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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

This is the end of an excellent tweetstorm by Sarah Jeong (so you can feed it into Spooler and read it as a single blog post) https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/953713433530089472 but I would like to quote one:

> All of this has gone too far!!!!! It was fine when you paranoid dorks were out there scamming each other, please leave the normies alone!!!!!!!!!!!

I also copied this all into https://pastebin.com/e8vXE5Vi

This is what the SEC is saying too with different words.

View on HN

She is purporting that bitcoin is somehow "worthless?" and that all of Crypto would crash if people truly understood it. The Chairman's post is simply about being responsible about blockchain and the hype surrounding it at this point.

I would be vastly more interested in hearing her explain what blockchain really is so I can decide for myself if her outrage is appropriate than hearing about how she has to hide her internet activity from her boyfriend and how she is "in trouble" for not coming to bed like she said she would. Her personal comments on those things make her sound like a lunatic with a lot of personal problems, including both zero self control and a dysfunctional private life. This does not inspire confidence in me that I should just listen to her wisdom and do as she tells me to do.

Meh, my wife does the same thing if I'm doing something on the computer late at night. I get the "I thought you said you were coming to bed in 5 minutes?" treatment. Hell I might even joke about getting in trouble for it. In any case this is clearly not a tweetstorm where she's laying out her argument to change minds, it's just a rant. It would be interesting to read her views in an article.

I realize it is a rant. It is a rant in which she says she has never bothered to explain it because [excuses] and asserts that she doesn't want to hear your opinion if you didn't read the white paper 5 years ago.

So it is a lazy, elitist snob rant that asserts that she has no plans to explain it to us unwashed morons and we should just take her word for it. My general opinion of such attitudes is Fuck you, which is part of why I walked away from a National Merit Scholarship and dropped out of college in my youth.

I already said I would be interested in her explanation. But I am not holding my breath. Her rant suggests she can't be bothered to explain fuck all. She is too busy stroking her ego on twitter.

She did explain.

"Internet money with the usability of PGP and the stability of BART service."

https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/953461510000398338

I saw that. I don't know what PGP is and I don't have firsthand experience with BART, though I inferred her remarks were not intended to say anything nice about it. Perhaps you could elaborate for me?

Well, PGP is an email encryption layer that's 20 years old and was very enthusiastically adopted by the privacy community. It actually has some uses, e.g., Edward Snowden used it to communicate with Laura Poitras. But it's too complicated for the masses and nobody uses it. Kinda like bitcoin.

As for BART, I only took the train a few times in my life so I can't really elaborate on that.

Thank you. The info on PGP is helpful. There is enough criticism of BART online that I can get the general idea that comparing something to it is not likely to be a positive.

It's called humor. You've never told a joke about getting in trouble with a significant other?

Not that I can recall.

As I said, I would be interested in her actual explanation of blockchain. Her comments suggest she has no plans to give that.

Do what she suggests you do: read the original Bitcoin white paper.

Most of Twitter rants I post don't include the complete background of what I'm talking about. I assume the readers who are interested have some context. I'd like to think that at least some of them are useful nonetheless.

Remember a basic issue with things quoted on HN: they usually weren't written specifically to be discussed on HN. That's clearly the case here. Maybe you could direct any other concerns you have to the comment introducing Jeong's Twitter thread, rather than attacking Jeong herself.

She didn't suggest I read the white paper. She suggested she couldn't be bothered to talk to anyone who had not read the white paper 5 years ago.

Had she said "Those who are interested in understanding it can start with this white paper" and linked to it, I would probably be reading the white paper right now. But I don't actually know what white paper she means.

Last I checked, you aren't a moderator on HN. So how about you refrain from trying to police my behavior here?

Your take was bad. You posted it publicly. Pointing out the badness of your take is my birthright as a message board nerd.

I'm really not sure I understand how you get from snark about people showing up in her TL to cryptosplain Bitcoin to her despite her having read the white paper 5 years ago to feeling like probably you shouldn't have to read the white paper.

