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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 ba

• Eisenstein 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. Let's get this out of the way right now: I did not accuse you of anything -- I pointed out that you were using a loaded question and strawman and that you shouldn't do that. You are now suggesting, with no evidence, that I am acting deceptively. I have done nothing but share my opinion based on my own knowledge and experiences and have done so in direct response to you, quoting when appropriate, without pivoting, without moving goalposts, without using logical fallacies, and without accusations. I ask that you do the same going forward. If you dislike or disagree with something I write or I have made an error in rhetoric please point it out, but if not I would appreciate civility. Thank you. Moving on... > 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. I'd rather not that I rehash the same things but respond to you specifically. By bringing counterpoints you force me to revisit my thinking and clarify and expand -- this is a good thing and this is what discussions are good for. I hope you aren't suggesting that we sit here and yell the same unchanging talking points at each other ad-nauseum. I am honestly confused by your response here -- if you got my point the first time I said it then you wouldn't have responded to a misunderstanding of it. If you think you understand that what I meant by a philosophically motivated product was anything like a solution oriented product then I have not explained it properly and I would ask that you try and parse it so that we can be on common ground and not talk past each other. A philosophically motived product such as Communism has as its goal a politically driven end-point. It seeks to get there by whatever means are available and sees the end-point as the mark of success and treats things like human suffering on the way there as irrelevant or collateral damage or justice. Another example would be 'apocalypse fetishism' (with or without a religious basis) A solution motivated product like medicine or the writing of the constitution seeks to to solve problems by working through them, proceeding in a fashion that seems reasonable, and moving forward or in other directions based on the results as the happen. Sometimes these products are ineffective, or they were the result of external forces, but the people at the heart of them were working towards progress and a goal (freedom, health) and would change their methods when news ones proved better, or they realized it was not productive or what have you. I contend that Bitcoin is essentially a philosophically motivated product and has as its end-point a 'libertarian' society based on economics averse to central banking. The fact that you can point out faults in some of these things does not change the fact that they are fundamentally different ways of approaching things. That is what I was trying to convey. If you still think there is no difference then I will either have to think of a better way to explain it or I will have to concede to the fact that I am either terrible at communicating something that seems basic to me, or that you are unable to understand it for some reason, but I neither of those things is true. > 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. I don't see any of the use cases for it happening at all. It may be that I live in the USA and am privileged, but no one I know who interacts with crypto sees any problems which can be solved better by it, except for novelty or speculation. The only cryptocurrency which is good at legitimately solving a problem well is Monero, because it is good at being a means of transaction for illicit goods online for which there is a good privacy wall in place. > 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. There is a difference between refusing to engage in an idea and having already spent time engaged in that idea and realizing that the idea is a bad one. I have done the latter. > Again, my argument is to have a reasoned critique, not a shouting match. Critique is important. Bullying doesn't help. There is no way to illustrate what can only be described as a technology which has as its stated goal the changing of society but to mention times in the past when this has happened to ill effect. I do not see it as hyperbolic at all. If you wanted to talk about a political philosophy advocating the training of dogs or something, then I wouldn't bring up Soviet Russia as a response. But since Bitcoin wants to break down central banking, for which our world economies are reliant, then Soviet Russia seems apt. > Capitalism I don't want to get into a 'the definition of...is' type debate, can we accept I was being a bit reductive but that you understood my general point, and skip the back-and-forth about it that we both know is pointless?