no, and i agree with her that you focused on the religion part and ignored the philosophical basis of her point about psychic profit because she isn't as schooled in economic theory and relies on things she does know that are the religious basis
it's fine if you don't want to believe in God or ultimate justice of any kind but you also can't deny that a society that organises around these principles is a better society... the whole reason why europe has come to dominate the world in the last 500 years has not just been guns, it's also because a more just system of money and contracts, which are central principles of christianity, were in effect, from the chiming of the church clock bells to the mediation of disputes performed by the priests of a parish, christianity has been critical to how the world has got a lot better in the last 500 years, and further, Satoshi even gave a nod to that by picking the same day to finally go to public with his early alpha bitcoin project, to make a clear connection to Luther and the end of the catholic monopoly on christianity, and their prohibition of distribution of the bible
Replies (2)
and yes, she is a very intelligent lady, and very confident about her intelligence, and performs well at carrying that
i also write a lot off the top of my head, so much so that i get accused occasionally of being an AI (even though i post photos of my ortholinear mech keyboard) - back in the old days people would say "you're on meth" and occasionally that was true
people with high intelligence and low impulse control have a lot of audacity at argumentation, even when they have got something wrong, and attacking that as a personality flaw does not endear you to them, nor does it achieve the ostensible goal of correcting their inaccurate models
and i'm definitely of the opinion that atheism is a wrong model, this universe has rigid laws and you have to at minimum agree that the entire edifice of science rests upon the foundation of this fixity of the laws, even if maybe some of the apparent constants fluctuate the laws that they regulate do not
It's quite the claim that Satoshi's nod was at Christianity itself and not actually the process by which the church's ideological stranglehold was dismantled and potentially a celebration of the decline of the church... but we'll both just be guessing here so let's not.
---
I focused on the religion part because I had a strong suspicion that her points about economics were backed not by economics but by religion. I feel that she mostly confirmed this, but we'll never really know since I guess I scared her off by going there.
If I'm going to get into a conversation with someone and some large portion of their opinions on all topics are undergirded by a metaphysics I don't subscribe to, I sort of want to know that early on because in my experience it's hard for religious people to set their beliefs aside and meet me on neutral grounds about the topic at hand.
Faith tends to be totalizing - and it's understandable that it is, that's kind of the point. It's not meant to be this little sliver of a thing [over here] that sometimes has an effect; it runs through a person's core.
So I prefer to find the places we're going to "agree to disagree" early and just get that out of the way and see what else (if anything) is left to discuss that isn't poisoned by either of our convictions about metaphysics (here I am including my own convictions - I totally get that religious people will think I'm quite wrong).
In this case, it seems there was "nothing left to discuss" after the religious part was out of the way - since we couldn't even get past the religious part without her blocking me.