No problem, if you want to proclaim that forum members are not engaging in enough critical thinking.. but you gotta admit that you frequently go overboard with your insinuations that we are a bunch of lemmings.
I actually think I specified twice in the last post that I'm not referring to you when I say that,
I am not taking it personally. Perhaps, I am largely trying to push back on the idea that you have already asserted that bitcoiners give too much benefit of the doubt to others if they perceive them to be pro-bitcoin, and then if that's the case, they (or we) no longer engage in critical thinking.
and I only said you because I replied to you,
For sure, I am not taking your comments personally as if you were talking about me.. .. even if I might sometimes share beliefs with a variety of other folks on this forum, even while there might not be any particular member that I agree with about everything because I realize that every person has his/her strengths weaknesses, and sometimes I find some members who seem to be geniuses on various topics, but then I perceive that they have some flawed thinking in other areas... and surely some areas are discretionary too.. so we could disagree greatly but then just recognize that discretion may well be employed in ways that comes to different results... or sometimes come to similar (or the same results) but based on different rationale.
there are tens if not hundreds of people on this board which I don't consider lemmings at all,
hahahahaha.. I hope that it would be in the hundreds, ultimately.. even though there could be some people who any of us might consider to be a bit lame on certain topics, but they seem to be genius on other topics, so we are not necessarily going to follow or agree with them in the areas that we perceive that they are lame... but we might respect their judgement and analysis in other areas.... and surely, it is also quite likely that it is really difficult to know some members in terms of looking at their posts, and there could be a decent number of members who we believe to share a lot of agreement, but if we met them in a bar, we might discover that there are areas in which we do not agree, even though through their posts, we had tentatively concluded that we had agreed on a lot more than we ultimately discovered. .. and the opposite could be true, too.
and there are some even more radical about and against the "yes men", a lot who still think and who still scrutinize everything, although some are not as vocal as me for various reasons.
That's true... and some members might agree with you, but they do not like to type... or they cannot type very well, or maybe their English is not as good as yours.. so yeah, I understand that sometimes there might be views out there (or in the forum) in which the members might not be expressing their beliefs but those members might be glad that there are some posters who express their views.. and that might also be demonstrated partly in the merit button.. but maybe not completely.. it might be better expressed if we had a "like" button. .but we do not have that feature here.. the last time I checked.. hahahahaha.. actually as I think about it, some members might not even want to click on a "like" button, even if they agree with you.. and sometimes I am like that on "facebook" because I don't necessarily want to telegraph my views, even if I might agree.. so different strokes for different folks, and perhaps the forum (or the medium) might make a difference in terms of how free or true any kind of sentiment might be expressed.
Plus I wasn't actually restricting this to the board, in here is quite tolerable, on Twitter or Reddit the madness is on a different level!
Fair enough... but I doubt that I would change my response to you in spite of such clarifications that you are making.
There are varying levels of trust that goes into any system based on who we are and what are our life experiences, and sometimes there might be needs for a certain level of blind trust if we might have other priorities... .. so for example, if I am struggling to put a roof over my head and buy some food, I might be ready, willing and able to take any job, which I might hope to be an interim job "until I get back on my feet," but sometimes people are not in a very good position to question certain kinds of matters, and I am not even trying to excuse it,
We're not talking about Salvadorians for which 30$ could turn into 300$ in a year could mean something, from paying finally the rent on time for an entire year to actually eating enough for the whole family, I won't ever blame one such for doing what I might think is morally wrong, the only ones I have a beef with are the ones that have no other stake in this other than the price. And don't care about anything other either!
Does it really matter? I mean bitcoin is not like some shitcoin, even if some people might treat it that way, yet in some sense there might be some people who come into bitcoin for the "wrong" reasons, but then they learn about it along the way, and there might be other people who never learn anything. There are some folks who are compulsive gamblers and there are degenerate people who might end up coming into bitcoin.
Sure in the earlier days of bitcoin, such as now when we likely ONLY have about 1% of the world's population in bitcoin and even that those who are in might even be under invested (in terms of being a low coiner, rather than being a no coiner), we still might want to suggest that there is some moral responsibility in terms of how "we sell" or "promote" bitcoin, and so there could be some growing pains that last 10-20 years or longer where some folks are going to get burned or even some folks engage in really shitty risk management and no one told them to be careful, and don't put 50% into bitcoin, maybe ONLY put 5% or something that is more appropriate for you, and if you have shitty financial management and/or psychology, then maybe you should ONLY put 1% or maybe bitcoin is too volatile for you..
