Making arguments to these believers on technical grounds (like all the foundational issues with various blockchains) is as we say in Polish, like throwing dried peas against the wall. Technical problems will be solved, what matters is that they have seen the promised land.
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You make as much headway trying to convince Mars nuts that we can't even keep people alive in the Earth desert yet unsupplied, or the strong AI people that we don't need to start making plans for immortality. Because you're not in a debate about technology but about the Millenium
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What such beliefs have in common is that they offer a positive, transformative vision of a future made better by technology, with a story about why it is achievable and inevitable. Whereas the real world right now doesn't offer much hope or positive future at all. So you get NFTs
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To all the fraud, speculation, and just basic insanity in this space, the NFT crowd can answer that they're replicating the same thing that happens in high finance, except now it's a different set of people who get to participate. The Fed creates money out of nothing, why not us?
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I think recognizing the spiritual hunger that sits at the core of these movements (and remember how many in the space are young people!) is an important step to understanding them. Crypto culture is a mirror world that feeds off of the unexamined failures of the real world.
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And it is also, like everyone points out, a massive scam that will hurt regular people the longer the bubble is allowed to inflate. But it's not just "name a star", it's "name a star" with the promise that you'll get to visit in a rocket very soon, if only enough people believe.
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And I deserve a goddamned medal for 12 tweets on this without a single mention of Communism.
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Replying to @Pinboard
But what is the promise of crypto beyond the star you just named you can then sell at a profit to someone else? Like at least with Mars there's some transformative vision. Seems just like another get rich quick scheme no different than international air mail stamps.
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Replying to @papanoel_cool
The long-term promise of crypto is a decentralized substrate for the internet that is highly resistant to state censorship and corporate control, allowing people to own stuff and enter into complex transactions and cooperative endeavors without needing anyone's permission.
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Replying to @Pinboard
Yeah there's certainly a core of true believers who think that way but it also fits into a longer American tradition of wanting to democratize finance. Basically the same as the Wolf of Wall Street guy was selling. It's interesting how it straddles those 2 things.
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It absolutely is. There's a pervasive belief that this is finally a way to guarantee that the same Wall Street sharks can't take things away from the common guy or gal.
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