[Poll] Tell me if you are who I think you are...

[Mike Christ]

I'm not really surprised; "white" is a blanket for so many different ethnicities, both western and eastern.  I picked non-white, since my mother's native, and I'm often mistaken for philippino, despite my 100% white Santa Clause father.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

The pool confused me aswell..

53 and white male. Which one do I click?

[Pale Phoenix]

53 and white male. Which one do I click?

Do a lot of drugs in the disco era?

I'm guessing this is your demo: white/male/<20, >49

[mearylll]

The pool confused me aswell..

Me too I gave a wrong answer but I'm in the usual suspect group.

This make me wonder if the 10% of females is less or bigger in reality.

[Lethn]

LOL that's just an example, I'd end up writing out the whole poll myself it I put in every ethnicity out there and for your information I'm half-Irish motherfucker

And what's your other half?

Are you trying to use Irish as an example of non-white?

I'm saying that it's incredibly ignorant to define people as white/black particularly as I'm an artist and understand the concept of there being more than two colours in the world, oh and I'm not colour blind.

And yes, I'm half-irish/half-english, there was actually a whole daily show segment on this kind of thing where politics and mainstream media loved to group everyone together in easily definable ways like hispanics or blacks or Europeans and there are many different groups in that group who hate each others guts.

[jackjack]

The pool confused me aswell..

The pool makes me wet

[Lauda]

The pool confused me aswell..

The pool makes me wet

Okay mister wet guy.
I meant the poll 

[oda.krell]

LOL that's just an example, I'd end up writing out the whole poll myself it I put in every ethnicity out there and for your information I'm half-Irish motherfucker

And what's your other half?

Are you trying to use Irish as an example of non-white?

I'm saying that it's incredibly ignorant to define people as white/black particularly as I'm an artist and understand the concept of there being more than two colours in the world, oh and I'm not colour blind.

And yes, I'm half-irish/half-english, there was actually a whole daily show segment on this kind of thing where politics and mainstream media loved to group everyone together in easily definable ways like hispanics or blacks or Europeans and there are many different groups in that group who hate each others guts.

Don't know if you're refering to my poll in particular, but I thought I already addressed that point. Yes, white vs. non-white is incredibly crude and simplifying, bordering on rudeness. At the same time, as this poll so far confirms, it is not without predictive/empirical power.

More precisely, from a, say, biologist's perspective, or that of an artist, white vs. non-white is probably dumb and meaningless. But in an economic context, it is de facto an important distinction. It's kind of sad that it is still a meaningful distinction, but don't blame the messenger for the message.

My entire question was about: who will hold power/wealth in the bitcoin future. Right now, it looks like it'll be predominantly white guys. Doesn't that make you at least the smallest worried or uncomfortable?

[Lethn]

Not if the free market we have now stays as it is no you should also bear in mind this is an incredibly small poll of only 95 people which doesn't represent the population of the world or even the amount of people using Bitcoin, in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there were just as many or maybe more women/ethnicities because of the pretty anonymous nature of Bitcoin. If everyone's only identity is an address then how can people judge them on their appearance or gender unless they reveal themselves?

Don't fall into the traps that the mainstream media use of thinking that percentages and polls of people in the mere thousands means shit.

[oda.krell]

Not if the free market stays as it is no you should also bear in mind this is an incredibly small poll of only 95 people which doesn't represent the population of the world or even the amount of people using Bitcoin, in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there were just as many or maybe more women/ethnicities because of the pretty anonymous nature of Bitcoin. If everyone's only identity is an address then how can people judge them on their appearance or gender unless they reveal themselves?

It's not about appearance or judgement, but the early adopter demographics, which consistently seems to be dominated by young guys, usually white with a few Asian guys in the mix.

It's been like that during the Internet boom, the dotcom bubble, and I suspect it'll be like that again during the early stages of bitcoin, i.e. now.

Sure, you can say, "what't the problem. us nerds are just quick to adopt new technologies", but I see several problems with this. (a) I personally think diversity/heterognity almost always beats homogenity, and (b) in 20 years from now, when bitcoin is fully accepted (let's say it is), we will probably have to somehow correct for this, similar to how we do now with quotas for female CEO/board members (in the EU) or affirmative action at universities ( in the US)

I think it would be kind of preferable if we could get some more people from outside the core group to join our little experiment now. But I admit, I don't think it's very realistic.

