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   Justin Dragos (ellisande@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 20-Mar-2023 23:18:55 JST Justin Dragos

   • Thomas 🔭🕹️

   @thomasfuchs I think with early low adoption technologies your read on their response is correct, but the motivation may be far less sinister. Often the tech itself isn't mature and the people arguing for it are looking at a beautiful model in their mind if what it could possibly become, not what it is, or what it would cost to get there.

   • Embed this notice
     Thad (thad@brontosin.space)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Mar-2023 00:14:08 JST Thad

     in reply to

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I think there's also a bias toward new shiny things, and it's easy to mistake something interesting for something useful and important.

     I think the blockchain is fascinating, as math, as a concept. I also see no use case, thus far, where it serves any practical purpose that wouldn't be better served by a traditional, centralized database. It seems hard for some people to accept that both things can be true, that a new technology can be fascinating *and* completely impractical.

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     Thad (thad@brontosin.space)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Mar-2023 00:14:14 JST Thad

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs I think it's common for people who are experts at one particular thing to overestimate how well their knowledge generalizes.

     Someone looks at a website, thinks "I could build that better," and maybe they're right, but then they also think they can build a better government or financial system or some other extremely complex thing well outside their area of expertise.

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     Justin Dragos (ellisande@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Mar-2023 00:16:05 JST Justin Dragos

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs it can be hard not to take criticism of something you are passionate about without becoming defensive. Particularly in today's social media atmosphere where piling on isn't just common, but explicitly encouraged by the platforms. Maybe they weren't so defensive the first 10 times, but by the 4,000,000th "lolz crypto is completely useless because reasons" tweet they got bitter.

     I'm not naive enough to think everyone has good intent, but I also don't believe everyone has bad.

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     Bálint Szilakszi (szbalint@x0r.be)'s status on Tuesday, 21-Mar-2023 01:46:03 JST Bálint Szilakszi

     • Thomas 🔭🕹️

     @thomasfuchs all those quasi-religious wars about nerd stuff should have been a warning. Anyone who can get that worked up about vim vs emacs or some other completely unimportant detail is vulnerable to what you've described.