On Sat, 15 Jun 2013, Juraj Bednar wrote:

> I hate when people do this - claim, even sarcastically, to understand
> what is going on in other peoples' minds. They are usually wrong.

apologies for my rather aggressive analysis. I admit that, by having
experienced mostly conflict situations, my analysis often ends up
shaping its discourse in terms of conflict. It is hopefully not needed
here and you are right on Gavin's merit. Ultimately mine here is the
attitude of a chess player, or somehow a war strategist, while I
understand why you hate it.

> > But out of this personal dimension, which is undoubtely governed by
>
> I will let Dan Dennet speak for a while:
>
>
> "When you're reading or skimming argumentative essays, especially by
> philosophers, here is a quick trick that may save you much time and
> effort, especially in this age of simple searching by computer: look
> for "surely"

I don't know Dennet, but this looks like a good approximative technique
to skim through texts and find such linguistic fulcra. However, once
found, their existance doesn't confutes their validity, which has still
to be challenged out of emphasis.

> > outside its territory. In such a scenario a tool like Bitcoin, in
> > which many have seen a chance for liberation, will transform in its
> > nemesis, a rapacious tool for the global control of value
> > transactions by the central entity pulling its strings.
>
> I really doubt value can be controlled this way. Value is subjective
> perception of people participating in an exchange.

the network that makes value cirtulate is not, and cannot be ever,
neutral: not even Bitcoin is, or the Internet itself,, while having the
merit of aiming to be more neutral than other existing networks...

Value flows have been controlled for example by Wall Street, where broad
access was given to certain values instead of others. It is not a
coincidence that BRIC countries today are interested in starting their
own stock market infrastructure, because the one in place and based on
euro/dollars is biased for the advantage of former colonial empires.

if Bitcoin is under the control of the same forces, it will not be to
protect it from "criminal activities" (which are overly present in every
system anyway, they work just like a witchunt against new communication
tech) but to protect it from the political determination of emerging
constituencies.

however, the abstraction and approximation of my sentences here make me
somehow uncomfortable, I'd rather discuss this in person over a coffee
or beer. what I'm trying to state aided by broader geopolitical examples
is that it does not exist an infrastructure of exchange that is open and
purely constituted out of the equal sum of subjective perception and
participation: this is a rather unrealistic utopia that omits the
crucial question of network neutrality and ultimately power from the
picture.

> > The most important thing for all of us now is that the code stays
> > open source, so that others can challenge this process. Another
> > important thing would be indeed that Gaving resigns from his role
> > because unable to fulfill the mission of bitcoin, rather than
> > betraying it and at the same time fostering its usage among many
> > people who don't know.
>
> I agree that there should be no Bitcoin foundation and thus no Gavin
> in it.
>
> I don't agree that Gavin should resign from the project. He has
> contributed a lot of time and effort to Bitcoin, probably more than
> most of us on this list. Again - if Bitcoin truly is robust and
> decentralized, it should not fall or rise based on what a developer
> thinks or does. If this is the case, that's what needs to be fixed,
> that's the vulnerability - not kicking people out, but making sure
> they can't do anything really bad systematically.

well put. yet I don't see how such a project can survive a backdoor
inserted by the lead developer on behalf of a national espionage agency
inside the main implementation of the tech. Maybe the way out can be
that other implementations become the central reference?

> I agree he should not try to represent Bitcoin users. And I understand
> that we are all sick of people trying to represent and explain what we
> think to others (and then find that we are doing the same thing, which
> is even worse).
>
> > scheme), while Bitcoino - an invention that hails the disappearance of
> > its own author and of leadership and control - was always governed by a
> > centralized hierarchy among its developers since its very early days...
> > its almost romantic today to note how a few have fought this situation
> > since the beginning, among them Amir.
>
> I like to think of this as creating, not fighting. Fighting has
> casualties. Creating makes things better :)

Another trace of my conflict-oriented thinking. You are right in
pointing it out.

> (Sorry to all, that's just me trying not to endorse phrases like
> "battlefield of science" or "war on evil". It's not a fucking war,
> it's a distributed database of transactions - revolutionary? yes.
> are people dying or suffering? no :).
>
> > The main question I'm interested to have answered now is whether the
> > hacker culture at large, which bootstrapped Bitcoin to its size today,
> > will be able to steer this narrative in other directions, or will let it
> > be appropriated by some centralizing foundation or venture capital
> > scams. I guess in our case the answer might be visible in graphs of
> > value fluctuations.
>
> I guess we could see it, but I see value fluctuation as noise more
> than anything. Noise that's coming from people's action, but I don't
> think we can infer from it backwards. It's butterfly effects -
> multiplied again and again and again.

my knowledge of trading platforms is very scarce, your skepticism looks
valid to me here, in line with many economists critical of
financiarization and its role in governance. I agree with this point
now.

> I am also curious how will all of this proceed and I hope for the best,
> but I don't think hacker culture is responsible for any narratives.

but i disagree with this. from the most recent example of Wikileaks to
other less globalized episodes in the past, hacker culture is a motor
for narration.

> Sorry for being so blunt, I did not want to hurt your feelings in any
> way, it's just I sometimes see the world differently and for some
> strange reason I had to express it today. I love you anyway.

no offence taken whatsoever: coming myself from a critical thinking
background I can only appreciate your well argued criticism, while
enjoying the conversation and learning from it.

ciao