I sometimes wonder if Bitcoiners (same, actually, for libertarians) are more or less stupid than the average person. Often, I conclude more.
It's the misalignment between knowledge of ignorance and pretense of knowledge.
A stupid person who knows that they're stupid don't make outrageous, ridiculous errors. (They also don't advance anything worth listening too, so there's that...) Per Dunning-Kruger type reasons, a stupid person with some newfound knowledge is still stupid but doesn't know it -- so runs around pretending they're not stupid. People who found libertarianism or bitcoin like five minutes ago quickly fall into this camp.
Latest observation, Seb Bunney -- whose book I really didn't like (#839329), in part for reasons I'm positing here -- on Preston Pysh's show, talking about psychology and the book The Body Keeps the Score:
It's an interesting field, and I very much enjoyed that book (for instance, the author approves of yoga as a gentle way of dealing with trauma, being comfortable with getting into your body again, #933248).
...and Bunney goes:
...a book that really stands out, and it's called The Body Keeps the Score by a lady called Bessel van der Kolk...
...except that van der Kolk is a man. And no, this isn't a trans argument; he's just straight-up a guy... (fair enough, the topic and the style in which the book is written is very female, but whatever.)
I see this a lot, and I cringe as much when Bitcoiners/self-proclaimed Austrian economists mispronounce "Mises" or "Keynes" or the "Cantillon" effect.
I'm not trying to be snobbish or superior (well, ok, maybe that one), looking for that one irrelevant/superficial gotcha or whatever... no, it's because these errors are so unbelievably rudimentary that only someone completely unversed in the topic would make them.
You are straight up telling me that you don't have a clue
You showed up two seconds ago, which is why you haven't heard these names be pronounced or bothered even googling the author you're reading to find out even the most basic info about them (background, university affiliation, freakin sex -- which, by the way, you definitely would have learned had you actually read the book...). You don't have a clue.
ai slop
. After all, it is a similar kind of heuristic people use to evaluate whether a post is slop of not (the presence of the em dash, too many emojis, the this, not that pattern, etc). There may be good and interesting things in the slop, but unfortunately, it's an asymmetric battle: slop can be generated at significantly less cost than is required to evaluate it. But heuristics seem like such a blunt tool for the job.Footnotes
Footnotes
No, Mr. Bunney DID NOT READ THE BOOK, god dammit