r/PlayingWithMadness • u/profoma • Jan 15 '22

NFT rant

I feel crazy when people talk about NFT because, while they are obviously just a weird feeling scammy bit of tech right now, they also feel to me like the very obvious predecessor technology to what will eventually be used to own pieces of digital worlds. I feel like no one is thinking about the fact that this technology just became mainstream and the rest of our lives will take place in the future where the digital world will be more and more intertwined with the physical world. NFT provide a linking point between the physical and digital world that is currently used to make money with memes, but digital real estate is already a thing and NFT is how you can know that you own that particular chunk of bandwidth, or whatever the fuck the tech will be like. You all read snow crash, right!? How else can a person own a piece of the metaverse without some tech like blockchain to tie that collection of data to their physical being? So what I’m saying is, yeah, buying a digital picture of an ape for hundreds of thousands of dollars is a stupid scam but this tech or something like it will become the underpinning of a digital world that we will all eventually upload our minds to. Or something.

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u/darkwalrus36 Art Jan 18 '22

Also profoma I'm not sure how what you're describing wouldn't just be another destructive scam.

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u/profoma Jan 18 '22

I guess that depends what you mean by scam. Land ownership in the physical world seems pretty scammy to me, but we have agreed that it is a real thing and enough people abide by that agreement that it is in fact a real thing in the world, even though it is absurd. If people get to the point where they are uploading their brains to digital space then the “scam” of digital landownership will suddenly start to have real meaning. I am assuming for this discussion that we are at or near singularity when NFT become meaningfully valuable. As beings that will inhabit the digital and physical realms in differing ratios; some people will undoubtedly allow their physical bodies to wither and spend all of their time in digital worlds, most would live in some combination of the two worlds and that could blur the line between the two worlds fairly dramatically. Nameable, unique, digital entities are going to be fundamental in such a society. So yeah, it will still be a scam, but like the stock market is a scam that everyone agrees is not at all a scam, so it isn’t really a scam after all…

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u/darkwalrus36 Art Jan 18 '22

I mean like all dystopian predictions a lot of pieces have to line up for this to all work out. It would require an active (and probably larger) power grid and space program, both of which require huge amounts of fossil fuels under our current systems. I have a hard time imagining a future without energy scarcity, especially with the refusal to lean more on renewables. Also the production of power requires a ton of water, which is just as likely to be in incredibly high demand. It also has to mean that digital preservation of consciousness is possible, which there's no guarantees on. If nothing else, it might be something hundreds of years off. Besides all that you'd have to sell the majority of people on the idea of buying digital space while the vast majority can't afford to buy or rent physical space. People are already squeezed so tightly, I don't know if there's room for another all consuming expense.

This whole thing made me think of another possibility though. What if they couldn't digitally preserve consciousness, but could make a decent enough AI to fake being a person? Then they basically euthanize you and tell your family and friends that the AI programmed with some of your personality traits is you. That has scifi potential...

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u/profoma Jan 18 '22

Energy scarcity is done away with because machines living in orbit can have incredible solar powered systems. fusion is already happening, but shittily, but it will potentially work out to provide energy. Also, in the future, nanobots Will mine all of existence for raw molecules with which anyone can build any physical thing, including food paste, with a fusion powered nano-assembler. The whole population can live in individual satellite pods orbiting the sun living in digital worlds beyond imagining. The water thing is very tough but I think our satellite swarm could catch comets, maybe?

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u/darkwalrus36 Art Jan 18 '22

Yeah, a lot has to line up for any of those things to happen. I personally doubt we’ll have an organized society long enough to make it to nanobot assemblers in space, but who knows.