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☮ Social ☮ PD Social Talk Thread: If 2020 Was the Dumpster, Can 2021 Be the Fire?

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I actually tried using the Lightning network the other day with Electrum wallet, and it's still super clunky and you can even lose your funds if you aren't careful. Not very reassuring, but there's not really any point to use BTC for small transactions anymore since most places are accepting other cryptocurrencies. And actually ETH tx fees are even worse than BTC right now.

The volatility situation with BTC is a little better now that there's some decent stablecoins (DAI and USDC, to name a couple). USDC is actually completely asset backed (it's ran by Circle and Coinbase), but unfortunately it's not decentralized and they've already frozen one person's funds on the network. Which even if the funds were stolen or whatever, is still super scary because that defeats the whole purpose of crypto.

I think anyone getting into crypto at this point, thinking they're going to get rich is going to end up disappointed more often than not, just because so much of the world has been exposed to it at this point. Of course I could be wrong, but there's so many institutions like mining companies or large investment firms with incentive to make those sort of price predictions, so I'm skeptical. I still think it will increase in value long-term, just not astromically.

Still, I think crypto is inherently a very powerful tool. For one, this scene wouldn't even have been possible over the last decade without crypto, at least not in America. Accountability in the public financial sphere, freedom from unstable foreign currencies, or just being able to say fuck the banking system, which is a leach just like the insurance system, are all good things, imo.

Jesus that Elon quote is brutal. I'm 15 and this is deep.
 
Xorkoth said:
I don't buy he's insider trading, it doesn't make sense. He's losing shit tons of money so he'd be the worst inside trader ever. Tesla was in a bubble, like many tech stocks are. Look at the graphs, actually of all sorts of stocks. If it looks like this:

Os0xthT.png


You can be damn sure it's in a bubble and it's going to lose a good portion of its value when it corrects. There's nothing mysterious here. Honestly the stock market has been going nuts for a long time, 2020/2021 have been absurd, Tesla's price is not in line with the actual value of the company. It's only actually lost a small percentage of its value. One year ago it was worth like $150 per share, it's still WAYYY up, and the growth seen by many companies including Tesla this past year is absurd and unprecedented.

Honestly, buying in right after the very brief crash when COVID hit would have been a great move. I almost did it myself. At this point, buying in is buying at the top of a bubble. I mean don't get me wrong, I did it too. I was too nervous to buy in after COVID in case there was another drop. But I suspect that we're headed for substantial losses in value for a little while while this bubble corrects. So hold on tight.
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Yeah Tesla is a big bubble, most know I guess? Some insist it's the true future value of the company, but as with anything Musk related, I am extremely skeptical.
 
Buzz Lightbeer said:
Hah, no worries about bringing Trump in, funnily enough quite similar dynamics are at play there. An inkling that public perception may be somewhat clouded... -> so I pushed in the opposite direction.
Firstly, how is disliking a public persona per definition superficial? On what basis should we be liking or disliking quote on quote famous people then? Surely not on a fairly constricted 'achievements' basis alone. I will say though that much of my frustration is fueled by constant over the top praise for Musk for much more than what he is, and what his actual personal achievements are, namely the infallible genius bit. This might be a key disagreement we're in, but I can assure you the distinction between possible personas is always in the back of my mind, I don't care whether or not he is a great guy to be around, and it's also not what we're discussing. This could possibly be a whole topic on its own hah.

You did rightly point out that I might not be armed well enough for these kinds of arguments, and I am well aware, I was close to saying it myself yesterday but I withheld in the knowledge that one should not be admitting weakness if unnecessary! But I have an excellent feel for 'rightly' liking or disliking certain characters, along my own standards of course.

Okay, so there have been years of complaints about working conditions at Tesla, programmers, engineers, factory workers etc.... Mainly about a highly toxic environment, racial and sexual orientation stuff. When workers tried to form a union, Tesla was sabotaging those efforts (like intimidation) and many were fired over the coming months. Regular reports over a toxic and very masculine atmosphere as well as quite dangerous (employees suffering much more injuries than any similar companies) and very strenuous factory working conditions appear.
Musk has also been repeatedly making all sorts of promises constantly, like every couple of months he's saying that in x amount of time he's saying that fully autonomous level 5 self driving cars will be available. If he were to know anything about AI, he would know that Tesla is far far off. He's also often implying like the Tesla autonomous driving is completely safe, so there are many instances of people taking a nap and such, which is extremely unsafe and has led to multiple accidents. The language surrounding the whole thing is also massively misleading, these constant promises and consistent use of 'self driving' is plain wrong and endangers people for some clout and the illusion that their technology is somehow superior, non-surprisingly other companies have repeatedly called them out on this. Tesla's self driving module has also been consistently worse than others over the years, often ranking very low on these tests. When it comes to the cars themselves I'm not really up to date, but I recall having read a lot of terrible comments regarding different Tesla models, namely Tesla 3 and Tesla S, all experiencing severe issues.

