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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3997 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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The book I'm currently into has a fictional cryptocurrency with a so-called “feedback problem” with its algorithm: it's viable to create sockpuppets and bounce transactions between them to ramp up your reputation. The resident math genius diagnoses that the protocol must be redesigned, because the problem is isomorphic with the Collatz conjecture. I can't imagine a way how it could be, but I have only a surface math knowledge and am only familiar with the conjecture from its Wikipedia article and a 4chan shitpost. Is there a plausible design where the two are similar? Or is it just used a piece of technobabble?

A nice work otherwise, judging from half of a book of a trilogy. Could possibly be a modernized Atlas Shrugged without the monologues.

Well, don't keep us all in suspense! Which book?

My bad, the title went away after rephrasing, it's Titan by Robert Kroese (Mammon trilogy 1).

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