In my case, it was about not-so-trivial inconveniences. Like Richard, I couldn’t install the software and didn’t know a reliable place to buy. A few months ago, when a friend sent me a link to BitStamp and explained what to do, I bought some BTC, which are currently at triple the price I bought them. Nice, but not as nice as if the same thing would have happened a few years sooner.
(I am in a similar situation with index funds right now. I agree that it is a good idea to buy them. I just don’t know where exactly to go, what exactly to do, and what exactly will be the consequences for taxes. I am not an American, so I would need specific information for my country.)
But it is also my fault for not paying enough attention to this specific topic. Not realizing that this article is not the same as 99.99% of the rest; that this is the right moment to stop reading web and actually do something.
Some of us were smarter than others. Good for them! But if we want to help each other, and avoid having the same thing happen the next time, next time when you see an exceptionally important article, don’t just think “others have read the same article, and they are smart people, so they know what to do”. That’s another form of illusion of transparency; after reading the same text, some people will jump up, others will just continue reading. Here are two things you can do to nudge your fellow rationalists in the right direction:
1) Imagine a person who has very little knowledge in this specific area, and for some reason is not going to study more. Can the whole thing be simplified; ideally into a short list that is easy to follow? For example: “Step 1: register online at BitStamp. Step 2: send them the required KYC documents. Step 3: do the money transfer. Step 4: buy Bitcoins. Step 5: HODL!” More people will follow this procedure, than if they just read “buy and/or mine some Bitcoins, find out how”.
2) Offer help at your local meetup. Make a short lecture, explain the details, answer questions. When people are interested, guide them step by step.
All we would have needed to do was invest $100 (or a few CPU cycles) back when people on LW started recommending it.
All we needed was someone who would make a lecture about Bitcoins at a meetup and then say: “If you are interested, bring a laptop and USD 100 to the next meetup and we will do this together.” Today, you would have a local rationalist millionaires’ club. Think how awesome that could be!
More generally, if we want to win, we need to seriously improve our teamwork. Sometimes that means to cooperate with other people. Sometimes that means to lead them. It is not true that each of us needs to play the game of life alone.
This post is interesting to me, because I feel strong resistance to acting as you suggest. (Background: I made a lot of money from buying Ether at $0.80, but was into crypto before I was into rationalism.)
I think my intuition is some sort of fear of social risk? I’m mostly willing to tell people what I think the right move is, but if they’re not motivated to figure out the details themselves, then I worry that they will be upset if the most likely outcome (losing 100% of their money) happens, and that I’ll bear the social cost.
Yeah, I tend to agree that social factors work against the idea of telling someone to invest in cryptocurrency or other high-risk high-reward things like this. (And despite Eliezer’s point that modesty is not necessarily correct in making decisions for oneself, I find it hard to sensibly eliminate modesty in what one tells other people to do.)
Strongly agree that I probably would have bought some crypto on LW advice had there been a nearby meetup to go through the process of doing it. Otherwise my priors about not giving my credit card info (or whatever) to strange websites were too strong to believe I would even successfully engage in the strategy.
In my case, it was about not-so-trivial inconveniences. Like Richard, I couldn’t install the software and didn’t know a reliable place to buy. A few months ago, when a friend sent me a link to BitStamp and explained what to do, I bought some BTC, which are currently at triple the price I bought them. Nice, but not as nice as if the same thing would have happened a few years sooner.
(I am in a similar situation with index funds right now. I agree that it is a good idea to buy them. I just don’t know where exactly to go, what exactly to do, and what exactly will be the consequences for taxes. I am not an American, so I would need specific information for my country.)
But it is also my fault for not paying enough attention to this specific topic. Not realizing that this article is not the same as 99.99% of the rest; that this is the right moment to stop reading web and actually do something.
Some of us were smarter than others. Good for them! But if we want to help each other, and avoid having the same thing happen the next time, next time when you see an exceptionally important article, don’t just think “others have read the same article, and they are smart people, so they know what to do”. That’s another form of illusion of transparency; after reading the same text, some people will jump up, others will just continue reading. Here are two things you can do to nudge your fellow rationalists in the right direction:
1) Imagine a person who has very little knowledge in this specific area, and for some reason is not going to study more. Can the whole thing be simplified; ideally into a short list that is easy to follow? For example: “Step 1: register online at BitStamp. Step 2: send them the required KYC documents. Step 3: do the money transfer. Step 4: buy Bitcoins. Step 5: HODL!” More people will follow this procedure, than if they just read “buy and/or mine some Bitcoins, find out how”.
2) Offer help at your local meetup. Make a short lecture, explain the details, answer questions. When people are interested, guide them step by step.
All we needed was someone who would make a lecture about Bitcoins at a meetup and then say: “If you are interested, bring a laptop and USD 100 to the next meetup and we will do this together.” Today, you would have a local rationalist millionaires’ club. Think how awesome that could be!
More generally, if we want to win, we need to seriously improve our teamwork. Sometimes that means to cooperate with other people. Sometimes that means to lead them. It is not true that each of us needs to play the game of life alone.
This post is interesting to me, because I feel strong resistance to acting as you suggest. (Background: I made a lot of money from buying Ether at $0.80, but was into crypto before I was into rationalism.)
I think my intuition is some sort of fear of social risk? I’m mostly willing to tell people what I think the right move is, but if they’re not motivated to figure out the details themselves, then I worry that they will be upset if the most likely outcome (losing 100% of their money) happens, and that I’ll bear the social cost.
Yeah, I tend to agree that social factors work against the idea of telling someone to invest in cryptocurrency or other high-risk high-reward things like this. (And despite Eliezer’s point that modesty is not necessarily correct in making decisions for oneself, I find it hard to sensibly eliminate modesty in what one tells other people to do.)
Strongly agree that I probably would have bought some crypto on LW advice had there been a nearby meetup to go through the process of doing it. Otherwise my priors about not giving my credit card info (or whatever) to strange websites were too strong to believe I would even successfully engage in the strategy.