One other thing that massively annoys me is just him throwing out all sorts of random statements and one liners just to get to the top of the of the headlines. Stuff like Skynet will be a reality, AI will turn deadly (all those time limits have for sure by now, for some reason he has an inkling to say IN 5 YEARS), AI will apparently be the biggest threat to humanity soon, many ludicrous Mars statements, those time limits appear to be changing on the daily as well. It's also not true that Tesla has 0 dollars invested in marketing, they have 0 dollars invested in advertising, which is much different, their marketing budget is huge. Musk also has some strong astroturfing operations going on, trying to reinforce this fan and even cult like mentality for many.

Then the whole coronavirus thing was quite a mess at his factories, but I can forgive him for that. Does anyone remember the time when he was saying he would make thousands of ventilators for hospitals in the US (after a lot of public pressure on Twitter of course)? Well apparently he never made even one, and Tesla even had the nerve to make a promotional video on making ventilators using Tesla parts, but none were ever made or given. Typical!

This is all I have time for now, but I'll continue tonight, I just found a good article that refreshed my memory on some stuff ;)
I can easily find sources for all of these claims, and will do so later.
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OK, I'll concede people are free to dislike a person, I guess that's reasonable and I'm just pushing back against what I see as unreasonable vilification, which is itself a reaction, I guess to perceived deification, which I just don't see. Maybe my use of the word "superficial" is overly dismissive but I would maintain to dislike a person based on how they come across is superficial compared to disliking someone based on their actions and what they actually do.

Noted also the difference between advertising and marketing, might have overlooked that but I'll take your word for it for now. I also won't try to defend any of the stuff about anti-unionisation, discrimination, intimation or retaliatory firings at Tesla or any other companies, that stuff obviously is wrong. As far as the other stuff though, ie, annoyance about overly optimistic timelines, maybe over-selling some things, it's just hard for me to understand why that's annoying. Whether it's annoying that he's not delivering on things that are very difficult to do in the stated time period, or that he doesn't give more realistic timelines for how long something will take, both options seems kind of unfair when talking about things that are both difficult to do and require a lot of funding, which needs to be raised in some way.

As far as whether or not some specific aspects of Tesla are more or less superior than other companies... I was under the impression that Tesla really is a world-leader in self-driving AI, if I'm wrong I'll check it out but even if it's not true right now, it seems unlikely to be for long just because of the sheer volume of data collected by people driving Teslas. But even if it is true, I don't really think it's too important. They're still an important company. Transitioning to electric cars is vitally important for the world. Fully autonomous driving might not be critical to human survival, but it surely will be very useful. Any company contributing to these things is worthy of some praise, IMO, even if they are flawed individuals, as we all are.

I know you've posted since and I'm a bit behind in the conversation but I won't bother to go over that point by point, I will say that your more recent points though to me seem to be leaning towards the superficial again, evaluations of his narcissistic personality, etc. Yeah, he probably does have narcissistic traits, and he is wrong about a lot, he said a lot of dumb shit about COVID too, but he's still obviously a smart guy. Also the SEC squabbles are really kinda hard for me to take too seriously, that stuff just doesn't seem that important to me.

I'm admittedly biased because I'm a fan of technology and so for me it's easy to overlook the other stuff, but maybe I shouldn't. I definitely couldn't personally work for Elon Musk, no way would I want to bother with such a high pressure environment, and no one else should be forced to. But, some people no doubt thrive in that sort of environment, and the world needs people like that. All kinds of people are needed in the world of course, and it's a sad state of affairs that someone might be forced to work in a company that is not kind to them because other opportunities might be so scarce, and I'll admit it's maybe too easy for me to lay that blame on the way our society is structured and the problems with capitalism rather than solely with the companies with fairly hostile work environments, of which Amazon is of course another prominent one - although they are in no way blameless.

I know @Xorkoth (get well soon man!) mentioned Bezos already, and I am curious if people with a strong ire for Elon Musk also dislike Jeff Bezos? A less publicly prominent but otherwise surely just as dislikable billionaire. Unless being prominent in the public eye in a certain way is one of the primary bases for that dislike, which maybe it is.

