✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.

  • 6 Posts
  • 41 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: November 14th, 2024

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  • One cannot be sincere / ethical and be a billionaire simultaneously.

    “Says who? You? Maybe they once were not that sincere and have since had a change of heart. BTW, the Gates Foundation has done a tremendous amount of good over the years.”

    No. They might have done some good, but the harm of hoarding that much wealth outweighs their good contributions. Anyway, it’s not the billionaires fault per se, but our flawed systems that have allowed it to happen. If I or most other people were put in the position of Bill Gates in his heyday, we likely would succumb to our vices as well.

    "“They are moving away from unfettered, no-strings-attached giving and toward increased donor control over organizations, and are blurring the lines between private investment and public benefit.” —Gilded Giving 2020, by Chuck Collins and Helen Flannery [17].

    “Your “Giving Pledge” has a loophole that renders it practically worthless, namely permitting pledgees to simply name charities in their wills. I have found that most billionaires or near billionaires hate giving large sums of money away while alive and instead set up family-controlled foundations to do it for them after death. And these foundations become, more often than not, bureaucracy-ridden sluggards. These rich are delighted to toss off a few million a year in order to remain socially acceptable. But that’s it.” —Robert Wilson to Bill Gates, 2010 [18] […]" —What if I paid for all my free software? | arscyni.cc



  • Bollocks. If these rich assholes felt guilty and inclined towards altruism they’d have spent it already instead of “pledging”.

    "[…] Furthermore, their supposed philanthropy isn’t just them giving money away no-questions-asked. More often than not they aim to benefit their coffers and/or virtue signal their “conscience”:

    • “They are moving away from unfettered, no-strings-attached giving and toward increased donor control over organizations, and are blurring the lines between private investment and public benefit.” —Gilded Giving 2020, by Chuck Collins and Helen Flannery [17].

    • “Your “Giving Pledge” has a loophole that renders it practically worthless, namely permitting pledgees to simply name charities in their wills. I have found that most billionaires or near billionaires hate giving large sums of money away while alive and instead set up family-controlled foundations to do it for them after death. And these foundations become, more often than not, bureaucracy-ridden sluggards. These rich are delighted to toss off a few million a year in order to remain socially acceptable. But that’s it.” —Robert Wilson to Bill Gates, 2010 [18] […]" —What if I paid for all my free software? | arscyni.cc







  • “Russia, which is blocked from other international payment systems.”

    Fair enough.

    “We’re still throwing around fallacies like it’s 2010? Okay, I cast fallacy fallacy!”

    Guess I’ll simply parry with fallacy fallacy fallacy—quoting from your linked Wiki: “That one can invoke the argument from fallacy against a position does not prove one’s own position either, as this would also be an argument from fallacy”.

    Your latter argument for the crypto cult is that the others are problematic too, therefore it’s okay to join the cult. This invalid reasoning renders the entire conclusion void. I did not claim your conclusion is false, only that your reasoning is invalid.

    “like it’s 2010?”

    There’s no expiration date on logical reasoning.


  • “Cryptocurrencies are a tool, similar to how money is a tool. You can’t blame money itself for all the scummy shit done using it, similarly for cryptocurrencies.”

    A knife is a tool. Knives can be used for food and violence. However, knives do not persuade their users to buy as many knives as they can, they do not incentivize manipulating others to do so too, nor do knives inherently encourage violence. The exact opposite is true for crypto"currencies" because these are multi-level marketing pyramid schemes. As soon as one joins the Crypto Cult one benefits from recruiting new members—often by indoctrination and/or demagoguery.




  • “There’s a legitimate use for crypto, to support something you use and (probably) enjoy, and you want them to remove it to set a good example?”

    Of course they should remove it, for it is the moral thing to do. The only legitimate use is donating to entities who have their access to a bank account removed, e.g., whistle blowers, Z-Library, et cetera. In any other case it is an unethical instrument that brings out the worst in humanity.

    “All of this existed (except the bit about nazi coins) already.”

    Whataboutism fallacy.