Selfish Effective altruism #5: How cryptocurrency could become the evolution to cash

Hello there!

Welcome to the 5th installment to my Selfish Effective altruism series, this time revolving around money - more specifically a digital kind of money called 'Cryptocurrency'.
Just to clarify, this would have been my 2nd one, but I decided to include the other smaller posts, since I didn't think it would make sense to exclude them. Back to the topic at hand.

Preface

TL;DR: Cryptocurrency has the large potential to transform currency, but has the bottlenecks of governance, scalability and power cost since it goes through computationally taxing processes which require a lot of energy - which may also damage the environment.

Cryptocurrency is potentially a very world-changing technological innovation, similar to how the internet changed the world over 25 years ago. This post was inspired by an 80,000 hours podcast episode where they interview the founder of 'Ethereum'. Cryptocurrency is digital currency which can be transferred on-line and anywhere in the world. Bitcoin is an example of cryptocurrency. Whilst I was doing research for this post, I thought that since it was digital it could be hacked by some very seasoned programmers, but I was proven wrong. Let's just say that, whilst it's not impossible, it's not exactly worth anyone's time either. Another thing I've learned whilst writing this post is that cryptocurrency is also not subject to things like inflation, therefore it can be quite a reliable currency - especially for the poor suffering from corrupt institutional control of their money. I will explain all of these in detail in the post.

But first of all, before we get into the specific problems, you will need to learn what a "Blockchain" is, as that's a very important aspect of cryptocurrency.

Introduction to blockchain

Block chains are a large collection of data, much like a virtually endless spreadsheet on many computers, created by a mysterious Japanese entity called Satoshi Nakomoto. The 'block' is what contains the data and the chain is what strings it together to form a blockchain. Let's demonstrate an example: Say you want to purchase something - maybe a lamp on-line. The block stores information about the transaction like the date, time, the dollar amount of the said purchase and who was involved in the transaction. Up to 1MB can be stored in a single block, less than an MP3 file but can contain the data of a few thousand transactions.

Real world currencies are managed by public institutions like the Bank of England for the pound sterling or the US Federal bank for the US dollar; they make sure that money supply is well-managed and suppress inflation. However, this system is not held by any particular institution, therefore this means that people can make transactions on this without needing to worry if an institution has checked their transactions.

There is also a term called 'Mining' which is adding blocks to the blockchain; the meaning is a bit counter-intuitive since mining would be extracting from something rather than adding to it. Though there is a part of the definition of mining that agrees with this term. This process is done through a "Proof of work" system, which has a computer prove the work they have done by solving a computationally taxing maths problem. The amount of effort there is similar to the physical effort of mining. As of this January, the chances of solving such problems are 1 in a trillion - thus requiring a lot of energy to run the programs to solve these. Despite this immense power cost, it can prove useful to weeding out frauds such as accidentally sending things to the wrong person, as the miners try and find who made the transaction as well as which transaction occurred. Since there is this "Proof of work system", hacking into the blockchain is as difficult as moving a mountain, as you would need to be able to seize control of over 50% of all the blockchains to hack into it. Although it is possible, it is pretty unlikely since most hackers may not have the tendency of Dashrath Manji, so they may just decide to give up.

Keep in mind the definition of 'Mining' for later, since I will go on to the problems with mining. For now we will be looking at what problems Cryptocurrency can solve.

Possible solution to poverty

Bill Gates, despite being against cryptocurrency in the past, believes that it is the solution to the  money problem occurring in low-income countries and it can also help to improve healthcare and agriculture. Sun Exchange is helping this idea come into fruition, to make sure that, for example,  no child cooks with unsafe kerosene.
A city in turkey called Konya, with a population of 2.4 million as well as a place with rich mosques and a past, plan to use this currency, as revealed by Mayor Ugur Ibrahim on 16th January. Turkey itself is one of the largest users of cryptocurrency along with Brazil, South Africa, Columbia and Argentina with 20% use. Turkey also has quite a high level of inflation, therefore they are likely to be one of the first places to use Bitcoin. Konya plans to use this for social support programs, corporation events, public transport and environmental services. A doctral who goes by 'Cibikdiken' (I cannot pronounce the name), who operates as the adviser to projects like 'True Feedback', states that they want their crew of 7 blockchain developers to seek ways in using blockchain to finance social platforms, the prototype is plan to be debuted in 2021.

