Mathew Crawford & Digital God
preaching the bitcoin gospel from the bully pulpit
When I first wrote ‘Digital God,’ it was a typo for Bitcoin as digital gold. But then, Mathew Crawford wrote a hit piece on me called Technical Education vs. Mental Illness. Mathew parodies me as a mentally ill nuclear protester named Maya holding the sign of a two-headed snake. She demoralizes the workers at the plant from producing the safe and effective energy that would make everyone’s lives better.
At the same time, I got this fine article from Truthful Planet’s Newsletter about a book called Money as God?:
I realized this is really about faith. Those who question the science of Bitcoin are to be pilloried as heretics messing up the illusion for everyone else with their pesky questions. And since perception IS its power, critics must be silenced.
On a Crypto-Education chat group I was invited to join, the moderator told me not to talk about conspiracy theories, keep my comments short and don’t criticize Bitcoin. However, he commended my courage in ‘stepping into the fire.’ He said “most people would be afraid to enter the chat of someone who’d just roasted them publicly on YT.”
What he considered to be ‘a roast’ was him saying “I could refute all of your negative points about Bitcoin if I wasn't so tired of doing the same thing for the last 10 years.” and “Bitcoin is nothing like gambling.” and “The farther I go in your video the more I am just laughing at your lack of understanding. … I made it through 12 minutes but that's as far as I go.”
The perception of insults as logical arguments and logical arguments as insults seems to be a way to differentiate men from women, now that genitalia are off the table (as Miss Manners says they should be! Gross!)
Curiously, after Mathew responded to my Substack, my YT channel got no views for the next 16 hours—something that’s never happened before. It reminded me of my year-old video Mealy-Mouthed Malone getting a second strike right before Malone’s PsyWars lecture came out and got 1M views unimpeded.
Mathew has now deleted his comments on my Substack, which made them disappear without a trace, along with the responses to them. Curious, that doesn’t happen when anyone else deletes their comment. However, I did post my responses to him in my Notes, which seemed excessive at the time but now seems prudent.
When he indefinitely suspended me from his Substack, however, the Notes that I’d posted with my responses also disappeared. Weird, huh? Fortunately I’d saved them into my own draft article, just in case.
I also saved his comment that he suspects the banking cartel created Bitcoin as a way to continue their Whole Earth Theft without the bother of WWIII. I’ll post that at the end so you can read his words verbatim.
So I will first read my responses on my article, that somehow were deleted with his comments. Then I’ll jump into his parody of me, and then read the comments I responded to before he indefinitely suspended me.
Grab your binoculars and popcorn:
mosquito bytes & bits
My last article was on Gabe and Mathew Crawford’s interview called BitCoin’s Rise & Its Future Role: Digital Gold or Tulip Mania? In it, I said that Mathew’s position that crypto-scams were ‘a mosquito bite’ was a little bit callous. He responded that I had ‘impugned his character’. I responded to his initial comment by saying:
When Gabe raised issues about people being scammed, you brushed off his concerns with 'That doesn't bother me.' You didn't counter his points but gave a response on how you felt about it.
My friend didn't invest his retirement savings, he set up the initial token transfer with an agency his research had shown to be reputable. And his account was drained, before he caught it and was able to reverse it. Any decentralized system of anonymous, secretive transfers is going to be prone to that.
Bitcoin is designed for savvy investors who have the time to educate themselves and have the money to risk. I think it's likely to be a very lucrative risk, especially with the financial blob and gov't buying in. If that's your goal, I'm not disagreeing. My purpose with the caret is different.
My biggest concern, as I've stated in previous episodes, is that we don't know how to disagree productively on ideas. Your initial comment was that my questions were wasting your time and I should do the research to convince myself why I'm wrong, saving you the trouble. Was that not an insult, Mathew?
You've told me you have no time or energy to understand my caret system or read my book. You're now saying I have no credentials to understand economics, and I'm at the baby steps of people just starting their learning curve. But that's not a character attack, right?
You are irritated and feel I'm callous to even start a conversation without the years of rigorous study in a 'technical discipline' that you've had (and somehow this is related to Russell Brand?)
The decade that I spent researching geo-economics is 'dancing on the first step of a long staircase.' It's merely a 'pet theory' that others have grown out of. And then you say, "I won't bother taking time with you in the future. It's far too much trouble." That seems as if you consider my intelligence so far beneath you that the gift of your attention is squandered. Is that not demeaning?
