(Part 3) Top products from r/ethereum

> I haven't done proper research, but i personally feel it is an over-ambitious or rather an extremely pretentious project.

Agreed--it’s either ambitious or over-ambitious, depending on your view of what is possible. But if it’s not in this category, it’s not a zero-to-one project and therefore, not interesting enough (at least to me) for the time and effort.

By doing some proper research, you may come to the conclusion that such an endeavor is possible. Read some good books on Peer-To-Peer technologies, like this one and try to figure out why many distributed computing projects in the past all failed and why that should not be the case today. Also try to read some academic papers on distributed computing, grid computing, etc. There are a lot of those. Think about reputation systems and what kind of businesses they’ve enabled. You’re on this board, so I’m sure you have a good idea about how Ethereum enables new things to come to life. And importantly, do research on the team.

> with all these icos, it looks like a blockchain bubble is around the corner. Don't get me wrong, Blockchain will definitely invaluable just like the internet. Companies without substance or created just to ride the hype fall.

Agreed--it is a minefield out there. A bunch of projects look like nothing more than a scam. Others are legit but probably won’t work for one or more valid reasons. This is consistent with any technological breakthrough of the past, whether it’s the invention of the railroad, automobile, computer, internet, and now the blockchain; it's part of the package. And one day, among all the rubble, some very large enterprises will come out of this, just like what happened in those other breakthrough technological periods. And the rewards will go to those who have put in the time and effort to understand which of these projects will add a lot of value to the world and be able to keep their competitive position for a long time.

This kind of stuff worries me as well. There is a very real risk we end up bound by blockchains. The concern is not just that Blockchains become coopted by Governments (1,2) and used to make it easier to control their populations or even used to make genocide more efficient but also that even if we evade cooption by states the economic and social incentives mean we end up with a kind of decentralised black mirror episode where everyone is constantly ranked and rated even if people have full control over their identities and information. That is the mere presence of a credible signalling method coerces people into revealing damaging information about themselves. It really doesn't matter if it is governments, corporations or so called crypto-anarchists who provide the ID infrastructure we still end up in the same dark (yet transparent) place. Decentralisation doesn't help. Pseudonymity only partially helps. Social sorting is of course to some degree required for an efficient economy however if the surveillant assemblage too good it massively exacerbates inequalities and results in total exclusion for some. I would argue that a good system which does not marginalise and exclude people is one which has a bounded degree of inaccuracy.

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Desirable features:

• Pseudonymity => ok
  
• Activity doesn't create trail of surveillance breadcrumbs.
  
• Can still prove uniqueness for anti-sybil.
  
• Can prove facts without revealing information e.g prove you are over 18 but not birthday or age
  
• Multiplicity of unlinked identity facets that can be revealed in different contexts.
  
• Ability to "start again" with a fresh identity but without falling painfully far below average.
  
• Smoothing and uncertainty in reputation to prevent extreem Matthew Effects or total exclusion.
  
• I'd also like to make it costly for people to ask for discriminatory or irrelevant information but I'm not sure how other than through regulation. Perhaps oracles that attest to things could refuse to attest if there is no good reason for asking (important that it is the oracle not the person refusing since in a scenario like "prove you don't have a criminal conviction if you want to get an arcade city taxi" then all people without will gladly provide this information.).

There's a pretty awesome documentary mini-series [1] that TechCrunch created based on Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. I ended up picking up the book last week after watching that mini-series. Heard nothing but good things about the book. Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies was pretty good as well... Always enjoyed watching/listening to Andreas M. Antonopoulos who wrote the book.

• [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHRxVckaE8daSH4OEReWshCKWu3iIOIS-
  
• [2] https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042/

Good point, for accuracy I should probably have written "Cyberpunk" however a) I was being a bit facetious/lose b) I see both cypher and cyber punk as one movement these days, probably because i'm getting old c) my preference goes to Daemon by Daniel Suarez.

Littérature Bonus points: Karl Schroeder from "I am the mighty brick" fame is an Ethereum fan.

> Someone rather more intelligent than I - from memory Richard Feynman - wrote a long and interesting article about scientific rigour, and how when you do one expirement that appears to suggest a theory, you don't assume the theory is right because it fitted that one set of data. Instead, you specifically design other experiments that TEST the theory.
The problem with this book is that there appears to have been a single "real world example" which suggested the theory, but that every other example is a "class room experiment by Professor X in which a series of students did Y..."

It's pretty unsettling to read that review because it really puts into question just how much scientifically rigorous the author was.

