What Do You Mean, It Doesn't Grow On Trees?

[avatar (Alistair Young)]

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@equestriaverse <project9701@gmail.com> on 2019-01-28 19:36:40 wrote

The moment I started to hear “cryptidcurrency,” a blockchain currency based upon the blockchain collection of mythological monsters, I realized that my skills as a Pokemon Trainer would suddenly become a very valid commodity as I raised mons to make money for my investors…

@Buggy <buggy1997123@yahoo.com> on 2019-01-29 00:50:31 wrote

Huh, this actually brings up something I saw come up in another work of fiction that I’m curious about, where essentially a AI argued that cryptocurrency isn’t that great as a future-currency because:

A: The concept of “more processing power makes more money” is less than ideal because it wastes power, and that gets a little ridiculous when you can, say, build entire dyson swarms worth of bitcoin miners.
B: Having a entire currency that falls apart if someone cracks a single algorithm is less than ideal in a world of geniuses armed with a solution for P=NP.

So, how do they handle it? Are there just better solutions to making it secure without requiring immense amounts of processing power, and then once they had that they just dropped the whole “whoever wastes the most electricity in the next ten minutes gets 10 coins” part?

@driagledd <driagledd@aim.com> on 2019-01-29 05:13:33 wrote

The “whoever wastes the most electricity in the next ten minutes gets 10 coins” part isn’t an inherent component of cryptocurrencies, rather merely how some like bitcoin choose to assign new coins and reward those who assist in running the calculations needed by the blockchain. So yeah, they probably dropped that part.

As for B? I can only assume you’re right, that they’ve discovered some much more secure set of algorithms. Not unbelievable, given we’re developing better algorithms in real life and security and privacy is very important to the Imperials. They’d no doubt have put a lot of resources into this problem.
We also don’t know if P=NP actually does hold true. That’s an unsolved problem. If it turns out not to be the case, then they’d definitely be able to find nearly unbreakable algorithms that would require processing power so great as to be well beyond the point of gaining any benefit approaching the cost.

@Buggy <buggy1997123@yahoo.com> on 2019-01-29 15:20:06 wrote

I’m not a expert on the inner workings of modern cryptocurrencies, but I was under the impression that the extreme amount of computation that goes into bitcoin actually helps with security, because anyone who wanted to falsify transaction data would basically have to recompute the entire chain, requiring more-or-less as much computing as was invested in it in the first place.

With B, they have proved that P=NP, it’s called the ‘Isif Theorem’ Glossary of Otherwise Known Terms
And they solved it because they have time travel: UNMOVED MONAD

But I’m not a expert on data security either, so I’m not sure if there are practical methods of security that are resistant to that. Probably, though, given that data security still exists there.

@Ru <shearwater+eldraeverse@gmail.com> on 2019-02-02 09:24:10 wrote

Huh. My original reply to this somehow got detached and moved to the main thread. Probably took too long to write it or something.

Anyway, an addendum:

I’m not sure if there are practical methods of security that are resistant to that. Probably, though, given that data security still exists there.

There are certainly complexity classes that can’t be practically solved by a computer that can beat PSPACE problems (EXPSPACE) and problems are known to have those complexities. Creating a new EXPSPACE problem or using an existing one to do encryption or signatures is left as an exercise for the reader.

I’m fairly certain these technologies slay pretty much any kind of symmetric cryptography, though.

@Ru <shearwater+eldraeverse@gmail.com> on 2019-02-02 14:25:32 wrote

With a teeny bit more research, it appears that one might use a Malament-Hogarth spacetime to perform a hypercomputational task. You can find these around a rotating black hole, of the sort that’s found inside every eldrae stargate. Of course, you have to throw yourself over the event horizon to read the answer to the task, but come the advent of the starleaper initiative you’d be able to use your FTL drive to escape the event horizon and make use of what you’ve just learned. Boom, no more cryptography. And, for that matter, a new generation of weakly godlike intelligences that could outthink the existing crop of recursively-optimised AI. So that’s interesting, too.

