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What behavior of mine do you think I should change? I didn't see any suggestion of something I actually did wrong. It felt like you were trying to criticize, bu

by javert 6y ago

What behavior of mine do you think I should change? I didn't see any suggestion of something I actually did wrong. It felt like you were trying to criticize, but that your criticism had no actual content.

xapata 6y ago
> no actual content Indeed, the criticism is not of the facts but of the logic. My critique is primarily of your rhetoric. You requested a citation without offering a rebuttal. Yet, you you made a claim that appears to be equally well-founded, or as you're implying, un-founded. Saying "citation needed" is a somewhat bland, passive-aggressive statement that itself lacks content. I'd have (and still would) appreciate reading the rationale for your skepticism.
- javert 6y ago
  I'm not interested in arguing with you for its own sake. I'm just saying the following because I don't like to see the kind of behavior in this community that I think is going on here (and I don't think it's intentional, fwiw). Your criticism of me amounts to the fact that I asked for a citation of a statement I was skeptical about. I think that's pretty plainly not a legitimate criticism. I think that you are the one who is being passive aggressive here. If you thought my comment was passive aggressive, you could have just said so. (It generally is not passive aggressive to ask for a citation, but I can see how someone could think that.) If you wanted me to explain the rationale for my statement, you could have just directly asked, instead of criticizing me in the way you did, which seems indirect and unfair.
  - xapata 6y ago
    I'm not interested in arguing for it's own sake either. I spoke up to fight a frustrating trend in internet argumentation. > ... pretty plainly not a legitimate criticism What's plain to you isn't plain to me, and vice versa. I think you missed the main thrust of my argument, which is getting at the hypocrisy of asking for a citation and then making an uncited claim. Perhaps more importantly, it's asking for logical argument to accompany requests for a source. There's a related issue in the current scientific paradigm, fetishizing statistical p-values. People are so distracted by the veneer of a p-value (or a citation) that they forget to look for a plausible causal mechanism. By the way, you still haven't explained your skepticism of the original statement you replied to.
    - javert 6y ago
      > getting at the hypocrisy of asking for a citation and then making an uncited claim A person asking for a citation is not disallowed from making a claim. Someone else is free to ask for a citation from me, in return. You are not only incorrect, which is fine, but you're unjustly calling me a hypocrite, which, personally, I consider to be a rather non-nice thing to say. Furthermore, my request for a "citation" was supposed to be equivalent to asking for "any sort of rationale." You are interpreting that overly legalistically. I'm was just trying to have a conversation, OK? And I did it in a polite way. I would have been happy to hear a rationale that was not a citation per se. It would even have been OK for the person I was responding to to say, "I don't know, I just suspect it," or "I heard it anecdotally," or whatever. > There's a related issue in the current scientific paradigm, fetishizing statistical p-values. People are so distracted by the veneer of a p-value (or a citation) that they forget to look for a plausible causal mechanism. I agree, although that's not related to my behavior here. I'm annoyed by the same thing you are, which is when people use "citation?" as though it's a counter-argument. But I wasn't doing that. I wish I had just said, "What's your rationale for saying that." But you know what? I can't predict when someone is going to misinterpret a perfectly reasonable and polite thing I've said. I think the thing I was responding to is exactly the (rare) kind of thing where an actual citation probably is the kind of answer someone with a rationale would want to give, as opposed to a causal explanation or some other sort of evidence. So you're preaching to the choir, here. I get what you're saying, i.e., that many people ask for citations in a context where a citation doesn't really make sense (for example, a controversial medical claim where there are probably numerous studies that seem to disagree with one another). This just isn't that sort of context. I could see myself making the same point you are making in a different context. It annoys me to be lumped in with those people that you and I are both justifiably annoyed by. > By the way, you still haven't explained your skepticism of the original statement you replied to. I just don't think it's true. I know that cryptocurrency is being treated as a financial asset. I haven't seen evidence that extortion or fraud are a major fraction of what's going on with cryptocurrency. I have enough familiarity and experience with the field to think that my sense of this is probably correct. Bitcoin is 66% of the market cap of cryptocurrency. It's clear that bitcoin is being used widely as a financial asset (it's available in multiple funds you can get in brokerage accounts, there are many high-volume OTC desks, there are derivatives, there is now lending). There is a lot of journalism showing that large sums of money are flowing into bitcoin as a financial asset; for example, the company MicroStrategy purchasing $425M of bitcoin, or Robinhood facilitating bitcoin trading, or GBTC accepting inflows of hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase bitcoin. In contrast, I'm aware of ransomware, but I suspect it's probably a very small fraction of the bitcoin/cryptocurrency economy (but, as I said originally, I would be interested to see evidence contrary to that). My sense is that it's pretty hard to effectively launder money with cryptocurrency, unless you stay out of the US and Europe and parts of Asia, i.e., unless you stay in the places where it's already probably easier to launder money. But again, that's just my sense, so if someone has an explanation contrary to that, I'd be interested to see it, which is why I asked. I view many of the smaller crypto coins as scams, so there is actually an interpretation of OP's statement that I agree with - I guess it depends on how you define "fraud" and "a huge fraction." Again, bitcoin is 66% and is clearly not a scam (though it would be fair to ask why that's clear if someone doesn't already know - but my answer right now would be, go research it yourself, I can't take the time to explain all that). Bitcoiners may be misguided or wrong, but it's not a scam.

