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It's a weird distinction you make. To say that it's a philosophical motivation is ignoring motivation of a lot of innovation and kind of beside the point. The "

It's a weird distinction you make. To say that it's a philosophical motivation is ignoring motivation of a lot of innovation and kind of beside the point. The "philosophy" of the internet was to build a network that would be resilient against a nuclear attack yet, because of those motivations and in spite of that cynical outlook, the internet was created that was robust and flexible. The "philosophical" motivation behind cryptography is privacy. The "philosophical" motivation behind medical research is to improve peoples quality of life. Science is the method to pursue our philosophical aims. This sentence is also weird: > The 'economics' behind it are completely misguided and appear to be based on the notion that taking power away from powerful entities and distributing amongst individuals will remove the problems associated with capitalist systems. So you're arguing that consolidating power by removing it from the masses is a better alternative? It's not that distributing power solves problems, it's that distributing power is a necessary precursor to solving problems. You apparently disagree with that premise? I said that it may have critical flaws not that it does. I'm trying to communicate uncertainty. I believe Bitcoin has a solid foundation but I could be wrong so I'm trying to leave room open for debate and to be open to new information that could prove me wrong. Bitcoin is also an evolving story, with usability issues and scaling issues that complicate discussions. The fact that dogma is associated with it is kind of irrelevant. I guess you focus on it so much because it's dogma you disagree with? GNU is steeped in dogma. The US constitution is steeped in dogma. The mere fact that dogma is present is not the sole indicator of validity of an idea. Bitcoin was a specific and evolutionary response to what was perceived as a failing system. Your statements get pretty hyperbolic. I'm not sure it's relevant, helpful or valid to compare Bitcoin to eugenics or atrocities committed by Russia on it's citizenship.

