Avatar
Neal
38a1cd1be90b9a898d2415dc101df0870f15b72ea23cdb0adfaafac80d02fd09
Author of “Modern Chains.” Catholic. Husband. Father of two. Former Army Officer, AH-64 Pilot. BS in Art, Literature and Philosophy from the US Military Academy. MA in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary.

building a life worth living and sharing with others. lots of growing pain, but words cannot describe the fulfillment my wife and children bring to me

The most fun part about steelmanning the argument against my book is debating without being tied to reason and logic.

It’s the only time i’m not burdened by logical rigor and consistency 🤣

#philosophy

my wife said when I write that book, why dogs aren’t people, the philosophical case, I have to use a pseudonym because that’s more controversial than a “I love Hitler” book. 🤣

no pseudonyms, If i can’t stand by the argument then im not worth publishing

When u unpack the implicit dignity in personhood, investing any personal energy into non-persons isn’t just practically unwise, it’s fuxking evil

yeah, good point, it can be a tool for making real friends.

i was thinking more of interactions in comments and tweets, seperating DMs. We dont call texting or sending an email “social media” so DMs are just an additional feature built into the platform.

we don’t @ a friend to ask them to come over, but no sense in dissecting definitions of “friend” or “social media”

with the right purpose, any pain can endured

discipline orients the pain towards something worthwhile

so it’s not just that the pain is lighter, you get something valuable for it

#proof-of-work

yep, i never liked myspace or facebook when they came out right after highschool. thought social media was stupid then, and despite my best efforts, i personally can’t really find a good use case for me.

it’s really a “i need a way to take a break from productive work” might as well check out social media

Replying to Avatar Lyn Alden

I agree with this take.

I would add that connections matter. I see many people on Nostr say that blue-checks still use Twitter mainly for audience reach. They’re addicted to the reach, and so forth.

While I do love the dunking on blue-checks overall (as a blue-check myself, it amuses me and you should keep it coming), I’d point out that it’s more than that.

When I was temporarily locked out of my 700k+ follower permissioned account on Twitter, I didn’t lose sleep over not being able to broadcast to people. I have email lists and other mechanisms for that, where it economically matters.

What I lost sleep over is that I couldn’t see my friends’ posts or DMs. The *receiver* side of it all.

Similarly, when people ask me why I don’t just leave Twitter and be Nostr exclusive, that’s the reason. My friends aren’t just bitcoiners; they’re also tradfi people. Twitter is where they are. Leaving that network would mean leaving friends. Would mean not seeing their content.

-Twitter is the fastest news source. I literally monitor it as part of my research process.

-Twitter is where my friends are. The tradfi community isn’t on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook. It’s on Twitter. Bitcoiners too. I’ve been open here on Nostr about dealing with isolation when my husband has had to be in Egypt longer than normal due to a construction process, and my social media life, both here and on Twitter, has been helpful for me at dealing with that. The sheer amount of people I know on Twitter, and the rapidity of responses, is really powerful.

That network effect is so strong. It’s generally not optimal to try to attack it directly.

Instead, you need to build and popularize things that *can’t* be done by Twitter. Zaps are the go-to example. But also using the social graph for non-social media things (ie reviews). Be a compliment to Twitter that a user *also* needs, rather than trying to convince a user to leave Twitter and join Nostr.

That’s how you win. How we win.

nostr:nevent1qqsf0sqdllvshxs3yf0le80ew00kkqse66e3ww44z6vgkvm0psfu2rspzemhxw309ucnjv3wxymrst338qhrww3hxumnw5kadfj

hot take, but there are no friends on any social media. just images of people. social media has legitimate uses, but those have nothing to do with friends

moral analysis on the modern monetary system incoming in my book.

Fractional Reserve Banking is one of the monetary gnostic’s favorite spell

society also programs us to dismiss social capital which is more valuable than financial capital objectively.

i get your point, and would be in the camp spending my 200 on btc

just saying investing 200 in people isn’t necessarily dumb

Gnosticism is the form of fiat.

People been filling it with various matter for millenia.