Question is in the title. Want to hear your thoughts.
It is the greatest religion. It's an algorithm sent by God to reprogram society from the bottom up. It's a wormhole to a new Earth. Plus, Lambos! what other religion offers that?
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I've thought a lot about this question (or at least, one interpretation of this question) as someone who grew up heavily indoctrinated into a particular religious view of reality and strongly believed it into adulthood. Not like "everyone around me believes in these general things so I guess I do too" but "it doesn't matter that hardly anyone around me believes what I do, because my family is one of the few that has correct beliefs, which involve numerous specific claims about reality, not just fuzzy feelings."
Thankfully, part of that religious teaching was to prioritize truth above all else (e.g. what people around me believe, what my tribe believes, or what feels good), so when I discovered that the facts didn't seem to support my religious beliefs, I followed the apparent facts rather than my beliefs. At significant social cost.
Years later, I discovered something called the Litany of Tarski, which embodies this philosophy and may be useful here. It goes:
If the box contains a diamond, I desire to believe that the box contains a diamond; If the box does not contain a diamond, I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond; Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
To rewrite it in the context of Bitcoin, it might go something like:
If increased Bitcoin adoption is good for the world, I desire to believe that increased Bitcoin adoption is good for the world; If increased Bitcoin adoption is not good for the world, I desire to believe that increased Bitcoin adoption is not good for the world. Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
I think we'd all say we want what's good for the world, and most Bitcoiners are Bitcoiners because we believe Bitcoin is good for the world, but the problem comes when we stop evaluating developments in terms of what's good for the world and instead what's good for Bitcoin.
It's hard to constantly ask, is this development good for the world? It's much easier to ask, does this development increase Bitcoin adoption? So we slip into what's easy. But that's what pulls us toward religious thinking instead of truth-at-all-costs thinking.
There's a reason Robert Breedlove's Twitter bio says "Freedom Maximalist", not "Bitcoin Maximalist". Robert is one of the biggest Bitcoin advocates I can think of, but I'm confident that if it came to light that something promoted freedom better than Bitcoin, or that Bitcoin actually diminished freedom, he would choose freedom over Bitcoin. I don't have the same confidence for a lot of other Bitcoin advocates.
Bitcoin is just a tool. I think it's an awesome tool, one of the greatest tools in human history, and precisely the tool we need at this time, but that can never mean it takes primacy over the values through which we came to believe in Bitcoin.
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Yes
Well.... it is for tax purposes
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Yes, the first one that requires zero faith.
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Definitely activates the same parts of the brain.
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"We're not worthy! We're not worthy!"
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What is a religion?
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