This is, in and of itself, a blaming statement. Blaming statements, such as the one contained in the comment you replied to, are a result of a) dissonance and b) inability to resolve the dissonance.

It is, in fact, unknown what the culture of online shaming has led to in our society. In fact, I'd hazard "shaming" online is actually just raw blame provided by some rationalized thought process driven by Internet interactions themselves, not the people reacting. See This Video Will Make You Angry on YouTube for context. Screwing with people's Internet in contextually what could be considered "wrong" behavior becomes highly polarizing. In as much as someone coughs because they smoke, people blaming is a result of a larger problem, perhaps related to the fitness of memes and some people's weakness in being hacked emotionally by memes with higher sophistication. Again, that problem is noted by the dissonance and inability to resolve it, but the behaviors emerging from those who are "infected" by the thoughts are not exactly theirs to bear alone. We blamed the tobacco industry for smoking. Why can we not blame the employees who are providing the rationalizations for bad behavior? One might argue that they shouldn't be blamed because they have no choice in the matter. It may be their job to argue otherwise for the company.

The irony here is that vast majority of the denizens of HN are likely responsible for creating most of the "mess" we're in today by writing software without considering the long term effects on consciousness and perception of reality. That "mess" would be defined as means, by algorithms or neural networks, to attempt to exploit weaknesses in human nature to spread other's beliefs in a unnatural way. Growth hacking. In some cases, like Comcast, those beliefs are rooted in sophisticated rationalizations which sound good when limited in scope. But! I don't care what anyone says about it, changing the content of a page which, when requested from one place returns one thing and when requested from another (which ones pay for I might add) returns another thing entirely is a violation of TRUST. At least it is to me. I like consistency in my data.

If one of the "members" of this group we call HN wants to make a blaming statement against someone who is defending this irrational logic, then I say let them blame! How else are we to uncover the dissonance and solve it? Or, perhaps, that dissonance is desired to be left in place by our complicit behaviors trying to be "nice" to each other.

I've suggested before social media sites could benefit from a "this is a blaming statement" flag on articles or comments. I stand by that assertion today. Logging back out again. Thank you for all the hard work that goes into running this place.

> don't post off topic

Users of HN, please note "we" is Facebook and Facebook, or a representative of Facebook, is telling us what we can and can't discuss here.

This is why I quit posting here and use /r/hackernews on Reddit for my links. However, I occasionally make an appearance when I see patterns emerge, such as control where we didn't assume control existed.

Why is it that we EVER may assume, by someone's external behaviors including their writings, videos and interviews, that we may "know" an individual? Why would we ever assume a level of trust in how they conduct themselves in their personal lives by their outward actions? Why would we assume someone who did "fit" the investment world would be more likely to act in a similar improper manner? How is it that we actually fail to acknowledge that each of us has a line that, when it is crossed, we are capable of making horrible mistakes? Why is it that Western culture has formed a view of mistakes as something to be avoided at all cost, as opposed to an opportunity for great learning?

I came out of my self-imposed exile here to post this because I think it's important to draw a line and indicate a social community such as HN (or Twitter) are woefully inadequate to deal with these types of issues in a meaningful way and to do so without a highly divisive conversation forming. (This is not to say the message should not be delivered strongly to anyone listening, however.) All that comes of these discussions is blame and division. Evidence of that is show here, now, in the polarized comments.

The only people who can judge Dave honestly here now are the victims, his co-workers and himself. I do have empathy for those involved, but my emotional contributions here are pointless, given the scale and reach of this news.

My HN profile has carried my thoughts on Penrose and Hammeroff's theories for some time now. Good to see it posted here and debated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpfvhiqFw7A

Honestly, most of the world's economic trust is backed by similar bag-holders, just without the use of proof of stake algorithms. Yes, one could argue that hard goods are an amount of tangible trust that can represent value, but most of the value in today's systems comes from human backed trust, which itself is irrational. Take the Fed for example.

A bag-holder, by any definition, is simply an individual that believes a given fact, irrationally. Here, the irrational belief is that cryptocurrencies like Litecoin can give way to rational desirable outcomes in the future. This is based on a mostly rational assumption crytpocurrencies are designed to provide a rational and clear means by which value can be established among those who participate in a group using the technology. For example, if I send you 1 Litecoin, then everyone in our group can immediately come to the rational conclusion you now have control of 1 Litecoin, assuming you control the private key to that address, of course. In other words, we agree to use this thing because this thing appears to be rational.

It only becomes irrational when we start talking about adding fiat currency values into the mix. Those values themselves are based on human established trust, so must be irrational by definition. Again, I point at the Fed. The way the Dollar's value is calculated, in part, is by analyzing 100K different products sold on the markets. Who picked these items? Who decided how much they are worth? What ruler was used to measure their worth?

Either we can continue down the path of handling irrational beliefs the old way, by electing group leaders (or leaders electing themselves) to speak for the group and it's collective value, or we can adopt new ways of instantiating trust by letting computers do it in a way that can be proved to be almost, but not quite, completely rational.

> Can we all just agree that Litecoin is a way over-hyped and silly excuse for a cryptocurrency?

No. As I've pointed out now, the belief that our current economic systems "make sense" is irrational. I think it's far better if we all agree that something needs to be done about it, that something might be slightly irrational in the short term, and that cryptocurrencies, like Litecoin, may present a rational means by which we measure value in the economy of the world, moving forward.

As is clear from its current market cap, it would seem others agree with me, and disagree with you.

Note: I use the terms rational and irrational frequently nowadays. When I use the terms I am referring to the concept of either an "unknown amount of work ahead" or a "known amount of work ahead". Programmers may liken this concept to the the P versus NP problem. While not equivalent, they both represent an idea that an unknown or overly large amount of work can be "collapsed" into a known amount of work, and thus calculated at a given cost.

VCs don't invest in breakeven, or slightly ahead of breakeven companies. They would rather force a product move by the company to try to make more money for the stakeholders, even at the risk the move kills the company OR hurts the customer's privacy/UX experience. Case in point, Facebook.

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Fair enough. I'd also say remember what Mark Twain said about politicians: “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.”

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