brockm on Nostr: Someone privately asked me why I am wasting my time refuting the hyperbitcoinization ...

Someone privately asked me why I am wasting my time refuting the hyperbitcoinization narrative. They suggested that if I’m right, it doesn’t matter in the end. They also suggested this represents an unnecessary argument *within* the bitcoin conversation.

One, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time at all. Because my goal isn’t even to convince people who hold the view that hyperbitcoinization is inevitable. In fact, given their predilection for simple, self-consistent narratives and their tendency to dismiss my attempts as nuance as a “lack of critical thinking skills”, I don’t actually expect to convince them of anything. But I do want to debate them, if for no other reason than I can test the strength of my own ideas. Which for me, is pretty important to being intellectually honest with one’s self. Alas, it does not surprise me that they refuse the opportunity of debate. Because, well, you can guess where I’m going.

The audience for things like this are always the unconvinced. The people who are coming to bitcoin for the first time and trying to make sense of it. I seek to give them a theory of bitcoin I think makes sense, and steers it towards its potential. That focuses people on believable use cases, that will hopefully, on balance direct research and development into more productive products and ideas.

Also, I am just generally fascinated by people who think they have everything figured out, and can smugly claim that something in the future is “inevitable”. I’ve never thought anything about the future is inevitable. To me, the future is an epistemic fog-of-war. The fact some people think they see it with overwhelming clarity (even in the narrow issue of money and markets) by playing forward some theory from a first principles foundation, says to me something about human nature that, quite frankly, I see as the seeds of fanaticism at worst, and sophistry at best.

As for the worry that I’m trying to create unnecessary discord within the bitcoin conversation, this just offends my intellectual and truth-seeking sensibilities. If I think something is wrong, and I feel strongly enough about it that I want to say something about it, then I’m going to. I don’t know what to tell you. Suggesting that it’s counterproductive to engage in a debate against a relatively popular strain of thought, in a field I work in, that I think is wrong, is just bizarre to me.

It’s the anti-intellectual golem showing up again.