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I don’t really understand what this document is for. Or rather, I would have guessed it would be an attempt to respond to the NYT article and to convince reader
by dan-robertson 5y ago
I don’t really understand what this document is for. Or rather, I would have guessed it would be an attempt to respond to the NYT article and to convince readers to come to their point of view, but I think it totally fails at that.
The format is difficult to read, and the phrase-by-phrase analysis leaves it incohesive, scattershot and makes it feel nitpicky.
Lots of the arguments are fundamentally ideological (basically ‘crypto is libertarian but libertarianism is bad compared to my preferred ideology so crypto is bad’) and I think most people will recognise an ideological argument and decide the merits of the thing based on their own ideology. I think these arguments don’t do much to convince or inform.
It’s largely appealing to the in-group of crypto-skeptics with commenters riffing off each other or referring to unmentioned but agreed-upon facts.
I think a better argument could be made with a more cohesive narrative sticking to the most defensible points.
- datagram 5y agoI think the article is mainly for a bunch of skeptics to dunk on both the author for writing the piece and the NYT for publishing it. As the introduction says: > Here, a group of around fifteen cryptocurrency researchers and critics have done what the New York Times apparently won't. Between this and the title, I assume they're mainly referring to the perceived lack of editing that went in to the original. I think it's pretty safe to say that this was mainly written for the amusement of crypto skeptics (which it does a good job of, imo) and to serve as an example of how to identify irresponsible crypto reporting, rather than to actually convince anyone.