Brilliant.

Accurate. Without the support of an organized banking system, crypto will continue to flounder and eventually drown.

And given the technical limitations, I don't see any serious bank embracing it beyond a token level of interest.

naw, it works, keep doing it.

Ah, I see what's going on here: you're taking a centrist, "both sides" approach to a conversation about perception and reality.

It's a position that only serves to enable and embolden the worst antisocial elements of our society.

No, I won't be presenting "proof," as I'm quite confident you won't accept anything as such, regardless of how accurate or well reasoned it is.

Good day.

"Perception is Reality" is inaccurate. More correct is "perception is reality," with small letters instead of capital, because perception is limited to the individual. Reality exists outside of our perception. "Tree falls in a forest, no one around, does it make a sound," etc.

"Perception is reality" means "if I perceive something to be true, I will act as though it is true." This is a useful axiom for dealing with people, to be sure, but it's terrible whenever we need to deal with the real world. You might perceive an absence of cars on the road but that won't protect you from being struck and killed by one.

>>Who decides where a given value falls within the hegemony?

>Media, thought leaders, journalists, politicians, etc don't so much decide maybe, but strongly influence people's "decisions" (formation of beliefs).

Hegemony: "leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others."

Are you saying our "media, thought leaders, journalists, politicians, etc." have dominance over our society? Curious. I can see how that argument could be made but I think it's rather soft; that is, yes, certain persons on the internet have had a direct influence over me, personally, over the past few years; but I am not beholden to them. Indeed, I no longer consume content from some influencers that, just a year ago, I would have considered high on my list of reliable sources. This isn't to say that they're not worth listening to, rather, that I don't see how this hegemony functions in practice. Further, I'm not convinced there is a hegemonic order (as the OP seems to think there is). I think there's a different kind of order, but it's certainly not hegemonic (though it is hierarchical, after a fashion, mostly because people tend to naturally organize themselves into groups with a hierarchy).

>All humans view reality through various biased lenses

True; but this fact has little bearing on the point I was making.

Unless you want to argue that a left-leaning bias is somehow equivalent to a right-leaning one . . . which is patently absurd, on its face, if we take the time to understand what the Left and Right (as political platforms go) actually believe.

>And if you are unable to explain it to a conservative thinker, do you know (as opposed to believe) that the problem is 100% on the receiving end?

I do.

Because I've been explaining these concepts to people for a long time. And I've found that, when someone refuses to understand the basics, it's usually because of a deeply held conviction (i.e. bias) about how the world works.

Why is it that liberals cannot escape intolerance?

I mean, that's the implication of this article, isn't it? That liberals can't escape intolerance; and moreover, that the author is going to tell us why this is the case.

But I don't think he does; and try as I might, I can't seem to figure out the answer.

>Despite these debates, it struck me that I almost never see liberals address the strongest case for the liberal intolerance hypothesis.

By "these debates," we mean "A politician took a position that their constituency disagreed with." Is this the "intolerance" the author is speaking about? If it is, it seems a disingenuous way to frame disagreement over a political issue. Are we going to argue that voters upset about a new tax law are engaging in "intolerant" behavior when they write their representative or attend a protest?

Is "intolerance" a new buzzword for right wing ideologues? I suppose it must be, since "the tolerant Left" has been a snide rejoinder* for some time now.

(*useful for when a right-wing pundit wants to shut down a conversation.)

>In Western countries, certain liberal values have achieved hegemony.

Really?

Which ones?

And how is this hegemony of ideas structured? Who decides where a given value falls within the hegemony?

Personally, I find a major problem with conservative and right-wing thinkers is that they tend to assume hierarchies are both natural and inevitable. This leads them to view the world through that rose-colored lens, where everything must be part of a hierarchy and if one group (or their ideas) gains recognition, it must be at the expense of another.

This simply is not true; but damned if we're going to successfully explain why it's not true to a conservative thinker.

>Traditionally, liberals champion dignity and self-expression, recently emphasizing the rights of ethnic and sexual minorities. As Western societies have become more affluent and secure, majorities have embraced these causes.
>
>Yet this creates a dilemma.

Why?

What is this dilemma? How does it manifest? What form does it take? How can we identify it when it's in front of us?

Or is the dilemma merely the fact that some people hold certain beliefs that the general public has decided (through their "hegemonic" practices, of course) to be unworthy of respect in polite society?

>... in ideological terms, I am not sure that liberalism will overcome this.

Overcome what? I still don't understand the problem this article is supposed to be illustrating.

>Broadly, ideologies and political movements adopt positions which suit groups, political space being predicated on inter-group competition and rewarding efficient groups.

Yes. Good. This is how political spaces are formed. I take issue with the "rewarding efficient groups" part, but mostly because defining "efficient" seems a critical step to understanding that sentence and we haven't done that; but even so, sure, this is a straight-forward factual observation.

>If incentive structures deter liberals from advocating tolerance, liberalism will struggle to counter this trend.

. . . and?

Wait, is this the answer to the question? Are we saying that "liberals cannot escape intolerance because the incentive structures in everyday social interactions discourage them from advocating for more tolerance?"

That's it, isn't it?

This entire article is a veiled rant about how people are being mean to the author on Twitter.

>liberal interpretations are now too broad

Do you have examples?

Zombified liberalism?

Makes sense, capitalism is basically a shambling corpse at this point, dead and decaying and obvious to anyone paying attention, but still barely able to pass itself off as alive and healthy to the general public.