.....though I am not sure if I am going to suggest for anyone not to take a stake in bitcoin, but surely I do agree that people do have to make sure that they have their expenses covered and that they have enough of a budget (or timeline) before they can establish that they have enough of an extra cashflow to actually be in a position to invest in bitcoin or in anything else, but who's fault is that? Are we going to blame Bukele for that? Can't we leave some of this for people to figure out for themselves? Maybe here's the advice.. get your financial and psychological "shit together" before investing anything into bitcoin. Ok..? After that, who's responsibility is it whether normies make sure that they don't over invest into bitcoin or any other investment? Bukele's? Some normies listened to Michael Saylor and misapplied his situation to theirs? People/normies have to figure out their own finances and psychology, no? I am not going to blame saylor or bukele or PlanB for people failing/refusing to engage in their own self-assessment and proper attempts at risk management. Is that what we are talking about?
Is that what this is? You might be labelling it. "If everyone likes it, then I don't like it." hahahahaha
Actually, I remember a conversation here on the same thing:
I always find myself in a conundrum with these, my instincts scream it's going to either be fake or a fail, it's obviously good news, it has to be done, it will probably be done sometime somewhere but at the same time I really hate what comes after it, people that have no clue about the said country will start claiming stuff like Salvador will be the richest in the universe, that somehow the laws of economics will be shredded and glued together in another way, to the point that I end up hating more the outcome that I yearn for it, so I end up like this, basically typing against something I actually wish for.
Probably it's a thing I'm doing unaware, the fear of not falling for an illusion,
I know I have my flaws, a lot of them,
No kidding.. hahahahaha
I prefer to criticize things before embracing them so I don't put a stamp of approval on it with which I will have to live all my life if I'm wrong, etc etc.
Maybe that is ok.? I don't know. It seems that it is a bit of a glass-half full to the world, and sure there are people like that and any new thing they first attack it and then they might come around to liking the thing after they attack it.. but still seems a bit stressful to have such an approach.. even if it might be something that you believe works for you, overall.
At the same time, one might have the wrong impression because my post always seems contrarian but it's not that I'm always against something, I simply don't post when I share the same opinion with someone or if the whole topic has 100 posts with the same positive vibe, so it's pretty obvious I have more that argue against an idea than clapping for some other!
Sure, but are the responses either black or white?
I like to consider that I will respond only if I feel that I have some kind of personal perspective to add, or I want to quibble with something.. but sure, if there are several members who largely said what I was going to say, then my post would not be a contribution.. so maybe we are similar in that regard.. even though I might say, "I agree with what several members are saying here.. and my reason is this.", so in that regard, I might still be saying the same thing or something similar, but just letting anyone know (to the extent anyone gives a shit) what my thinking is on the topic, however, I must clarify that sometimes I am not posting for anyone else except for myself, and sometimes I feel that I just want to clarify my own position on a topic merely by typing it out.. so it might not even be the case that I know exactly which points I am going to emphasize until I finish drafting the response, so in that sense, I could end up saying something different than I expected or maybe I will even change my mind or my point of view as I am going through the process of typing it out and then realizing that I did not really believe what I was going to post, but instead, I realized that I believed the exact opposite of what I thought that I was going to say. Call me a wiffle-waffler, if you must.
I don't like when I see information that does not add up,
This for me is something on a personal level, probably more than 90% of all the fuckeries in my life be it at work, be it with family members or with so-called friends, even in your politics from town mayor to the country legislators have been caused by things that don't add up and when you finally find the missing piece you wish you wouldn't have found it at all and you could just jump in a time machine and not touch it again.
Again, part of our cultural commie heritage, lol:
Radio Yerevan was asked: "Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?"
Radio Yerevan answered: "In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn't win it, but rather it was stolen from him."
Yes.. facts can make a difference, and also tone can make a difference in terms of whether people might continue to listen to what you are saying. I used to be in a business relationship with a person who had responsibility over selling things, and I usually tried to just let that person do things the way that she was comfortable, but there were so many times that I would hear her respond, "no, but" when the potential customer asked her if she could do something, and frequently I would tell her that she was screwing up by the way she began her responses, and if she merely would say "yes, but" instead of "no, but" she would do a lot better in her way of communicating with some of those potential customers, and I was not really even suggesting that she change anything that she was saying except to just frame her answers a bit different, and she could still use a large majority of the same substance that she had been using. Because she surely was knowledgable enough about the product, and in the end, it was most likely that the answer was really "yes, but" even though her repetitive habit was to frame her answers as "no, but."...,. and sure, maybe she would revert back to "no, but" when I was not around.. but sometimes, she would actually see that saying "yes, but" was a lot more inspiring in terms of making the sale... and it was not like anything was being forced on the customer, because they were actually engaging in the conversation because they wanted the product, but it was a matter of particulars in terms of some of the tweaks and features and maybe even sometimes about price or method of payment or installments or various kinds of things that should not have been deal breakers as long as the details of the deal were clearly communicated on both sides.
