> I would think anyone below the center line vertically (so anarchists to free market libertarians) would support what you call “cancel culture” since is a powerful form of direct action.
No liberal is the other alike, but some would argue that privacy is a prerequisite of freedom. Calling out someone with intent of harm is a violation of their privacy and civil rights. This can have a chilling effect and promote homogeneous thought and expression, which is inconsistent with basic liberal values. Maybe a distinction between anarchism and liberalism is that the former want no regulation at all, while the latter embrace legislation that protect civil and human rights.
This is not an argument in good faith. I'm referring to the consequences of attacking a person's character publicly. We have yet to see what those consequences will be in the case of Mustafa Suleyman.
> It's weird, Hacker News is usually extreme in its defense of absolute freedom of speech and the press, especially the freedom of the press to report negatively on people in positions of power. But when someone writes an article on a Google employee that they don't like, it's "destabilizing our society at large" and violates "basic legal principles."
I cannot say anything about the opinion of HN, and, indeed, I'm the one being downvoted here. My position is that, in order to protect the freedom of the individual, some freedom of speech must be sacrificed. Unlimited freedom of speech risks violating people's right to privacy and due process, which ultimately limits their freedom and promotes conformity. Defamation laws and well-functioning legal systems combat this outcome.
> Where was all of this sympathy and assumption of good faith for Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell? Why does HN only ever go to the mat for sociopaths, bigots and assholes?
I know as little of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell as I do of Mustafa Suleyman. If they were unlawfully terminated, I support their cause. My comment was not tied specifically to the case at hand.
> Are you trying to make this "cancel culture" now? This has nothing to do with "today's social media climate."
The consequences of being publicly shamed have never been greater than they are today. This is largely a result of the rise of the information economy and the current design of social media. My point is that many lawmakers have yet to catch up with this development.
> There was no Twitter mob calling for Mustafa Suleyman's head, there were internal complaints made by employees.
Again, I don't think we have seen all the consequences yet. As long as complaints are internal, I have no problem with them.
> This isn't a court of law, there is no "burden of proof."
That's exactly the problem with news publications like this; they are extrajudicial. They throw away the right to due process. And make no mistake: The consequences for the accused are very tangible.
There are also important second order effects from legitimizing this rhetoric. A democracy cannot exist without a rule of law. When we violate those basic legal principles, we risk destabilizing our society at large.
In some jurisdictions, defamation is illegal irrespective of the claims' veracity in order to ensure the right to due process and avoid non-sactioned punishments. I cannot help but feel legalization in other countries, including the US and UK, have not yet caught up with the forces enabled by today's social media climate.
Protection mechanisms do not need to be "layer 1" (on-chain) solutions, though. There are many possible forms these could take. For example, a multisig wallet gives you very secure cold storage of your BTC/whatever.
> Crypto currency is designed from the ground up with the goal of eliminating all such centralized power and protection mechanisms. Anything that goes wrong is your fault and you have no recourse, and that is not a flaw that will be fixed, that is the most central thing in its design.
This is hyperbolic. There are many insured custody services for cryptocurrencies, similar to fiat banks. Secure storage is a big topic in the crypto space, and it is certainly not a goal of cyptocurrencies to weaken protection mechanisms (centralized or otherwise).
> While I disagree about banning this research ...
For context to other readers, I had the following phrasing at the end of my comment: "This research is extremely damaging and should not be allowed". I removed it shortly after posting before I had seen sinenomine's comment, since, ultimately, I'm not in favor of censoring research (as along as limitations are clearly stated). My original comment was mostly a knee-jerk reaction knowing the uphill battle that life-extension research faces in the public discourse.
Every day over 100,000 humans die due to age-related disease. The lack of research in aging and life extension is one of the biggest resource misallocation of our times, and it is leading to massive welfare losses.
There are so many entrenched beliefs that curb research in this field: 'Aging is "natural"', 'Who would want to live until they are xxx years old, anyway?', 'Aging keeps population levels down', 'Aging removes bad people (dictators etc.)', 'Death makes life scarce and therefore valuable', ...
No, aging is fixable and all other problems, real or imagined, have more direct solutions.
We have to realize this, as a society, immediately and stop all the nonsense prevarications.
Parents should not have to outlive their children, and neither should children have to outlive their parents.
Mathematical models that claim to “prove” that aging is inevitable are trivial to construct by introducing assumptions that fit your narrative. The assumptions are biologically plausible in isolation but fail to account for the full complexity of biological life and, indeed, reality [1].
You will need to define 'deflationary'. Are you assuming the price of bitcoin (in real goods) will always go up? Why? That would imply an enormous market failure.
The supply of bitcoin will increase until the year 2140 due to block rewards. Afterwards, the supply will be constant (equal to 21M btc).
A sibling comment compares btc to gold. Well, there are a lot more volatile assets than gold (fiat currencies included). The ratio of the price of gold to world GDP has been pretty constant over time, despite the value of gold at times also being derived from various fad uses.
Why do you believe a global PoS currency will be controlled by US actors? The US has a 10--20% share of global GDP.
Regardless, history has proven that the most legitimate branch of a blockchain wins, irrespective of security model. It will not be the actor with the most hash power or stake. For reference, see the Justin Sun/STEEM drama.
> The other problem is much more fundamental. How do we create crypto that maintains stability without having to resort to typical "stable coin" strategies like holding other currencies and selling/buying them to artificially adjust the value. Is it possible to create crypto that would maintain its value in the long term in distributed - no central authority manner while discouraging pyramid investment schemes.
The value of a cryptocurrency is mostly tied to its adoption. Future adoption is uncertain, so there is naturally a lot of volatility right now. If adoption stabilizes, the volatility will likely decrease markedly. In fact, since many cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply (or the supply follows a predetermined set of rules), one could argue that they could end up less prone to speculative pricing than fiat.
No liberal is the other alike, but some would argue that privacy is a prerequisite of freedom. Calling out someone with intent of harm is a violation of their privacy and civil rights. This can have a chilling effect and promote homogeneous thought and expression, which is inconsistent with basic liberal values. Maybe a distinction between anarchism and liberalism is that the former want no regulation at all, while the latter embrace legislation that protect civil and human rights.