[Lethn]

It isn't realistic, you have to realise as well there are some people who just don't care much about this sort of thing, in fact I'm betting that's how most people will feel, I always hear these dumb arguments from rights groups about how the leaders of various organisation etc. 'should' be hiring more of the group they're representing. How? If they aren't interested in doing the job then they're not going to do it well and you can't bloody well force them. This will be a pretty stereotypical example but imagine what one of those really girly stereotypical barbie style girls would say if they were suddenly told they'd should give up the work they prefer and go and work in a steel mill, they'd probably say "Go fuck yourself" or something along those lines.

[oda.krell]

It isn't realistic, you have to realise as well there are some people who just don't care much about this sort of thing, in fact I'm betting that's how most people will feel, I always hear these dumb arguments from rights groups about how the leaders of various organisation etc. 'should' be hiring more of the group they're representing. How? If they aren't interested in doing the job then they're not going to do it well and you can't bloody well force them. This will be a pretty stereotypical example but imagine what one of those really girly stereotypical barbie style girls would say if they were suddenly told they'd should give up the work they prefer and go and work in a steel mill, they'd probably say "Go fuck yourself" or something along those lines.

The "barbie in a steel mill" example is such an oversimplification, it is not really useful in my opinion.

I'm not a huge fan of affirmative action/quotas/etc either, but I'm not entirely against them either.

The ultra-short version of my argument in favor of them would be: (a) for pretty much all throughout history, only men have been recipients of the highest level of education. it is naive to assume that 50 to 100 years after we've opened up the opportunities to everyone, the playing field is level already. (b) even assuming there are inherent differences that make guys more likely to become early adopters of technology, it could be in the best interest of all of society to correct for this -- only to a degree of course, otherwise you'll stifle natural competition too much in all likelihood.

[elor70]

Im a little younger than 20

[oda.krell]

Im a little younger than 20 ::)

there's an option for that. But I guess my idea to randomize the order wasn't that smart after all :/

[b!z]

NSA information collection scheme?

[oda.krell]

NSA information collection scheme?

Right. Cause if they are actually capable of doing what people think they are capable of doing, they'd need a poll for that kind of info.

[b!z]

NSA information collection scheme?

Right. Cause if they are actually capable of doing what people think they are capable of doing, they'd need a poll for that kind of info.

That's probably what an NSA officer would say.

[marcovaldo]

Interesting poll. I would have guessed white male between 20-49 ofcourse dominant, but it seems very dominant, confirming we are still in very early adopter phase.

I am a white male 20 - 49

[Peter Lambert]

Not if the free market we have now stays as it is no you should also bear in mind this is an incredibly small poll of only 95 people which doesn't represent the population of the world or even the amount of people using Bitcoin, in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if there were just as many or maybe more women/ethnicities because of the pretty anonymous nature of Bitcoin. If everyone's only identity is an address then how can people judge them on their appearance or gender unless they reveal themselves?

You also have to realize that this is the English section of the forum, if you ran the same poll in the [insert any other language] subsection of the forum you would probably get very different results.

LOL that's just an example, I'd end up writing out the whole poll myself it I put in every ethnicity out there and for your information I'm half-Irish motherfucker

And what's your other half?

Are you trying to use Irish as an example of non-white?

I'm saying that it's incredibly ignorant to define people as white/black particularly as I'm an artist and understand the concept of there being more than two colours in the world, oh and I'm not colour blind.

And yes, I'm half-irish/half-english, there was actually a whole daily show segment on this kind of thing where politics and mainstream media loved to group everyone together in easily definable ways like hispanics or blacks or Europeans and there are many different groups in that group who hate each others guts.

So you are half-white and half-another shade of white. So you definitely fall under the "white" category.

Now, my nephews are half-white and half-Aztec, which category do they fit under? The answer is whichever category they identify themselves with.

[oda.krell]

You also have to realize that this is the English section of the forum, if you ran the same poll in the [insert any other language] subsection of the forum you would probably get very different results.

I have some real doubts about it. What's the biggest non-English subforum? German? Don't expect too many people that fall out of the core category (I'm German myself, btw).

One thing is true: bitcoin seems to have some success in China. Assuming most Chinese forum member don't post in the English subforum, you're right, they're skewing the results quite a bit.