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Why would you care what anyone does with their money? It screams vested (but hidden) interest.

by exstudent2 10y ago

TylerE 10y ago
Why should a doctor care when he sees someone eating buckets of fried food while smoking a cigarette?
- exstudent2 10y ago
  They shouldn't? Free will and all... Also, if these "experts" are wrong and crypto currencies continue to do well then they've actually harmed people instead of helped. Are they willing to take that responsibility?
powera 10y ago
"Why would you care what anyone does with their money? It screams vested (but hidden) interest." You sound like a shill who has a vested interest in people not getting good advice about what to do with their money, honestly. EDIT to all the downvoters: he's literally attacking people for giving sound financial advice, and claims that giving good (read: likely to not cause people to lose money) advice is inherently biased. I accuse him of being a shill, or at least arguing in bad faith, a second time.
- aianus 10y ago
  > good (read: likely to not cause people to lose money) advice That's not what good advice is. If I offer you 7:1 odds on $100,000 to guess a die roll, the only question running through your mind is "can I afford to lose $100,000 without impacting my lifestyle" or "do I know any rich people that would stake me for this". If the answer is yes, it's a far better bet than any mutual fund or bond or savings account or whatever you would consider a sound investment, even though you lose $100,000 the vast majority of the time. Similarly for dropping an appropriately small amount of money (relative to your net worth) in cryptos. The odds are low that they'll take over any significant fraction of commerce but the rewards would be enormous.
- dang 10y ago
  > You sound like a shill Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. Accusing someone of being a shill or astroturfer is a personal attack, unless you have evidence, and merely holding a different view than they do is not evidence. Please don't do this again.
  - aminorex 10y ago
    Interesting issue. Would explaining explicitly the defining features of shill behaviour manifest in a post be a "personal attack", or "evidence"?
    - dang 10y ago
      Likely a personal attack, since people who level this charge are typically projecting shillness into the comments they dislike, not extracting it out of them.
  - ACow_Adonis 10y ago
    That really is an interesting issue. I've been noting a few more posts here on hacker news recently getting flagged for "personal attacks" that I, personally, would have interpreted as someone calling out nonsense, and that not calling them out was more offensive. Regardless of whether he does or does not sound like a shill ... how do we extend this to things like: - Pointing out Nimby's in SF housing markets? - Calling someone a salesperson/marketer/advertiser (which I view as offensive...but is often highly-accurate/true) - Pointing out the self-interest in boosters talking up tech/bitcoing/etc Indeed, in many of these recent observances of "personal attacks", what I view as actually happening is silently assenting to the worldview of an original poster/article and protecting that worldview. Contrary opinions or valuations or interpretations of events are taken as "personal attacks", which can be really quite repugnant when, sometimes, the more morally questionable/civilised position is in fact that of protecting the right to point out that which probably should be attacked in any reasonable discussion/society in the first place: (say, saying Theranos looks like a bunch of scammers/grifters, various startups and SF culture looks eerily like the past practiecs of get-rich-quick-schemes and boosterism)...
ceejayoz 10y ago
> Why would you care what anyone does with their money? Really? Two fairly obvious reasons I can think of in ten seconds: sympathy for other people, and the desire to not see the entire sector tarred as a giant scam. I suspect there are other valid reasons.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Because if this becomes big enough, and enough grandmas lose their nests, my tax dollars will be used to prop up others' dumb decisions.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11898693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11898693 and marked it off-topic.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ACow_Adonis 10y ago
Because in the real world, distribution of capital has a little thing called "opportunity costs". A bunch of people are allocating large amounts of capital to shams when they could have been making productive use of it, this both gives rewards, social power, and encourages scammers/fraudsters, but also forgoes investment in otherwise productive activities that could benefit us all. In addition, there are very real concerns about government involvement, as well as the social consequences when mom/pop/sister/brother/anyone we care about loses their money to such... I could go on...

Why would you care what anyone does with their money? It screams vested (but hidden) interest.

TylerE 10y ago

Why should a doctor care when he sees someone eating buckets of fried food while smoking a cigarette?

exstudent2 10y ago
They shouldn't? Free will and all... Also, if these "experts" are wrong and crypto currencies continue to do well then they've actually harmed people instead of helped. Are they willing to take that responsibility?

powera 10y ago

"Why would you care what anyone does with their money? It screams vested (but hidden) interest." You sound like a shill who has a vested interest in people not getting good advice about what to do with their money, honestly. EDIT to all the downvoters: he's literally attacking people for giving sound financial advice, and claims that giving good (read: likely to not cause people to lose money) advice is inherently biased. I accuse him of being a shill, or at least arguing in bad faith, a second time.

aianus 10y ago
> good (read: likely to not cause people to lose money) advice That's not what good advice is. If I offer you 7:1 odds on $100,000 to guess a die roll, the only question running through your mind is "can I afford to lose $100,000 without impacting my lifestyle" or "do I know any rich people that would stake me for this". If the answer is yes, it's a far better bet than any mutual fund or bond or savings account or whatever you would consider a sound investment, even though you lose $100,000 the vast majority of the time. Similarly for dropping an appropriately small amount of money (relative to your net worth) in cryptos. The odds are low that they'll take over any significant fraction of commerce but the rewards would be enormous.
dang 10y ago
> You sound like a shill Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. Accusing someone of being a shill or astroturfer is a personal attack, unless you have evidence, and merely holding a different view than they do is not evidence. Please don't do this again.
- aminorex 10y ago
  Interesting issue. Would explaining explicitly the defining features of shill behaviour manifest in a post be a "personal attack", or "evidence"?
  - dang 10y ago
    Likely a personal attack, since people who level this charge are typically projecting shillness into the comments they dislike, not extracting it out of them.
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  That really is an interesting issue. I've been noting a few more posts here on hacker news recently getting flagged for "personal attacks" that I, personally, would have interpreted as someone calling out nonsense, and that not calling them out was more offensive. Regardless of whether he does or does not sound like a shill ... how do we extend this to things like: - Pointing out Nimby's in SF housing markets? - Calling someone a salesperson/marketer/advertiser (which I view as offensive...but is often highly-accurate/true) - Pointing out the self-interest in boosters talking up tech/bitcoing/etc Indeed, in many of these recent observances of "personal attacks", what I view as actually happening is silently assenting to the worldview of an original poster/article and protecting that worldview. Contrary opinions or valuations or interpretations of events are taken as "personal attacks", which can be really quite repugnant when, sometimes, the more morally questionable/civilised position is in fact that of protecting the right to point out that which probably should be attacked in any reasonable discussion/society in the first place: (say, saying Theranos looks like a bunch of scammers/grifters, various startups and SF culture looks eerily like the past practiecs of get-rich-quick-schemes and boosterism)...

ceejayoz 10y ago

> Why would you care what anyone does with their money? Really? Two fairly obvious reasons I can think of in ten seconds: sympathy for other people, and the desire to not see the entire sector tarred as a giant scam. I suspect there are other valid reasons.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Because if this becomes big enough, and enough grandmas lose their nests, my tax dollars will be used to prop up others' dumb decisions.

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11898693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11898693 and marked it off-topic.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

ACow_Adonis 10y ago

Because in the real world, distribution of capital has a little thing called "opportunity costs". A bunch of people are allocating large amounts of capital to shams when they could have been making productive use of it, this both gives rewards, social power, and encourages scammers/fraudsters, but also forgoes investment in otherwise productive activities that could benefit us all. In addition, there are very real concerns about government involvement, as well as the social consequences when mom/pop/sister/brother/anyone we care about loses their money to such... I could go on...