Topic: Bitcoin's Dystopian Future - page 4. (Read 28215 times)

No!
Because the system parameters are ever changing and equilibrium is never reached, but we are mired in a perpetual instability.
this is also why free market doesnot work as advertised, The invisible Hand suffers from parkinson

But to reach this "equilibrium" we may lead again towards a certain degree centralization, like the coin Bill Gates wants.
Overall I think equilibrium is impossible in total anarco capitalism and it always ends up again with certain degrees of centralization.

well hello again this thread

It's wrong to assume that cryptography will lead to a chaotic and dystopian future.
Cryptography is just a tool like knife, it can be used for good or for bad.

Some people might use this tool for bad which will disrupt the society negatively, but as a defense response the society will eventually evolve back to what we had before urbanization: strong local communities where people in the local community trust each other but are extremely suspicious to outsiders. Our social relations will be our greatest defense against possible threats from the outside.

Changing the parameters of a system will lead to instability short term but a new equilibrium emerges always.

It would be hard to convince me that bitcoin is anything more than just another great free market innovation. It will make lives easier and cheaper for humans thus increasing overall satisfaction with life. Hopefully it will just slowly replace the dollar and all the early investors will move up a wrung or two in society

I have a problem with poor people. They're kind of smelly and scare me a little because they have nothing to lose.

I tend to agree with you. article is full of FUD and shows dark side. bitcoin is nowhere near there, it even cannot interact with existing bank network so far. this view of future seems very, very distant to me. oh, and i don't have any problem with people richer or poorer than me. do you?

And then, you know, global warming.
Bill Gates is optimistic for the future though. We should try to be too

Brains are developed as babies, yes. But we have the choice how we use them. We can choose to learn what and how to think. We can change our brain wiring, including the mirror neurons. We can choose to physically alter our brain mapping and functionality. We can choose to unlearn the abusive patterns of our parents. The NAP is a method of doing so, but the denial of altruism further isolates ones ability to develop empathy.

Nice write up, but i think the whole "if you can't beat em, join em" mentality will overtake the general population at the tipping point, and political associations to money will dissolve.

Mirror neuron development happens long before a baby is capable of using technology.

If a human being grows up without empathy it's because of a lack of parental attention and affection.

That's because socially conservatives mostly likely come from religious backgrounds, and religion is child abuse.

Technology reduces our contact and dependency on the many people in our environs. How many of us even know our neighbors? This has the effect of stunting the mirror-neuron development. Because of this few people feel empathy towards the pain and suffering of others. This was an evolutionary development to bond social animals. It drives us to be fair and to not inflict unnecessary harm to others simply for material gain. It also drives us to help someone that seems to be suffering. But nowadays, this empathy seems to be lacking in many folks. Many studies have shown brain scans of people that lack mirror neuron development and they are highly correlated to socially conservative worldviews. I would love to see the brains scans of our elected officials.

As another misfortune of our technological advancement: we have financialized and professionalized the humanistic services of healthcare to the point where only a few people are so efficient with technologies that even they have little time to spend with suffering people. For example, where there was once a trained healer for every tribe, there are now only 13.9 doctors for every 10,000 people globally. They frequently become overwhelmed and detached. Our society lacks the social structure it once took to care for each other and teach each other the skills to help one another.

I suspect this is where the Non-Aggression Principle was born. There are people that experience cognitive dissonance between their own lack of empathy for the suffering of others and the philosophical impracticality of Machiavellian social engineering. They don't feel the physical pain and suffering of others, but they recognize the gift. They see the empathy of others as virtuous, but without the brain wiring to experience it themselves, they justify a cognitive approach to self behavior modification. This is admirable, but it also further detaches the person from actually developing their own mirror neurons. This can only be done through direct human contact where people are suffering. And a little suffering ourselves also helps in the development.

Will Bitcoin help to improve this vector of the Human Condition? Well, it certainly addresses the financialization issue of crony corporatism. It brings transparency to the greed and malfeasance that has destroyed Main Street financial ecosystems. Will it bring back the day when doctors make house calls? I hope so. Maybe someday humanity and empathy will be valued in our society and nobody will feel the need for unnecessary violence for material gain.

Violence is naturally unprofitable compared to cooperation, ceteris paribus.

There are two ways to profit from violence:

• Disable the victim's ability for self defence via a side channel. This includes disrupting access to the physical tools of self defence, and disrupting access to the mental tools via propaganda.
• Bribe a third party to do the work for the attacker. The rulers of a society rarely have to act directly, because they can rely on a hoard of sycophants who will attack other peasants who start asking why we need the rulers at all.

Nation-state centralizes violence. Capitalism decentralizes violence. When violence is centralized, everyone who has a propensity to violence will be drawn to the center, concentrating and increasing it. When violence is decentralized, concentrations of violence themselves attract counter-violence, forcing it to disperse, decentralize, and exist as much lower levels.

Your scenario relies on one flawed assumption. That we will just wake up tomorrow and all the sudden everyone is using bitcoins and the value of one bitcoin is not 10k or 100k or even a million but 10 million! That is lunacy to the extreme thus the rest of the dystopia is not based on any or even a small part of practical real reality.

Bitcoin's Utopian Future

That video was so cool. Thanks for sharing. All we have to do is remove human nature from the equation and we can make that kind of world.

Capitalism = violence. Nation-state = violence. Neither one of these can survive without systemic application of violence down a hierarchy.

An atmosphere of violence suffocates reason. Reason = peace. Abandon capitalism and the nation state, and your children can inherit a world of reason, rather than the world of violence and lies you grew up in.

I like you. You'd like this.

The future is drawing near.

Tor, the same as bitcoin, is just another tool, how people use the tools available to them says nothing about the tool, the tool did not choose to do something that was illegal.