What bothers me when this topic comes up sometimes is the double standards some people use.

Some people bend over backward to exclude any possibility of any of this being done for any other reason than the public welfare. Even in that best case where we're dealing with the noblest of intentions every step of the chain of command / decision-making about policy there's still the "road to hell is paved with good intentions" problem where ideas can arise from good intentions while at the same time being deeply misguided and counterproductive to stated goals.

Then anyone criticizing the slide into dystopian pseudo-technocratic tyranny (e.g. Alex Jones) or offering some resistance is often assumed to have malicious or cynically self-interested ulterior motives or dismissed as a dumb person / "deplorable" in need of re-education.

Somewhat related in that double standards are also in prominent display there: talk about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. I see many people apply double standards there.

Anything the "western" "leaders" say when it's about noble intentions they take at face value (even when it's in contradiciton with what they've said at another time) while anything Russian leaders say that may sound reasonable must be pretext and lies.

False flags are a possibility when Russia or some other opponent did it but never when it's "our" "leaders".

When one sees this kind of double-standarding one know one isn't dealing with a rational discussion partner but instead with some kind of cultist or weird religious dogmatist.

You consider the act of voting to entail an implicit consent to the system? I'm not sure if I do.

The argument I'd bring up would be about risk, What he is doing is a fundamentally more risky strategy. If you keep the bitcoin you know you'll have that amount of bitcoin as long as you don't lose the keys , get hacked etc. What you're not exposed to is price risk. What he is doing may get him more bitcoin in the end, or less. We don't know. He does not know. If he is okay with that, fine. But that's the argument: the lack of certainty.

If you don't trade your bitcoin and just hodl it you know you'll have it. There's always the risk if you're not holding any bitcoin that the price will spike and not come down again. If he's willing to take that risk then fine but I'd advise him to keep at least a portion of his capital in assets like bitcoin and gold. That way he can be sure he will always have that portion. How big that part is depends on risk tolerance and one's confidence in one's ability to predict price movements.

edited to add: Another factor would be how much you mind actively managing your portfolio and keeping up with trends, news etc. Some people enjoy doing that. He seems like he might fit in that category. It may not feel like a chore to him.

I'd rather keep open the option to be able to use that time and attention for other things. Sure I may miss out on some gains (then again I may miss out on some losses too...) but I gain free time and attention. I also gain certainty and with that a sense of tranquility. I don't have to worry about my speculation bets checking out. To each his own.

Here's another comment of mine which may be relevant to this comment. #692683 Also the one 2 steps above that one. I give some thoughts of mine about conspiracies in general and what I see as misguided reactions to "conspiracy theorists". I often see an attitude of dismissal, ridicule and straw-manning rather than an inquiring attitude expressing curiosity and good-will.

One can pauze audiobooks but I would guess that audiobook listeners do not pauze the book as often as readers pauze to ponder a point, think about how it relates to the rest of their knowledge and experience, try and find an example or a counter-example etc. I often pauze when reading when something I read does not sit right with me. I try to think about why I'm having this reaction. Similarly when something resonates much in a positive sense. I probably interrupt the process of reading a little too much with this kind of meta analysis, and getting side-tracked or going off on tangents (i write these up sometimes. can take a while to finish a book if there's many of these) but a little of this seems to me to be a good thing. And it seems to me that with audiobooks this kind of thing perhaps does not happen as much as would be desirable because the default is for it to keep playing. It seems to me that listening to books is a more passive process that conditions the consumer more towards being in the passenger seat. Could be off on this.

There's probably benefits as well as downsides when comparing listening to books versus reading them. I'm unclear as to the "net effects" And now that I think about it one could listen to books in a way that one could easily pauze and have a similar process of following up on occurring thoughts and feelings

One podcast I've discovered in the past few years: Geopolitics and Empire. Some very high profile and extremely credentialed guests but also more obscure people. Many of the episodes offer dissident points of view very critical of "the globalists" / NWO / emerging (pseudo-)technocracy

I used to not pay much attention to this kind of talk but since covid I've been looking into it a little bit Seems like some of these conspiracy guys were on to something after all Or at least there is a legitimate discussion to be had about potentially non-democratic influences on national governments. (E.g. what's the role of organizations like Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, WEF, CFR, bohemian grove, Skull and Bones etc? What have organizations like UN, WHO, IMF, World Bank, BIS etc been up to? What's their history? Who makes the decisions in these organizations and how are they selected? Who funds them? What's the relationship with our democratic institutions and tax systems?)

The podcast I mentioned features these kinds of people who actually know what they're talking about. People who've read a couple dozen books, a few hundred papers etc on the topics they're speaking on and in some cases been part of the actual organizations and bureaucracies involved.

I've found that I'd underestimated the amount of conspiracy going on. It's also not that clear if it should be called a conspiracy or not since much of the stuff appeared in publications available to the public such as articles, papers, books etc. It's just that nobody was reading these things except guys like Alex Jones.

