I used to relate to the label "militant agnostic" and strongly felt that religion was stupid and irrational. I now relate more to "pro-religion atheist", because I still don't believe it, but I appreciate the value it's adding to society.
So many of the thinkers I respect the most have found religion as adults that it's just impossible for me to look down on it anymore. However, I also have just never found any of the arguments persuasive, at least so far.
I think very few people can be argued into faith. I did hear an argument for faith in God (not for the existence of God funnily enough) that was the straw on the camel's back. However, I was already receptive at that point. If it wasn't for all the things I experienced previously, I would have rejected that argument outright.
must be willing to listen and humble enough to understand that there are things they do not understand, have no experience of, to date.
All of that definitely applies to me wrt religion. I go out of my way to hear what people I respect have to say about their religious beliefs, so far nothing's clicked.
There are ways of thinking about certain "non-physical" properties of the world that I think are reasonably describe as supernatural (spontaneous market order, for example), but it would be disingenuous to claim that I mean the same thing as religious people by that.
I used to believe I lived among titans. And I was very humbled by my culture. I used to believe it was honest, hard working and righteous. But as I get older I'm starting to realize this isn't the case. I'm not even sure if I should be saying that because it will not help. Must be strong and lead by example no matter what. No complaining.
I used to think that it would be cool to use Bitcoin as a immutable, uncensorable storage layer and was thus pretty benign towards ordinals. I've since changed my mind. Here's what I wrote in another post about whether or size limits for OP_RETURN should be turned off:
It's easy to say let the market decide. But markets don't exist out of nowhere. The marketplace must be designed so that the incentives of participants are aligned. Bitcoin acknowledged this reality from birth.
This proposal creates misaligned incentives. It asks node operators to host arbitrary data that is of no value to them without compensation. The question of whether there is sufficient incentive to operate a node is already somewhat shaky. This proposal would make it worse.
And this is a good point to remember, to all those who lean towards laissez faire, as I do myself: Satoshi when he created Bitcoin made opinionated design decisions about the network. It is appropriate for Bitcoin devs to continue making opinionated design decisions about what the network is for. We need to make sure that the devs make decisions that are supportive of the principles of sound money and financial liberty. I don't see how turning Bitcoin into a decentralized storage layer supports that goal.
If people are interested in decentralized storage, which I believe is a worthy goal, they should start a different project. Perhaps bitcoin can be part of that solution as the way to incentivize hosts... but don't put it directly on the blockchain please.
All people are fundamentally good but are merely compelled to be bad by circumstances.
My view has kind of shifted. I now believe this is only true of most people. Also that a significant number of those most people are more easily and permanently compelled to be bad than I thought. And that some people are bad regardless of circumstances.
I started with Ethereum, learned smart contract programming and was fascinated by smart contracts and believed this could be the Windows operating system of the new internet.
Then I watched the 10 hours plus What is money show of Robert Breedlove and Michael Saylor and understood the features of Bitcoin. And especially the value of the 21 million limited Bitcoins.
Now I believe the only digital asset that is digital real estate and property is bitcoin.
OP_RETURNshould be turned off: