121–130 of 138 posts
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When you’ve been an investor in multiple billion dollar businesses, you can call him out for not being smart. Until then, you basically look like a couch philosopher criticizing public figures on an anonymous forum. Well done.
Snarky, ooh! Let me try! You basically look like a anon pundit, criticizing couch philosophers on an anonymous forum. Well done.
I am rubber, you are glue!
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Is not also the "idea of a social construct" a social construct? And by extension is also arbitrary and meaningless? And surely then every idea of any category is dissolved as meaningless and arbitrary, and then reason itself is absurd?
When you then see yourself as a social construct, then you are on the path to enlightenment
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That "property" is just a series of laws and agreements that we can change arbitrarily is neither a tricky concept nor a slippery slope. A body is not a series of laws and agreements that we can change arbitrarily, it's a hunk of meat. "Your body" can be a social construct if you want it to be, but that probably means that you're having a disassociative episode.
Chattel slavery wants a word with you.
Chattel slavery underlines the point. What is and isn’t property is decided, arbitrarily, by people. Because property is a social construct.
What is and isn’t someone’s body does not depend on others accepting it has meaning. How it’s treated does. But my body has inherent value to me independent of others’ perceptions of it. This is, at its core, the problem with slavery.
If we reject property being a social construct we reject the fact that the government, a social construct itself, could have legalised and then outlawed slavery. Because if property is inherently meaningful, how can the government poof it away?
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> any particular location may be more desirable relative to others, e.g. a gorgeous view, away from factories or highways It's politics, usually, keeping the factories and highways away. More fundamentally, the notion that a piece of paper (the deed) gives you certain rights (but not others) over some land is totally made up.
> It's politics, usually, keeping the factories and highways away. I don’t see how this changes the fact some locations are more desirable than others. > More fundamentally, the notion that a piece of paper (the deed) gives you certain rights (but not others) over some land is totally made up. It is very useful though, otherwise how would I know where to sleep tonight? By lottery a few hours before the sun sets?
Totally agree! Most social constructs are! That’s why we keep them. Something being a social construct isn’t a diminishment of it. Governments, laws, families and religions are all social constructs and all highly useful.
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Is not also the "idea of a social construct" a social construct? And by extension is also arbitrary and meaningless? And surely then every idea of any category is dissolved as meaningless and arbitrary, and then reason itself is absurd?
Just because something is a social construct does not mean it's arbitrary and meaningless. Social constructs have developed over time under evolutionary pressure. Useless or damaging constructs eventually disappear since they contribute negatively towards survival. The constructs that remain have demonstrated a certain level of fitness towards the environment.
I've been in and out of crypto since 2014 or so but I've never been more bearish than 2021. When the majority of my Twitter feed became visionaries predicting web3 it all seemed destined for pain. There are billions of reasons to embrace the idea of a platform shift but when everyone can see it coming a mile away they're probably either wrong or a deep trough of sorrow away from it working out.
You've never been more bearish than when the highest number of developers and builders are working on crypto?
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Just because something is a social construct does not mean it's arbitrary and meaningless. Social constructs have developed over time under evolutionary pressure. Useless or damaging constructs eventually disappear since they contribute negatively towards survival. The constructs that remain have demonstrated a certain level of fitness towards the environment.
...but it's important not to assume that just because a particular social construct is still in use today , it's "fit" to remain for the foreseeable future.
Social constructs likely follow the Lindy effect.
The longer one exists, the longer it can be expected to continue to exist.
Old constructs have proven their fitness simply by persisting over a long period time.
I think it's easier to make the mistake the other way around, to wrongly assume that a relatively new social construct will remain "fit" far into the future.
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It's like crypto enthusiasts honestly believe that the problem with the financial system is that the buildings have the word "Bank" on them. Then they turn around and offer to take your money promising absurdly high interest rates. Surprise! The only way to do that is to invest in risky assets, except this time there is no FDIC insurance, no capital requirements, no regulations whatsoever to protect your money.
Wrong. What “crypto enthusiasts” refer as the problem is the trust on a third party, banking or watherver. Therefore people who got burned trusting centralized lending castle of cards cannot be referred as crypto enthusiasts.
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Matt Levine always likes to say that cryptocurrencies are relearning hundreds of years of financial lessons in just a few short years. He describes the current crypto crisis as a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. Every single problem that cryptocurrencies face are extremely well known and studied phenomena in traditional economics. It is all very predictable.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense. Bitcoin and ethereum are still up and processing blocks with little regard to what is happening in the financial system. Those lending companies closing down are basically centralized platforms very much like the legacy financial system. This take is the same type of uneducated comment that someone does while attributing actions done by say Coinbase to crypto as a system.
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If that's true, at that rate crypto will blaze past traditional finance in only a few years, and be hundreds of years ahead of traditional finance in a couple decades. Sounds pretty good to me.
By that logic, we should all be taking our paychecks in tulip bulbs.
You are unwittingly making the argument that traditional finance, or the future thereof, is (/ "should be") tulip bulbs. Perhaps not the worst of arguments, but probably not your intention to advocate as you have that traditional finance become tulip bulbs.