johhnyUA: Off-topic, but thanks for suggesting this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200104000755/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1159946.420
By way of general preface to my replies, I think that I should better explain what I am trying to do, in terms that are not so abstract.
Imagine that somebody made the following nonsensical argument in defence of a scammer who was caught red-handed:
Scamming is a human right! There is nothing wrong with lying to people and ripping them off. Those who try to stop scammers are oppressing their right to redistribute wealth to themselves, a charitable end which justifies any means whatsoever.
Would you ever engage in a financial transaction with that person? I doubt it.
You would not only distrust “hypothetical’s” judgment about trust in others: You would distrust “hypothetical”, period.
That hypothetical is intentionally extreme. I think that “cryptohunter” did a lesser, subtler, and less-obvious version of the same thing. He admitted that plagiarists should be banned, but demanded that people stop being so terribly
mean to them. He said that some plagiarists have “semi legit reasons” (!), and he was clearly in sympathy with those who did this because they are (actually or allegedly) poor. Without saying so outright, he made it seem that the plagiarists were somehow victims.
Because I evaluate people, not mere actions, my gut reaction was, “He is making excuses for dishonesty; what does that say about him?” I mean that as a practical question, not only the theory of whether he is a good or bad person.
In real life, most liars and scammers are not psychopathic evil geniuses who honestly say to themselves, “I want to rip people off, and I think that’s cool: I am a predator who eats human flesh, an economic Hannibal Lechter; I drink the sweat and blood of people who have worked hard for their money, and I love myself all the more for it!” Some are; and those are usually too busy holding political office to post on the Bitcoin Forum, or else they work for banks or law firms. The ones in Bitcoin would be hacking exchanges or pulling huge scams for hundreds of BTC or more, not swindling newbies for sats. That’s not because they are so great, but rather, because they are comfortable with criminality: They can plan it in advance, eyes open, with coldly rational calculation of risk and reward, and set long-term criminal goals that are not ridiculously pathetic.
Most of the others are only weak wretches who choose the path of least resistance, all along making excuses—first, excuses to themselves. It starts small, from the ease of excusing something a little bit wrong, and then grows into a habit, with excuses growing commensurately. Nobody starts out by declaring, “My highest aspiration in life is to become a career forum scammer!” or, “Plagiarizing texts to pad my post count is my awe-inspiring skill that will make me rich and powerful!”
Incidentally, this is why bingo-card ridicule is so effective. It is much harder to hurt the feelings of a blackhat who pwns Equifax—or of people accustomed to being called “Mr. President” (though this post may theoretically do the latter
, nf V bapr qvq sbe fbzr onax rkrphgvirf jub znqr zr ovt gebhoyr).
(Of course, the foregoing dichotomy is a simplified generalization that does not cover all possible roads to perdition. There are other ways; for example, a review of the downfall of the forum’s most-untrusted active user would be interesting, but offtopic on this thread.)
Protip: Everybody has it tough in life—some more, some less. Everybody sometimes faces pressure and a choice between the hard way, and the easy way out. The type of person who excuses dishonesty on the basis of neediness may find himself in an opportune situation to rip someone off, and maybe he himself feels some desperate need at the moment, and then—well, then, you do not want to be the one trading with that person.
As for him, he will never admit to himself that he’s just another scammer: He had an excuse, or at least a “semi legit reason”. It would be cruel if someone were to ridicule him with an excuse bingo game, for that would honestly declare to him who
and what he really is. How could he look at himself in the mirror then? You mean bully, won’t you please think of his self-esteem?
As I said,
I would not trust “cryptohunter” with even a millisatoshi. That’s a judgment that he himself is untrustworthy...
The course of action that you should be taking is ~ them from your trust list as you don't trust their judgement.
...not only that I don’t trust his judgment about the trustworthiness of others.
I actually asked theymos to give input on this, but he may or may not.
Thanks. But isn’t this the very reason why he created the flag system? I didn’t flag #92110: I saw the new flags, didn’t see any explicit criteria that met this situation, and left an old-fashioned negative feedback.
Unfortunately, since feedbacks have been neutered, this will do little to protect newbies who do not know how to investigate through the trust system. But that is a different topic.
In OP, I referred to trust feedback as a sort of “common law”. It uses have been decided and adapted by precedents set in reaction to different types of untrustworthy behaviour. For an example that I myself experienced, two years ago, when the merit system was introduced, scammers and spammers immediately started feeding merit to their alts. People started red-tagging them; and it became a regular practice, widely accepted on grounds that it was necessary to protect the the integrity of the merit system. If theymos ever made a statement specifically about issuing negative trust feedback for merit abuse, I must have missed it. (Granted, I may have done just that.)
As such, I wanted to see people’s reactions—not as any sort of vote, but more to assess baseline acceptability by the forum community. Thus far, reactions are a mixed bag: Some approval, some idiocy that I can safely disregard, and some disapproval...
Is it supposed to be a big deal or something?
It seems nobody really cares too much other than to say it is a pretty shitty tag and a pathetic choice of a target..
...case in point.
I see no evidence that the sky is falling, or that I accidentally broke the trust system.
(It is an interesting question, but offtopic here, whether the trust system was broken by placing DT under long-term control of mob-rule, and thus demagogues, alt-armies, and people with infinite free time to figure out new ways to game the system.)Steamtyme raised a concern that is not invalid
per se, but it is not something I care much about:
Actions such as this are honestly only emboldening the individuals who feel on the outs, or that having opinions are why they are targeted. They then use these instances as a lightning rod to others, and they aren't wrong when they get handed these gifts that "prove" their opinions on the system to be right.
Aren’t such individuals bold anyway, without “emboldening”? I see no shortage of prolific new topics by people playing the victim because they got their hands caught in the cookie jar. Moreover, I myself do not customarily give a tinker’s damn about the bluster of such people. They will make noise; and if you fear the noise they make, then they will make worse noise.
I don’t see any other criticisms warranting a response more specific than: I will agree to disagree.
Note to self: In the future, on self-moderated threads, add an explicit note that posts quoting a whole post will be deleted. I don’t want to censor hostility toward me in a reputational discussion, so I will not delete this one. But please, for the sake of readers, have some forum etiquette!
1. noobious does not have a miilisatoshi so it matters little to cryptohunter we are sure
You expect for that to make a Bitcoin privacy advocate reveal some juicy evidence of his money? LOL.
Nice to put this fucktard in our sights though and see his true colors. Look forward to plenty of public destruction scumbag. Fancy words and " sounding smart" won't stop us pulling you apart in debate.
Look forward to your own thread.
Writing skills would help. Graded
F. Try harder.
And wow, nullius is back! My attention span doesn't allow me to read everything he writes, but it's cool that he returned.
Thanks.
I don't know if TECSHARE is right that he's an alt of someone, but who knows.
I will mathematically prove how this works. Given:
- nullius = Lauda (Source: forum somebody said so)
- nullius = Satoshi (Source: forum somebody said so)
- Craight Wright = Satoshi (Source: Craight Wright)
n = l, n = s, cw = s
∴ l = cw
Lauda is Craig Wright! Q.E.D.