Eisenstein 4y ago
> The "philosophical" motivation You misunderstand. If I develop a technology because I want society to be able survive a nuclear attack by making a robust network that has extra effects like enabling instant communication between disparate entities, that is a benefit. If I develop a technology that replaces in-place infrastructure like school buildings with nuclear-proof bomb shelters at great cost and by removing the schools and making children homeschool because I think that any ill-effects caused by disrupting society are worth it in order to safeguard humanity from a nuclear attack that I believe is coming -- well that all depends on whether I am right about my founding belief, isn't it? If there is no nuclear attack and we lose critical infrastructure because I had a political, unprovable belief, then we seriously messed up. I think you know that what the difference is between ancillary benefits because of planning and destructive effects because 'the ends justify the means' especially when the 'ends' ever happening are highly disputed and the 'means' haven't even been proven to work in any sense at all to produce them. > So you're arguing that consolidating power by removing it from the masses is a better alternative? It's not that distributing power solves problems, it's that distributing power is a necessary precursor to solving problems. You apparently disagree with that premise? You are better than this. Please don't disrespect your position by relying on loaded questions and strawmen. What I am arguing for is not disrupting existing power structures that society relies on because you think it would be better off without them and that they are unfair. Especially when your replacement is unproven and it seems reasonable and sounds good on paper until you play it through logically and see that it ignores basic tenets of established processes of modern societies -- like we need to be able for a world-wide payment system to be able to scale and not destroy the planet and eat up a large portion of our energy resources if and when it is trying to do so. > I said that it may have critical flaws not that it does. I misread you then, but that is probably because I contend that it does. > I believe Bitcoin has a solid foundation You have every right to believe that, and I have every right to tell you that you are wrong and that the debate is only between people who want Bitcoin to be a solution to something it cannot do (fix inequality or really anything that it is advocated for), people who want to use Bitcoin to redistribute wealth to themselves and their friends, and people who want the former group to snap out of it and use their effort to work on productive solutions and for the latter group to be investigated for crimes and if found guilty sent to prison. > The fact that dogma is associated with it is kind of irrelevant. Not when you come to terms with the fact that looking for evidence for something you already believe and discarding that which does not fit is something that is extremely harmful to society and prevented and reverted progress for unknown generations of people as evidenced by the dark ages in Europe and the regression of the middle East from world leaders in sciences and technology to war-torn wastelands. > Bitcoin was a specific and evolutionary response Evolution does not mean better -- it means more effective. Capitalism is about distributing resources from the ground to production to consumption and conversion into capital. Moving capital from people with little power to people with more power is actually more efficient when you remove regulations and societal prohibitions on deception, fraud, and usury. Bitcoin is great at that.
- abetusk 4y ago
  I am better than what you're accusing me of. It's too bad that you either can't see it or purposefully ignoring it. I suspect what you're doing is arguing in bad faith but accusing me of it first to shield yourself from critique. > You misunderstand. No, I didn't. I understood and got at the core of the argument. You've responded to it with the argument you actually wanted to make, not the one you did make in the parent response. So your argument now is not that it's dogmatic but that the implementation and rollout is/would be too disruptive. I disagree. I think we're seeing people have mixed fiat currency and cryptocurrency and it seems clear that cryptocurrency can further integrate itself into everyday operations without causing the disruption you're thinking of. > ... like we need to be able for a world-wide payment system to be able to scale and not destroy the planet and eat up a large portion of our energy resources if and when it is trying to do so. These are all things that Bitcoin possibly can mitigate and work around. I'm willing to admit that this might not be possible. You refuse to engage in the idea. > ... looking for evidence for something you already believe and discarding that which does not fit is something that is extremely harmful to society ... Again, my argument is to have a reasoned critique, not a shouting match. Critique is important. Bullying doesn't help. I am aware of the shortcomings. I don't want to ignore the problems but I also don't want to let let them overshadow the benefits, especially if the benefits outweigh the problems. I urge you to do the same. > Evolution does not mean better ... This was a response to your earlier point that Bitcoin was created from dogma. There might be bias in terms of which economic or political model is best (by Satoshi Nakamoto and other proponents) but my point was that Bitcoin was a logical progression of ideas to fix critical flaws in earlier attempts. The commonly held political definition of Capitalism is "A socio-economic system based on private ownership of resources or capital." You're describing what you believe to be the effects of capitalism. Maybe that implies what you're talking about but that's not obvious to me and I suspect it's far from the truth. Shooting from the hip, I can already tell you that things like solar energy exist which are in the other direction of where you're pointing to for resources. Moving capital from people with little power to people continuing to consolidate power is progressing just fine without cryptocurrency [1]. Though I'm not sure if the sources can be trusted or that the interpretation is correct, there's at least some evidence that cryptocurrency is being used for one of its intended, altruistic, use cases [2] [3] [4]. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capitalism https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capitalism [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... [2] https://ripple.com/insights/broadening-financial-inclusion-in-africa-through-crypto-and-mobile-payments/ https://ripple.com/insights/broadening-financial-inclusion-i... [3] https://cointelegraph.com/news/africa-s-crypto-market-has-grown-by-more-than-1-200-since-2020-chainalysis https://cointelegraph.com/news/africa-s-crypto-market-has-gr... [4] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/africas-grassroots-cryptocurrency-adoption/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/africas-grassroots-cryp...

