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Didn't Ben Evans previously shill for bitcoin, which is now omitted in the graphs for "disruptive technologies"?

This is a marketing Gish Gallop talk that pretends to invalidate counterarguments with a couple of fantasy graphs.

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Yeah, beyond this mumbo-jumbo non-answer of yours, did you or did you not push crypto? Because if you did...it could kind of not speak for your analytical competence.

'these charts are fantasies' is a non-criticism from an anonymous moron. If there is an actual criticism of an actual point, make it.

Back when people were interested in Blockchains, I explained why people in tech were interested. I'm happy to explain that again now, if anyone cared. If someone thinks that's bad, they're a fool.


Blockchain as a technology was something a lot of people were interested in. I am curious about Bitcoin - the monopoly money of the real world. The questions was simple: did you, or did you not, promote Bitcoin? Anyone who would promote a fake, un-regulated "currency" would not be someone whose opinion I care about.

Unflagged as I don't feel this comment deserves to be flagged. The call for reposting with a real name is unnecessary though - if an internet comment is incorrect or overstates the case, just reply to correct it or ignore it.

not to be too pedantic but sourced doesn't usually mean accurate. sourced can very well be fantasy. it will be a 'sourced fantasy' in that case or hallucination if you used a LLM.

Sure. So which chart does our anonymous coward think is a fantasy, and why?

Hah wow, what a way to confirm what he posted.

Why do you need this persons name?

The implication is that it's a bot saying this, not a person.

No it isn't. The implication is that pro-AI people can take revenge. He knows he is secure with his opinions. He even paraphrases Andreesen's title "software will eat the world". He has repeatedly appeared at a16z.

It is very secure to be pro-AI while the rest has to resort to unregistered typewriters like in the Soviet Union.


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You are absolutely not a "random person on the internet", you are a very public figure with the wealth and influence available to you that could allow you to take revenge on someone who says something you don't like in real, life-altering ways. Now, I'm not saying that you would do that, but it is a shocking lack of self-awareness to think of yourself as a random person on the internet.

This is hilarious. What am I going to do? Hire a hitman? if you’re going be a dick on the Internet, you should be a dick using your real name. I don’t think that’s a threat.

Doesn't seem like a bot, and even if it were, the critique is germane. Calling for a name is a little threatening.

Looking at a 80 slide deck and saying that the charts are 'fantasies' is not a germane criticism at all. it's handwaving.

One of the graphs has two series: net revenue for one company, gross revenue for another. Absolutely ridiculous.

And that's just one example. You also haven't adjusted for inflation in your graphs that span multiple decades. Not to mention that the graphs themselves are not related to what you're discussing most of the time. You're just pointing at random historical developments and seemingly claiming they imply something for AI. They don't.

Also you don't name your sources. You just say "Companies" for most of them. Or a single name. Ridiculous. Those are not sources. You should identify the documents.

This is incredibly low quality work. A college freshman would do better.


All of these points are simply wrong.

I charted the revenue reported by Anthropic and OpenAI as gross and net because those are the numbers they disclose. Anthropic does not report net revenue nor give us any way to calculate that, and the same in reverse for OpenAI. It would be great if we had GAAP revenue, but we don't. This is what we have, and it still tells an important story. What are we supposed to do - just not show the data?

All of the charts indicate whether they are adjusted for inflation. There is no rigid convention on this, but the general practice is that you don't adjust up to maybe 20 years and generally do convert for more than that, unless inflation itself is under discussion, which it is not here. Meanwhile, the text on each slide explains the purpose of the comparison. None of them are random.

Every chart is correctly sourced exactly as you will see it in any other piece of financial or industry research. It is not industry practice to cite specific documents or provide footnotes.

You've clearly just never seen any industry or financial analysis before, and are unfamiliar with basic and universal conventions that run back decades. That's fine. Being rude about it is not.


It is not industry practice to actually give the sources then? Just list vague names in a short "Sources:Companies" note? I now see the inflation indication as well. Which is not on the y-axis label, but in the "Sources:"-note. I will concede that. But what the hell my guy, why is it down there.

If "financial analysis" is less rigid in sourcing requirements than grade school, what are you guys even doing. If you have the source, it's not very difficult to make a bibliography (or even write the year/publication with the author/publisher), and not doing so only serves to hinder the reader. If this is industry standard it means your entire industry is terrible at sourcing, does not want the reader to verify claims, or both.

And I've also definitely seen financial slide decks with actual sources cited. So I'm inclined to hope there are people in your industry who actually respect the reader's time.

Here's some more picks (and some more reasons you should list your sources): Your graphs based on surveys don't report error margins. You never list what a 100% is very precisely (what's the sample/population). In one graph, you don't label the y-axis at all (except for a 0 at the bottom)!

