1442 sats \ 14 replies \ @orthwyrm 11 Jan \ on: Taking the ETF temperature on Hacker News bitcoin
The question of why so many people hate Bitcoin is one of the most fascinating things about this space.
It's because Hacker News is an algorithmic opinion amplifier.
The upvotes/downvotes/karmapoints you see are just the steering wheel on the shopping cart child seat. They don't do anything. Their only purpose is to calculate your opinion-similarity (based on upvoting/downvoting similar comments) to Sam Altman and a few of his buddies. Sort of like a Web of Trust, but with additional regression/ml passes thrown in. The actual story/comment ranking is based on the sum of similarity-to-SamAltman multiplied by upvote/downvote.
Basically the whole site is engineered as a gigantic system to recruit people who think like its originators, and get them to moderate the site for free, without ceding any influence to anybody who doesn't see things the way SamAltmanAndFriends do.
Sam Altman hates bitcoin. Therefore Hacker News hates bitcoin. It's really quite simple.
reply
reply
reply
That's like asking Stacker News to provide an API.
You can access the API from your browser using the GraphQL playground and your browser will automatically set the session cookies since it's the same domain.
But for external usage (like from Python), you would need to copy the cookies yourself. We don't have something like API keys yet.
But we do have an public API you can use and you don't have to reverse engineer it since we enabled introspection. But you probably meant that we should provide API keys.
If so, PRs welcome :)
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and founder of Worldcoin, has expressed excitement about Bitcoin, calling it a "super logical and important step on the tech tree"[5]. He believes that Bitcoin, as a global currency outside government control, can help reduce corruption by enabling transparent financial flows[5].
Altman has been a long-time supporter of Bitcoin. In a blog post from 10 years ago, he argued that a world transacting in Bitcoin would be more transparent and reduce corruption[5].
However, Altman and podcast host Joe Rogan are "very worried" about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and believe they could give governments more control over people's spending and lead to a surveillance state[5].
Altman is disappointed with how the U.S. government has recently treated the cryptocurrency industry, describing it as a "war on crypto" that aims to control the technology[5].
Sources
[1] employee retention. A reasonably common failure mode for startups ... https://blog.samaltman.com/?page=10
[2] Worldcoin, Sam Altman's Crypto Project, Is Building a Layer-2 Chain https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/04/17/worldcoin-sam-altmans-crypto-project-is-building-a-layer-2-chain/
[3] Worldcoin, Sam Altman's eye-scanning crypto project, announces its ... https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/04/17/sam-altman-worldcoin-blockchain-world-chain/
[4] OpenAI CEO promotes crypto project Worldcoin after fundraising ... https://www.reuters.com/technology/openai-ceo-promotes-crypto-project-worldcoin-after-fundraising-report-2023-12-15/
[5] Bitcoin is a 'super logical' step on the tech tree — OpenAI CEO https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-openai-ceo-sam-altman-joe-rogan-excited
reply
reply
I don't know. It's certainly true that people can be stubborn and refuse to update their worldview in the face of overwhelming evidence, but I suspect it runs much deeper than that.
Some people are simply wary of disruptions to the status quo. Others find comfort in living under the thumb of the state. And then you have a small cohort of bitter goblins who thrive on resentment, as we see in the dark caves of r/buttcoin. Yet still, the hostility continues to baffle me.
Who knows? We're witnessing a fascinating psychological experiment unfold here. One of my favorite things about Bitcoin is that it has a tendency to make people I agree with rich, and people who I disagree with poor. Let the coping and seething continue, because it's only going to get more hilarious as time goes on.
reply
My take is that a decent amount of the variance is based on the dissonance from a web of connected beliefs. If you think of your belief in btc as a tower, where the tallest block (btc) is set on top of many other blocks, what are those blocks? Many of them take a long time to acquire. Sometimes one block has a weird shape and prevents other important blocks from stacking on top of it. (@k00b and I had a far-ranging discussion on this someplace, but I can't dig it up atm sadly.)
Anyway, this metaphor isn't exactly right, but if there was ever an illustration of how much of the iceberg lies below the surface of the water, it's with btc. Which suggests that it's going to be a long time before I stop saying how early we are. Maybe I'll be dead first.
reply
I think it's because they are brainwashed by the fud and the idiot box (aka tv)
reply