But let me ask a simple question: How does it work under Bitcoin when someone borrows money to buy a house? This is how 94% of dollars are created today. That's how the bankers control our lives and take 30 yrs of our labor. How does Bitcoin change this?
I will concede your point, Mathew, that it's not callous to consider someone who's been scammed to be 'a mosquito bite' if the system ends the "packs of feral pitbulls tearing people apart." However, there's no quantitative and systematic way you've shown that Bitcoin will do this. Those being torn apart are not the savvy investors with money to risk.
These seem like valid questions that Gabe raised, and that other intelligent readers on my stack also voiced. I'm always willing to doubt my own intelligence but the clear thinking and deep research of people in my comment threads blows me away. I can't dismiss them as naive, deluded, self-important or however you're characterizing me. I'm sorry you're choosing not to engage here, and hope you know that our disagreement doesn't change the high regard I have for you.
To Mathew’s second comment, I responded:
I am REALLY not interested in you holding my hand, Mathew. You say that I will 'think' you're being insulting again, when you're merely stating the facts. Let's test whether that is merely my perception. You write:
"The caret is a nonsensical system that nobody who has studied Economics well will spend much time discussing."
"What I would recommend for everyone, but most particular those like Tereza who are going to wade into public conversation about Bitcoin, is to read up on the basics. When I initially got irritated with Tereza, it was because she wanted me to hold her hand through google searches on the basics, then jumped to this message that, for anyone who has learned the basics, demonstrates that she did not bother to take that step. I suspect that her decade spent studying geo-economics was approached similar, and without any mentor guiding her, because she came up with a system that leaps over a hundred simple tests against reality that it would fail. It has the appearance of watching a person who hasn't learned how to balance an equation explain a new plan for operating a nuclear energy plant, except the risks and implications are much larger."
By your admission, you have spent zero time understanding the caret system. Yet you confidently proclaim it nonsense. You believe that I shouldn't 'wade into public conversation about Bitcoin' without doing my own research first.
On my article, I've given extensive explanations to questions readers have about my caret system, in which each commenter has been satisfied that it does address that issue. You haven't answered a single objection I've raised to Bitcoin but only answered with irritation, appeals to your authority, attempts to make me feel guilty for taking your attention away from other things, or belittling insults.
On this thread, Shane Pisani, who does know Bitcoin, has engaged in a long and respectful conversation with me comparing it to the caret. He has seen my questions as valid and worthy of analysis, whether or not we agree. Teo Jacobsen, who's read my book, invited me to join the Crypto Education Affair chat, which I understand broke off from your group. Kate Smiley also encouraged me to join and Tonika, who's also read my book. No one there has treated me or my ideas with the disrespect you do.
And Mark, to whom you're responding, has put more work into the logistics of my system than anyone, since he's found it worth his time to develop an app for it. Fadi Lama, another author of a book on geo-economics, has felt it to be a text equal to a graduate education. So your glib dismissal of me, based on no knowledge, makes me wonder why you think intimidation will work to deflect attention from your lack of answers to my objections.
In your reply to Mark you say that you suspect the Military Occult Banking Syndicate (MOBS) created Bitcoin in order to keep their Grand Theft Earth going without engaging in WWIII. I agree with you! It transfers ownership of the world's properties from the petrodollar, which is in freefall but hasn't yet splatted, to Bitcoin. As my book explains, derivative bets were at $700T in 2013, and take superpriority over deposits if a bank goes bust. There are now those derivative bets on BTC, so the MOBS will continue to own us even if BTC goes bust.
You say that BTC isn't 'liberating' and that's just hopium. What it will do is make the Grand Theft Earth transparent. Is that enough? What the caret does is take away the assets from the bankers—the houses and land—and makes sure their value can never leave the commonwealth. Why not let the dollar go belly-up if we've withdrawn our houses and mortgages from backing it? Let the bankers keep their currencies while we take back the wealth that props them up.
I don't think that pulling the 'authority card' works very well with people who are thinking for themselves, and I'm certain that includes all of my readers. Maybe yours are more easily swayed.