Eisenstein 4y ago

> The "philosophical" motivation You misunderstand. If I develop a technology because I want society to be able survive a nuclear attack by making a robust network that has extra effects like enabling instant communication between disparate entities, that is a benefit. If I develop a technology that replaces in-place infrastructure like school buildings with nuclear-proof bomb shelters at great cost and by removing the schools and making children homeschool because I think that any ill-effects caused by disrupting society are worth it in order to safeguard humanity from a nuclear attack that I believe is coming -- well that all depends on whether I am right about my founding belief, isn't it? If there is no nuclear attack and we lose critical infrastructure because I had a political, unprovable belief, then we seriously messed up. I think you know that what the difference is between ancillary benefits because of planning and destructive effects because 'the ends justify the means' especially when the 'ends' ever happening are highly disputed and the 'means' haven't even been proven to work in any sense at all to produce them. > So you're arguing that consolidating power by removing it from the masses is a better alternative? It's not that distributing power solves problems, it's that distributing power is a necessary precursor to solving problems. You apparently disagree with that premise? You are better than this. Please don't disrespect your position by relying on loaded questions and strawmen. What I am arguing for is not disrupting existing power structures that society relies on because you think it would be better off without them and that they are unfair. Especially when your replacement is unproven and it seems reasonable and sounds good on paper until you play it through logically and see that it ignores basic tenets of established processes of modern societies -- like we need to be able for a world-wide payment system to be able to scale and not destroy the planet and eat up a large portion of our energy resources if and when it is trying to do so. > I said that it may have critical flaws not that it does. I misread you then, but that is probably because I contend that it does. > I believe Bitcoin has a solid foundation You have every right to believe that, and I have every right to tell you that you are wrong and that the debate is only between people who want Bitcoin to be a solution to something it cannot do (fix inequality or really anything that it is advocated for), people who want to use Bitcoin to redistribute wealth to themselves and their friends, and people who want the former group to snap out of it and use their effort to work on productive solutions and for the latter group to be investigated for crimes and if found guilty sent to prison. > The fact that dogma is associated with it is kind of irrelevant. Not when you come to terms with the fact that looking for evidence for something you already believe and discarding that which does not fit is something that is extremely harmful to society and prevented and reverted progress for unknown generations of people as evidenced by the dark ages in Europe and the regression of the middle East from world leaders in sciences and technology to war-torn wastelands. > Bitcoin was a specific and evolutionary response Evolution does not mean better -- it means more effective. Capitalism is about distributing resources from the ground to production to consumption and conversion into capital. Moving capital from people with little power to people with more power is actually more efficient when you remove regulations and societal prohibitions on deception, fraud, and usury. Bitcoin is great at that.

abetusk 4y ago
I am better than what you're accusing me of. It's too bad that you either can't see it or purposefully ignoring it. I suspect what you're doing is arguing in bad faith but accusing me of it first to shield yourself from critique. > You misunderstand. No, I didn't. I understood and got at the core of the argument. You've responded to it with the argument you actually wanted to make, not the one you did make in the parent response. So your argument now is not that it's dogmatic but that the implementation and rollout is/would be too disruptive. I disagree. I think we're seeing people have mixed fiat currency and cryptocurrency and it seems clear that cryptocurrency can further integrate itself into everyday operations without causing the disruption you're thinking of. > ... like we need to be able for a world-wide payment system to be able to scale and not destroy the planet and eat up a large portion of our energy resources if and when it is trying to do so. These are all things that Bitcoin possibly can mitigate and work around. I'm willing to admit that this might not be possible. You refuse to engage in the idea. > ... looking for evidence for something you already believe and discarding that which does not fit is something that is extremely harmful to society ... Again, my argument is to have a reasoned critique, not a shouting match. Critique is important. Bullying doesn't help. I am aware of the shortcomings. I don't want to ignore the problems but I also don't want to let let them overshadow the benefits, especially if the benefits outweigh the problems. I urge you to do the same. > Evolution does not mean better ... This was a response to your earlier point that Bitcoin was created from dogma. There might be bias in terms of which economic or political model is best (by Satoshi Nakamoto and other proponents) but my point was that Bitcoin was a logical progression of ideas to fix critical flaws in earlier attempts. The commonly held political definition of Capitalism is "A socio-economic system based on private ownership of resources or capital." You're describing what you believe to be the effects of capitalism. Maybe that implies what you're talking about but that's not obvious to me and I suspect it's far from the truth. Shooting from the hip, I can already tell you that things like solar energy exist which are in the other direction of where you're pointing to for resources. Moving capital from people with little power to people continuing to consolidate power is progressing just fine without cryptocurrency [1]. Though I'm not sure if the sources can be trusted or that the interpretation is correct, there's at least some evidence that cryptocurrency is being used for one of its intended, altruistic, use cases [2] [3] [4]. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capitalism https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capitalism [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-... [2] https://ripple.com/insights/broadening-financial-inclusion-in-africa-through-crypto-and-mobile-payments/ https://ripple.com/insights/broadening-financial-inclusion-i... [3] https://cointelegraph.com/news/africa-s-crypto-market-has-grown-by-more-than-1-200-since-2020-chainalysis https://cointelegraph.com/news/africa-s-crypto-market-has-gr... [4] https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/africas-grassroots-cryptocurrency-adoption/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/africas-grassroots-cryp...