by javert 6y ago

xapata 6y ago

> no actual content Indeed, the criticism is not of the facts but of the logic. My critique is primarily of your rhetoric. You requested a citation without offering a rebuttal. Yet, you you made a claim that appears to be equally well-founded, or as you're implying, un-founded. Saying "citation needed" is a somewhat bland, passive-aggressive statement that itself lacks content. I'd have (and still would) appreciate reading the rationale for your skepticism.

javert 6y ago
I'm not interested in arguing with you for its own sake. I'm just saying the following because I don't like to see the kind of behavior in this community that I think is going on here (and I don't think it's intentional, fwiw). Your criticism of me amounts to the fact that I asked for a citation of a statement I was skeptical about. I think that's pretty plainly not a legitimate criticism. I think that you are the one who is being passive aggressive here. If you thought my comment was passive aggressive, you could have just said so. (It generally is not passive aggressive to ask for a citation, but I can see how someone could think that.) If you wanted me to explain the rationale for my statement, you could have just directly asked, instead of criticizing me in the way you did, which seems indirect and unfair.
- xapata 6y ago
  I'm not interested in arguing for it's own sake either. I spoke up to fight a frustrating trend in internet argumentation. > ... pretty plainly not a legitimate criticism What's plain to you isn't plain to me, and vice versa. I think you missed the main thrust of my argument, which is getting at the hypocrisy of asking for a citation and then making an uncited claim. Perhaps more importantly, it's asking for logical argument to accompany requests for a source. There's a related issue in the current scientific paradigm, fetishizing statistical p-values. People are so distracted by the veneer of a p-value (or a citation) that they forget to look for a plausible causal mechanism. By the way, you still haven't explained your skepticism of the original statement you replied to.
  - javert 6y ago
    > getting at the hypocrisy of asking for a citation and then making an uncited claim A person asking for a citation is not disallowed from making a claim. Someone else is free to ask for a citation from me, in return. You are not only incorrect, which is fine, but you're unjustly calling me a hypocrite, which, personally, I consider to be a rather non-nice thing to say. Furthermore, my request for a "citation" was supposed to be equivalent to asking for "any sort of rationale." You are interpreting that overly legalistically. I'm was just trying to have a conversation, OK? And I did it in a polite way. I would have been happy to hear a rationale that was not a citation per se. It would even have been OK for the person I was responding to to say, "I don't know, I just suspect it," or "I heard it anecdotally," or whatever. > There's a related issue in the current scientific paradigm, fetishizing statistical p-values. People are so distracted by the veneer of a p-value (or a citation) that they forget to look for a plausible causal mechanism. I agree, although that's not related to my behavior here. I'm annoyed by the same thing you are, which is when people use "citation?" as though it's a counter-argument. But I wasn't doing that. I wish I had just said, "What's your rationale for saying that." But you know what? I can't predict when someone is going to misinterpret a perfectly reasonable and polite thing I've said. I think the thing I was responding to is exactly the (rare) kind of thing where an actual citation probably is the kind of answer someone with a rationale would want to give, as opposed to a causal explanation or some other sort of evidence. So you're preaching to the choir, here. I get what you're saying, i.e., that many people ask for citations in a context where a citation doesn't really make sense (for example, a controversial medical claim where there are probably numerous studies that seem to disagree with one another). This just isn't that sort of context. I could see myself making the same point you are making in a different context. It annoys me to be lumped in with those people that you and I are both justifiably annoyed by. > By the way, you still haven't explained your skepticism of the original statement you replied to. I just don't think it's true. I know that cryptocurrency is being treated as a financial asset. I haven't seen evidence that extortion or fraud are a major fraction of what's going on with cryptocurrency. I have enough familiarity and experience with the field to think that my sense of this is probably correct. Bitcoin is 66% of the market cap of cryptocurrency. It's clear that bitcoin is being used widely as a financial asset (it's available in multiple funds you can get in brokerage accounts, there are many high-volume OTC desks, there are derivatives, there is now lending). There is a lot of journalism showing that large sums of money are flowing into bitcoin as a financial asset; for example, the company MicroStrategy purchasing $425M of bitcoin, or Robinhood facilitating bitcoin trading, or GBTC accepting inflows of hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase bitcoin. In contrast, I'm aware of ransomware, but I suspect it's probably a very small fraction of the bitcoin/cryptocurrency economy (but, as I said originally, I would be interested to see evidence contrary to that). My sense is that it's pretty hard to effectively launder money with cryptocurrency, unless you stay out of the US and Europe and parts of Asia, i.e., unless you stay in the places where it's already probably easier to launder money. But again, that's just my sense, so if someone has an explanation contrary to that, I'd be interested to see it, which is why I asked. I view many of the smaller crypto coins as scams, so there is actually an interpretation of OP's statement that I agree with - I guess it depends on how you define "fraud" and "a huge fraction." Again, bitcoin is 66% and is clearly not a scam (though it would be fair to ask why that's clear if someone doesn't already know - but my answer right now would be, go research it yourself, I can't take the time to explain all that). Bitcoiners may be misguided or wrong, but it's not a scam.