And finally, I detailed many of his response by categorizing the rhetorical fallacy they used. Mathew’s comments are in quotes:
"From my perspective, it is far more frightening to me that you reached this point, describing it as a decade studying geo-economics, without anyone chiming in to steer your education in a more rigorous direction." Appeal to authority
"... a perspective that comes from tens of thousands of hours of intense labor, where I see no evidence that you learned what any of that labor looks like." Assuming that you and I have the same hours in a day, and I've lived more days than you, this assumes that how you've chosen to spend your time is inherently more valuable than how I have. Why would that be so?
"I'm the only person I've seen trying to address it while those efforts are sabotaged both from above and from below the baselines of power." Sympathy bid
"Gabe's biggest mistake is a misunderstanding of Bitcoin, but understandable in the sense that it was built on hopium sold by early advocates who either themselves misunderstood it, or were simply pushing adoption based on the emotional desires of audiences." States wrongness as a fact and 'forgives' it based on Gabe being emotionally gullible and not rational.
[Two paragraphs arguing privacy] deflection to something NOT one of my objections, and not what I cited from Gabe.
"Somewhere close to 99% of money scammed during our lifetimes has nothing to do with Bitocin." Lesser of two evils argument that has nothing to do with comparing solutions.
"In fact, I'm wondering if the story is even true, and if it is true, I'm wondering why you would think it is relevant." A personal story of a friend having his account emptied by a crypto-scam isn't relevant to whether scams are a mere 'mosquito-bite'? And accusing me of lying about it? Character attack
"You want for me to have shown that Bitcoin will stop people from being scammed by following con men who exploit their lack of understanding of a process?" Straw man argument. Turns a question about a systematic protection against scams (as the caret has) into following con men.
"Your comment is also weird to me on the level that, so far as I can tell, I haven't seen you show the ability to have a quantitative conversation that would be meaningful in the grand scheme of things. Your caret system is a kitchen table math exercise, at best, on a quantitative level." On the original interview, I stated that I wanted to lure you into engaging with the math, aka quantitative side, of the caret system. You told me your health required you to conserve your energy. But now, after refusing that conversation, you say I don't have the ability. Weird.
"I could say more, but I'm trying my best to manage my rest and energy so that I can recover" Sympathy bid and guilt-mongering. By implication, I'm making you more sick because you have to respond to my attacks. Yet the closest I've come to criticizing you has been my statement that not caring about scams is callous. I don't think anyone can read what you've said about me without seeing that as an attack on my intelligence, my work ethic in rigorous research, and my honesty in lying about a friend's experience in order to make a point.
I'm sympathetic to the health ordeal you attribute to your work on the DMED data, but I don't take responsibility for making it worse by not capitulating on my points and meekly resigning myself to being too ignorant to be in the conversation.
mathew’s article:
Mental Illness Wrecks Democratic Participation in Technology
A young woman stands in front of a nuclear power plant. She is a practiced speaker. She protests the dangers of nuclear power holding a large sign with a picture of a two-headed snake. The audience seeing this protest in person and over the internet includes many people who then relate the two-headed snake to the nuclear plant, then donate to the organization run by the woman with the sign. This organization gains momentum, leading to pressure on the company running the nuclear plant. The quality of life of everyone working to create energy at that plant begins to degrade as their costs playing public relations and legal games increases, even though this particular plant is cleaner, better run, and more efficient in terms of negative externalities (risks and pollution emissions) than any power plant of any kind within hundreds of miles.
The young woman, Maya, tells her audience that she studied geo-economics for a decade, so she came to understand how the community should manage the nuclear plant. In truth, she did uncover various forms of corruption between government and the energy industry, and spends time getting friendly with members of the community, telling them stories of her research, patting them on the head each time one of them expresses their own frustrations, real or imagined.
While most of that corruption emanated from Big Oil's early consolidation of capital and political power, Maya aims community outrage at the operators of the nuclear plant. The value of the company running the plant declines, and the owners begin talking about selling the plant and walking away. Maya tells the community that her years of experience studying the issues of nuclear power by watching Russell Brand videos help elevate her understanding of the nuclear plant, so you can trust her to use your donations to buy the plant and operate it according to community interests. She has never operated machinery more sophisticated than a car or personal computer, nor worked in an industrial business of any kind.
