ASICs are used to mine crypto, but the ledger itself is on a regular server, more or less. It’s also true that LLMs are trained on High throughput ASICs. I don’t know what that volume looks like rn wrt AI, but I imagine its still in high demand.

The number of actual active coins has barely changed since the peak. Its a little higher, and there are more coins now, but they are significantly less active. Active trading on exchanges during the peak was about 25T, now its around 18T, a decrease of over 1/4. Are you arguing that 7 trillion dollars in annual exchange volume is inconsequential? At the peak there were about 400 exchanges, now there’s a little more than 200 active exchanges. Do exchanges not use any computing power? Are people trading bitcoin by hand somewhere? I’d love to see that.

There’s still a good amount of marketing and advertising but it has cooled a great deal. Lots of that business has consolidated and sees significantly less traffic = less computing power.

Added to the post covid lockdown decline in demand for computing services, which affected all of the same subjects of concern, there was a fuckload of unused computing power, just sitting around. This computing power represents a ton of investment in infrastructure, and long term plans that could not be stopped. AI is the justification to buy up a bunch of cheap server space available at the time, and continue growth of data centers and chip manufacturing plants (now stalled for 5 years or more). Why are all these companies who are heavily invested in vast server farms and chip manufacturing going so hard for a service that barely works?

The answer isn’t technical, its economic and political. I have no doubt you know more about chips and computing than I do, but if you want to understand what is happening, you have to look at economics and politics. The technical world of these tiny little areas of concerns and continuously manicured definitions is not how you tell what is going on in the world of chips and computing.

Trump is buying 10% stake in Intel, whose stalled manufacturing plant in Ohio was once visited by Biden and heralded at his state of the union. And the justification for it is National Security concerns. The great tech giants all sat right behind Trump at his inauguration. Did you not get the message? Chips and servers are a national security issue, it is incredibly political and as such greatly influences, and is greatly influenced by, the economics of an economic system that has to constantly grow greater returns of profit.

Anyway coin maintenance, ancillary services and subsequent economic activity surrounding crypto uses the same kind of computing power as AI. Its not like once a chip is mined with a ASIC GPU it stops using computing power, quite the opposite, but it does stop using ASIC computing power.

The bubble isn’t just the thing itself, its all the services and infrastructure that built up around it. Crypto doesn’t have to be awful, its just a tool, a ledger. But it exists in its current form because of what it creates, what kind of economic activity it stimulates. My point is that all the grifty ass economic hype activity around crypto just moved to AI

But I do appreciate the clarification, it gives me a chance to refine my perspective

The crypto bubble is the ai bubble. AI was the answer to “what are we going to do with all these chips and servers now that crypto crashed?”

Wow the problem with modern society is still a sub-culture of women? Its crazy how that’s been the main problem with society for the last 1000+ years

Yes its definitely the major pitfall most comrades make. Fortunately, we also have the most comprehensive theory of change! Today, for example, a local leader in our city who we would only have described as a moderate socialist for many years, someone who once told me “i wouldnt read theory i read enough theory books in school” is pitching hard into Marxism, consuming large amounts of theory and history, and making radical demands for radical action. Very interested to see where he will be in like 6 months. Another comrade who once mocked my “ideological” views has become one of my closest cadre comrades. Honest good comrades learn from experience that we Marxists are consistent in our beliefs and fight the most important struggles, time after time, changing everything around us. The time we live in is so dangerous and frightening, and yet the movement is growing rapidly, and sloughing off opportunism and reformism for revolutionary principles. “Decades where nothing happen, weeks where decades happen,” hits pretty hard in this period of struggle.

Anyway thanks for letting me dump, I think I’m just eager to get back to an essay I began a couple days ago!

I wouldn’t disparage people for anything that brings them to socialism though I def agree, but the question of how theory is practice gets neglected quite often. There’s a dialectical relationship between the two, Marxism is what gives us the capability of fully fusing theory with practice, subject with object, individual with the social. We can read theory and commit to practice and learn nothing, accomplish nothing, because we still have the insidious dualist mindset. Everything we learn gets categorized and atomized. We learn words and phrases to signal understanding to others, but understand very little. Feeling accepted is perhaps the first step for the stubborn individual to let go of individualism and embrace socialization, so its natural for new comrades to want to make themselves sound radical, and they should be accepted by cadre and celebrated for their achievements. But of course radical talk and radical action can be quite distinct, and experienced cadre should know how to tell the difference, and challenge comrades to continually improve and fix themselves. I’ve seen people able to be very inspiring and educated in speeches, but opportunistic reformists in practice. This must not be how comrades develop, this is not self actualization, it is bourgeois affect.

Theoretical study opens up many avenues to understand material conditions, through practical analysis, discussion and criticism. Then, once the actual conditions have been assessed we can take action – but based on material conditions and not theoretical abstractions. Taking action changes conditions, changing conditions requires more analysis and critique, which may require deeper understanding of theory in order to assess conditions accurately. Once assessed, we act, rinse, repeat. Evaluate and take action, reevaluate, and take another action.

I’ve seen too many comrades trying to apply the tactics of 1910s Russia to american struggles. They quote Lenin on a particular tactic or strategy, when Lenin was often changing tactics, and rhetoric, in order to most effectively address changing conditions. Too many comrades read Engel’s 3 rules of Dialectical Materialism and apply them like an orthodoxy, but have never closely studied Theses on Feuerbach nor unveiled the human spirit that thrives within Marx’s works.

So I’m not contradicting you, or I don’t mean to, but theory and practice is not necessarily our objective. Marx explicitly called for theory in practice, which means our theory must itself be practical. Theory helps us to see through the illusions, it must not be made into yet another illusion. But IMO therein is the most important benefit of surrounding ourselves with good cadre, they’ll call me out on my shit, and help me up when I stumble. Anyone who encourages us to be better, to be more practical, to center the human perspective in our work is following the same spirit as Marx, and it doesn’t matter what they’ve read if they’ve read anything at all.

But also, its no coincidence that good cadre Marxists are also exceedingly comradely, good natured, fair and fearless. The practice transforms us, so we can transform the world, together.

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is pretty easy, good bones, but Marx revises a lot of his views later, by Capital he’s abandoned concepts like “Lumpen Proletariat” and the idea that socialism can only be achieved after a capitalist developmental phase.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Engels is one of the best intro Marxist works: comprehensive, practical, and easy to follow.

Wage Labor and Capital is another short and pretty digestible work by Marx that lays out a lot of the economic ideas without a deep dive such as Capital. But “economic Marxism” is kind of its own kind of confusion, and Capital shouldn’t be read to understand his economic ideas but his actual methods.

Marx wrote for the workers, not the academy, his works can be difficult but they make more sense as someone trying to learn more to understand about their lived experiences of exploitation, than an academic view that only wishes to compete in an intellectual marketplace, rather than empower the working class to liberate ourselves and each other.

But Marxism isn’t a book to be studied or a method to be applied. You can be a Marxist without ever picking up one of his works, I think there are a lot of “organic” Marxists who know through experience but doubt through shame and misinformation. Marx ultimately wanted to teach us to understand material conditions, but without the various distortions that have been introduced by bourgeois philosophers (some of them even considered themselves Marxists!)

Put yourself in touch with people who can get you involved in actual work in your city and community, doing real social work with the people who need supported. You’ll get an education from the work and take your time with the written works of Marx and Marxists to let it enrich your actual work, not define your idealistic beliefs.

After all, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.”