Geez Claude, calm down.

Not getting caught in groupthink isn’t a matter of intelligence, it’s a matter of maturity and self awareness.

BIP110 fascinates me. Not from a technical perspective but from a psychological one. Technically it's always been clear, and yet I’ve watched very technical, highly intelligent people get trapped in it. We over value raw intelligence and seriously undervalue emotional maturity. Not getting caught in groupthink isn’t a matter of intelligence, it’s a matter of maturity and self awareness. Humans have a big fucking issue with mania and groupthink. We expect that in places like politics but we are often blind to it in fields like science and technology. But groupthink exists anywhere that humans exist. Many years ago I became a technological determinist and decided that the best way to improve the world was to build tech. But these days sometimes I think it might be a better idea to go get a degree in psychology.

Rage bait or food for thought? Both, of course.

Update to 2.4.2 but also, if you have the standard docker bitcoin + lnd + BTCPay setup, you'll want to explicitly destroy all your macaroons and macaroons.db and recreate them fresh. Or, just shut it all down until you are ready to update.

Look, you want to go & make sure all your stuff is up to date & expect to have to do some emergency updates soon. But this isn’t just the Bitcoin world. Anyone running any kind of relevant software is busy frantically patching things. We are in a strange moment right now.

Every new ”groupthink” will sell itself to you by convincing you that this way of being is above the groupthink. Spoiler: You are never above the groupthink. Human’s are a social species. Just be very aware of what variety of groupthink you specifically are susceptible too.

Is abortion murder? Well, in a sense. And then also, a woman not having bodily autonomy is slavery.

Pavol Rusnak's recent Twitter article - Bitcoin Toxic Maximalism Has Failed "Good people attract good people. If you build a community around hating something, you attract people who hate."

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Pavol Rusnak (@PavolRusnak) on X

Bitcoin Toxic Maximalism Has Failed

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Lately I’ve seen a return to using “gay” as a pejorative. That concerns me. I don’t want to go back to a world where gay bashing is normal. But I call people on it and they are like “nah it’s just a word, it doesn't mean that, relax” And so for those people I have a question… How about when I see something that I think is stupid or an over reaction, or someone just being dense I’m going to note how “male” that is. It’s “male” as a pejorative. I don’t mean that I hate men, of course not. Some of my friends are male! It’s just that things that are silly, or impulsive, or idiotic are “male”. Ya know it’s just a word. And you of course are totally cool with this… right?

Pretty much every Bitcoiner I know has a story about losing funds. I’m unaffected by this latest disaster, but I’ve lost funds in other mishaps. We all have. If this one affects you, I want to tell you that money really isn’t all that important. Which may sound insane when you’re staring at a zero balance with that pit in your stomach. And it’s also a strange thing for a Bitcoiner, with a degree in economics, to say. But, more accurately, I want to tell you that the accumulation of personal wealth is not very relevant to living a good or happy life. Now how money functions, the type of money that the world uses, that is very impactful. I don’t work in Bitcoin to stack sats, or build a citadel, or to drive a lambo, I do this work to separate money from state, to remove a giant concentration of power from the world. And having meaningful work in my life does make me a happier person. Where you spend your time and energy is wildly important, but wealth, the accumulation of stuff, is a different beast entirely. If this one affects you, I want to shake you and yell at you… WEALTH DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BETTER OR HAPPIER PERSON. Please believe me, I checked! ...a few times. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen this issue from many different angles. I grew up in a household that had some wild swings in income. One year a trailer in Florida, one year a month long vacation in Europe. I’ve lived in a roach filled studio apartment on the wrong side of town, and in a house so big you might get lost. I’ve lived among the poors and partied with the super wealthy. One time my ex won the lottery and then fell into a depression. True story. I’ve got some experience with this one! So many of us grew up with the belief that money is how you measure personal value and worth. That understanding is deep in our bones. I believed that for a long time and I fought really hard to ‘get into the room’, and then hated it there. Getting out of poverty will make you happy, but from there the more you climb that ladder, the more you find yourself in rooms filled with people absolutely desperate to prove themselves via money. People who have lost their soul. That is not winning. The accumulation of wealth is not an interesting or valuable goal in life. You can’t take the money with you. You can’t take the Twitter follower count with you. You can’t take the perfectly decorated giant house with you. You do take your story with you. And your story just got a wild new chapter. Welcome to the club.

Good times/bad times don’t make someone’s character, they reveal it. Re this Coldcard disaster, it’s been very interesting to see who is using this to dunk on others, who is trying to CYA, who is using this to gain new customers, and who is simply helping. Noted.

I’m so not a Ayn Rand fan, but she did say something brilliant once, “people who are genuinely racist usually are so because they don’t have a better reason to like themselves.” Nailed it! And this applies to all sorts of things and certainly to sexism, and especially to the Red Pill crew. Men who look down on women nearly always do so because they don’t have a better reason to like themselves. There is that zerosum hierarchy again. If you can be above a woman then you aren’t on the bottom… right?