In reality, Maya never solved an equation involving basic nuclear physics. She does not know the basic terminology involved in nuclear energy. She knows the name of the elemental isotope used in the nuclear plant, and can rattle off several facts about it that anyone can read off of Wikipedia, but she has no real understanding of how nuclear energy is generated. She cannot explain the differences between the processes of generating endothermic and an exothermic reactions, or the calculations associated with the size of the artificial lake on the side of which a cooling tower sits. When confronted with this lack of understanding, she turns the accusation toward the operators of the plant, saying that they have not demonstrated their understanding of how to safely generate energy from unstable elements. She consistently baits conversation with the operators of the planet through local newspaper articles that explain how they behave with callousness toward her unnamed friend who suffered a mild injury that made him want to kill himself after being conned by a conman into doing something dangerous at a nuclear power plant that might or might not have been the local plant. Enough of the crowd buys Maya's story that the economics of the power plant are under local mob control unless surveillance and policing are ramped up to control the mob's proximity to the plant and its operators.
The picture of the snake was not local. Maya's photo came from a zoo in France, but could have been one of any number of pictures of two-headed snakes pulled off the internet. But the crowd associates the unusual characteristic with radiation pollution and the three-eyed fish in the introduction of so many episodes of The Simpsons cartoon. The result is thought-terminating fear. Three different morticians begin claiming that they've pulled two-headed snakes out of corpses.
Despite efforts by the operators of the nuclear plant to promote better science education in local schools, they fail to motivate the local populace to learn enough to participate in the conversation productively. Many of the members of the community struggle with time and family finances, and do not know how to begin a technical educational journey, and Maya has misled mentally ill members of the community into attacking their own best community resource in the energy sector. Because Maya is well-spoken, and wields jargon and facts that they cannot recognize that she does not understand, they do not recognize Maya as being herself critically mentally ill. …
Tereza is something like a Bitcoin Bolshevik. Whether or not she understands her role, she leads protests like Maya's that would result in the [lower case] mobs taking over the nuclear plant. The runaway feedback loop of then making her ideologically-driven replacement system work would result in some version of the disaster that befell Kazakhstan. There's no better way to make the oligarchs of the empire look better than to prop up the worst possible rival—have the blind lead the blind. …
Like Maya, assuming her role in protesting the power plant is merely confused good faith (which we cannot really assume), Tereza is one of those people. She identifies as an expert in Economics after making a self-study of geo-economics for ten years. And while she did identify corruption in the system, that's the easy part. She shows no ability to research even the basics of a technical subject as evidenced by her misuse of basic terminology. She works to bait me into conflict, but shows none of the motivation driven by the curiosity of people who educate into technical arenas. This is a mental illness parallel to Wokism, and probably devised by the Empire she believes she combats as part of the ever-granular culture wars that leave most people frightened, frozen in place, and codependent with new alt media figures who pat their audience participants on the head while stating the obvious, "This new Wokism is mental illness." …
Tereza never took the steps to be able to read the books that matter. She wasn't even willing to peruse any of the many guides that explain what a token is, what the "crypto" in cryptocurrency means, or how Bitcoin mining works. Is this somebody you would trust to design a whole new monetary system?
Tereza has characterized my attempt to explain the vast difference between actual technical experts and under-educated protesters as "appeal to authority," but the purpose is not to hoodwink anyone into accepting some "A implies B" statement of reality, as labeling of fallacy would imply. I just want for everyone to be aware of the efforts and lack thereof that precede the conversation because there isn't enough time to hold every Tereza's hand, and not enough Bitcoin on all the exchanges to pay me to do that.
How would you handle it when such a person begins baiting you? My choice is to cut off communication, and unfortunately begin a process of vetting people better before I'm even willing to have a discussion with them. This is the result of the mind viruses planted by agents of the oligarchs into the populace for the purpose of having them become agents of the Matrix who attack anyone doing the work that could develop into a network that competes with the status quo ruling class.
kool aid or tea?
tea drinker 1d Liked by Mathew Crawford
thanks for caring about truth
Tereza Coraggio 10h User was indefinitely suspended for this comment
Hi, tea drinker. How do you define truth? I reread this article to see if I could find a single quote. But it's entirely a convoluted parody saying that I'm mentally ill, involving nuclear reactors and double-headed snakes. Is that truth?
Whether or not Bitcoin will continue to be a good investment is a prediction, one I don't have an opinion on, except for myself. For myself, I think that housing is the only investment guaranteed to keep pace with the price of housing, and that it has use-value without being sold or traded, unlike Bitcoin. I don't think those are facts in dispute.
