This actually is a fascinating case, the first I'm seeing directly.
Sure, I've seen plenty of Jesus worshipers that are similarly deluded. (And their cousins, the Allah worshipers, and yes, Shiva-Vishnu worshipers as well, many of them completely, resolutely deluded.) Likewise, I've seen enough Trump worshipers that are actually deluded.
But this here is the first instance where I'm seeing a stark demonstration of delusion, in context of something so entirely ...banal, as crypto, and BTC specifically. Remarkable!
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I'm no longer addressing
@psionl0 directly, since it seems impossible to penetrate his delusion with reason. Instead, I'm now addressing anyone else who might be reading this.
What exactly our disagreements are, I'd enumerated earlier. It started with one point, and spiralled off into many, as he kept introducing additional items. I'll just revise that list just a bit, to add one item to it, and change the order of it a bit, fine-tune it a bit as it were, to better reflect our actual discussion:
(1) His jaw-droppingly ignorant claim that intrinsic value is "meaningless". That I clearly addressed, and am happy to revisit with greater detail, if called on to.
(2) His subsequent claim that, apparently, it is not possible to have monetary value in the absence of trade. Again, very clearly dismissed. And again, happy to elaborate, and actually demonstrate, if called on to.
(3) My explaining to him that any investment trading above its intrinsic value is essentially a bubble. Yet again, I'm happy to defend that position completely unassailably, if called on to. This is valuation basics, is all.
(4) Following on #3 above, the fact that BTC is a bubble. An obvious fact, pointing out which apparently gives poor
@psionl0 a heart attack, and leaves him frothing at the mouth.
(5) His bringing up the gold argument at this point. And my contention that gold is a true exception to this rule, given literally millennia of usage, and his claim that it is "special pleading" to so single out gold.
(6)
@psionl0 's implicit contention that because gold is an exception, therefore BTC must be too. And my stating that that is BTC is nowhere like gold, in this specific context. (Albeit I went out of my way to steelman my own argument to inroduce a pertinent qualification there, given recent developments.)
(*) Yep, #3 and #4, above, sum up the core of our disagreement, the rest is stuff he's introduced himself to somehow keep alive his delusion. This is the crux of it: That any investment whose trading price is substantially higher than its intrinsic value is essentially a bubble, held up by nothing more than froth, and that might, therefore, burst any moment. Trading prices are difficult to pin down, and it could be that a bubble keeps afloat for years and years and years; and it is also possible, if less likely, that an intrinsically valuable investment plummets below its intrinsic value --- but even so, the intrinsically valuable investment always has that intrinsic value itself that holds up its worth, even in the absence of trade (to take two completely obvious examples, the dividend from a stock that keeps coming in regardless of what price it's trading at, or a home that keeps providing shelter no matter what price it commands in the market, or a commodity that keeps giving utility regardless of what price it commands). ...There's exceptions to this, like gold, which by this definition is also a bubble, but one that is an exception simply by virtue of thousands of years of usage; and no, BTC does not qualify as exception as gold does --- although see my proactively presented steelmanning qualification, because, unlike @psionl0 , I'm in this discussion to honestly and seriously examine and explore this issue, not to bizarrely keep defending some a priori position.
(7) His further claim, rhetorically expressed, that the utility value of gold cannot be monetized. Which, apart from being irrelevant, given this discussion, is plain wrong.
...At which point he does the goalpost switch. Moving on from the in-principle discussion of this, moving well away from his quote-worthy halfwittery that "instrinsic value is meaningless". And brings in short run price bubbles, and how to address actual price movements within the larger bubble itself, and whether there's an actual price deflation imminent, and all of that --- which of course is a whole different discussion. ...And no, there's no question of believing him if he now sees this opportunity of lying about each us being under the mistaken impression that the other was talking about this other thing --- because this has already been clearly explained to him, so clearly that there's no question of his not understanding; and the time to trot out that excuse would have been then, and I'd have taken him at face value had he done that then, conceded this and said that he was talking of this other thing. At this point, now, it's just a lie.
…He then comes back to me, and asks me to explain to him how a thing that has never been traded can have monetary value. Like a fool I take the time to answer him, and clearly explain to him, in this post right up there,
this one. Whereupon he mangles my post, and pastes the first line of it, and says, simply claiming this sans explanation won’t work --- when it is he who has gone out of his way to cut out the explanation I’ve put in. And in the same breath, he dismisses my addressing exactly what he asked for, as “verbose”, and with some inane nonsense that betrays zero understanding, or at least zero acknowledgement, or what I said in response to him.
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I'm laying completely bare
@psionl0 's brazenly dishonest discussion strategy here, which consists in his deliberately refraining from clearly spelling out his full argument, and deliberately spitting out short disconnected posts, literally hundreds and thousands of them: so that, should they hit home, as they sometimes do, in that case he can then (rightly) claim victory, knowing that his interlocutors are possessed of integrity, unlike him, and will clearly acknowledge that (like I myself did, on another point); and, when they don't, then he just moves on with more brief disjointed posts, and even more posts, and even more, completely ignoring all of the past posts, or else just mangling them up, and/or cherry-picking small portions of them, and/or otherwise misrepresenting them, and lying about them as well ---- and so on, for literally months and years and decades even. Secure in the knowledge that after a time, sooner or later, people will run out of time and patience, and stop engaging, obviously. As I will myself, soon now. Leaving him free to do his weird thing here all over again.
That's his strategy in a nutshell, clearly demonstrated here. That's how he keeps his delusion alive.
Except: I don't see how he can do that now, not any more, not after this post of mine.
(Nah, nah, I do actually. I do know how he'll get over this as well. He'll just do what he's done all along. Just ignore the content of this post as well, and the clearly documented discussion that it represents. And maybe just spit out some more cherry-picked, mangled quotes, and/or some random dismissals, and just carry on as before. His shtick is good, real good, and I guess it'll survive this as well ---- because obviously I don't share his fixation, and won't keep doing this forever with him. ...Haha, yeah, nice strategy, to keep alive his weird delusion!)
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...Let me hasten to add here, that just because
@psionl0 is demonstrably and demonstratedly dishonest, and apparently deluded, that doesn't mean he's ignorant or irrational, far from it. He actually has a great grasp of the technicalities of BTC, and indeed its history, given his long years-and-years-and-years-long dedicated engagement with this series of discussion threads here (and maybe independently of that as well). He knows way more about BTC per se than I do, I've no hesitation in acknowledging that. For instance, on one point of factuality, I must thank him for actually filling up a gap in my own knowledge base, and my opinion based off that gap --- which I've already very clearly acknowledged, and updated, as any sane reasonable honest person would.
Just, this weird delusion thing of his. Clearly documented and demonstrated now. As conclusively QED as anything can get, outside of math.
I’m done wasting my time on this weirdness now. But I think it is important to clearly highlight the nature of the craziness that often accompanies discussions on this thread, given that this poster is apparently a constant fixture here in this thread.