The Global Findex Database 2014 mentions that digital payments have both benefits for senders and receivers such as increased payment speeds and lowered costs of disbursing and receiving them. Joi Ito, director of MIT media Lab, says that Bitcoin can reduce the complexities of the financial system, with an even playing field not needing to have people like pensioners with lots of money go through mediums that don't resemble them well.

This can also elevate poverty in places like sub-Sahara Africa, where people live on just $1 a day. There are some solutions to this poverty like micro finance, which provide loans for individuals or small businesses like farmers. However this could be manipulated through inflation and government corruption - hence, at best farmers would be denied access to these loans or at worst getting lands taken away. Since bitcoin does not operate on any kind of government institution, there is a more level playing field which could be a solution to this issue. One such company that tries to solve this problem is GoTenna who have made a product of the same name which is a low power node, reliant on bluetooth networks without needing the internet. They have teamed up with 'Samoruai Wallet' to make Txtena which allows bitcoin transfer without needing the internet - though eventually they will need it.

In October 2019, Xi Jinping (whom you may know from my post about china), gave his consolidation about cryptocurrency, therefore China, already bursting with growing innovation, may release their cryptocurrency this year.

Of course, Bitcoin doesn't come without its problems, most notably, scalability, cost, speed, governance (conflicts with public and private chains). I hope that you have kept the term "Mining" in mind because it will come up here.

Dangers and problems with Bitcoin

There are seldom many rules set in place for governance, since Blockchain is in its infancy. The internet, despite being a public platform like Blockchain, has standards put in place thanks to institutions like the Internet Engineering Task Force. Although companies like IBM, AWS, Oracle, Microsoft and others are experimenting with Blockchain, as well as JPMorgan and Skrill offering cryptocurrency services, Blockchain is still quite niche.

There are some solutions, for example Jack Dorsey who is the CeO of a fintech company called Square, has in interest in cryptocurrency and wants to establish a "Layer 2" solution which is basically a payment protocol which operates on top of the cryptocurrency, intended to take off some of the processing power of cryptocurrency which can solve the scalability problem. This is also known as the "Lightning network" - though it is far from a polished solution. This solution was also agreed with by Brian Armstrong, CeO of Coinbase as he believes that they are vital to making cryptocurrency useful. He also says that there is a 'privacy coin' being developed over the decade because it does not make sense to broadcast every payment as transparent - though this could create conflicts with certain institutions.

There is also a concern about energy usage which is said to have been a lot. As mentioned before, the "Proof of work" is a very demanding procedure for the computers. The energy cost of mining is speculated to be far greater than Google's entire computing power - a mere 5% of the cost of mining. Mining happens where there are large amounts of speeds and costs are low. Since the mining energy is not concerned with where the energy comes from, they end up coming from power plans that consume fossil fuels, which generate pollution. This has a number of climate impacts, according to a study by New Mexico University, for every $1 of bitcoin produced, almost half of that contributes to climate damage in the US. Not to mention there is also the energy required to cool down the machines mining the bitcoin.

Conclusion

Cryptocurrency is quite a promising digital system. Although it does have a lot of bottlenecks, it does not take short of experienced people to tackle these bottlenecks. If we solved these problems then the cryptocurrency could be a very promising way of solving problems with corrupt governments, poverty and could help less developed countries get an edge in this competitive 21st century economy.
In the future I may make a post about the specific cryptocurrencies out there and perhaps mention the goals of them. I would like to thank 80,000 hours for inspiring me to make this post with their podcast with the founder of Ethereum. I recommend you check that out too.
That's all from me!

Sources

https://150sec.com/what-does-cryptocurrency-have-in-store-over-the-next-decade/13411/
https://insidebitcoins.com/news/turkish-city-set-to-launch-its-digital-currency/247257
https://jewishlifenews.com/uncategorized/blockchain-cryptocurrency-embraced-by-turkish-city/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/bitcoin-what-is-cryptocurrency-where-use-investment-dark-web-illegal-explained-value-exchange-rate-a8082491.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/darrynpollock/2020/01/29/will-2020-be-the-year-cryptocurrency-and-blockchain-becomes-operational/#1f854cef6960
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-has-power-to-break-people-out-of-poverty-current-system-broken/amp
https://hackernoon.com/bitcoin-for-the-unbanked-how-mesh-and-microfinance-could-end-poverty-as-we-know-it-547bf22c2e1e
https://blockpublisher.com/bitcoin-the-answer-to-poverty/amp/
https://www.zmescience.com/science/cryptocurrency-mining-comes-at-a-great-health-and-environmental-cost/
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/how-blockchains-could-change-the-world

Hello there, Effective Altruism community!