The G&E interview on Digital Gold or Tulip Mania was about that investment prediction. Mathew didn't see Gabe or Hrvoje as mentally ill to question whether Bitcoin could go bust. But what Gabe, who does know Bitcoin, questioned went deeper. He showed why Bitcoin doesn't function as a currency, even though the original white paper was called "Peer to Peer Digital Cash." He demonstrates why it's vulnerable to scams and how the system discourages self-custody.
Mathew suspects that the Military Occult Banking Syndicate may have designed Bitcoin as a way to keep their Grand Theft World game going without the bother of fighting WWIII. I agree! When the petrodollar, already in freefall, splats, it will transfer default ownership of our houses and lives back to the bankers, who'll start the game again after they repossess the houses lost to variable rate mortgages that have gone through the roof.
The purpose of my plan is to increase the intergenerational wealth—meaning assets, not money—of families and communities. Bitcoin claims to do this on an individual level, for those who have funds they can afford to put at risk. My plan aims to do this at a societal level by decentralizing default ownership of the houses—the asset that backs the banker cartel-issued credit called the dollar—to the level of communities.
There's a difference between 'claims' and 'aims.' I welcome other people to 'put their roosters in the ring' and compare them by quantifiable and measurable goals. Mathew hasn't answered a single one of my comparisons. Is that truth, tea drinker?
gluing back pumpty dumpty
SherS 1d Liked by Mathew Crawford
The mental illness you speak of has afflicted me a few times over the course of this… whatever it is. For most of us who experienced our entire formal educational history as a pump and dump scheme, it has been a lot like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Choosing the glue has been difficult. Much trial and error in the formulation of that glue…
Hi, SherS. It's actually not that Mathew thinks I've been misled by our formal education system. He's saying that I haven't been indoctrinated enough. My decade of research into geoeconomics, culminating in the writing of my book, was auto-didactic--like his. He states that it was wasted because it wasn't under the tutelage of a mentor.
Have we not heard the same about those who dare to 'question the science and do their own research?' I start my book with a quote from Johan Galtung: "I have one advantage in my life: I’m not trained as an economist. So it is so much easier to see reality. When you have to see it through the kind of crazy training these guys get, it becomes very difficult. I admire any economist who nevertheless could talk sense—there’s not many of them, but it happens."
That's from the intro to my book, which I'm reading chapter by chapter into my non-monetized YT, Rumble and Substack: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/0-in-the-beginning-was-the-purpose. My book is the only way in which I could make money, since I have no intention to ever solicit or accept donations. I think we should each take responsibility for our own livelihoods and contribute what we can of our time and energy.
Is it mental illness to think for yourself and not take an authority's word to just trust him? Mathew thinks it is.
SherS Liked by Mathew Crawford
Hi Tereza. The mind war is real. I see that you're glue is under formulation as well. Good luck.
tiptoeing through the ponzi tulips
[Thanks to the magnificent Conspiracy Sarah for this adorable owl. Read her article for context]
GLK 1d Liked by Mathew Crawford
Tereza is impossible. I stopped reading and responding to her substack a long time ago. Once her mind is made up there’s no talking to her. I can’t say I miss her or most of the stacks I used to engage in. …
My simple thinking was, BTC makes sense on many levels. But I saw two schools of thought. One, was the optimistic “change the world for the better” scenario. The other was there’s no way the legacy power structure will allow this to infiltrate unless it benefits them. So, as the years stacked up it was clear BTC was being allowed to proliferate. Adoption in the face of the cries of Tulips and Ponzi by the hordes was indeed growing.
It occurred to me that regardless of which scenario plays out, there’s a good chance I’ll make a lot of money either way. So I bought more years later at a significantly higher price.
Have not regretted it. It’s hands down the best risk I’ve taken. I’m a big boy and realize anything can happen. And I’m nowhere near as bright as you are, but I’ve learned a lot about BTC … and I’m optimistic that BTC is definitely earning a place in the economic hierarchy.
Where and how far it goes will be fun to see. But at 67 years old I’m not sure if “to the moon” is in my future. But I imagine the day will come when my daughter is going to look at the BTC I bought for her and say, my dad was a genius!
Hang in there Mathew.
