[NikolaNovak]

But politics impact me and my family and the world we live in.

And some technologies do too!

So it's natural and probably good to have thoughts and perspectives and positions on politics and technologies that impact me and my family and the world we live in (rather than be apathetic).

Should we avoid polarization, and arguing by memes, absolutely!

But like perpetual motion machine and eugenics and racism and trickle down economy, there are things in life that a) We've discussed and read about sufficiently and b) We believe they impact us negatively enough that we have a fairly established position on; something would have to change quite radically to shift it.

For cryptocurrency, I find it either naive or disingenuous to call it "just a technology" or "an algorithm". Tables and B-trees and markov's chains and blockchain may be technologies. Cryptocurrencies are an implementation and usage and ideology, not an "algorithm". It's closer to a cult religion, from where I'm sitting, and I'm terrified that zealots will push it far enough that its current (flawed! Awful! Insane!) implementations become the norm and "too big to fail".

(Snarky add-on: And even for technologies... since when did any of us not have guttural reactions and strong opinions and religious wars on technologies? JavaScript, Oracle, Microsoft, Perl, Intel vs AMD, Linux vs Windows for Apple, Kubernettes, etc etc etc... guttural reactions and strong opinions are the norm, and those are not policy-changing, environment-draining, scam-filled financial schemes :)

FWIW :)

[soulofmischief]

In any case, I think we can all agree that one shouldn't compare cryptocurrency to a perpetual motion machine. It's a real technology, with real utility for the people whose problems it solves.

[NikolaNovak]

Sure, and it's also different than racism, which is a prejudice toward other human beings based on criteria they have no control over.

The list was heterogeneous analogies to illustrate a point, not equivalences. And that point was: there are concepts which are not obscure and no longer new and people have had some experience with, and its ok to have a negative reaction about them until and unless some pretty darn novel new evidence or argument comes up (yet there exists a set of people who still buy into it and don't understand the negativity). Like, I have a friend who's into crypto currency and I know a guy who's into racism and I have an uncle who's working on perpetual working machine... and they'll all get a "negative gutural reaction" from me.

[soulofmischief]

Okay, but the fundamental difference is that cryptocurrency works as intended and provides value for an entire economy of people even during this experimental phase where we are still working things out.

[noduerme]

Hear, hear! And while we're on the subject, fuck Markov chains. It's abundantly clear that cause and effect are at the root of all our problems.

[standardly]

baller comment. thank you