I'd like to also suggest this book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Willful-Blindness-Ignore-Obvious-Peril/dp/038566902X

edit: downvotes aren't helpful but some legitimate scientific studies will do, so far haven't seen anything convincing. I know it's uncomfortable to question your own beliefs because it gets to your egos but neither did people running LTCM. I just want one good convincing scientifically rigorous study that can back up the claim "Crowd is statistically significantly better at predicting the future than few experts and roll of a dice". If this was true, lot of hedge fund managers shouldn't even be trusted with billions of dollars under management. They should just blindly follow whatever ticker the crowd votes to purchase.

I've read Introducing Ethereum and Solidity and it pretty good.

I'm working on a tutorial on how to create a DApp using React and Solidity that I will post on my blog. If you are interested, you can subscribe to get an email when I publish it.

Just started reading "Future Imperfect" and pretty excited about it, so thanks

Have also had it recommended to me from my brother (interested in social justice side of things), that a new concept called "social license [to operate]" might be of interest to those of us who are considering the design of decentralized systems. Primarily, what does "corporate social responsibility" deconstitute into as we disassemble traditional corporations? I've only just started digging, but I feel there might be some really interesting intersections...

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140827212307-16269230-what-is-the-social-license
  
• http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/sep/29/social-licence-operate-shell-bp-business-leaders
  
• http://www.amazon.ca/The-Social-License-Organization-Legitimate/dp/1137370718

I just purchased the following books:

• Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1491954388/)
  
• The Internet of Money (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1537000454/)
  
• Ethereum: Blockchains, Digital Assets, Smart Contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1523930470/)
  
  They have good reviews and seem nice reads for the money. However, the Ethereum book - "This text was written for people with a fast grasp, who are not programmers." Still missing a book on Solidity for programmers.

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography is excellent if you’re interested in this stuff. It takes you through the history of encryption and explains everything well.

Chichen Itza is one of the most amazing things in the world. Experience it no matter what. Also, a great time to read Breaking the Maya Code, which seems applicable to Ethereum/crypto in a lot ways. Spoiler alert: it took forever in part because each generation of archaeologists thought they had a monopoly on the truth and couldn't adapt their techniques and understanding to evidence that they were wrong.

Please take a look at this Ethereum history book. It's a great resource for anyone who wishes to catch up with what has happened so far with Ethereum since 2013.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1546544828/ref=s9u_simh_gw_i1?ie=UTF8&fpl=fresh&pd_rd_i=1546544828&pd_rd_r=H50H3KZ30K8DT7QBX6T0&pd_rd_w=6UlGI&pd_rd_wg=gkZZ5&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=&pf_rd_r=EDRPNYPEB7H6BDC7GWMP&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=781f4767-b4d4-466b-8c26-2639359664eb&pf_rd_i=desktop

We all make mistakes, I'm sorry to hear that. This advice has helped me immensely; you might be surprised how quickly it can rebuild trust and improve your relationship.

My own quick partial list:

• http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Applied-Economists-Robert-Gibbons/dp/0691003955
  
• Everything on http://lesswrong.com and http://overcomingbias.com ; keep reading until you understand what "acausal trade" is
  
• David Friedman's Future Imperfect (some economics of futurism, also deals with many of our issues); his "Legal Systems Very Different from Ours" is also very relevant and his Price Theory is good for intro economics
  
• Technical intro to signalling and countersignalling theory: http://ideas.repec.org/p/iuk/wpaper/2005-05.html
  
• Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, also Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational in the same vein (and Bryan Caplan's Myth of the Rational Voter for another set of fun consequences of irrationality :) )

Starting point is the book and the various on-line presentations and interviews:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Radical-Markets-Uprooting-Capitalism-Democracy/dp/0691177503

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This Epicentre interview I found particularly enlightening:

#251 Glen Weyl: Radical Markets – Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WicmpkQkWDM

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I listened to the author's interview on the podcast The Ether Review. It was interesting as hell and I will be reading this book this summer.

Here is the interview: https://soundcloud.com/arthurfalls/the-ether-review-27-blockchain

Another great book I recommend that got me into cryptocurrency and bitcoin history was [Digital Gold] (https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires-Reinvent/dp/0062362496?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0).

Here's a book on implementing these functions that seems pretty good; I have it but won't get through it anytime soon. Most of the published work seems to focus on floating point math but there's some fixed-point; here's a paper (pdf) on a fixed-point log algorithm.

There's a huge amount of research on this stuff. Start here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Wisdom-Crowds-Many-Smarter/dp/0349116059
It's clear that throwing darts will perform worse than asking which way people would bet in almost any situation.

Check my own book Mastering Ethereum. It's 490 pages long of practical content showing you many projects that you can apply right away: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-blockchain-applications-Ethereum-supported/dp/1789531373/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?keywords=mastering+ethereum&qid=1562327809&s=gateway&sr=8-4

his book really made me question a lot of my assumptions about technology. highly rec'd:

https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307389979