Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cycrutchfield 2991 days ago
>the tiny fantasy world of True Believers

Let's not give them the benefit of the doubt here. They're shills. They have a vested financial interest in twisting logic and reason to convince the world that a secret cabal of bureaucrats and bankers are conspiring against this particular technology.

This is the primary problem with discussing anything crypto-related online. In a technical discussion about the merits of Linux and free software, you can be reasonably sure that whomever you are engaging with does not have a financial interest in pushing their particular stance. It seems like in any crypto-related discussion, it is impossible to find honest, impartial debate.

1 comments

> Let's not give them the benefit of the doubt here. They're shills.

Excuse me - are you addressing me with this comment? My identity is not secret. My contributions to open source software (and to higher education in New York State) are reasonably well known.

Are you seriously directly calling me a shill right now?

Is this the level of discussion that we've reached on HN now?

FWIW, I think my comments have been pretty moderate. I don't see anything that is even vaguely construable as shilling. Nor am I positioned with anywhere near the resources to make shilling worthwhile.

Rather than a shill, I am a long-time NY activist who has deep problems with the way my government has interacted with nearly every facet of the (largely toxic) financial industry in my state. I don't think that concerns regarding the underlying motivation of the AG's office are ever unreasonable to raise, and certainly not here.

Sorry, I was not referring to you here, although I realize that it's confusing given the threading. I was more referring to some of the other posters here (the "True Believers" referred above).