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by rawtxapp 1930 days ago
> The community around Bitcoin is one of the most toxic.

If you go on places like Twitter and reddit somewhat, I agree with you. But if you look on Github, you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard and I wouldn't discount their work based on some loud mouths on social networks.

3 comments

“you'll see some of the smartest engineers of our generation working real hard”

I've been reading those cheap empty words way too much lately. Unless they are the likes of John von Neumann I'll just assume they're people of average intelligence working on things that look incredibly intimidating to outsiders.

Also, an excerpt from Marcus Aurelius - Meditations: “How corrupt and two-faced is one who claims, 'I intend to be fair and honest in my dealings with you.' What are you up to, my friend? There is really no need for this preamble. The matter will soon become plain. It should be written on your face,* it should ring out immediately in your voice, and shine out at once in your eyes, as the loved one at once knows everything about his lovers from the manner of their glance. In short, a good and honest person should resemble one who smells like a goat in this respect, that anyone who comes near him is immediately aware of it whether he wishes it or not. But the mere pretence of simplicity is like an open blade. There is nothing more odious than the friendship of the wolf for the lamb; avoid this above all. A good, straightforward, and kindly person reveals these qualities in his eyes, and they will not escape you.”

I'm saying it as someone who actually dived pretty deep into both Bitcoin and Ethereum protocols and who has actually seen the research and the code...
Sometimes I wonder if getting people to click on more ads was actually a more socially beneficial project for that talent.
If you look at it from the perspective that ad-clicking has funded the biggest information retrieval system and the biggest human connection platform, yes it was overall socially beneficial.
A counterfactual is that those two things would have happened anyway, and the ad-funded model has deeply corrupted both of them.
I don't think there's world with these counterfactuals in place, do you have any proof?
That’s not a meaningful way to discuss counterfactuals.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_conditional

Those engineers are so smart they refuse to scale Bitcoin.
No, they built some of the most well thought scaling solutions in forms of layer 2 (payment channels, lightning network, zk-rollups) and many other solutions like sharding, etc.

You're the one who refuses to see those solutions.

Please send me $3.00 via Lightning Network and I will agree whole-heartedly.
Its just not working as a payment system.. Compared to solutions such as lydia or weibo in china..