One small critique:

>Of course, everyone spending a few extra hours on applications is not so bad. Except that the same incentive structure iterates. Everyone has reason to spend ten hours polishing, now fifteen hours polishing. Everyone has reason to ask friends to look over their materials, now everyone has reason to hire a job application consultant. Every applicant is stuck in an arms race with every other, but this arms race does not create any new jobs. So, in the end, no one is better off than if everyone could have just agreed to an armistice at the beginning.

Except everyone has a threshold for accepting diminishing returns. The incentive structure doesn't result in everyone escalating the amount of time and effort that goes into an application, because at some point, each individual is going to stop. I'm only going to put in so many hours on my application for any given job, because I recognize the difference between one and three hours is significant, whereas the difference between 15 and 20 hours is not (or at least, it's less significant as I add hours; hence, diminishing returns).

Beyond this (admittedly nit-picky) observation, I find the rest of the article to be rather refreshing and insightful. I think there's good opportunity to use a lottery system as part of a selection/hiring process and if it results in employers dropping all these stupid hoops form their applications, that's a net win for everyone.

Which implies we can change the degree to which a person feels compelled to engage in moral behavior.

How is that a problem?

And that problem is solved if we can point to a genetic trait that causes feelings and/or behaviors which we typically associate with morality.

Isn't it? I suppose we could continue to argue otherwise but that just . . . I dunno, seems off somehow.

Knowing that a scientist has a habit of publishing misleading, misguided, inaccurate or otherwise deliberately false information is justification for ignoring what that scientist says and believes.

It's not justification for ignoring the results of their work.

>If someone lies, all of their work is suspect . . .

and within scientific fields and disciplines, the standard is that all work is suspect until it's been tested and recreated under similar conditions.

Are we absolutely certain of this?

We've been able to observe empathetic and altruistic behavior in animals, even (arguably) in bacteria. Is that not a sign that our moral framework has a biological component? And if it does, doesn't that mean that we (potentially) isolate morality within the confines of biology (and thus, the physical world)?

I guess I have to question whether it's possible to have "meaning" without information. (and vice versa)

That's an interesting thought, I don't think I have an answer for it.

I don't, actually. Our brains are wired for certain kinds of communication and storytelling is one of the more critical aspects of our basic nature.

This isn't to say that "story" (or constructed narratives) exist independent of people ~which is a position I encounter a lot on the internet ~rather, that it exists in our minds and in our words.

And, by extension (and to some degree), through our actions.

>In the context of conveying meaning I would argue myth and metaphor are always useful tools.

Whenever someone uses words like "never" or "always," I like to ask myself, " . . . are we sure?"

For instance, do we consider math equations to be a means of conveying meaning? If the meaning I want to communicate is highly technical, like an equation, should I resort to a myth or a metaphor? Let's say my intent is to convey the location of something to someone. "Where's your house?" is the question I want to answer; should I tell the querent my address or a story about how I came to live there?

Yes, myth and metaphor are useful tools for communicating information; but the utility of a given tool is dependent on the user's intent.

You can use a hammer to pound a screw into a block of wood . . . but you're better off using a screwdriver.

(and that is an example of when using a metaphor (or simile) is particularly useful.)

That's fair, I usually get those two mixed up.

. . . of course, so did the author of that Medium article . . .

>It requires the ability to abstractly compare the two things for their abstracted commonality.

And how should the audience compare these two things for the abstracted commonality if they're not familiar the things they're comparing?

gawd, I wish I could. Unfortunately, these are simply my thoughts as filtered through my years of experiences and nerdy interest in these topics.

Maybe someone better informed than me knows if there's a related published work?

One small critique: metaphor requires common experiences and understanding in order to be effective.

"Traffic flowed like a river after rain" is largely meaningless if the audience does not possess an understanding of the words "traffic," "river" or "rain." While it's difficult to imagine a person who doesn't understand the latter two, it's not difficult to imagine a person who doesn't understand the former, given that automobiles have been around for almost a century-and-a-half. Of course, we might argue that the word means something to a person who lived in early 1800s London or New York, where horses and carts made up the hulk of traffic movements . . . but the point remains, if your audience doesn't have a common frame of reference for your words, there's a not-insignificant chance that the metaphor will either fail to convey meaning or, more likely, will convey a meaning wholly at odds with the author's original intent.

With this added context, I think there's an argument to be made that myth and metaphor aren't actually a form of knowledge. They can be used to communicate knowledge and meaning, but only under specific circumstances, and lacking those circumstances, they're just as likely to be abused, misused or simply misunderstood.

Myth and metaphor are tools of communication through which we can convey meaning; but like most tools, they're more appropriate for some situations than others.

If I remember correctly, didn't Neo get beat by Morpheus at first? Doesn't this imply that "knowledge insertion" only goes so far in terms of application and personal experience?

Based on my own lived experiences, yes, I would use technology to "insert" information into my brain; but I would also take the time to apply that knowledge through practical exercises, in order to learn from personal experience and thereby to expand and hone my skills.

I think, however, that this article is hinting at something deeper: how do we quantify and qualify "knowledge?" Because the author is correct, we can learn valuable lessons by having a relationship with our instructors; and if we eliminate that relationship, how do we make up that lost knowledge? They seem to suggest that, if we can insert knowledge of kung fu into a person's head, then we can (theoretically) insert the knowledge of (for example) restraint; that is, we can implant the wisdom to know when (and when not) to use our kung fu skills.

But this would require a much deeper understanding of what it means to learn something; how to identify the sources of our knowledge; and how to synthesize those disparate pieces of information into a cohesive whole (which will be accepted by a person's mind).

. . . for a moment I thought that was your butt and I was like "but why are you bent over like oh ok I see it now."

"Begun, the Clone Wars have."

Cat screaming.

A persistent rodent.

Me at 3am.