As for the Bitcoin thing, yeah I can for sure get behind the idea that there are already far more efficient currencies out there, that seems undeniable. I guess I'm just also biased against any crypto-criticism in some ways since I personally see it as another revolutionary technology. I said earlier that we're most quick to point out in others the traits we most fear in ourselves or whatever it was I said, and I'm biased like anyone else, for sure.




Besides that stuff, I just had my first therapy session in 6 months or so and although the guy wasn't a psychiatrist he did say he thought I displayed some symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder in my communication and the way I thought about things, and might benefit from some kind of prescription, whether an SSRI or something else. Have kinda mixed feelings about that and although it's not an official diagnosis he really was on-point with a lot of stuff and it does for sure make sense to me. It's obviously also kinda nice to have probably a lifetime of general on/off unease of some form or other acknowledged as possibly beyond the range of healthy variation of psychological states. I guess it's something I could try while I'm on this substance abstinence flex...

It's the first time I've had a male therapist also, I actually asked for one this time just because I've always had female therapists before, not deliberately but just by chance, so thought it would probably make sense to get a different perspective. I'm potentially gonna gender stereotype or something here but I really don't mean to, it's just my personal experience from my very limited sample set of life, anyway I can't put my finger on the exact difference but besides the suggestion of medication I think there was some difference. I feel potentially the women I've had therapise me before have maybe just validated my feelings a little too much, "oh that must be difficult", kind of thing. Through no fault of their own I'm sure, and I did still get something out of those sessions, although the most recent one before this for sure I wasn't really improving much, just staying in the same place with on/off kratom addiction and other binges as a backdrop.

Hope y'all here are doing well as ever.
 
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psy997 said:
I don't think it's necessarily hype. It is a generating a huge amount of wealth, and wealth is what is prioritized in modernity. It all lines up, to me.

Also, I really doubt BTC breaks. We're in another ATH cycle, like to hit $100k+ this year, and potentially much, much higher. And, after the price drops post ATH, we're going to see another ATH in another 2-4 years. No-one is letting BTC break considering the institutional investment and profit potential.

For instance, some models show $1,000,000 in a few years, and $7.5-8,000,000 in 5-10. The more conservative models say $1,000,000 by 2024-2025.
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Yeah it's 100% hype, you said yourself that the numbers don't matter. If we discard the facts, which I do believe you're correct that they don't matter, then what's left?

Bitcoin isn't generating wealth, that wealth is coming 100% from buy-in by new people entering the market. It's a market, not a source/resource.

Yeah @Vastness Bezos is even more dislikable than Musk, but he keeps his head down so he's harder to pick on. Can't be too hard on Elon, I'd drive a Tesla in a second if I could afford one, and I sure hope he lands us on Mars. It's just embarrassing some of the things he says, and some of the fanboys out there lining up to give him a handjob.
 
Bitcoin is redistributing wealth, really. Since all of the value comes from people putting money into it, it is shuffling money around. In some cases that's bringing wealth to previously non-wealthy individuals. It is also taking money from a lot of small-time investors who don't know what they're doing and buy in at the peak of hype and then panic sell, and that money is going to other people. It's making the most money for the big time players who are already wealthy and who are able to manipulate the price (though price manipulation by any single entity is getting increasingly more difficult since the total amount of money in there is so vast now). But yeah, it isn't creating new money.

I don't mean to sound like I'm being a naysayer for Bitcoin, I agree that Bitcoin's value will keep rising to levels far higher than it is now, over time. I just think it's very important to understand what BTC/crypto is, and what it isn't. The hype that I see people repeating reminds me so much of the hype I got caught all up in back in 2017. That hype leads to a lot of small-time investors losing a lot of money on these big spikes. Bitcoin is a speculative asset that is worth exactly as much as the total amount of money put into it. It's not some new currency that is going to replace fiat currencies, and it's not creating new wealth, and it is terribly inefficient and wasteful in its implementation. And no wonder, it's the very first of its kind, groundbreaking for what it is. I doubt that Satoshi or whoever it was who created it (individual or team, whatever) ever envisioned it would ever have a trillion dollars in market cap. It's too bad BTC is the one that stayed dominant, it sure would be nice if one of the newer generation ones that doesn't have needlessly astronomical energy costs per transaction was what people were investing in.
 