Those criticisms seem to make sense.. but does that mean that the whole thing is bonkers?.. let's say that they bank on bitcoin prices going up 12x? Maybe that going up 12x could take longer than when they would need the money? So there could be some reliance on the bitcoin price going up, which makes it unrealistic to be banking on something that may or may not happen... but yeah, maybe they are able to provide some justifications for a variety of ways that the money might come or be raised or be generated or whatever.
But if this is the plan, why not say it?
We might just disagree about how something might be said... now for example, there could be a statement that says we expect BTC prices to go up 12x, but then it might not be within the same statement in which they are selling the bonds or selling the great idea for the project or when disclosures about how much it will costs and how much it will produce in profits and whether the profits even cover the costs, and surely when there are a lot of unknowns, sometimes it might not be a great idea to disclose all of the various ways that it is considered to go forward and/or the potential back up plans in case plans A, B and C fail, we happen to have plans D, E and F.. but why the fuck talk about anything beyond Plan A? and maybe a slight reference to plan B, those may well be discretionary disclosures that are not a good idea to make, and let's say for example, the most likely way forward is going to be going for Plan C, but all they talk about in public is plan A and plan B, and there might not even be any deceptive reason for not disclosing that the real plan is Plan C.. there could be legitimate reasons that are within the public's interest to present plans A and B without discussing the true plan, and I am not even saying that I know the answer or that I am trying to promote deception, but I am saying that there still could be legitimate and honorable reasons to have other plans that are not disclosed or even to present a scenario that is less likely to play out.. because in fact it could be that any of the 6 scenarios could play out.. but it may be foolish to wiffle-waffle with a lot of that and then get caught up in a variety of speculations about weeds... instead of staying focused on the forest, we are talking about irrelevant bullshit and weeds and not really getting anything done.. or maybe all of the plans and alternatives are presented in the writing or some non-public writing, but the ONLY ones in the public writing are the first three... not necessarily deceitful to engage in that kind of conduct.. and there maybe discretion in regards to some of those kinds of matters, and maybe the specifics are presented further down the line when it becomes more apparent that some of the possible scenarios are no longer viable..
Because if you're hiding from us how you're going to get that money I can only assume that, you have no clue, you don't actually plan on doing it and your city is just another Akon city!
Yes. You can assume negative if you like, and if you have a variety of reasons to not trust the leader (such as Bukele in this case) it may well not be helpful for Bukele to try to disclose to a broader constituent like you and then it ends up causing the supporters to wane.
If your plan is to bank on a 12x increase in Bitcoin price, then say it, and let's have a discussion on how feasible this is on a plan, not on, what??? Rumors?!? Jpegs?
If the leader has support they might not want to engage.. You may well be free to criticize and to dig into whatever they have said. Let's say for example, they outline everything that everyone seems to agree with in some kind of a plan, and they seem to be somewhat overly vague about how the numbers are reached (as you have already pointed out), but then they put in some kind of a vague footnote that says some kind of amorphous language about:
"an expectation that the BTC price could double or it could go up 100x or it could go up some variation in between 2x and 100x within the next 6 months to 10 years, and this plan that is being outlined is partly dependent upon such good price appreciation scenarios playing out in regard to BTC prices.. blah blah blah."
Of course, they might want to keep the language even more vague than what I have outlined because they already know that there are guys like you out there that is going to sink his teeth into any kind of detail of information, so in that regard, they are incentivized to be more vague about it, even if they do not necessarily have bad intentions, but they do not want their gambling/speculation and expectations in regards to the BTC prices saving their asses to be directly stated and admitted.
You can frame their behavior as deceitful and others might consider their behaviors to be fair given the political hostilities against them. Do you think that this get's resolved except at the ballot box, and if Bukele is likely to stay in power until 2029 and if things turn out good, then he might even be able to appoint a successor to continue after 2029.. then maybe that is their gamble that seems to be somewhat discretionary and somewhat based on BTC prices going up 12x sometime soon enough to save their assess to pay for the planned city and/or in the event that other aspects of the plan do not blow up prior to then for other reasons that may or may not be adequately prepared for.. and if a leader is popular (which Bukele is and seems to continue to be), then he has more likelihood to have more discretion (as you seem to not like, even if it might be in line with a possible positive bitcoin outcome which some scenarios of that seems to be o.k. with you, too.)..
I would think that ultimately bitcoin is for everyone
My point also, and this is one thing I love about it, is that anyone can use it the way it wants, and not just based on some whitepaper, you want to buy 0.1
BTC and wait till you can buy a Ferrari with it, go ahead, you want to hide some of your money cause you think your wife is cheating and might run away, do it, you want to buy something from Irak but no bank will let you send money, that's your choice! Go!
