What Becomes the Narrative

In my work on blockchain, we always heard two main criticisms: there was the lack of security that some protocols had (think: 51% attacks, greifing attacks, etc), and the environment impacts that PoW had on the world.

Currently, these two narratives are the main fuel that feeds the flames of anti-blockchain hate; if you like blockchains, how could you, because they are terrible for the environment. Also, look at how many of these protocols get hacked (not in the exact ways I expected, I think, but security is a major concern here).

It’s very interesting to think about how the concerns on the inside become the concerns on the outside the movement or technology. The main difference being, those on the outside don’t look at these deficiencies as something to improve or as ammunition for shitting on other approaches, but rather as a way to write off the entire space.

I wonder if we can try and come up with some more good examples of these narratives and how they move. I’d be interested in trying to understand this for climate technology, etc, and then trying to map it onto the current AI Safety alignment protocols. It’ll be interesting to see if we make some guesses about the memes that emerge!