How might one discover the best method of protecting people from themselves (and others) when they begin exploring cryptocurrency?
Most toxic maximalism reminds me of the Reid technique form of police interrogation in which good cop, bad cop is based:
The technique is known for creating a high pressure environment for the interviewee, followed by sympathy and offers of understanding and help, but only if a confession is forthcoming.
Its effectiveness seems somewhat up for debate in a similar way too:
Critics claim the technique too easily produces false confessions, especially with juveniles, with second-language speakers in their non-native language, and with people whose communication/language abilities are affected by mental disabilities, including reduced intellectual capacity. While this criticism acknowledges that the technique can be "effective" in producing confessions, it is not accurate at getting guilty parties to confess, instead sweeping up people pushed to their mental limits by stress. Critics also dislike how police often apply the technique on subjects of unclear guilt, when simply gathering more information in non-stressful interrogations can be more useful both for convicting guilty suspects and exonerating innocent suspects.
PEACE is another interrogation practice in common use, but in contrast to the Reid technique, it requires interrogators be highly trained:
In a study published in the British Psychological Society related to benefit fraud, 63% of (non-police) interviewers who displayed an acceptable level of competence in their interviewing ability obtained comprehensive accounts or full confessions from subjects. [...] In the same study, 92% of interviewers who did not display competence in their interviewing technique failed to obtain a comprehensive account of events or a confession from their subjects.
So maybe toxicity is the best lazy form of "protecting" people or maybe this interrogation model isn't very good at all. Toxic maximalists argue it's helpful, even necessary, for protecting people, but the evidence for that mostly amounts to some kind of axiom along the lines of it's worked so far. Perhaps we could do better at protecting people if we found a better means of interrogation, or if interrogation doesn't model the problem very well, a better example to borrow from.
Is toxic maximalism effective in your opinion? How do you evaluate its effectiveness? Can you think of a better model than interrogation?
What is more important?
Controlling what people do, or is it teaching people how to sustain themselves and be self reliant/sovereign?
Seems to me like the toxies want both, but it can't be that way. If you have no desire to control what I do then you wont resort to odd psychological tricks to get me indoctrinated into your belief system in the name of "protection"
Why do I need protection? Why do they feel it is their duty to protect me? How is that different from the government telling me how to be protected, and saying I need theirs?
I don't want anyone's protection. A toxie can share knowledge or fuck off back to whatever hole they crawled out of to spew bitterness at the world. I don't need someone pretending to be a Lil Dictato trying to "protect" me from shitcoining. I don't need anyone to be my white knight.
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I have never once seen or heard bitterness from a Bitcoin only Bitcoiner. I think any such perceptions by others are a classic case of projection (bitterness on the part of the observer for 'not getting in as early'). What does a Bitcoiner have to be bitter about?
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Man koob that shit's deadly. Got worse when the political element broke cover. For me, if you can't explain a way in which bitcoin fits, without the world going completely asunder, you've got a shrinking audience. Maybe moon bois and family (who'll hate you when volatility strikes). Cuz people have to know a whole bunch of basic - seemingly unrelated - things to even be prepared to understand bitcoin. Then after they do, explaining volatility and energy use is tough. Maxis scaring people into ownership with politics and economics. Like religion's heaven and hell. Tokenizing Pascal's Wager or something.
You know this is an important thread cuz I feel bitcoiners are thinking about this a lot. Seriously. Some are just meh to address it. Looking through the comments on this thread though: 🌈
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Great point about toxicity scaring people in bitcoining and love "tokenizing Pascal's Wager." There is a lot to learn from evangelism.
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I tried to talk to @DarthCoin about this once, but he told me to fuck off. 😀 Seriously, though, this is an important topic that I've been thinking about lately, especially with all the newcomers here on SN.
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When a shitcoiner is trying to drag me into a useless debate, I just imagine that he's a police thug, trying to make me talk...
I NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE. NO DEBATE, NO INCRIMINATION POSSIBLE.
I always reply (to the police) with "I do not answer questions", "I do not consent to answer this question" or I answer with another question that is putting them in the corner.
So same strategy with shitcoiners: no debate about that and that. If they can talk about using BTC in x and y case, ok we can have a discussion, but starting to compare x shitcoin with bitcoin, it doesn't make any sense and is wasting time.
