I, nullius, am a 118-year-old Russian princess named Anastasia! (←
If I were to say this seriously, and say it loudly enough, and insist
on it with neither uncertainty nor hesitation, then somebody, somewhere would actually believe it—and more somebodies would have some doubts.)
Whereas BSV propaganda is actually more effective than Bcash propaganda, because contra what you were told as a child, a half-truth isn’t the worst lie...
I must preface this by noting that I doubt Craig Wright’s own ability to carry off such a—well, a
psy-op by himself. In view of how the Faketoshi sham is being handled overall, I expect that Wright has some sound advice in some form or another. He is a shrewd scammer, but he was never so smart as one who could understand the deeper details of human psychology. Money and power are on the line.
Cui bono?
Blackhat Mindhacking 101: Exploiting Wetware InsecurityThis is a basic exploit in human psychology—a sort of stack-smashing buffer overflow of the capacity to assess falsehoods:
I think in general the pattern we've seen from Wright is that he isn't particularly convincing or persuasive, but rather he exploits the fact that people are usually unprepared to deal with such an audacious liar. ... the sort of person who will go literally red faced screaming at you that NO, IN FACT THE SKY IS GREEN NOT BLUE THE SKY IS GREEN. When faced with behaviour like that some people just start wondering if maybe its legit because they'd personally never act that way unless they were telling the truth and were absolutely sure of it.
Damn. You made me look outside at the sky, just to double-check! And then, I started wondering if maybe, just maybe, I am colourblind—protanopia often
does cause difficulty distinguishing green from blue!—or perchance, I went slightly insane, and I confused the meanings of basic English words
blue and
green in some
Twilight Zone style psychosis...
You sounded
so sure. Nobody would sound so sure unless he
is sure, and he’s telling the truth. Subjectively, I know that I wouldn’t dare to tell such a whopper—and if I tried, I would stammer and stare at my toes or glance around nervously, instead of saying it straight while looking you in the eye.
Of course, it is not necessary for me to be so introspective as to think through all of this: I
feel that nobody could tell such a lie, because I instinctively feel that I myself couldn’t. I empathize: I feel what a liar would feel in that position, and thus, I feel that he must not be lying. It feels
terrifying to me.
It is not because I am so virtuous. I know that I could probably get away with the petty little lies that most people sometimes tell themselves and others. But such a ghastly monster of a lie, telling people that the sky is green? I would fear being caught; I wouldn’t dare! When I see Dr. Wright declare that he invented Bitcoin, I wince, and wonder in the back of my mind what the consequences will be if he’s lying—
no, I wouldn’t dare! Therefore, nobody would dare...
Add to that: You apparently have more education than I do, and you
definitely have more money than I do, and you’ve got plenty of friends for “social proof”—hell, you are even better-looking than I am!—I am just some guy on the Internet; how I am to be sure you’re wrong? —And
who am I to say so? I am a no-name nobody; I’m a nothing, a nullity.
(nullius = Latin: ‘of nobody, of nothing, of zero’.)Doctor Craig Satoshi
fresh-scrubbed and dolled up as best he can manage,
showing credentials, looking confident,
surrounded by a retinue (see also):
Who am I to question him? Dare I? Could the sky be green? You made me seriously
question my own judgment,
just because you sound so certain!I’ve been advised that I am “
nowhere near as smart as [I] (and apparently many merit sources) think” I am. Since my childhood, I’ve been told that I should be humble.
How can I be sure of the authority of my own mind? —
Dare I risk being left to stand alone?Nullian Rule: To exercise fully independent judgment in the face of opposition requires that one’s humility be inversely proportional to the strength of the opposition.
And the delicate Internet tea-party debate-club members would never dream of using
ad hominem argumentation,
even when it is objectively correct! Need I remind you that
argumentum ad hominem is only an “informal fallacy”, and is not at all fallacious when personality and personal credibility are relevant to—no,
are the issues being argued?
Oops, I forgot that. I became so “logical” that I
feel like I should avoid anything
ad hominem.
Furthermore, I’ve been told that it is rude to insult someone by calling him a “liar”.
Mother said so: I should
judge actions and not people, and put things in terms of “‘I’ statements” and diffident requests, not harsh demands: “Dr. Wright, you make me feel like your claims are incredible; would you please provide me
a verifiable Satoshi signature at the threshold, or at least explain to me one more time why you refuse to do so? I’m sure that you are a good person—we are
all good people, deep down inside!—there must be some little misunderstanding. Maybe
I misunderstood something.
I am sorry if I hurt your feelings; I apologise! It’s not you; it’s me.”