I will need to let my daughters know I've been labeled impossible, GLK. They will likely agree ;-)
It's interesting that you state "Once her mind is made up there’s no talking to her." I've said many times that I suspect the second-most powerful force in the universe is someone who changes their mind. The most powerful is two people asking the same question, with more concern for the right answer than being right. Those are obviously related, as I say in articles like this: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/when-did-you-stop-being-wrong? and https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/how-to-have-a-better-argument.
The basis on which I change my mind (and I've documented 16 major times I have here: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theorists) is facts and logic, or being shown it conflicts with my only dogma, that I'm no better than anyone else. I don't change my mind because someone says they know better than me and I shouldn't question their authority. Did we not learn that lesson in the CovidCon?
If you haven't listened to the G&E interview, I recommend it, even if you have no interest in my analysis. Gabe, who does know Bitcoin, asks some basic questions that Mathew only answers with 'I'm not bothered by that.' But perhaps Mathew's emotional state matters more than objective reality, GLK, if you're telling him to 'hang in there' after he calls someone mentally ill and ridicules them because they said his position of seeing scams as 'a mosquito bite' is callous.
ideology vs. looking a little off
LC 1d Liked by Mathew Crawford
… I'll gladly endure the difficulty of living in a world that is continually more and more uncomfortable because of the increasing number of people with "mental illness" as you describe, Mathew. … it increasingly difficult to engage most people anymore because their minds have been oriented in ways that are representative not only of the data streams they ingest, but the medium through which they do.
… Sadly, people are conditioned to seek "cult" mindsets. It is a product of their having been severed from their own capacity for effectively and successfully navigating the world. …
Anyway, your thesis is sound, in my view, but the implications get very complex - for me at least - very quickly.
I'll be eager to see how you parse it out.
LC, I encourage you to re-read Mathew's article, scanning for anything it tells you about me. Other than a link and a random screenshot of my face, there's nothing. He's come up with some insults and a ridiculing parody but hasn't given a single quote. Is it my face that leads you to take his word for it that I'm mentally ill? I agree it's not the most flattering but I didn't think that I looked particularly demented.
As I responded elsewhere, it's not my formal education that Mathew's pointing to, but my lack of indoctrination because my decade of research into the historical psyops of money was on my own time, at a rate I calculated to be 30 hrs a week in the prelude to my book, which I deleted from the later edition as too personal: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/how-i-became-who-i-am.
In fact, I share your and Mathew's dismay over the Prussian schooling system. I've written about John Taylor Gatto many times, champion of homeschooling. Returning schooling to serve the interests of families and communities is a cornerstone of my system: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/reinventing-education and https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/five-feminine-economies.
While Mathew says that he sees an education exchange as a possibility for asset backing the economy, he's entirely vague on what that would look like. Mostly he's promoting STEM education, which would certainly be applauded by technocrats, bankers and CEOs. Is that not the world they see for us, programming code in our 15-min city cubicles, where we both live and work?
What is the thesis of Mathew's article? It skips around too much for me to tell. That we need more math and less critical thinking? That's all I'm getting from it.
Hi Tereza,
Honestly, your presence in the article didn't even capture my attention beyond reading about yet another online spat people got into. Getting involved with people's intellectual and ideological battles isn't really why I read what Mathew offers. I do agree though that the random screen shot of the woman in the article (I guess that's you?) does make her look a little "off".
don’t respond, write ridicule!
Alex Trapp 1d Liked by Mathew Crawford
Great conclusions - they aren't all worth the time, in fact some may be motivated to waste yours.
Depending on the value of the discussion, i recommend (articles like this) or a video call with someone else (gabe?) Reacting to the conflict.
If you are going to spend the time, maximize the potential "education" that may happen. But don't empower them.
Alex, you might want to read my article before recommending Gabe as an outlet. It's his positions that Mathew was dismissing in the G&E interview, and his meaningful questions that I quote as the basis of my article.
I admire his courage, because he stuck to his convictions in the interview and didn't allow himself to be intimidated or bullied into acquiescence by Mathew. And you might want to read his comments on my thread. Despite Mathew belittling his objections, by calling them a response to emotional influencers, Gabe went back to the original whitepaper to show why Mathew is wrong and continually cited evidence--using the correct jargon--that Mathew never refuted.
