site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You can make quality arguments against crypto valuation but isolating the drops from the rises is not an honest way to talk about risk.

You can see how starting in early 2018 returns become much worse even if still positive. 22k/15k is just an 8% annual return since early 2018. If history is any guide and if you believe the people on twitter and youtube, November was the bottom BTC will go up 10-20x (or more) to $100k or whatever. I think it will not recover.

You can see how starting in early 2018 returns become much worse even if still positive. 22k/15k is just an 8% annual return since early 2018.

I mean here you go picking another peak. 2017 is a 20x and 2019 is a 5-6x but you, for not very mysterious reasons, picked 2018 and not just 2018 but a period of roughly 3 months that it was over $10k.

If history is any guide and if you believe the people on twitter and youtube, November was the bottom BTC will go up 10-20x (or more) to $100k or whatever. I think it will not recover.

Do you do all of your market sentiment analysis based off of the activities of random sketchy 'influencers'? This is like feeling bearish on cosmetics because of the unrealistic ramblings of Mary Kay stay at home moms, there is no signal where you are pointing.

Pre-2018 is where all the easy money was made. 100x returns from mid 2015 to late 2017. That will never happen again. At best, maybe $40-60k. Andreessen creating a crypto fund in 2020-2021 is too late. It's like creating a gold mining company in California in 1884 instead 1848. But since its not his money anyway, it's not like he is going to lose , unlike his followers who bought at the top.

Do you do all of your market sentiment analysis based off of the activities of random sketchy 'influencers'?

I said "I think it will not recover." so obviously not.

Of course people were saying this in 2019, and of course you could be right it may never go back up. But you could also be wrong and your confidence seems unfounded. I would also point out that a crypto fund isn't necessarily just buying bitcoin and sitting on it. Smaller and newer projects have different growth potential, making the right choice on the various bitcoin forks could have doubled or tripled the amount of bitcoin you were sitting on at certain points not to mention making the right bets on the various other happenings over the years, polygon/matic in 2021 could have done quite well for you and people plugged in could probably have seen the scaling benefits, I know I saw a great return on it.