What I’m not sure about is why an M-H spacetime allows hypercomputation and a CTC does not as it would appear that a computer in M-H space still lacks the necessarily infinite amount of storage required to do hypercomputation with a turing-equivalent, but my mathematics and computer science is waaaay too weak to answer that question with the papers I’ve found.

@Alistair Young <us@arkane-systems.net> on 2019-02-03 10:14:13 wrote

Point of detail: the Isif Theorem doesn’t depend on CTC hypercomputation; it’s a straight-up mathematical proof. From the 2800s, even, so before the era of even STL interstellar colonization.

@Alistair Young <us@arkane-systems.net> on 2019-02-03 10:07:40 wrote

For the purposes of fictive tech development way back in the day, I had to pick a solution to that particular unsolved problem, and assuming P=NP gave me more interesting answers.

(And, yes, consequentially this means that modern - for values of modern meaning “after the mid-2800s” - cryptosystems are mining EXPSPACE for algorithms.)

Those who are really serious about their security are, of course, using one-time pads based on one-third XORs of stellar noise.

@Alistair Young <us@arkane-systems.net> on 2019-02-03 09:58:18 wrote

On A: As driagledd said, that’s not an intrinsic part of the system; that’s just how bitcoin-model cryptocurrencies incentivize people to do the work necessary to validate the transaction blocks. In cryptid-currency, you get that work done for you by the forest in exchange for sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide.

On B: Yeah, as with other crypto applications, this is where it’s important to pick an algorithm that stays working even when you publish it.

(As a side note, most cryp is fairly vulnerable to Powers and others with access to hypercomputational methods or mega-massively parallel systems. Its users rely on the notion that anyone with said access has access to many more resources than could be gained by, and far better things to do with its time, than forging transactions in low-level black markets.)

@Ru <shearwater+eldraeverse@gmail.com> on 2019-02-02 08:56:58 wrote

@Buggy

but I was under the impression that the extreme amount of computation that goes into bitcoin actually helps with security, because anyone who wanted to falsify transaction data would basically have to recompute the entire chain, requiring more-or-less as much computing as was invested in it in the first place.

Its hard if you want to change the past, but you only need hold a majority of the compute power (for a proof of work system) or holds enough of whatever “stake” is defined to be in a proof-of-stake system then you can manipulate any future transaction after the point at which you achieved that status, for as long as you are powerful enough.

One would hope that the Eldrae have cryptocurrency mechanisms that aren’t nearly so fragile or wasteful as the ones we have.

With B, they have proved that P=NP, it’s called the ‘Isif Theorem’

I like that this is a single throwaway line in a 4 year old page, given the magnitude of the consequences of P=NP

The funny thing is that I don’t think there’s anything in the eldraeverse that requires P=NP. Between quantum computation and time machines, any limtations implied by P!=NP have been quietly sidestepped anyway.

And they solved it because they have time travel

The existence and usability of closed timelike curves does not imply that P=NP, it “merely” means you can complete problems in PSPACE (which is a superset of NP problems) in a sensible amount of time. The amount of actual computational steps required to solve an NP problem could still be non-polynomial, its just that from the point of view of an outside observer it seems to take a constant time (possibly longer for PSPACE problems, but I Am Not A Mathematician, so I don’t know).

It is worth noting that access to CTCs alone does not let you make a hypercomputer, because you are still limited by the amount of storage you need to solve a given problem, which is why you “only” get to defeat PSPACE problems.

@Alistair Young <us@arkane-systems.net> on 2019-02-03 10:21:20 wrote

At the moment, considering what’s been published, the Theorem mostly shows up in the long backstory of technological development. (And is a lot less relevant now, given said development, than it used to be.)

Well, and other history: the Great Slump (the severe recession 2840-2848) was directly caused by the abrupt loss of faith its publication caused in secure banking systems, despite it being a non-constructive proof and the means of reversing the then-common public key algorithms not being produced until 2844, well after the majority of them had been phased out.

But one must publish and be damned, after all.