But using it to attract political capital, no! No!
You think that you can stop one thing without the other? I don't know.. there is a mish-mash of dynamics, and we have both traditional financial systems and bitcoin going on at the same time, and it is not like you can just get rid of one system and transition over to the other, so there are going to be reminants of both systems infiltrating the other, and surely a lot of folks consider bitcoin as a good thing because it improves incentives .. but there is almost no way in hell that there is not some kind of transitionary period that could take an additional 10 years from now or it could take another 200 years from now.. and yeah, bitcoin is going on year 14, and it has already had a lot of impacts, even though it is still a relative baby in the terms of size.. so there seems likely to be a lot of turmoil along the way and sure, you can lament or yell or whine about certain things that you see happening, and sure, you might affect some people, but how you going to say, bitcoin cannot be used to buy, attract or whatever when it comes to political influence? Seems pretty arbitrary and hard to control. Let's socially shame and meme everyone who tries to do such political attraction.. go on, do it? What's your anti-bukele meme? the pro-bukele memes seem to be winning, and I am not even going to say that people will not be critical of him, if it is perceived that he goes too far, and I suppose if you are suggesting that he has gone too far, and you are campaigning to get the word out about the numbers are not backed, then go ahead.. do it do it do it.. maybe you will be right and the price rise of bitcoin will not be enough, or perhaps maybe by the time people start to get worried that there won't be enough money, the BTC price will go up sufficiently to save his ass.. I am not even proclaiming to know, yet I don't consider the various things that he is doing to be bad, even if the numbers do not currently seem to add up, absent various miracles or fleshing out the substance a bit better or the BTC price going up 12x after the bonds had already been issues and after El Salvador had bought the bitcoin stash with that money (assuming he does not run off with them or jeopardize them in a way that someone else runs off with them).
Maybe you are part of the cult too.. stompix, you are just part of the disagreeable part of the cult.
For sure I'm part of something, maybe the cult, maybe one cult worse than this, maybe I'm just one that under his mask is more radical than the one I'm criticizing for being radical,
So often, I hear people claiming credit for being the lone voice out there, and sure sometimes they end up being correct, but not always. Sometimes I get irritated because I hear some podcasters say that they are the first ones with X, Y or Z message, and I say to myself "bullshit, you got into the BTC space in 2018, and some variation of the same thing has been being said since I got in in late 2013, and I am pretty sure that it was being said before my time, so no, you are not the first to be saying that." At the same time, it is good for people to be saying things and even being critical or even sometimes saying things that no one (or few folks) seem to be saying, and surely sometimes there can be some unique ways that people say things and then they might also get attributes for being the one who came up with such idea, which may or may not be true, just like Satoshi did not come up with bitcoin out of thin air, even if there were some innovative attributions that he made to some preexisting inventions, but no one had quite put them together like him.. and then some luck in that it got momentum and more momentum and here we are in a state of momentum that may or may not go how we expect.
who knows, I might be the one who is the most in the wrong. It's going to hurt a lot in a few years if I was wrong and I won't gain anything from being right but, here we are!
Yeah.. it could be that you were right in some ways and that you were wrong in some ways, but then you might end up being 100% right or wrong, too, and I doubt that anyone can really blame you, unless we might think that you are just trolling or that you are not being genuine.. I remember criticizing Stolfi for picking some kind of an outlandish not very likely scenario and then just dwelling upon it as if it were more likely than it is.. .. and so maybe sometimes you might be criticized for getting in the way or trying to ruin dee moo.. or for bashing on one of our heros (Bukele in this case), and if Bukele ends up rug pulling us, then you can say I told you so.. and then if Bukele starts the city and ONLY gets 1/12 of the way through because the BTC price got stuck at $23k until 2029, then you can say, I told you that he did not have a good enough back up plan.. fucking bitcoin only at $23k. .and he thought that it was going to go up 12x at some point between 2023 and 2029.. that fool... or maybe you will say.. look, the BTC price only ended up going up 6x, and Bukele's plan required 12x or more, and that's why the plan failed. He should have told us so we could have more properly debated whether we wanted to invest in that way or not... he's such a deceiving dictator.. even though he used to be liked, no one likes him now because we run out of money... and BTC prices did not go up enough to reach the goals.. so therefore there is nothing to show for all the efforts, and plus the secretary ran off with her boyfriend, and they went to Alabama... I already could have told you that was going to happen if we had properly debated the matter in 2023 until waiting until 2029 to see it all come to fruition.. just like I would have predicted if there had been proper disclosures from the start... blah blah blah.. you go the could have been stompix that was not given the proper info!!!!!!!