I originally posted this on the Effective Altruism Forum as a way of introducing myself to the community

Hello there!

Ever since 2018, I've been increasingly interested in the effective altruism movement. The movement, at first just seemed like some really non-conventional, cold-hearted career advice. But I have learned that this is far more than just simple career advice. I will explain how EA affected my life-philosophy as well as my career ambitions (which is still tentative).

Keep in mind that this is not a post about my life-story, because I don't think I need to mention details about my life here - it is solely focused on my opinions on effective altruism. Nevertheless, it would be impossible to not at least mention a bit of my life since this movement affects that too.

Preface

I was first introduced to the movement in very late December 2016 through 80,000 hours and their career guide (now outdated), but I found it scary because when they said 'Do something that helps others' - I thought that I would need to abandon all my passions, which I will get to later on.

1 and a half years later, I took a sneak peek to their website and saw a post that consoled me which was the idea that you don't need to be a doctor to save lives, written by Gregory Lewis. Instead of having to spend a long time getting the needed qualifications, as well as doing a few years of residency, you can earn to give and save far more lives than an individual doctor could (with of course much less time spent training). The post also mentions that despite the increase in life expectancy in the UK, most of it was unrelated to medicine and more relevant to better housing, nutrition, wealth and a wholesome of other things.

I liked how the post was rejecting common notions and how it focused on doing as much good as possible rather than just doing good, therefore, it made me want to investigate 80,000 hours' website more and more. I started reading their career reviews, advice and ideas. At the time I was also aware that the advice 'Follow your passion' is really bad advice, pointed out by people like Cal Newport and Mike Rowe - which also made me agree with the ideas of Effective Altruism, since they don't find this advice very good either.

Back in school I was often told that altruism was sacrificing to do good: in order to do good you must have some kind of maytr complex. On podcasts with Rob Wiblin (from 80,000 hours), he has said multiple times that EA is not about sacrificing yourself to help others - in fact he says it would be better if nobody sacrificed at all to do good. EA is about just doing good, the sacrificing part is entirely moot.

How EA changed my philosophy on life

I've always viewed myself as a deep thinker and EA tends to cater towards these people. Especially when I watched Will McAskhill's video on EA and read 80,000 hour's post on future generations and the value of a life. Peter Singer is also someone who fed my deep-thinking mind. Although I don't agree with all of his ideas, I still think that they are enough to disrupt a consumer lifestyle that most people from 1st world countries tend to embark on. Like McAskhill, he also has a great Ted Talk (although I think he emphasises a bit too much on earning to give).

I have read his free audiobook "The life you can save" and I think anyone that is fed up of being rich yet unfulfilled should read it, as it gives detail into things such as the psychology behind charitable acts, which charity you should donate to and anecdotes from other people who are giving away. I like how Singer emphasises that even if you don't know someone else who is in dire need, that doesn't mean that you should just ignore them. If you can help them, it is clear common sense to help them otherwise, you're pretty much a fool.

He has even convinced me to work towards being a vegan since taking away, for example, a cow's life for a little bit of cuisine pleasure (even if they were killed ethically and grass-fed) when we have a number of vegan alternatives is pretty barbaric. Would you do this to your own pet if you felt a little hungry?

EA in general makes me think of living life in a better way. Many I know tend to live a conventional life of working a 9-5, 40 hours a week, earning money for frankly mostly pointless stuff like a big house or a super-expensive car and maybe a nice holiday to some exotic place, then go back to their jobs subconsciously aware that they are living a perpetual cycle of earning money, spending it, earning money, and it goes on and on. Try and add starting a family to the mix.

P erhaps though, they really enjoy their jobs, it's almost like a hobby, but even then - is it meaningful? Will it matter in the end? Sure they may have fulfilled their dreams, but what does it matter in the grand scheme of things? EA gives me another picture of living life, like doing work that could help lots of others and make them remember you for something, as well as having an inter-connected goal that is not just about fulfilling one's dreams. I wouldn't be happy if I fulfilled everything I would have desired to do (selfishly speaking, not accounting for helping others) - I would just search for more goals.