And when guys like Alex Jones told people what they read "from the horses's mouth" they were called conspiracy theorists for decades or completely ignored / blacked out from coverage.

Then a weird shift happened where instead of continuing to say "it's not happening, that's a conspiracy theory and therefore somehow untrue by definition" to "yes it's happening, of course, nobody said it wasn't. Besides, it's benign or if anything it is good or even necessary"

Any examples that come to mind where this peculiar switch in PR occurred from "it's not happening you crazy conspiracy theorist" to "it's happening and here's why that's a good thing"?

I've got some candidates myself but I'd like to hear from others first.

Any good pieces of journalism on why this mass immigration has been happening?

Is it an organic process? Or Are there various NGO's or government programs or UN programs trying to suck in immigrants / encourage and enable people to move to "the west"? (who would not have considered emigrating without the intervention of these organizations)

Basically is the bulk of this immigration happening out of the own free will and self-determined decision-making of the immigrants or are there third parties doing their best and succeeding in making the immigration to happen?

I used to not really think about it and I guess I assumed it was a natural / organic / not-artificially-induced phenomenon but now I'm not so sure.

Would it make a difference in your view which of these scenarios, or in what proportions, were reality?

Also is it known what percentage of the immigration that Europe is dealing with is a result from USA's ( or NATO's) war activities and USA's efforts of "spreading democracy" (and the ripple effects of these / effects downstream of these)?

Wouldn't these be averages calculated from a collection of answers?

I live in Western Europe and in some of the biggest cities, judging from the people I see out and about on the streets the native population seems to be a minority in large sections of the larger cities.

On the country-side it is rarer to see non-native people.

I can imagine that if some of these polls occurred in cities and that may be why the guesses are off when correcting for the lower percentages of immigrants outside the cities. The guesses may be accurate for the local region these folks live in but not accurate for the country as whole.

There's also the interesting point someone made here that in these numbers only foreign born people are counted as immigrants and not their children. The children of these people may be confused with immigrants by some of the native population. I guess it also depends on one's definition of "immigrant".

Is rational discussion already possible on this issue, or not yet? For decades anyone trying to talk about the issue of immigration was met with non-arguments intended to shut down discussion.

There even seem to have been cases of stochastic terrorism in some european countries. Seems like that sort of thing was bound to happen given how the corporate media / mockingbird media in "the west" has long demonized voices trying to bring nuance to this discussion about immigration.

Some of the folks trying to raise this issue may have been racists, but surely some of them weren't. And in any case it seems to me we should engage in civil discussion, not name-calling or lying about one's opponents no matter how strongly we may disagree. I can't help but recommend John Stuart Mill's On Liberty; the part about freedom of speech, in this context. Especially for those tempted to shut down discussion. Mill makes some arguments about censorship and how it can backfire relative to the professed goals of the censors. I think these arguments are worth taking into consideration by those tempted to shut down or prevent discussion.

I don't have strong opinions on this topic but the long-time taboo around raising any concerns or nuance around this issue does raise some red flags.

Holy crap these reality percentages are large percentages

I remember listening to an episode of the Geopolitics and Empire podcast where James Bovard (author of the article linked to) was the guest. I remember it being an entertaining and edifying conversation. Jolly fellow this Bovard. Also knowledgeablea and experienced.

Familiar with these doctors? They've found heir way to these ideas as well. Shawn Baker (ex pro rugby player, record-holding athlete (rowing) and orthopedic surgeon though these days he is focused more on prevention through his telemedicine company Revero), Ken Berry (family doctor), Anthony Chaffee (ex pro rugby polayer and brain surgeon), Philip Ovadia (heart surgeon) , Robert Kiltz (fertility surgeon and doctor)

These are inquisitive scientifically-minded doctors that appear to have taken seriously their profession and the oath they've taken. They don't practice "medicine by guideline". They don't function like mindless robots or bureaucrats. They function like scientists. That's how doctors ought to practice in my view. There's probably many many many more doctors like this but the ones I've mentioned have a pretty big digitalk footprint. They've got podcasts and or big youtube channels.

I am reminded of the quote from some prestiguous college commencement speech or something like that where it is said that half of what you willl learn here or have learned here will turn out to be wrong and that it is your job to figure out which half.

Also worth mewntioning: youtube channels (though perhaps they'd better move elsewhere....): Low Carb Down Under AncestryFoudnation

It's hard to control. Healthy user bias is always a possibility in studies of this kind.

Chocolate will likely have some positive effects and some toxic effects. A mechanism for potentially beneficial effect is explored but we don't know the net effect.

Most plants are toxic to most animals. Chocolate can kill a dog. Is it doing some damage to humans as well?

If you enjoy chocolate then go for it. It's probably not that bad for humans. I wouldn't put too much stock in speculated health benefits of it.

Another thing to keep in mind in this context: Publishing studies is not mandatory. It very well could be the case that a company keeps ordering studies while not publishing them when they get a result they don't like. Eventually randomness / chance will seem to show a statistically significant result. We'd have to know how many studies they did as compared to how many they published.