“
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive...” is what I was taught
not to be by my mother, and
my kindergarten teacher,
* and the finger-wagging Sunday-school teacher who told me that
the meek shall inherit the Earth, by the mass-media culture, the movies, the teevee, and the beauty-pageant winner who said that all she wants is world peace and to meet
a nice guy.
Sounds great in a swimsuit. To stand up and face someone down is to be a jerk: Cruel, contemptuous, forceful, domineering,
heartless, as if I’m some aristocrat who looks down his nose at everybody. It is indubitably unkind and unsympathetic. Why can’t I at least
be nice to somebody who tells me that the sky is green?
Philological protip: Compare the etymological development of the word “nice” with the proposition, “...der ungefährliche Mensch sein muss: er ist gutmüthig, leicht zu betrügen, ein bischen dumm vielleicht, un bonhomme. Überall, wo die Sklaven-Moral zum Übergewicht kommt, zeigt die Sprache eine Neigung, die Worte ‘gut’ und ‘dumm’ einander anzunähern.”
And I know, gmaxwell, Dr. Wright’s (actual) credentials do not compare to yours—however, Gavin Andresen’s
socially important credentials do! Why, he even has the mark of popular fame in $CURRENT_YEAR:
A Wikipedia page! Sorry, I could not find one for you (despite your @wikimedia address). And Gavin is the official Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, he has a three-digit forum ID, he hob-nobs with big cheeses in the government and the Council on Foreign Relations... Even if I were so terrifically prideful as to argue against Dr. Wright,
who am I to argue with Gavin? —Who am I, just-nobody, to
stand alone and call him out, cast the first stone and say that he is an
untrustworthy liar?
Dr. Wright has been expertly “verified” by the Bitcoin Chief Scientist. He also has some peer pressure on his side. hv_ and his buddies are Internet nobodies; but then, I’m the guy who named himself “of nobody” on the Internet. Who am I to call hv_ such nasty names as “shill”, “liar”, etc.? Him, and plenty like him (
a dime a dozen)... Who am I to stand against Dr. Wright
and the Bitcoin Chief Scientist
and a crowd of folks? Authority plus peer pressure!
*again When
Dr. Wright sounds so sure...Anyway, Sir Maxwell, I feel sheepish; I admit that you may have a point here. If I dare to repudiate your fully self-confident declaration that the sky is green, then either people will think I’m a jerk, or people will think I’m a fool. Maybe both! I dunno. Maybe you are right.
Maybe my eyes are lying to me, or maybe I made a big mistake—and then everyone will laugh at me, because the sky actually
is green, and
the Earth is flat, and
2 + 2 = 5, and Dr. Craig Steven Wright invented Bitcoin, and I’m just so stupid that I didn’t realize it.
* nullius is suddenly feeling so insecure. :-(
Craig Wright does not need for a majority of people to believe him: He needs only for a hard core of shills and fanatics to believe him, whilst the majority wavers.Military counterinsurgency studies show that a revolution can be carried off by as little as 10% of the population. This applies to both violent and nonviolent “revolutions” in the sense that the deciding factor is social change of opinion. The majority is always deadweight: Apathetic fence-sitters,
at best. If the majority has no too-strong opinion, then its opinion will be carried by a vocal, absolutely fanatical minority—
if there is no opposing minority of equal or greater strength and certitude.
In the current context: If Craig Wright can play the mass-media to introduce
doubt into the minds of most people who have heard of Bitcoin, and if he is shilled to the hilt by a cadre of hv_ types,
and if the only significant opposition is a bunch of forum theorists who won’t push the issue as hard as hv_ does,
then Faketoshi will win.
That he is wrong is irrelevant. History shows that contra popular delusions, the truth is a fragile and precious thing. Lies are robust, because they appeal to the power of human frailty—and because they can be manufactured at will: I have only one truth, but Craig Wright can make up a new lie every day so as to drown my protests of truth in endless arguments.
A compounding factor is the distaste that many Bitcoiners have for drama, hostility, and
especially, emotionalist arguments and
ad hominem attacks. It is good to have a culture that values logical arguments—but do not confuse
critical thinking skills for efficacy at persuasive argument. If Craig Wright wields
false persuasive arguments against your facts and logic, then he will win
the hearts and minds of the majority, whose critical thinking skills are negligible. As I have said before:
Don’t bring a sword to a gunfight.If you
debate the
question of Craig Wright’s
claims to or before the average person, then you may
mostly convince him—yet he will harbour a lingering doubt:
How can I be sure that Craig Wright isn’t Satoshi? He seems so sure... As aforesaid, the doubt is Faketoshi’s trump card, his secret nuclear weapon. And you allowed that doubt to persist, via your first mistake:
Debating a
question in a
reasonable manner, which implies that there is a reasonable question to debate!
Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. He did not invent Bitcoin. He is a liar, a scammer, and a grand-scale
identity thief. Every
expert who has ever examined the matter has so concluded, without any doubt—except for Gavin, the same Gavin of the thoroughly corrupted so-called “Bitcoin Foundation”, the same Gavin who
visited the CIA and the CFR before embarking on a years-long campaign of fork attacks against Bitcoin!
Gavin has no credibility.That is a conclusion, not an argument—and certainly not an invitation to debate. I will
only debate Faketoshi or his shills
if they can produce the most basic piece of evidence: A verifiable signed statement by one of Satoshi’s known keys, identifying Craig Wright as Satoshi.
They do not do so, because they are liars or dupes—period. That is the truth, the objective truth, based on
facts and not “debates”. Complaints >/dev/null
This is how it’s done, folks!
Don’t waver in the face of lies. Don’t quibble with liars. The emotional question in the minds of those watching these “debates”:
Are you as confident that Craig Wright is not Satoshi, as he seems to be when he declares that he is?I exceed his confidence because I am a Bitcoin expert, I have examined the facts, and I know that Wright is dead wrong. I know the truth. I do not need to argue.
* A small personal story—not quite about kindergarten, per se: When I was in the sixth grade, a teacher said something gratuitously rude to the class unpopular kid—and the whole class laughed at him, except for me. He was the stereotypical unpopular kid: Jewish, nerdy as hell, a face as handsome as dog barf, skinny and runty, but inadvertently too wont to advertise his 148 IQ—and he was enthusiastic about books of tricky riddles and little mathematical puzzles.
He was admittedly annoying: Mostly harmless; but all he ever wanted to talk about was puzzle books, Star Trek (yes!), or this top-of-the-line new computer that his family had just bought, way back when that was a big thing... And since he knew that he annoyed people, he had the exact opposite of self-confidence. He thus annoyed all the worse, with a self-conscious, desperate puppy-dog friendliness.
I don’t remember what the teacher said to him; it was forgettable, just a matter of picking on him like everybody else did. There certainly was no reason. He was supinely diffident, a wannabe teacher’s pet; he wouldn’t have even imagined doing anything to incur the teacher’s negative opinion, much less dared it. And for my part, the teacher never would have expected me to dare opposing authority. A congenital tendency to orderliness is easily mistaken for blind obedience by those who see only the surface.
I abruptly stood up on my chair, and told the teacher with cold courtesy that she was wrong. Cue twenty pairs of eyes suddenly staring at me—of a sudden, you could have heard a pin drop. ’Twas the silence of mass shock, from the teacher on down.
Later that day, the teacher approached me in the hallway, hugged me, and profusely apologised to me. I have no idea what she said to him, if anything at all. I never asked him, because I wasn’t really his friend, either: I was born to be nobody’s; I kept everybody at arm’s length. He liked me, though—probably because I didn’t treat him like dirt, he could invite me to his birthday party without the risk of a crushing rejection, and he respected my IQ of higher-than-his.
Now, I am not sure whether I accidentally wrote a saccharine glurge story, or showed myself tenfold as arrogant for my sense that noblesse oblige. Anyway, the point of the story is about the social pressure of combined authority and peer opinions in the abstract, irrespective of the particulars of the circumstance. Moreover, I have with myself a running contest for the title of “the longest footnote in history”—so to speak.
Postscript: A Liar’s EquivocationBoldface is mine:
So Gavin believes there's an equal chance that Craig is a "master scammer." The narrative that he completely believes Wright is Satoshi has been bogus since before BSV was even an idea.
Soooooo... Let me get this straight. After he played a pivotal rôle in the creation of a monster, your excuse for Gavin is that he equivocates?
Either way, he clearly says Wright should be ignored.
...and that he sometimes may whine that, in substantial effect, would you please ignore something that is very embarrassing to him—which he himself is too dishonest, too cowardly, and/or too compromised to repudiate with the same mass-media “Bitcoin Foundation Chief Scientist” starburst as with which he originally “verified” Faketoshi?
You never see BSVers talk about this blog entry when they talk about Gavin, its always a YouTube clip of an interview he gave _before_ he wrote this post.
You see, that is the “nice”
* thing about equivocation: Faketoshi can get the support he needs, and Gavin can try to repair his reputation without actually repudiating his “verification”
unequivocally, in no uncertain terms.
(* See above notes on “nice” etymology.)Gavin has done massive actual harm: Bitcoin Foundation, XT, Faketoshi “verification”, Btrash shilling... You are defending him because he says there’s an “equal chance” that Craig Wright is either a scammer or Satoshi!?
Not falling for that one. If he ever wants to be known as anything but a malicious liar, he needs to come clean and put serious effort into repairing the
actual damage that he did. Shrugging doesn’t cut it.