I am one of those people who don't think anything will 'matter' in the end (be it the heat death of the universe or the end of time). This might sound very nihilist of me and it very much is - but being a nihilist doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Pleasure feels good, such actions like going out with friends or saving a life and seeing someone smile feels good. The why and how we should have this is not known, but pleasure is still a good thing, therefore we should have more of it. This makes the idea of future generations very important as they could be living in a more just, healthier and enjoyable world than the world of today.

The goals of EA according to Will McAskhill from a podcast is something along the lines of 'As much good conscious experience as possible'. Which I can infer that even though the heat death of the universe may very well happen and nothing will be left. That won't happen for another billion years so there isn't really much point in worrying about such stuff. There is something more important than the end, it is ironically more of an immediate importance, despite the fact that future generations are important in my opnion.

It also show s that you don't need to believe in God, Allah, YVHV, Jesus, Angels, Demons, Heaven or Hell to be a happy person and give your life some kind of meaning. Helping others is a pleasure in itself, similar to playing a very fun and intellectually rewarding game or sport - you don't get rewarded anything other than the satisfaction of doing it. 

Without effective altruism

Originally I planned to be a freelance Indie game developer, because I've made games for quite a few years, and still do now. I also like the freelance lifestyle of how flexible it is, rather than sitting in an office from 9-5 and having to go through rush-hour, I can go on a pleasant walk if I feel like it or travel around working remotely. It's still my passion, but I also want to learn about the Effective Altruism movement and develop a similar passion to the one I have for Computer games.

Video games definitely have value in them, as they can be enjoyed by loads of people and like books, board games, movies and whatever art form exists out there, they can provide a very provocative message. But I believe that they don't solve the all world's problems in the same way as Effective Altruism does as it directly solves the problems as opposed to, at best advocating them. Think about this: Would you rather play video games instead of visiting the doctor to cure your blindness?

That being said, I would still like to make money out of making games, if anything for advocacy and or earning to give.

What do I plan on doing?

I don't really know how I can help in any direct way. Without giving away too many personal details - I'm looking for an apprenticeship in the tech industry since that is a largely growing industry and it is something I'm good at. Tech is often used in EA, not limited to things like websites and data science - as well as problems like AI. Even the type of thinking used in EA is not too different from writing software or gathering data.

I run a blog which, although mainly I write posts about the development of my games, I also write about EA (in a series called "Selfish Effective altruism" because you can be an altruist for very selfish reasons). I find writing as engaging as making games (I used to write fiction books when I was in primary school to secondary school). The posts about EA aren't meant to be too scientific (because of my lack of access to scientific studies/ literature); they are more of intended to encourage people to look up such topics and create some discussion. In the process, I even learn about the problems I write about because I have to research them. 

Conclusion

This post is my introduction to EA, I hope anyone reading this can perhaps relate in some way or another. I'm not experienced at EA and I'm still a newbie to the movement. Nevertheless I think I was introduced to this movement at the right time since it is still a niche movement and I could help promote the movement.

I will be doing a bunch of cross-posts, putting EA posts from my blog to here. I'm also working on a post about Bitcoin and crypto-currency, which I hope to publish later this month - if you want to suggest problem ideas worth looking into, please let me know.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!

That's all from me!

Bounty Hunter III Update #3: Area (near) completion + New character

Hello there!
Here is some more Bounty Hunter III progress.

Preface

Some progress has been going on in Bounty Hunter III, I've implemented most of the main areas into the game, progressed on the story and added in a new main character. There are also a few ideas that have been bouncing in my head about gameplay.

Implementing the environments

I've included almost all the environments that will be in the game. The way I will go around doing this will be similar to how I implemented the environments in Bounty Hunter II which is all at once, albeit with horrible and rushed textures.

Recently, I have created a map to help me envision the environment and the general direction characters may go. It looks like those overworld maps in classic RPGs like Final fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Shin Megami Tensei, etc. I have tried doing world maps on paper, but it felt much harder to do since I would easily make a mistake and I would need to constantly rub things out. I think it's easier to make maps on something like Tiled (which I used to make the levels of Bounty Hunter 1 and 2) because I can easily erase things, stamp tiles rather than having to draw every single detail from scratch.

With some of the environments, I would like them to be very spacious, allowing for open combat rather than the closed-in environments from Bounty Hunter II, where you had to fight a bunch of enemies in order to progress. Of course, I still plan there to be fights like these, especially if they are relevant to the plot, but I want to allow the player to feel more free to leave some enemies behind and maybe fight some but keep moving on.

