It can be. I think Marxist realism was a force for bad. It really does depend on what the normative goals behind the expression are.
Not it’s not *always* bad. It’s a well-known, evolutionarily selective survival trait. And pretty good one when you consider the landscape of human experiences 20,000+ years ago. I think in the context of a technologically advanced, organized society, it starts to have destabilizing effects that when coupled with our capacity for self-destruction, is a deeply concerning thing.
Honestly, I’m not sure it’s ever particularly useful to advance understanding. Is there, perhaps, an example you could give that would demonstrate the utility of black and white thinking as a good thing?
It’s really crazy how hard it can be to not fall into all-or-nothing thinking. Even people who are philosophically trained, or have a general disposition towards uncertainty, can quickly lapse into all-or-nothing thinking when stress takes its toll, or emotions take over.
When it happens to me, as it does, and has recently, it really causes me to reflect on how much of my own mind I consciously control. I know, intellectually, that the answer is: very little.
You probably sell yourself short, here.
If you’re talking about “memes” in the way Richard Dawkins defines them, then yes, you are correct. But we both know that’s not what I’m talking about, here.
Yeah. But that’s not really the point. The point is what cultural valence they have, and what direction those cultural winds are blowing.
Of course, my fellow Canadian, Marshall McLuhan would agree with you there. 🤣
I would love more intellectual conversations on bitcoin, that don’t shy away from uncomfortable and challenging topics. I wish there were more intellectually honest debates around everything!
No. But it’s mostly bad. Group-affinity is driven by proximity and context. Not by simple dispassionate reasoning.
Yeah. Absolutely. But when you really look memes today … the vast majority of them are essentially delineating an in-group from out-group. Even bitcoin memes! There’s generally an enemy that’s being signaled out, and mocked.
It’s not just “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” anymore. To take a phrase from the culture war, memes in this sense, have become yes … virtue signals.
Unpopular opinion: internet memes are actually a force for bad in the world. They are basically just digital versions of the kinds of group signaling mechanisms that breed tribalism and dangerous in-group/out-group behaviors.
Well, I'd argue with a straight face that money is information, and modalities that provide a substrate for that information must, by definition, be more important in terms of their historical purchase. But you're obviously free to disagree.
Need it standardized and available in every phone.
I don’t mean it literally like that. I’m talking politically and culturally, in the abstract.
I don't think Bitcoin is the greatest paradigm shift in history. I mean, the amount of things you need to take for granted to say that is ... a lot. Like, I don't think Bitcoin is more important than the internet itself, in terms of human history.
To the extent that bitcoiners may have low time preference behaviors, the first thing one might ask, is how do we eliminate selection bias? I'd bet a lot of bitcoin that there's a lot of selection bias at play, in the apparently low time preference dispositions we see in the community. Just like the fact that libertarian and anarchist politics are over-represented, stems from a selection effect.