volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
Agreed!
And that's exactly part of why I think we need to be pushing back against wanting financial service providers, not to mention others, to impose particular concepts of morality in their business.
No I don't think we are at cross purposes. We're talking about the same issues, looking at the same analyses.
You say Bitcoin is without worth, but your own sources are showing directly how much Bitcoin is worth to people. You say it's not been adopted but your source is illustrating very directly how much adoption there has been.
I guess if your purpose is to ignore reality, all right fine, we are at cross purposes. I am not particularly interested in doubling down on those fictions, no matter how many clicks they may get for opinion writers just trying to get sensationalized articles out there.
But if you want to talk about what is really happening in the world, which I assume you do, then we have the same purpose, and your article shows just how valuable Bitcoin is to its adopters.
Whether you care about facts or not, I guess that's up to you.
Right, but this is the reality crashing in :)
This is not a paradise without gatekeepers, where the best ideas go viral as decided by everyone collectively.
No, realistically this is a place where gatekeeping is available to instance owners who want to shape conversations as they think best, and hopefully they will be right, and similarly they can put their fingers on the scales to amplify what they think are the best ideas, regardless of the collective.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, we should be honest about it being the reality.
And in part this is very important to make sure those actors aren't abusing their power over the platform.
We've seen GOP senators defy leadership plenty, much to the consternation of Republicans through the country.
From John McCain through Mitt Romney, even recent history has examples debunking the narrative of GOP congresspeople being particularly loyal... or organized.
So the story that senators stand with leadership is a pretty weak one. Like you said, they'd only have needed to sway a few.
Regardless, though, Obama ceded his opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice as he voluntarily chose to press the Garland nomination even after it was clearly dead in the water.
Under Senate rules it's not up to any one senator, not even the Majority Leader, as to whether a nominee would be confirmed or not. The entire Senate has a say.
IF the Senate actually supported the nominee they could have brought a motion to the floor and got on with it. That they didn't shows that they didn't actually support him.
We really need to call these politicians out when they point fingers and try to shift blame to high profile figures for things that are within their own power.
But regardless, it's the president's responsibility to find a nominee that the Senate will approve. We need to remember that it was Obama's failure, as per the way the system is set up.
Personally, I think designing the system around instance owners was an unfortunate decision, so I'm critical of that. But it is what it is.
It paints a pretty different picture, though, from attention democracy when users have to choose which instance owner to be subject to, or become an owner themselves with all of those drawbacks.
I just don't want to oversell a dream.
This place isn't nearly so democratic and gatekeeper free. The power imbalances are still front and center, even if you might say they're not as bad as somewhere else.
Another issue for niche forums is cost. They may have the financial resources for managing their little group, but ActivityPub requires significant resources and adds significant overhead, that the little group of people might not be interested in affording.
And then there's the issue of niche groups showing ads on their sites to fund their servers. ActivityPub risks undermining that source of revenue.
I'm not saying one way or the other since it's definitely a case by case decision to make.
Although I will say this is one place the overhead and cost of ActivityPub comes up, so I'm critical of that.
Ruthless GOP power plays? Democrats' strategic missteps shaped the court today.
From RBG's strategic retirement plan through Obama's insistence on nominating Garland, who could not pass confirmation, the ball was in their court, and we need to hold those people accountable for their errors.
Anyway, blocking future expansion also protects the Court from legislative interference once the pendulum has swung the other way.
That's the advantage of it being a constitutional amendment and not a simple law.
Well, keep in mind that this isn't necessarily true.
#Fediverse delivers a firehose of content around to the different instances, but the people running the instances decide for themselves what to do with it, whether to show it to users, which users to show it to, etc.
There absolutely ARE gatekeepers, as many here embrace and promote deferation and blocking of users. And there's nothing stopping a instance owner from accepting money from an advertiser to promote certain content.
Fediverse is just the communication technology. The instance owners are in charge.
I think it's important to be really aware of what this is and isn't.
Maybe it's for the best that we don't look to unelected private actors, particularly those with power over finances and abilities to act as gatekeepers to financial tools, to don the hats of police?
Yeah, when the bank owner isn't telling people what they can and can't do with their money, some people will do bad things with it.
But that's for law enforcement to address through transparent channels that respect due process. It shouldn't be for Jack Dorsey to go vigilante and take the law into his own hands.
Coffee, but my personal anecdotes are hardly significant.
These articles are about people #Bitcoin mining, right? Every one of those miners is an adopter who is not only engaging in trade using Bitcoin but is finding the currency so valuable that they're willing to pay both fixed and variable costs to acquire more.
The narratives complaining about Bitcoin mining are necessarily highlighting the adoption and value of the system.
It reminds me of the old line: Nobody goes there anymore--it’s too crowded.
But that just goes for another round of the same.
Sure, it's not useful for transactions, except for all of the times when it is, it's not useful for remittances, except when it is, etc.
It really comes across as gaslighting when folks insist on the nonexistence of what we see with our own eyes.
The news of zero adoption is quite surprising to all of the adopters.
It's a ridiculous argument, amounting to, Except for all of the benefits, there is only cost!
It does drive clicks, I suppose.
But this argument seems to miss the very importance of the network effect, so it comes across as both circular and Pollyannish.
The network effect drives growth and provides value. Heck yeah, that's the thing the successful platforms have going for them, but to say Fediverse will match that value once it has lots of people misses that without first having that value it will have trouble attracting those lots of people.
It's like saying the only thing dollars have over Bitcoin is that they're accepted so broadly.
Well... yeah.
*shrug* the owner feels like those voters need to be called out for their role in electing the guy.
That's not a positive sentiment, but it's not orders of magnitude different from criticizing the politician voters elected.
Heck, maybe we need a little more focus on the responsibilities of voters in this democratic system.
It's almost as if these proceedings are doing little but playing into Trump's hands.
Right, but that you were surprised by this outcome means you were wrong about something, and if I were in your position, I'd do some self-examination to figure out where I was wrong.
If you were wrong about this, I'd be wondering what else you are wrong about, and how you could have gotten to that point during those years of advocacy.
I'd say that even if he is arrested, still not worth the energy.
Seriously, the more attention we give to the loser the more it plays into his sticking around.
If he's arrested then fine. Let the cops deal with him. Let's go focus on more important things.
Meh. Stupid state government deciding that stupid state government should do stupid things.
The key is just to recognize how stupid the government is and ignore it, as it's just a stupid institution being stupid, and the less room it takes up in our minds the better.
It's because such a law would be undemocratic.
If voters decide to vote for such a person, then that's how the election has worked out, and it would be problematic to overrule the democratic vote because the government doesn't accept its outcome.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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