This can give the game a faster pacing and feel less repetitive. Although I do feel that there can be some challenges in implementing optional combat like trying to not have enemies go where they are not supposed to go. I also want to make it so that the player can't just waltz out of certain areas - otherwise the immersion of a dangerous environment would be lost.

Story progress

I've been working a lot on the story of Bounty Hunter III, the specifics are more mapped out than before although they need polishing - this was achieved with the help of the aforementioned map. I used this map to jot down numbers representing the order of where the main story will take place, with squiggly arrows representing the route that the main characters will take to get to the next point. As of writing this post, I'm implementing bits of the main story into the game using a flag named "story" so that different events can happen at the same place depending on the value of this flag. This would have been impossible with Bounty Hunter II's engine, since the game is very linear. There was only one time in that game where you go back to somewhere you went before. A pretty crude method was used for this: Making a copy of the map and creating different events for it. 

Although I do write some scripts of certain interactions between the characters, I do this with the intent of seeing how the story plays out, when I write them in the game - I pretty much improvise.

Last time I mentioned about creating two endings for the game, that's now 3. Without any spoilers, there will be a bad ending, normal ending and good ending. The way you get them depends on what you do in the game, usually relating to exploration and talking to other characters. Through these I would like to reward the player for exploring with some lore and word-building, this would fit the less linear style of game I would like for Bounty Hunter III. If you have played Othermind, you will get a snapshot of what Bounty Hunter III may be like. Since I've said several times that Bounty Hunter III will be a conclusion to the series' continuity, multiple endings only seem fitting to this and I can avoid the issue of cutting multiple branches that some sequels have to their originals (like Shin Megami Tensei II).

Another bit of progress to the story lies in a new character...

Introducing Beth the hacker

For those of you who have played Bounty Hunter 2, the major characters were Peast and Milbert. I'm adding in a new character called Beth. She came from an NPC who appeared early on in the game who advises Peast where to go next. I thought that this character could play a larger part later on to give the player a surprise. A few mental brainstorming sessions later, I came up with the character Beth who is a hacker that plays a large part in the story.

Unlike Peast or Milbert, she's not going to be directly playable - because she doesn't specialise in combat. She's more of a pacifist than either of them, relying more on hacking things and communication than violence. I've had ideas of her operating snipers like Alyx Vance does in Half life 2 episdode 1 and 2 where she helps clear some enemies, Beth wouldn't operate the snipers with her hands, she would operate them using special software on her laptop.

New game mechanics?

I have implemented the code for swimming mechanics for the main character to give some variety to the gameplay. The player cannot attack whilst swimming, they have limited oxygen (if they drown, they will go back to their last non-water area like Zelda: Breath of the Wild) which could give the player a new layer of challenge as they calculate how far they can swim and try to avoid any projectiles if there are ranged enemies nearby where the player is swimming.

Another mechanic I have thought up of (and partially implemented) is rock-climbing, where the main character can scale rocks. Like the swimming mechanic, the player cannot attack and have an oxygen meter (yes I have tried rock climbing myself and it can be quite tiring). The player can jump off by pressing the jump button, they won't take fall damage so don't worry.

I don't know if any of these will be in the final game, but they seem like good additions of making gameplay have more variety. Just need to be careful that I'm not putting too much on my plate, since I also have implemented puzzles with locked doors as well so I should do something with that too. Perhaps this should be a focus that I should have with the game's design -  a mixture of combat, puzzle solving, jumping from platform to platform, swimming and climbing.

Art progress

Quite a bit has been going on in the art side of things, I'm working with my friend Joe to animate the sprites of the enemies and the main characters. I'm giving him more control here to design his own enemies, for example this one on his Instagram. This approach to art can put more bargaining ideas on the table.

He also helped me design the soldier enemies where I asked him to sketch out some concept designs which I would use to draw as a sprite. I used a combination of his concept art to come up with the final design.

Most of the game's graphics still look like utter rubbish, but I want to prioritize designing the areas and implementing the story. Thanks to the fact that I'm no longer a 1 man team, I can have some artwork done by the time the game has all the main story implemented.

Conclusion

At the moment I'm trying to implement the game's story as well as refining the it. I'll also think about coding in some of the enemies into the game. I'm hoping to get the game in a rough "playable from start to finish" state by the end of this month or somewhere around March. That way I can have more time to focus on art, sound and polishing.

In other news, later on this month I plan to post another installment to the Selfish Altruist series I've been working on for over a month now - the subject will be regarding Bitcoin.

That's all from me!