And finally, I was rude, yes. But I was only matching your energy. And I did show constraint there. I didn't make a veiled threat, did I?


You are surprised to discover how an entire industry you know nothing about does things. You conclude that everyone in that industry must be an idiot doing bad work.

This says far more about you than it does about me.


Yes, it says I have bare-minimum standards for how to cite references.

I never said I thought financial analysts are idiots. That's not a conclusion I made.

I gave a very reasonable reason: they want it to be more difficult to replicate the analysis. That makes sense if your goal is to make sure your work is profitable, rather than quality reporting and knowledge dissemination.

That would imply the people who set the standards (not everyone) is cynical and/or greedy. Not an idiot.

And still, presumably you are still allowed to add actual sources to financial analysis? You still failed the regular standard of good reporting on this. Your graphs also fail just regular data analysis sanity checks. There is, e.g., no thought given to whether it's even valid to compare data from two sources in one graph. You just do it.


It is an indisputable fact that you spent years shilling crypto. Why even deny that or threaten(!) someone pointing it out? It was/is a huge, verifiable chunk of your public output.

No, it's a really stupid lie. You can look at all my essays and presentations online.

I've spent some time discussing why people are interested in blockchains as software platforms, and what would be good and bad arguments around that. But I've never suggested anyone buy a token - indeed, I was pretty vocal in pointing to speculative bubbles and silly ideas, like NFTs.



Nope. This is the exact quote.

Crypto today has a lot in common with both the internet in 1993 and the internet in 1999. Huge potential with few of the use cases invented yet, combined with froth, scams and delusion. This makes it easier to dismiss (“useless AND a scam!”).

But dismissing crypto as a useless scam is much like looking at Usenet, Cuecat and Boo .com and dismissing the internet. It mistakes applications for the enabling layer.

Looking at crypto and only seeing the scams is like looking at the internet in 1999 and only seeing the bubble.

Looking at crypto and seeing no use cases is like looking at the internet in 1993, when the web was 3% of traffic

Another parallel: 1993 - people complaining the term should be internets, not internet 2018 - people complaining 'that's not what crypto means'

You could argue I was wrong and blockchain's potential never turned into anything much. It actually has become a huge deal as plumbing in the finance industry, but not much else. But so what? This was an interesting tech that hasn't really worked out. Welcome to the tech industry.


Nope what? You just confirmed the OP’s point. Glad we’re all in agreement.

I don't think it's fair to consider writing an analysis (even a favorable one) about a topic as _shilling_ for it. It's not like he was pushing shitcoins or minting NFTs.

I have always been (and remain!) bearish on crypto but it absolutely was something that couldn't be ignored a few years ago. Even if you came to the conclusion that it was bunk, there was significant enough fervor that any technologist needed to reckon with their position on it.

For example, lots of engineers proclaimed very loudly that document databases would replace the RDBMs, or that GraphQL was the future of APIs. They were wrong, as it turned out, but only with the wisdom of hindsight.


He actually was pushing NFTs but has since deleted his tweet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26434769

No, I didn’t. I made my account private and stopped using twitter. And the actual tweet says the opposite - that NFTs would need to develop some kind of cultural grounding for them to become a investment, which they didn’t have at the time and never got, and without that this would just be a speculative bubble, which is exactly what happened.

I made it very clear that I thought NFTs were a speculative bubble. I never suggested anyone should buy any crypto-related instrument. The idea that I was ‘shilling for crypto’ is something you would only say if you’re an idiot, as the OP and a few others on this thread clearly are.


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That quote is actually from "Scott Rackey" and not the OP: https://web.archive.org/web/20220603095222/https://twitter.c...

No, I've never said that, and never thought that. The actual text in that tweet is: " The blockchain can't lie, but you can lie to the blockchain"

You don't know how to use Search, and this is beyond anything worth engaging with.


It's literally right there on the front page. People should go look for themselves.

I dunno... but those self-quotes sound a lot like at least implying that "missing out on crypto" would be like missing out on early days of Internet. You also seem to try and retrofit "blockchain" instead of "crypto", but these are two different things - blockchain is a technology, crypto is a form of play-money based on that technology, just like it's older brother, the monopoly-money, is based on the technology of paper (but not much else).

No, I was using crypto and blockchain as interchangeable terms. I'm aware some people don't, but that's always how any person the space I've spoken to uses them

Indeed you did, but that does not make it right. They are not interchangeable. Now again, did you, or did you not promote Bitcoin?

No, you have a different opinion about terminology, which ironically is one of the things I noted as pointless in the thread I posted.

No, answer my question - it's not that hard!



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