Today I was attending a lecture about blockchain and cryptocurrencies and the lecturer said that freedom and safety don’t go together. You can have more freedom by abandoning safety. Would you agree?

  • orcrist@lemm.ee
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    4 hours ago

    No. You didn’t define either word. Probably they didn’t either. They want to equivocate – switch definitions of words without saying so – and this is classic sophistry.

    Anyway, freedom alone is hard to define. What happens if your freedom (to punch people) and mine (not to be punched) conflict? Who wins? … So you can’t actually have 100% general freedom. But if you have a narrower definition, maybe you can say something constructive.

    And crypto is all about theft. So let’s focus in that. If I send you money accidentally, because you tricked me, BitCoin has no robust refund procedure. So … you could say it is more free than a credit card (no credit card companies or banks in the middle), but the specific freedom is “freedom for fraudsters to steal more efficiently”. Is that what you as a small-time investor want? Did the lecturer spell that out to you? … I bet they didn’t.