There’s something I should note that doesn’t come through in this post: one of the reasons I was interested in Bitcoin in 2011 is because it was obvious to me that the ‘experts’ (economists, cryptographers, what have you) scoffing at it Just Did Not Get It.
The critics generally made blitheringly stupid criticisms which showed that they had not even read the (very short) whitepaper, saying things like ‘what if the Bitcoin operator just rolls back transactions or gets hacked’ or ‘what stops miners from just rewriting the history’ or ‘the deflationary death spiral will kick in any day now’ or ‘what happens when someone uses a lot of computers to take over the network’. (There were much dumber ones than that, which I have mercifully forgotten.) Even the most basic reading comprehension was enough to reveal most of the criticisms were sheer nonsense, you didn’t need to be a crypto expert (certainly I was not, and still am not, either a mathematician or C++ coder, and wouldn’t know what to do with an exponent if you gave it to me). Many of them showed their ideological cards, like Paul Krugman or Charles Stross, and revealed that their objections were excuses because they disliked the potential reduction in state power—I mean, wow, talk about ‘politics is the mind-killer’. I think I remarked on IRC back then that every time I read a blog post or op-ed ‘debunking’ Bitcoin, it made me want to buy even more Bitcoin. (I couldn’t because I was pretty much bankrupt and wound up selling most of the Bitcoin I did have. But I sure did want to.)
Even cryptopunks often didn’t seem to get it, and I wrote a whole essay in 2011 trying to explain their incomprehension and explain to them what the whole point was and why it worked in practice but not their theory (“Bitcoin is Worse is Better”). So, it was quite clear to me that Bitcoin was, objectively, misunderstood, and a ‘secret’ in the Thiel sense.
And in a market where a price is either too low or too high, ‘reversed stupidity’ is intelligence...
(If anyone was wondering: I don’t think this argument really holds right now. Discussions of Bitcoin are far more sophisticated, and the critics generally avoid the dumbest old arguments. They often even manage to avoid making any factual errors—although I’ve wondered about some of the Tether criticisms, which rely on what looks like rather dubious statistics.)
What sort of luck or cognitive strategy did this require? I think it did require a good deal of luck simply to be in LW circles where we have enough cryptopunk influence to happen to hear about Bitcoin early on. Otherwise, it would be unreasonable to expect people to somehow pluck Bitcoin out of the entire universe of obscure niche products like ‘all penny stocks’. But once you pass that filter, all you really needed was to, while reading about interesting fun developments online, simply not let your brains fall out and notice that the critics were not doing even the most basic due diligence or making logically valid arguments and had clear (bad) reasons for opposing Bitcoin, and understand that implied Bitcoin was undervalued and a financial opportunity. I definitely do not see anything negative about most people for not getting into Bitcoin in 2011, since there’s no good ex ante reason for them to have been interested in or read up on it and doing so in general is probably a bad use of time—but for LWers, we had other reasons for being interested enough in Bitcoin to realize what an opportunity it was, so there it is a bit of a failure to not get involved.
And in a market where a price is either too low or too high, ‘reversed stupidity’ is intelligence…
This is exactly why I did not get into btc so long ago, and I was in those circles, but not a good tech or economist and considered it a flavor of the month, then a flavor of the year for black markets. And THIS is how I have changed my entire worldview in the past month or so- I gave up, rationality doesn’t work when my life is going in wild swings, rational decisions end up being conservative and I never make any ground, or lose it fast. Losing it fast loses me confidence, and a lack of confidence leads to awful decision making, or a perception of rationality when it is not.
Rationality doesn’t work in a country where half of us are immediately convinced by a twitter video edited to make Biden look like an idiot that can’t talk.
As soon as I tossed intelligence to the side and started to use reversed stupidity, I’ve seen gains in pursuits I never had success in.
I hate this, epistemically. I love it, as a theory. I will be journaling my progress. Thanks.
There’s something I should note that doesn’t come through in this post: one of the reasons I was interested in Bitcoin in 2011 is because it was obvious to me that the ‘experts’ (economists, cryptographers, what have you) scoffing at it Just Did Not Get It.
The critics generally made blitheringly stupid criticisms which showed that they had not even read the (very short) whitepaper, saying things like ‘what if the Bitcoin operator just rolls back transactions or gets hacked’ or ‘what stops miners from just rewriting the history’ or ‘the deflationary death spiral will kick in any day now’ or ‘what happens when someone uses a lot of computers to take over the network’. (There were much dumber ones than that, which I have mercifully forgotten.) Even the most basic reading comprehension was enough to reveal most of the criticisms were sheer nonsense, you didn’t need to be a crypto expert (certainly I was not, and still am not, either a mathematician or C++ coder, and wouldn’t know what to do with an exponent if you gave it to me). Many of them showed their ideological cards, like Paul Krugman or Charles Stross, and revealed that their objections were excuses because they disliked the potential reduction in state power—I mean, wow, talk about ‘politics is the mind-killer’. I think I remarked on IRC back then that every time I read a blog post or op-ed ‘debunking’ Bitcoin, it made me want to buy even more Bitcoin. (I couldn’t because I was pretty much bankrupt and wound up selling most of the Bitcoin I did have. But I sure did want to.)
Even cryptopunks often didn’t seem to get it, and I wrote a whole essay in 2011 trying to explain their incomprehension and explain to them what the whole point was and why it worked in practice but not their theory (“Bitcoin is Worse is Better”). So, it was quite clear to me that Bitcoin was, objectively, misunderstood, and a ‘secret’ in the Thiel sense.
And in a market where a price is either too low or too high, ‘reversed stupidity’ is intelligence...
(If anyone was wondering: I don’t think this argument really holds right now. Discussions of Bitcoin are far more sophisticated, and the critics generally avoid the dumbest old arguments. They often even manage to avoid making any factual errors—although I’ve wondered about some of the Tether criticisms, which rely on what looks like rather dubious statistics.)
What sort of luck or cognitive strategy did this require? I think it did require a good deal of luck simply to be in LW circles where we have enough cryptopunk influence to happen to hear about Bitcoin early on. Otherwise, it would be unreasonable to expect people to somehow pluck Bitcoin out of the entire universe of obscure niche products like ‘all penny stocks’. But once you pass that filter, all you really needed was to, while reading about interesting fun developments online, simply not let your brains fall out and notice that the critics were not doing even the most basic due diligence or making logically valid arguments and had clear (bad) reasons for opposing Bitcoin, and understand that implied Bitcoin was undervalued and a financial opportunity. I definitely do not see anything negative about most people for not getting into Bitcoin in 2011, since there’s no good ex ante reason for them to have been interested in or read up on it and doing so in general is probably a bad use of time—but for LWers, we had other reasons for being interested enough in Bitcoin to realize what an opportunity it was, so there it is a bit of a failure to not get involved.
Apologies for replying to this so much later.
This is exactly why I did not get into btc so long ago, and I was in those circles, but not a good tech or economist and considered it a flavor of the month, then a flavor of the year for black markets. And THIS is how I have changed my entire worldview in the past month or so- I gave up, rationality doesn’t work when my life is going in wild swings, rational decisions end up being conservative and I never make any ground, or lose it fast. Losing it fast loses me confidence, and a lack of confidence leads to awful decision making, or a perception of rationality when it is not.
Rationality doesn’t work in a country where half of us are immediately convinced by a twitter video edited to make Biden look like an idiot that can’t talk.
As soon as I tossed intelligence to the side and started to use reversed stupidity, I’ve seen gains in pursuits I never had success in.
I hate this, epistemically. I love it, as a theory. I will be journaling my progress. Thanks.