So if you accept Mathew's pronouncement of my mental illness (based on my photo, since there are no quotes), you'll need to put Gabe in the loony bin with me. He's someone else who thinks for himself, no matter the pressure to cave to authorities--even those who are mentors and friends.
Alex Trapp 13h Liked by Mathew Crawford
Hi! I don't know anything about this specific case (yet), i may watch it someday.
But I think my answer stands, in general. Many times we must make tradeoffs, and deciding how and where to respond to criticisms with limited time, is valid!
I for one am used to crypto people arguing about details. I consider my interests to be more practical.
the nail: banking cartel or community caret?
I get this feeling that this post was as therapeutic to write as it was to read! I'm reminded of this video, "It's not about the nail". :-)
Love that video! Always makes me laugh.
Curious as to why it was therapeutic to read. It seems, to me, that it would have taken Mathew much less energy to address the issues that Gabe brought up about Bitcoin, and that I elaborated in my article, than to write this elaborate parody of me.
In my article, I go through a point by point analysis of the measurable goals of an economic system, and how the caret system could solve them. The only 'investment' in the caret system is the time to understand it. When Mathew said his health precluded him putting in that time, I said I was sorry and wished him well.
Yet after declining to give it any attention, Mathew now dismisses what he knows nothing about as nonsense. And says that for me to raise objections to Bitcoin without years of advanced technical degrees is crazy. Does that seem hypocritical to you?
In fact, I would say the roles are reversed from the video. I'm trying to take out the nail, which I see as the banking cartel having usurped money creation through the Federal Reserve Act. Mathew keeps saying, it's not about how Bitcoin would address these issues. It's not about the nail, it's that you're mentally ill. Is that an ad hominem attack or a diversionary tactic from his lack of factual answers?
robots praising rock stars
You are a rock star in modest brilliance, Mathew. I've always been put off by TC's self-assured theories of everything (probably because she reminds me of myself), and am appalled that she would denigrate you while she's at it. I hate cancel culture, but I never subscribed to her, so it's all good.
Gort, are the words "self-assured" and "theories" not mutually exclusive? I think we should all be confident in our ability to think systematically while holding our conclusions to be theories until better information or logic comes along. That's my process.
In your comment, you're taking Mathew's word that I have denigrated him. If you go to the article, you'll see that I've made only positive comments about him and said that his position that crypto-scams didn't bother him was callous. There's a difference between a character attack and critiquing someone's positions, don't you think?
In response, as I wrote on a recent Doc Malik comment, Mathew has said "'The caret is a nonsensical system that nobody who has studied Economics well will spend much time discussing,' that I am 'dancing on the first step of a very long stairway,' that I should do the research to prove to myself that I'm wrong rather than expecting him to 'hold my hand' through the basics. My decade of studying geo-economics was useless without a mentor or advanced technical degrees, so I'm like 'a person who doesn't know how to balance an equation designing a nuclear power plant, except the risks are much larger.'"
'Cancel culture' doesn't affect me because I don't monetize. I never have and never will ask for donations. My book sells on Amazon and I’m reading it into my stack for free. I put my own time and money into asking the questions that matter to me and welcome discussion and debate. I think we should all be deciding what economy would bring about the world we want, and comparing our models based on quantifiable results.
Mathew, by his own admission, knows nothing and cares to know nothing about my system. My article compares the two systems, based on my knowledge of my own and his answers in the interview to Gabe, who does understand Bitcoin. Instead of addressing the objections from his knowledge, he's using insults and ridicule. So while I have no problem with anyone not reading or subbing me, since I prefer constructive dialogue, I think you should research Mathew's claim that I've denigrated him before you are appalled.
back to the trapp
[my response to a deleted comment]
Hi, Danny. Could you give me some examples of my poorly calibrated cognition, reactionary thinking and/ or actions from the article? Or an example at all of my cognition, thinking or actions in the article? Mathew has made up a character, written a scene in which that character takes bizarre actions, said that character is me and therefore it proves my mental illness.
You seem to be taking that fiction as fact, without bothering to click a link to verify that it has any relationship to who I am and what I've said. Isn't the perception of a fantasy as if it's reality the definition of mental illness?
Tereza, as some form of defense;
I should mention that much of what is written here (in this article and the blog in general) takes specific examples to try and tell deeper truths.
Maybe you aren't a time-wasting mentally ill agent, but there might be value in assuming people on the internet are this thing, when choosing where to dedicate time and energy.