You've now heard it from two sources, me and Sarah Jeong: if you want to understand the background of what she's talking about, just read the bitcoin white paper.

You have an obnoxious habit of trying to police the behavior of other members here. I don't routinely call you out on it because I am not a moderator. But since you are all up in my business, it is well within my right to say back off. Policing my behavior is not some right of yours.

Edit in response to your unmarked edit: Please kindly provide me the link to said white paper instead of continuing to lecture me and I will have a go at trying to read it.

You can just Google for "bitcoin white paper". It'll be the first link. It is probably the most famous document to be called a "white paper" in the last 30 years.

Then it shouldn't take you any time at all to give me the link so I can be confident I am reading the correct paper.

I've confirmed it for you: it's the first link.

Is there some problem with posting the link?

I'm not in tech. I have terrible eyesight. Google customizes search results. What if they give me different results?

I would trust it coming from you. Not so much from Google.

Thank you.

Edit: Or anyone else here who knows which paper this is.

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Thank you.

15 exclamation points. She must be right.

>It was fine when you paranoid dorks were out there scamming each other, please leave the normies alone!!!!!!!!!!!

paranoid dorks are eating the world. Typical for a paradigm shift situation, the old world can only produce gasps of exclamation.

What a disrespectful tweet. If this were about a minority group, there'd be outrage.

> If this were about a minority group, there'd be outrage

People don't get a say on which race or gender (edit: sex) they're born as. That's partly why race and gender are protected classes. "People who own Bitcoin" isn't a protected class.

> People don't get a say on which race or gender (edit: sex) they're born as. That's partly why race and gender are protected classes.

The basis of protected class is more visibility and history of non-germane discrimination than innateness, which is why religion is a protected class.

You consider "paranoid dorks" and "people who own Bitcoin" to be the same set? Even then, would you consider something like "you fatasses need to shut up and leave us normal people alone" fine?

You're really going to double down on this argument?

I mean, fine, if you consider being a jerk to a group people just because <arbitrary justification>, I guess there's nothing left for me to say.

I'm not sure why "don't be an asshole to whole groups of people" is so controversial, though.

I agree; her tweets were overly pointed. But calling an individual names, a group of people of voluntary association names, and an entire race or gender names are three very different things. Her core point, that a knowledgeable minority padded with a zealous, clueless majority, the latter on a roll misinforming the public, stands.

May I suggest thinking about what he's saying?

Sure, it might feel upsetting. But is it true?

It seems true. And that has merit.

But so does your side of it. So it's a balance.

Are you sure gender is determined at birth?

Edit: My comment was tongue in cheek. It’s kind of funny that not only genders are like the twin towers, but even saying that sex is determined at birth can be a sensitive issue.

... but... it's not... so...

Sometimes I like to point out that without any form of meaningful static typing, writing code in Ruby requires huge numbers of unit tests to verify what would be basic properties of a better programming language, where no such test would be needed. It's true: if I said that about Serbians, I'd get in a lot of trouble.

I agree, "Javascript is an inconsistent language" and "all you smelly nerds go back to your caves and leave us normal people alone" are pretty much equivalent.

Please don't make up quotes to attribute to other people, especially when it's not at all clear --- because you'd have to go read through a whole Twitter thread to find out --- that you invented the quote.

The first quote is paraphrased, so by implication the second quote can be assumed to be paraphrased. I think it's fairly clear.

It's not only not clear, it's deliberately deceptive. 'StavrosK would have you believe Jeong is poking fun at nerds in general, and making comments about their personal hygiene.

My impression was she was making a statement about some nerds, yes, but people may interpret it as entailing a general slur.

Was it also deliberately deceptive to interpret Trump's famous statement about Mexicans as a slur on the whole group? I don't think so.

I observe people of all sorts making ambiguous statements deliberately in order to express bigoted opinions while not engaging with those who may be offended.

None of this implies I think defending "nerds" as a class is important - but I don't think being offended is necessarily "deliberately deceptive".

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