Not directly related to this particular question, but just to point out how truly flawed nutrional studies can be: Some of the famous "studies" (IIRC some of Harvard's Walter Willet's studies are of this kind) purporting to show that red meat causes various kinds of disease count things like macdonalds, pizza, lasagna etc as "red meat" because some parts of those foods may consist of meat. Sloppy and misleading "studies" of this kind are commonplace in nutrirtion studies. Unstated asasumptions (e.g. of all the things in there the meat surely is the ingredient causing the problems) and dearth of controls (e.g. healthy user bias. mgiht the people avoiding the junk food be doing other healthy behaviours which are responsible for better health outcomes?) seems to be the norm rather than the exception in these so-called studies which might more appropriately be called propaganda pieces. It really largely seems to be a junk science / pseudo-science field, especially nutritional epedemiology.

Poorly controlled correlation studies and + spurious theoretical mechanism does not a sturdy reliable scientific argument make.,

Have a "highlight reel" tab on profile. Didn't X provide this feature to premium users a while ago? I think it's a great feature.

I'd like people to be able to see a list of the substantive posts I've made with the shorter and more insignificant posts filtered out. (let the account owner do the filtering. perhaps have a post or comment not appear in this list as a default but when the user does a write-up or some writes some thoughtful comment he can toggle something or somehow mark it for inclusion in the highlight reel section) Right now I can go see the past posts of an account but there will be lots of noise.

I'd use the tab and populate it with more ever-green and self-explanatory comments of mine that stand on their own. When people go over my history they'll have to sift through lots of stuff that is likely a waste of time to them (and to myself quite frankly lots of the stuff) and they may bail before getting to posts that might have actually been worth their time and been useful to them.

When visiting a profile I'd like to be able to get to know the entity behind it more efficiently than I can now. A good way to achieve this would be to have this kind of tab I speak of. The profile description could be used to list these but I think having a separate tab for a curated / filtered list of comments would be better.

Also always welcome in my book: more fine-grained and more flexible search and sort options.

A few thoughts on this. Apologies for the sloppiness of the writing. Threw this together hastily off the top of my mind.

One way to look at this is that Elon is actually what a normal human is supposed to act like, and to flip the question around on ourselves.

What is it about the rest of us that is so internally discordant? Most of us, I think it is fair to say, wish we'd act differently than we do (or we've had long periods of time where that has been the case).

We say we want and value one set of things yet our actions suggest otherwise. Either we aren't being honest about what we really want, or somehow we can't seem to get ourselves to habitually do what we say we actually want.

Or maybe what we want is a very unstable rapidly changing thing. What about our core values? Are they a very unstable changing thing? Probably not. So why don't we act in line with our professed core values more consistently throughout our lives in the ways we use our time and spend our attention?

It seems to me Elon does do that.

Maybe most of us are virtue signalling (even to ourselves) more than talking about what we actually value and want to do, and maybe Elon actually holds the values, and really does want what he says he wants, in addition to merely talking about them. Or our values and desires are genuine but there is something going on with the rest of us that makes us unable to do what we say we want to do.

It seems to me Elon is a more consistent human and that seems to me like that's something that should be more normal.

Maybe we should ask the question "Why are so many of us so ineffective?" Why do so many of of struggle to do what we think we should do, what we think we really want to do, or what we want ourselves to want to do? Do you really want to do what you say you want to do? Then why don't you do it? Maybe that's the more relevant question rather than "Why is Elon able to do what he says he wants to do?"

Many of us could be far more effective it seems to me if we would only follow our own advice. Why don't we? Maybe that is the weird thing.

Yes. I understand there's some controversy with some things mr Saylor has said recently but I do remember him speaking quite eloquently about this issue and one solution in the form of what may be called an "orange check" that internet money like bitcoin can provide. I don't see any other practical way to stop spam myself. And it's just so friggin' simple, easy to understand and seems like it can't be that hard to implement. I don't understand why more websites and email providers haven't begun offering this feature years ago.

I guess that bigger network effects are needed to make it a viable solution and it may not be worth the effort for these websites given that so few people own btc, and an even smaller fraction lightning. Then again it wouldn't have to be bitcoin perse. As long as there is some cost. Could be X tokens. I'd have hoped that X would have been one of those trailblazers by now helping bootstrap initial network effects and introducing the idea, seeding the zeitgeist. Of course they've got lots on their plate as well so can't blame 'em that much.

In early days when you turn on "orange check mode" nearly everything will be blocked since so few people have set up the payment rails but the way to get it to catch on I'd think is to offer the ability to turn on "orange filtering" or just "money filtering" client side and have the user be able to select treshholds and amounts and also have sensible default settings.

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Silence, music, or sounds of another kind when writing (code or otherwise)?

Any interesting developments in mesh networking?

Have you tried the carnivore diet?