Also, about the mental illness, I think that mathew made clear that per his definition, all we humans are mentally ill in a few ways to different degrees.
I have been reading him for a while so I know that his aims are not diplomatic, but neither are they hateful.
Specifically related to pedagogy, I think you will find that "you" are more of a convenient example than a person he knows anything about particularily. An example about trade offs that educators must make.
empowering mobs or MOBS?
In Mathew’s own words from the comment he deleted:
And the only way to ensure a monetary system works in the form of a public ledger is through code protected by a game theoretic mechanism that resists attack. Either that works, or the Military Occult Banking Syndicate (MOBS) is going to World War over control over the biggest poker game conceivable. I suspect that they might very well have created Bitcoin to avoid that war (even criminals understand the stupidity of destroying resources in order to control them), but I do imagine that it's possible that Satoshi was outside of the system, I just lean toward thinking it's a MOBS project that happens to align with the goal of making MOBS finance transparent.
In the words of one of the readers of Bitcoin vs. the Caret:
Beanz-meanz Heinz 1d Liked by Tereza Coraggio
One thing that never seems to get mentioned is that BTC and the like are all global currencies. Which is funny because there definitely are people out there who really really want everyone in the world transacting via a newfangled global currency.
Simulation Commander, who writes Screaming Into the Void, quotes his avatar Orwell on "the intoxication of power." I describe the antidote as power over ourselves. I explain why buying local and UBI are good in the short term but won't solve the problem, and how technology could help us try out our models in cooperative competition.
Responds to Matt Taibbi's "Magic Monetary Theory Goes Primetime." He looks at the film Finding the Money with Stephanie Kelton and says, "Run!" From my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, I show how deficits do turn into someone's assets--and we need to make sure that someone is local communities.
Geopolitics & Empire interviewed Gabe of Libre Solutions Network and Mathew Crawford of Rounding the Earth on BitCoin's Rise: Tulip Mania or Digital Gold? I look at BTC as the US Treasury Reserve. I compare the Caret system from my book, How to Dismantle an Empire, on inflation, scams, laundering, dark markets, organized crime, lack of fluctuation, gov't treasuries that reward oligarchs, building generational wealth, economic migration, mining, exploitation of 'poor' nations, beneficial development of energy supplies, taxation, military aggression and aligning incentives in the direction that would solve everything.
okay, tereza. likely i'm slightly off because after these trials and tribulations i kind of laughed because the closing comment summarised perfectly my thought: global versus local. for example, in oaxaca province méxico, there is still extant a system of money-less asset maintenance, exactly as described in graeber's debt book. that is still alive now and thomas hardy refers to it in at least one of his novels, when the community comes out to balance the books. and this is much closer to your caret idea, which i consider to be well thought and sound in principle and intention. i have no idea if it would work, in actuality, although i would be confident that it would perhaps with tweaks going along.
i'm laughing a bit too because if i've understood the 'gist' you both consider bit coin to be of at best questionable value and at worse the mechanism being 'pushed' by the ponzi schemers to replace the soon to splatter federal petro matter?
this brought a smile to my face because back when i wrote my own anti-economics tome that i subsequently condensed down to two economics courses, i laughed at how wikipedia at the time described it. (i didn't find my description/quotation of it.) the wiki-writer was angry because it was clear to him that it was a form of mafia protection racket. i remember that because i laughed at that writer who also claimed (or inferred) that central banking wasn't!
i have no idea if my having a degree (extended minor) in economics followed by 7 years of intense research into why everything i was taught about economics was in order to perpetuate a fraudulent cult or religion. i described it at the time as the world's biggest religion. (not 100% sure i would say that now, given that it is a tool of the they who are controlling the cull project-19.)
and i was surprised that one of the most important of the logical fallacies, imo, was not on this list. it was big in economics in my day: the fallacy of composition, which is the fallacy that 'just' because something is true in a particular or limited case, it will be true generally or in all cases.
all the best with what is changing. everything changes! with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy.
🙏❤️🧘♂️☯️🧘♂️❤️🙏
Sheesh, Tereza, you sure get more than your share of patronizing interactions. I continue to appreciate how you stick with it, and even are able to share some appreciation during the exchanges. Maybe I'll have something smart to say later, but for now, just a reach out of connection and support.