At one level, I'd like to just shrug and say “guess we’ll find out” sooner or later. For my part, I want to know whether I’m a doofus for putting a modest amount of money into Ether. 5 and go Swiss… or you get more information. What’s a virtuous Bayesian to do? I figure you either adopt the Pyrrhonian skeptical stance, suspend judgment, set your p at. That is to say, we’ve got a rare instance of not-obviously-political intra-smart polarization on our hands! Or, as I tweeted a while back: The trouble is, I also know plenty of people who satisfy all these conditions but think crypto is unmitigated bullshit. One of my personal epistemic precepts is that if I disagree with somebody who is (a) at least smart as I am, (b) has generally sound judgment and (c) is better informed on a subject, then I ought to concede that I’m probably wrong and revise my opinion in their direction. However, a few of my best and smartest friends are deeply into crypto stuff and know more about it than I do. Until recently, I was skeptical of the whole deal, too. It’s not great, and it’s totally worth taking seriously. Now, I’m sensitive and sympathetic to the “ right-clicker” view because, well, I’m sure there’s more than a little money laundering, uninternalized climate externalities, greater-fool pyramid scheming, and frothy speculation in cryptoland. Which is a problem if it turns out that there’s a there there. The prevalence of this view spells trouble for the prospects of apposite regulatory forbearance and care. Indeed, within my social/intellectual circles, the dominant view seems to be that Bitcoin amounts to climate terrorism in the service of tulip mania, that NFTs are a pyramid scheme, and the main crypto use case is crime-enabling asset concealment and money laundering. Tom’s point seems to me to assume that something important is gained but nothing of offsetting importance is lost if burdensome-to-impossible reporting requirements hamper the use and development of blockchain tech and herd people back into the mediated and surveilled status quo ante. Similarly, Tom Lee, a long-time mutual follow and super-tech savvy IRL friendly acquaintance, tweeted: I’ve heard endless versions of the “What problem does this solve!?” plaint ever since delving into this world of mystery and wonder. Are there *any* problems solved by blockchains that aren't better handled by a nonprofit org with a good charter and a mysql database? I did some dabbling in Solidity two years ago when my company explored a crypto moonshot slash ICO cash grab, and I came away thinking there's mostly no there there… If anything I've become even more bearish since about smart contracts and web3 watching the NFT hype cycle blossom.
I THINK LOVE IS BULLSHIT SOFTWARE
In the comments, subscriber Trevor Austin, a software engineer who surely knows more about this than I do, writes: This obviously isn’t in any sense scientific, but it accords with my vague impression, which is why I was braced for some “polite but hostile” feedback, which was duly received. (Both of those guitars are 'signature' models but are not an endorsement of either artist which I don't particularly care for, but the guitars themselves have everything I look for in a guitar.If you click through to the results of Rao’s Twitter poll, you’ll see that it shows far more hostility than participation in “ Web3” blockchain stuff. Ideally I would put that money towards something useful like a new car, but I don't live in the US at the moment and had to jump through some hoops to cash those stimulus checks that mean I can only spend the money online. The accessories thing, I've always been into rings/pendants and have never let myself really indulge into that scene, but I'm thinking I'm getting old enough to pull of that wizened occult dude look. I finally let myself buy a $1000+ guitar last year that I'm in love with, but am feeling the itch to jump up to one closer to $2000 for my first seven string. I still haven't touched the $2000 in stimulus money us Americans got earlier this year and am in a constant struggle against spending it on a new guitar which I don't need or investing in a bunch of bullshit Etsy accessories which I definitely don't need.