The toxicity, yes is like a shield, to protect from their garbage. If you want to get dirty, you will smell like shit.
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been thinking too
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Toxic maxis say things like "you're not toxic enough so you don't care about bitcoin." Non-toxic bitcoiners say things like "toxicity is ineffective and has the opposite of the intended effect." Yet, I haven't seen either side (publically) develop a well supported opinion one way or another and I feel like the answer might be in some other domain where a lot of research has already been done.
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A month or so ago I replied to an SN weekend reading post that I was reading Jimmy The King, which partially involved the investigation of a murder. The police department had basically threatened and beaten high school kids into confessions. Coerced confessions are notoriously unreliable. The Innocence Project helps to free those wrongfully convicted of murder. Often DNA evidence exonerates people who had "confessed". To relate this to toxic maxis, the argument can be made that the aggression inhibits the arrival at truth. The intimidated shitcoiner learns what not to say publically, but may never really internalize why bitcoin is different and better.
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Not to be a weasel, but I think you have to really screw down how you'd define toxic maximalism before you can answer. My sense is that most debates about abstractions are both undecidable and useless, so I'll make a loose definition before responding.
Toxic maximalism: an anything-goes strategy often involving hostility, name-calling, attempts at public shaming, and general abuse deployed principally in service of helping btc achieve its manifest destiny, and secondarily to protect naive people from getting rekt with other crypto products, the majority of which are scams.
I think that's a reasonable definition that most people would recognize and even endorse.
So, conditioned on that definition, my opinion is that 85% of the behavior people describe as TM has a simpler pedigree: it's dickheads being dickheads online.
The nice thing about being a dickhead under the TM banner is that they can write off their behavior as being in service to some larger moral good; and they can even occupy relatively high-status positions within a very localized community. If you're naturally a dickhead, it's actually a pretty sweet deal.
That's not to say that some of these TM dickheads don't like btc and want it to succeed -- I'm sure they do. But I would bet most of my net worth that, had btc never existed, they would be directing similar dickheaded behavior against other online targets. In theory this hypothesis could be empirically validated, but I doubt anyone will bother.
As to whether it's effective, I'd say: no, it's counterproductive. For evidence supporting this claim, I'd say: cast your memory back for examples from your life where being a giant dick to someone caused them to come around to your way of thinking, or proved persuasive; then search your memory for examples of where such behavior caused people to dig in harder, for spite, if for no other reason. Better yet, imagine the ways you yourself have reacted to such an approach.
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"I'm a toxic maxi, and I'm here to control protect you!" 😬
Some people are blessed, they hear the argument for bitcoin, they get it straightaway. For the majority unfortunately, they have to learn from painful mistakes. I'm one of them, and I'm convinced there's nothing you can do about it. Trying to prevent this process is not helpful, imo.
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Just let go and let people enjoy their freedom. Maxi’s sound like people preaching about the end times.
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You can't shield someone from their own actions. I read about that in the Bible. You can try to tell them, warn them, beg them, even slap them, but they'll still do what they want. You won't take away their free will, so there's no way to stop them.
It's a real pain — really freaking annoying — but we gotta sit back and watch someone mess up sometimes.
As far as being toxic: If you understand Bitcoin, you know it's important to defend it from all the underhanded little campaigns waged against Bitcoin. People who don't understand what Bitcoin is won't understand that, and that's okay, it's early.
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u have an opinion on where X is at with bitcoin? too toxic?
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I don't see it as an interrogation model or even as just a method.
Bitcoin maximalism shouldn't have a name, It's just truth.
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My reply didn't fit into a comment. Posted my reply here: #420635
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A colleague of mine was into shitcoins, we started talking about crypto ocassionaly at work, I told him I was bitcoin only and that crypto is a scam, he asked why and I explained the playbook of scam coins, he understood it. Then in other occasions i talked how all fiat is going to zero against bitcoin. Now he's only in bitcoin. So it's a process, education, especially how the shitcoins scams work. Don't try to call them dumb or forced them, but still, not everyone will listen.
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maXis, as opposed to maxis. fu X
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This is an interesting topic. What do other Stackers think?
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.