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The second quote wasn't real btw, but the first one was, in hindsight it wasn't the best decision to back up my point, my bad. I was also wrong that there are multiple companies ahead of Tesla, well they were a couple years ago when I had to research it for a project. It appears they've caught up to the rest except Google, I wasn't aware. I'm only following what Google has been up to, which is really really impressive (driving around without driver or backup driver, doing complicated things, which I have never seen of Tesla)
Both kinda go differently about it but their approaches should converge to roughly the same in x amount of years. Tesla is starting with level 4 and wants to build up to level 5, while Google started working at level 5 from the get go. Google realized that neural networks aren't everything because edge cases will always be there which would then require a lot of custom code. I don't agree with the fact that simply gathering insane amounts of data by Tesla will magically give them the edge, it's a couple percentages at most + you need a lot of work, knowledge and computing power to actually make use of all that data, in all honesty I am pretty sure this argument is bunk but I'd need to look deeper into the specifics. It's also precisely a part of Musks way of going about things though, it doesn't matter if people get injured or killed as long as more get saved in the long run, by deploying average technology and advertising it as autonomous. But he has to bet, because he's beat in resources hands down.

Google concluded early that this is no way to do things, and they focused on literally mapping out everything, and then driving becomes easy with previously available technology. Personally, when it comes to level 5, I believe Tesla won't get anywhere with their approach, weeding out everything is impossible, and Googles way of mapping out everything is safe and maintainable with more cars on the road. But realistically, Tesla stands no chance, Google has many times more resources, brain power and computing power, and if their approach would be unfeasible they could just switch their lidars to cameras and not use their maps, and they'd be in the same place. It might surprising but I am rooting for both.

Me not rating Musks intelligence as highly and suspecting he's a narcissist is fully on me, I don't expect people to follow me there. I don't find that particularly superficial since it's one of Musks main selling points, something he seems to revel in and do a lot of things to strengthen, and I tend to dislike narcissists.

I do find Bezos even more despicable, but obviously not as much frustration there =D

Good luck with the heavy decisions @Vastness sounds like a smart dude.
 
I don't like thinking about the $200 I put into BTC in 2019 that could now buy me a house outright. Or the $200 back in 2015 that could have bought me a mansion and a Lamborghini to go with. It's all fake. I regret not being in the know, but would I really be wealthy if my wealth was from bitcoin? Perhaps. Perhaps I'd have panic sold after gaining only a few thousand.

I don't think recklessly pursuing or worrying about wealth is a healthy concern. It eats away at our humanity.
 
Buzz Lightbeer said:
I don't subscribe to Musk being a villain by any means though, I see him as a shitty dude that has somehow conned everyone into believing he is some sort of phenomenon out to save everyone. It makes it so that he gets away with a lot of stuff, + interest. I have to commend him for it, but I will never like him, no matter what his companies realistically do now or will do in the future.

Also, I am convinced he is a classic narcissist and his Twitter game is transparent, tasteless and sucks ass, but those are more subjective allegations.
I apologize for hammering so incessantly on many of the same point Vastness, it could very well be possible that I'm missing all sorts of stuff in my considerations. This was mostly the result of years and years of frustration, as well as listening too much to my boss talk about Musk lol.
For now, I will give up because I am too reliant on knowledge and research by others, instead I will let myself be inspired by one of Elons greatest quotes

iqYoBc8.jpg
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this video is priceless
 
Cream Gravy? said:
I don't like thinking about the $200 I put into BTC in 2019 that could now buy me a house outright. Or the $200 back in 2015 that could have bought me a mansion and a Lamborghini to go with. It's all fake. I regret not being in the know, but would I really be wealthy if my wealth was from bitcoin? Perhaps. Perhaps I'd have panic sold after gaining only a few thousand.

I don't think recklessly pursuing or worrying about wealth is a healthy concern. It eats away at our humanity.
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Well to be fair, $200 of BTC at the lowest point in 2019 would now be like ~$3200, not that big of a deal. And from 2015, it would have been ~$40,000, certainly a nice house downpayment. But like you said, no way you would have held it through 2017 anyway. It's a good point. The only way any of us would have actually done the stuff we wish we had done is if we could go back in time and know what we know now. Which, of course, is impossible.
 
Xorkoth said:
I know there is a ton of BTC hype right now, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of valid criticisms. If you really believe BTC will ever be a currency used for everyday transactions, I have a bridge to sell you, it's in Brooklyn.
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I don't think it will ever be the currency used for everyday transactions, and that doesn't matter at all to the perspective I'm sharing.

perpetualdawn said:
Yeah it's 100% hype, you said yourself that the numbers don't matter. If we discard the facts, which I do believe you're correct that they don't matter, then what's left?

Bitcoin isn't generating wealth, that wealth is coming 100% from buy-in by new people entering the market. It's a market, not a source/resource.

