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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32060 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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You can't hide in the theoretical wonderlands and ignore how the implications of the technology come about in real life.

Yeah, actually you can. If you don't do it, you aren't responsible for it. I don't even care for crypto myself (not enough practical uses and I'm not into naked speculating), but I refuse to give people moral culpability for things they didn't actually do. That's not how moral culpability works, you aren't responsible for second order effects of your actions.

I disagree: and I think it's a fundamental difference in values that can't be overcome by argument. I think that the world would be a better place if people thought through the consequences of their actions. If you pour chemical waste into the water table, you recruit people into a cult, or you don't push a shopping cart back to the corral, it's not guiltlessness - it's malicious indifference. There's no legal liability, but morally it is abhorrent all the same.

All the things you're listing here are quite different in that the bad effects aren't second order effects. Putting poison into the water table is bad in itself. Same for having a cult, or not putting shopping carts back. But being enthusiastic about crypto for positive reasons is not bad in and of itself.

But my viewpoint is that cryptocurrency is a first order terrible thing, it is a banal evil like slash and burn agriculture, payday loans, etc. All the good it could possible do is corrupted by its incredible inefficiency and callous indifference to its own toxicity.

It is technology that is completely worthless, obsolete as it was theorized and definitely as it was implemented. Its only use I see is to extort the tears and sweat of the gullible and enrich the intelligent and evil. That some South Americans occasionally use it to buy USD is, in my mind, completely inconsequential.

Technology is not agnostic. It can be built to be vile. No amount of clever evasions and definitional wordplay can hide smug, self-satisfied, all-consuming avarice behind it all.

Ok, well I think that's a very incorrect view and don't think you should judge people based upon it. But you are, of course, entitled to your opinion.

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