Yesterday at a dinner I was asked why I wasn’t more interested in Bitcoin. I didn’t have a real answer and my ignorance of my own opinion encouraged me to write it out.
I don’t know why the world is the way it is: why people are unhappy and why the future looks increasingly fraught. My conclusions lead me to consider that a majority of people do not feel self-efficacious in their decision making.
I’ve also begun to consider that surveillance affects decision making in an deeply negative way: while surveillance may have no effect or even encourage pro-social behavior, I wonder how easy it is to deny oneself (self-censor) with even the subtle threat of surveillance and punishment - even to censor yourself from yourself, which is a bizarre rabbit hole. What if pro-social behavior is anti-individual, and anti-social behavior is…pro-individual?
At times, it dawns on me how romantic and technically elegant Bitcoin is as a solution. I wish the branding were entirely different, but that’s a totally different post. The way I see it, I hesitate from further self-education and practical adoption for two reasons:
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Bitcoin can be positioned as the money to eclipse them all. I wonder if this exacerbates the actual issue as I see it: People do not need less options or choices, they need the practical self-trust that results from and encourages self-efficacious decision making. It is also true for me that some of the extremist cultural propositions among Bitcoiners can be stifling and suspect. To proposition Bitcoin in conjunction with values like carnivorism (as an easy example), “traditionalism”1, and “individualism”/strongmen suggest to me an ascetic restriction of choice that values one perspective of individual autonomy, action, and expression in the world, but also creates an image of aggression and authoritarianism. This is not the sort of culture that promotes global adoption - an anonymous culture might be more effective IMO.
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It may be true that if transactions were inherently private, individuals may feel more powerful in shaping the world with their earned money. But, if Bitcoin is treated the same way that other money is treated, this purpose is increasingly defeated, and further solutions might be with policy change in the financial (and technology) sector(s) to protect consumer privacy and/or more privacy-centered technological development. None of these things are mutually exclusive - however, if a major issue we face is that when people feel watched and potentially judged for their actions, they become less self-efficacious and fail to express themselves - and this failure impacts their future and therefore culture/the world, then any solution needs to address this and potentially retain this as a guiding value.
To address the perspective that most of my critique has to do with culture, how does the current culture shape how the technology is developed and where the money flows and what is that compared to the effect of “the opposite” - how much does money spent and technology developed have a direct impact on culture? Which is of greater importance/impact in a moment to moment way?
I think I would like to learn and hear more about the values of the technology of Bitcoin itself - and what I suspect may be a “high value” of the value of the technology itself. And I wonder how that can be talked about more to reinvigorate the “people culture” to more accurately reflect the culture of the technology.
A bonus: What are some ideas for SN that you can think of that promote the value(s) of the technology of Bitcoin and/or privacy? And, more complexly, how can those ideas be implemented to prioritize those values? E.g., I’ve thought of the option of permanently deleting material as this can protect privacy; however, this conflicts with one of Bitcoin’s values as reflected by the distributed public ledger. Which is more important depends on your perspective on what is important to change the world - and what that ideal future looks like.
Footnotes
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What is traditional? We used to live under a single king or ruler or chief - is that what Bitcoiners want? ↩