I am not trying to be nasty.
I didn't believe you when reading this sentence. But after competing your post I would say you were very fair.
Thanks. Ah, but you don’t know me! When I am nasty, the wrath of my pen is unequivocal; and I never make excuses for it. Why, just the day before yesterday,
I insulted a man so badly that he gave me +50 merits. I believe that to have been an historic forum first.
Here, I know that I myself fell to the same error as OP apparently does—spent years and decades repeatedly and perpetually
living that error. What I told OP is some version of a much longer, far harsher speech I wish I could go back in time and give myself. (The version I would give my past self may involve screaming, cursing, and violent shaking by the lapels.) Had I followed the advice I here stated, my life would now be much different and much better.
I too had an idea of a UPS when I bought my first rechargeable battery years ago. I got the idea of a hybrid car when I was playing with my first dynamo. As you rightly said, they don't count. Atleast 1000s of others would have had the same idea, well before me as well, andd they implemented it.
That sounds much like me. Unfortunately.
Such creativity is a rare gift; but all too oft is it wasted. From a population of many millions of people, yes, there must be some thousands who have within them the sparks of
what could become good ideas. Yet it is only but the few and the rare who have the requisite studiousness, willpower, passion, and focus to capture such a spark, kindle it, stoke it, feed its fire, and grow it to the brilliant flame of a working invention.
I yearn for the boundless energy of youth, combined with the fortitude granted by hard experience—and by the regrets of hindsight. I could have been—could have done—but I did not, therefore am not. Perhaps will yet be, someday—but am not, now.
It is through such experience that I encourage people who claim ideas to put their alleged ideas to the only test that counts: Brush up your skills where needed, work hard, and—well, most of you will find that your precious ideas were actually stupid, and you are not nearly as smart as you thought you were. Statistically, most of you. But a few of you may succeed in building something brilliant.
On the other hand Google, Facebook, Amazon, why Bitcoin are also not original ideas. They were the best implemention of the existing ideas.
Bitcoin is more original than you give credit for. From Chaum forward, feasible ideas for digital currencies always required a trusted authority. (Chaum’s solution had much more privacy than Bitcoin does; but it was designed to be issued by a bank, and that’s actually why it failed! Most banks did not want to issue digital cash which could be passed privately, without identifying counterparties or revealing transaction details to the bank.) And the need for a trusted authority always most of all boiled down to the double-spend problem. Digital bits can be copied, after all.
Satoshi solved a problem nobody else has ever adequately solved, not before and not since: How to create a decentralized, trustless Byzantine agreement for the ordering of transactions. Thus was solved double-spend. His solution to this is what we call “mining”—though Satoshi himself did not use that word; he called it “generating”.
The tools he used for this purpose were not original to him. He repurposed Adam Back’s Hashcash, which he credited in
his original whitepaper. But the way he put it together was original—and brilliant!
So as for double-spend; so as for the totality. In the whole of the system, the parts are not original to him; but the whole is more than the sum of the parts.
If you want to better understand the numerous pieces which Satoshi borrowed from others, and the original way he fit them together into a new system, I recommend this article:
Narayanan, A; Clark, J. “
Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree”. ACM
Queue, vol. 15 issue 4 (2017-08-29)
