're talking about is a DAO (a Distributed Autonomous Organization), which has a few notable features: it's distributed; therefore, it has nobody at the helm and no team maintaining it; and therefore, it can't be edited at all once launched.
This has been done before. [It went poorly.](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/the-dao/)
The big problem is that, rather unsurprisingly, it's incredibly difficult to program something that is bug-free and exploit-proof at all, let alone on the first try with no chance to patch it. It doesn't help that Solidity, the language that is used to program these smart contracts, is constructed with a priority on ease of use instead of actually being secure and good at handling monetary transactions.
Basically, they're saying "well yeah, the last guy to jump off this cliff met a bad end, but we're gonna think about how to jump really hard before we do it, so we think we'll succeed."
> we're gonna think about how to jump really hard before we do it, so we think we'll succeed
that's really the rationalist credo, isn't it
also yeah lol @ basing a language for security-critical monetary software on Javascript. no idea where you went wrong there lads
> The big problem is that, rather unsurprisingly, it's incredibly difficult to program something that is bug-free
I don't even think that's the problem. In the end it doesn't matter whether the code is bug-free or not, because when push comes to shove it's up to a court to decide on its interpretation.
The Ethereum people effectively did the latter when they, as your link says:
>The Ethereum Foundation changed how the actual code of Ethereum interpreted their blockchain so as to wind back the hack and take back their money. The blockchain was “immutable,” **so they changed how it was interpreted.**
Perhaps you're right-- I suppose an even bigger problem than the issues with decentralization would be that things are rarely *actually* decentralized anyways. Well, a problem for people who want them to be decentralized, at least.
It’s basically crowdsourcing, except you don’t know what you’re crowdsourcing until after you pay. Everybody pays, then they vote on where the money should go.
High-IQ STEMlords seem to really struggle with any art that's outside the realm of Harry Potter fan fiction and other trashy pop-culture garbage, unless it's purely didactic.
being smart doesn't help you have feelings, but to be fair, it's not an unambiguous idea of Ginsberg's - nor does Ginsberg have the final rights to the meaning any of his own metaphors.
What makes you say they missed the point?
I'm not great at poetry but it actually seems like a decent take. Ginsberg was upset that his smart buds (not smart like the way the rationalists mean it, but close enough) were doomed by the system. It's not perfect, but as far as software projects with epigraphs you could do a lot worse.
You know they just picked it because of these two lines:
> Moloch whose mind is pure machinery!
> Moloch whose blood is running money!
It reminds me of the Lexus commercials using "Sympathy for the Devil" because it contains the line "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste." Although at least in that case, you know some of the buyers probably do identify with the devil.
also I got to explain Racist Mensa to the buttcoiners
I have no idea of what any of this is supposed to mean. It just looks like cryptocurrency circlejerk bullshit.
I am absolutely agape in the sheer irony of “the smartest and most rational people” so utterly and completely missing the point of that poem.