Bitcoin Forum
December 15, 2024, 04:54:59 PM *
News: Latest Bitcoin Core release: 28.0 [Torrent]
 
   Home   Help Search Login Register More  
Pages: [1]
  Print  
Author Topic: 2013-04-26 BBC news: A Point Of View- Bitcoin's freedom promise  (Read 871 times)
lunarboy (OP)
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Activity: 544
Merit: 500



View Profile
April 28, 2013, 11:18:21 AM
 #1


Related to the Radio 4 documentary, but well worth a read


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22292708
cypherdoc
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 1764
Merit: 1002



View Profile
April 28, 2013, 05:05:52 PM
 #2

otoh, it just might work.
Roger_Murdock
Sr. Member
****
Offline Offline

Activity: 343
Merit: 250



View Profile
April 28, 2013, 05:41:44 PM
 #3

Yes, crime and violence will continue to exist in a world in which Bitcoin has become widely-used. And there will probably still be some violent criminal gangs who call themselves "governments." So what? The beauty of Bitcoin is that it empowers individuals and peaceful, voluntary exchange while disempowering thugs and coercion. Will Bitcoin make humanity perfectly free? Of course not. The real question is will it make us more free? I believe it already has. And my guess is it's just getting started.
davidgdg
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Activity: 552
Merit: 501


View Profile
April 28, 2013, 05:52:43 PM
 #4

It's hard to take seriously anything that John Gray says. He is an ex-libertarian who went over to the dark side about ten years ago and now just seems permanently confused.

"There is only one thing that is seriously morally wrong with the world, and that is politics. By 'politics' I mean all that, and only what, involves the State." Jan Lester "Escape from Leviathan"
marcus_of_augustus
Legendary
*
Offline Offline

Activity: 3920
Merit: 2349


Eadem mutata resurgo


View Profile
April 29, 2013, 12:09:08 PM
 #5

Quote
The trouble is that unlike the tranquil spiritual ether imagined by the ancient Greek mystic, cyber-space is all too clearly a human artefact. A site of unceasing warfare - abounding in worms and viruses, vulnerable to attack and decay, and needing scarce resources and energy to operate - the virtual realm of the internet is a projection of the human world with all its conflicts.

It is hard to take seriously the opinion of a philosopher on things 'virtual' who only refers to the technology platform performing the "virtualisation" in the abstract and in analogies.

He probably doesn't know the difference between a bit and a byte or how TCP/IP, packet communications, network routing, etc function. Yet here he is confidently espousing the technology's demise because why? ... because it is a "projection of the human world", a purely philosophical argument that has no basis in rational technical reasons.

He should take a look into the large body of philosophical work surrounding network growth, emergent behaviours, automata, whole outperforming sum of the parts, crowd-sourced solutions, etc, that have a far more rigorous empirical and quantitative grounding than "it will be limited to only ever being a projection of the human world".

Basically he is a technophobe, or techno-ignorant, defeatist ... so therefore it can't work.

Pages: [1]
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.19 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!