Yeah @Vastness Bezos is even more dislikable than Musk, but he keeps his head down so he's harder to pick on. Can't be too hard on Elon, I'd drive a Tesla in a second if I could afford one, and I sure hope he lands us on Mars. It's just embarrassing some of the things he says, and some of the fanboys out there lining up to give him a handjob.
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It's not 100% hype, because BTC introduced the world to and is the first cryptocurrency, the implications of cryptocurrencies being, again, paradigm shifting. Whether BTC is a viable candidate for a sustainable every day cryptocurrency solution does not matter.

BTC is more than a cryptocurrency, BTC is the flagship, the masthead, the champion of a new paradigm, in multiple domains. That is the reason why I say it is stupid to want BTC to fail. Because if BTC fails, crypto as a whole will likely fail, or at the least, be set back 10-30 years. BTC has institutional investors finally moving into it, investing for the long run. If BTC fails, those institutional players will leave the crypto space, and it will take decades to make that ground back. Not to mention the other numerous technologies and ideas that are associated with or exist in the same space, that will also be crippled.
 
Xorkoth, I just saw your post about not creating wealth, retail investors getting screwed, etc.

It is sad that many people will make poor decisions and be negatively impacted for doing so, during this BTC cycle. And, as long as the fact that it's going to peak is known to people, that's good enough for me.
 
psy997 said:
It's not 100% hype, because BTC introduced the world to and is the first cryptocurrency, the implications of cryptocurrencies being, again, paradigm shifting. Whether BTC is a viable candidate for a sustainable every day cryptocurrency solution does not matter.

BTC is more than a cryptocurrency, BTC is the flagship, the masthead, the champion of a new paradigm, in multiple domains. That is the reason why I say it is stupid to want BTC to fail. Because if BTC fails, crypto as a whole will likely fail, or at the least, be set back 10-30 years. BTC has institutional investors finally moving into it, investing for the long run. If BTC fails, those institutional players will leave the crypto space, and it will take decades to make that ground back. Not to mention the other numerous technologies and ideas that are associated with or exist in the same space, that will also be crippled.
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Yes, I agree that if BTC fails at this point it's a setback for all of crypto, you're completely right about it being a masthead, flagship, champion (I cringe to use that word because to me it's a terrible champion, but you're right in that's how it's perceived). You can see it everytime BTC tanks, every other crypto project falls as well, they are all intimately tied at this point, and it will be a long time for it to break free. If BTC moons, everything else moons, if BTC crashes, everything else crashes, and crypto becomes untouchable in the public eye once again.

But I have to say, all of those traits: masthead, flagship, champion - are of the "hype" nature. There's nothing inherent about BTC that makes it so, it's just that it's won the PR hype game to win those characteristics in the public eye.

The cost is too high. I honestly would rather see a setback in the acceptance of crypto, than for BTC to be placed forward as the gold standard of crypto. If BTC is the choice, then we are premature I'm afraid. If BTC really goes to 1 million like some people think is possible, it will chew through 20x as much energy as it does now. That means that annually, it will consume as much energy as 20 Argentinas. We can't afford that as a planet, it's really really not sustainable. I'd take a 10-30 year setback in crypto acceptance if that's the cost. There's no higher priority than living in harmony with this planet. There is no pressing need to make crypto front and center right now that makes it neccessary to give crypto precedence over the health of our planet. What's the rush?

Anyways, I don't think it would be a 10-30 year setback. Crypto is only about a decade old right now, so presumably it would take less than a decade for efficient/sustainable cryptos to gain acceptance. It really comes down to values and awareness. Hardly anyone is even aware of the issue, even less people are aware that there are already solutions to the issue.
 
btc will never fail at least for a 100 years. the black market that is fueled by crypto is powerful to give it underlying support.

had a dream about mushrooms last night seems to happen always before the season starts a month before. And now i live in shroom mecca. Will probably take one big shroom trip then microdose them if i get enough
 
Thing about instant purchases and bitcoin is, it matters not even the slightest bit what the price of BTC is for instant purchases. It could be worth $1 or $1,000,000 and it's all the same if you're buying it and transferring it instantly and then the receiver is liquidating it into fiat currency. But I agree that it is an important use case. Probably THE important use case, actually.
 
I was gutted when I learned that Mars is literally covered with poison. Mars is already uninhabitable enough already without adding that to the mix. Wake me up when we have fusion reactors set up on Enceladus.

www.space.com

Toxic Mars: Astronauts Must Deal with Perchlorate on the Red Planet

The toxic chemical perchlorate may be good news for the possibility of life on Mars, but it will pose a danger to exploring astronaut crews.
www.space.com www.space.com
 
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