Bitcoin is pure, pure evil'nBitcoin’s energy use per dollar generated now exceeds that of mining copper or gold'nBitcoin mining significantly increases PM2.5 pollution, the tiny airborne particles linked to respiratory and heart disease.

[reggiehere@mastodon.social]

@chikl

Bitcoin is especially bad for energy consumption (see link below), and that cost is exacerbated by the insane amounts of hardware that miners use to keep up in the competition to mine the remaining Bitcoin as the price, difficulty and competition increases (it was once possible to mine Bitcoin on a low power CPU).

Not all crypto is the same though, and the more energy efficient currencies use less energy than Visa.

@gerrymcgovern

https://www.daytrading.com/cryptocurrency/greenest-cryptos

[lordcaramac@discordian.social]

@ReggieHere @chikl @gerrymcgovern Unless some cryptobros set up a darknet assassination market and crowdfund the assassinations of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, etc., cryptocurrency is pretty useless other than for ransomware attacks and contraband deals.

[reggiehere@mastodon.social]

@LordCaramac

Hard to disagree currently, especially in the case of Bitcoin.

That said - and given that Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies were developed on the back of the 2008 financial crash as an alternative to the commercial banking system - I'm also quite sympathetic to the idea that Bitcoin is an example of good intentions with bad outcomes.

Kinda like the CFC chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

@chikl @gerrymcgovern

[lordcaramac@discordian.social]

@ReggieHere @chikl @gerrymcgovern I think we need something more radical: We need to build a society without money, without markets, without private property. Some kind of decentralised Anarchist Communism without a state, where nobody has any more power than anybody else, where all the people are radically equal, and where everything belongs to everybody.

[murdoc@autistics.life]

@LordCaramac @ReggieHere @chikl @gerrymcgovern
I agree. My preference would be Technocracy: https://www.technate.org/tiki-index.php?page=Begin

[lordcaramac@discordian.social]

@murdoc @ReggieHere @chikl @gerrymcgovern I don't think that will be possible. Scarcity is making a big comeback, and the Industrial Age is unravelling. We have missed our window for achieving sustainability, and now the entire system is beginning to collapse.

[murdoc@autistics.life]

@LordCaramac @ReggieHere @chikl @gerrymcgovern
It's entirely possible that the window for making this possible has already closed, but there will need to be a thorough study done to prove if this is true or not, one comparable to the one performed by the people who invented Technocracy in the first place (the study was called the Energy Survey of North America). Until then, I think that we have to assume that it is still possible. The efficiencies that Technocracy's design can achieve can solve a lot of the waste of our current society. But we can't afford to wait too long, because our chances are diminishing all the time. We have to work as hard as we can right now.

[lordcaramac@discordian.social]

@murdoc @ReggieHere @chikl @gerrymcgovern The real problem is that we humans aren't making the rules. Planet Earth is making the rules, and we need to accept that we are just very clever monkeys with swollen mutant brains, and all the rules that apply to any large primate also apply to us. We can't live on this planet as if we own the place, because we don't. We're just part of the landscape like any other living creature.

[murdoc@autistics.life]

@LordCaramac @ReggieHere @chikl @gerrymcgovern
That is what largely what Technocracy is all about. It's a system entirely designed by science, which is our best understanding of nature and how it works. It's a system that emphasizes scientific progress, because good science acknowledges its limitations so we should learn all we can with it so we can be even more in accordance with nature's laws. And one of its primary design parameters is to be sustainable, so that human society can live in harmony with our natural environment, instead of simply exploiting it for gain like our current society does.

So really your points are a big part of the reason why we should adopt Technocracy. 🙂

[gerrymcgovern@mastodon.green]

@murdoc
With the advent of the Scientific Revolution began the death of Nature, the destruction of nature. The scientific obsession with controlling and dominating nature is what has lead us to the point where we are hurtling into the Sixth Great Mass Extinction. Here's a book worth reading for greater context:

The Death of Nature, Carolyn Merchant, Harper and Row, 1980
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Nature

@LordCaramac @ReggieHere @chikl

[murdoc@autistics.life]

@gerrymcgovern
That's simply not true. Science is a tool, and like any tool can be used for good or ill. It has been other ideologies that have misused it for their own, destructive ends. Those same ideologies have a vested interest in turning the public against science because it threatens their control over people. These anti-science stances are playing right into their hands.

And that's just the most conservative interpretation. Personally, I believe that with what science has taught us, we can not only live in harmony with nature, but it also teaches us how to be good to each other as well. Only science can save us.

@LordCaramac @ReggieHere @chikl

[lordcaramac@discordian.social]

@murdoc @gerrymcgovern @ReggieHere @chikl There is a difference between science and technology. Science is about finding out how the universe works. Technology is about doing and making things. The real problem is that out technosphere has become so immense that it crushes the biosphere. Therefore, the technosphere needs to shrink dramatically, no matter what we do.
The humans of the future, if there are any, if Homo sapiens can escape extinction, will have to do with much less technology, but not with less science.