[ExI] the new stamp collecting, was: "Crypto Coin Law" vs "Law of the Crypto Coin"?

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg



>.Demand for a limited resource does not always grow with the economy and
population. Consider the collapse of the stamp market as the hobby fell out
of fashion. --  Dr Anders Sandberg

 
 
I hadn't really thought about it, but stamp collecting has certainly lost
most of its popularity, and by extension I would speculate that the same
goes for coin collecting.  Currently in the USA, we are seriously debating
the existence of a US post office.  It isn't at all clear we still need one,
or if so, perhaps it could be a specialized system for limited purposes,
with most of the load (paper advertisement and merchandise) being carried by
private companies.
 
A new replacement hobby has become wildly popular, and may even eventually
be more useful from a scientific perspective than is stamp and coin
collecting: genealogy.  With all the new tools that have become available,
we are finding we can fix the long-standing errors in the family trees, then
use the resulting data to track diseases and such.  Just yesterday, I made a
first connection with a knowledgeable member of the family, who had death
certificates.  That branch was plagued with a certain disease that is seen
in currently living family members.  It has turned out to be useful
information to find DNA relatives.  We once collected bits of metal; now we
collect bits of DNA.
 
Punchline: unlike stamp and coin collecting, DNA-based genealogy becomes a
hobby with an actual purpose.
 
spike
 
 
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