Bitcoin Forum

I've been following Jonathan Haidt's research on the 5 foundations of morality for a little while now. He does a really interesting job of explain the differences between people based on 5 independent scales. He then shows how people who consider themselves conservative and people who consider themselves liberal tend to show similar patterns on these scales.

He gave a very interesting TED talk (20 min) where he explains the concepts.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

I my personal life, I find his hypotheses seem to match the people I meet on a day to day basis. They also hold for different sub-groups I tend to interact with.

The group that gathers on this forum however is a less common group for me. Most people don't consider themselves either conservative or liberal. Usually more libertarian and anarchistic. However, I still see certain tendencies that I think can be predictive of bitcoin's future success or failure.

I'm wondering if anyone is interested in taking his "Moral Foundations Questionnaire" and sharing your results here. This is not a questionnaire about whether or not you "have morals". Everyone has morals. It simply asks what types of issues you personally see as being morally important. You might consider other things important for personal reasons, but not moral ones.

For example, many people here would consider that owning personal property as being very morally important. The same people might not consider cussing in public as a morally significant decision. (my made up examples)

Anyway, if you are. Here is a link. I understand if you are not.

http://www.yourmorals.org/

There is real research going on so their tends to be lots of available questionnaires, but initial one is called the "Moral Foundations Questionnaire".

I'll post my results first.

I'll post my hypothesis about how this is related to bitcoins future success later, for those who are interested. :-)

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=929.0;attach=261

Harm = 2.0
Fairness = 3.0
Loyalty = 3.5
Authority = 3.3
Purity = 2.2

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/3217/theymosa.png

I'm a bit anti-government.  ;)
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/7774/theymosb.png

The survey was not meaningful, I think. There aren't enough questions, and they are phrased poorly. I wanted to answer "none of the above" for most of the MFQ-A questions, and even the MFQ-B didn't really seem relevant to me.

Thanks! I found it an interesting survey because the questions are so weird. They are not so much asking your opinion as correlating emotional tendencies.

My hypotheses is that bitcoin won't be successful in the long term unless the bitcoin community has strong community building tendencies. Meaning strong group loyalty. Also reasonable respect for authority seems required, and some purity in the sense of respect for traditions. But in this case that means *future* respect for the new traditions being created.

In other words if members of the bitcoin community go chasing off after every shiny new monetary trinket...


If you compare this to recent American politics, you can see that the Democrats, even though they have vast majorities in both houses, they can't form a team. They have little group loyalty, little respect for their own authorities, and no respect for their own traditions.

The republicans on the other hand can agree to stand arms folded giggling at them in perfect unity.

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Take note of the following in your real life.

If you talk to a conservative about your liberal ideas, they will say, "I understand what you are saying, but I think you are wrong (or an idiot.)"
If you talk to a liberal about your conservative ideas, they will say, "You really can't believe that. You are just saying that because..."

It is not politeness or diplomacy. They really don't believe anyone could possibly hold your opinion. This is the first coherent discription I've seen for why this is.
 

It isn't necessary to have a "Bitcoin team". People will independently use/promote/protect the currencies that they find the most value in.

The Democrat vs. Republican thing is not a problem with the parties or representatives themselves, but a problem with democracy. Representative democracy always creates this kind of situation.

I absolutely agree.

A fun/connected/interesting group will tend to attract new people so we should try to be like that, but I think that is just a little noise compared to the fundamental value Bitcdoin brings.

IOW, even if you all were super douchebags, I'd still be here.

People trade with people. They trust their value to people.

You will attract more cryptoanarchists but if you expect to attract the mainstream it means team building.

Quite frankly if someone told me he was joining an anarchist organization I would just quietly smile to myself and enjoy watching the show.

Somethings in life really are marketing.

I completely agree with you here.  Sadly, there are not enough cryptoanarchists or anarchocapitalists in the world to make bitcoin profitable and robust solely amongst themselves.  That being said, the best place to focus our efforts of "mainstreaming" bitcoin might actually be through a more generalized movement.

I think that you hit the nail on the head with your statement about marketing.  However, I think it also boils down to value.  I have a hard enough time convincing my girlfriend about the value of bitcoins, and she has to hear me talk about this stuff day in and day out.  Unfortunately the value innate in bitcoins (possible anonymity, decentralization, known limited supply, etc) are things that only we as crypto-anarchists find valuable.  Even if my girlfriend actually agrees with me, I'm hardly going to be able to convince her to spend $100USD on bitcoins when she can go out and buy a lot more cool things with that $100, like say buy a new dress.  That leaves me with a couple options:
1.  I convince her that buying bitcoins now will allow her to buy 2 dresses in the future.  When in the future? I don't know
2.  I show her that "everyone's doing it," but in this case it's only me and she already knows that by definition if I'm doing it, everyone else is not.

Alternatively, I could figure out a business model for bitcoins that make them valuable to the run of the mill mainstreamer.  However, because bitcoins themselves have no intrinsic value, I can only offer existing goods and services for which there is a known direct demand, eg. intrinsic value.  Since the good/service is the same regardless of bitcoin/usd payment, the easier choice for the consumer (and they generally choose the easier path) is to simply stick with USD.

Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that until a new product/service is offered, for which bitcoin and all its glorious properties is not only a good fit, but the only fit, the market for bitcoins will be limited to us crazy crypto-anarchists.

Yep, community building is important. And offering a fun experience will help.

But business accepting bitcoins is the key to bitcoin success. Setting up or opening your already existing business to bitcoin is the best thing you can do to help.

That's just not true. And I don't mean it's a rounding issue from 98% to 100%.

Almost everyone has a few things they'd like to do anonymously. The vast majority of Austrian economists aren't even anarchists. And there are plenty of people who don't trust their current government or current government's money without denouncing all governments in principle.

You do see a high % of crypto-anarchists here right now because these are the most likely to seek it out and join when it's small.

There are lots of things that people want to do anonymously. But to convince yourself bitcoin is a safe place to store your value, that takes interacting with the community.

This community is really not that sympathetic to people who like existing monetary policy, but are just trying to find a way to send cash-like anonymous payments over the Internet.

They are even less sympathetic to those who say, "What makes bitcoin not a Ponzi scheme?" the answer that there is no pyramid is not one that inspires confidence.

The answer has to be that there is a community committed to supporting bitcoin and building business on its success. We know and trust one another, but it is an earned trust not a naive one. You should meet some of us and join our community. "Hi my name is Red!"