Recommended Reading

[toast]

Please stay far, far away from this topic... If you write about it keep it off of anything that promotes bitshares on the same page / is a subdomain of bitshares.org

[speedy]

Then I guess I shouldn't express my opinions on vaccinations

Write a blog post on it (if you want)

Id be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

[bytemaster]

I'm surprised someone hasn't tried to make a Steve Jobs analogy. 

Earthing reflects poorly. Like the New Age and their crystals or Jenny McArthy and her war on vaccinations.  SMH

Then I guess I shouldn't express my opinions on vaccinations

How convenient... look what is on Lew Rockwell.com today:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/bill-sardi/i-will-never-vaccinate-my-childe280a8/

[bytemaster]

I'm surprised someone hasn't tried to make a Steve Jobs analogy. 

Earthing reflects poorly. Like the New Age and their crystals or Jenny McArthy and her war on vaccinations.  SMH

Then I guess I shouldn't express my opinions on vaccinations

[PotatoPeeler]

I'm surprised someone hasn't tried to make a Steve Jobs analogy. 

Earthing reflects poorly. Like the New Age and their crystals or Jenny McArthy and her war on vaccinations.  SMH

[bytemaster]

To be fair, I stated that all I know is that "earthing will not HURT and might help".    I don't believe EVERYTHING in every book I recommend, I mostly recommend them because I find it fascinating and worth looking into.

I think this doesn't matter to those that want to form an opinion on you fast and not to those that seek a chance to denounce you/bitshares. This is a great opportunity to do denounce you/bitshares because it breaks a few norms that are shared by a vast majority of people especially if it comes to business and financial services (conservative realms which is reality up to now).

In the end it's a philosophical question about intention or effect driven action. I personally think there is no contradiction.

In my opinion, anyone who decides to use ad hominem attacks against BitShares based upon a view of a single founder is giving us free press and discrediting themselves.   

[Frodo]

At first I had the same doubts.
But wouldn't it be wrong to center everything about freedom and then hide your opinions because of fear how people will perceive you? Wouldn that proof, that we fail at achieving freedom even at such a basic level and yet we try at such a large scale?

To be fair, I stated that all I know is that "earthing will not HURT and might help".    I don't believe EVERYTHING in every book I recommend, I mostly recommend them because I find it fascinating and worth looking into.

I think this doesn't matter to those that want to form an opinion on you fast and not to those that seek a chance to denounce you/bitshares. This is a great opportunity to do denounce you/bitshares because it breaks a few norms that are shared by a vast majority of people especially if it comes to business and financial services (conservative realms which is reality up to now).

In the end it's a philosophical question about intention or effect driven action. I personally think there is no contradiction.

Is that a bad thing though? BitShares is all about breaking norms isn't it?
The great vision we have is probably not compatible with many people's view on things, yet we shouldn't hide it.

[santaclause102]

To be fair, I stated that all I know is that "earthing will not HURT and might help".    I don't believe EVERYTHING in every book I recommend, I mostly recommend them because I find it fascinating and worth looking into.

I think this doesn't matter to those that want to form an opinion on you fast and not to those that seek a chance to denounce you/bitshares. This is a great opportunity to do denounce you/bitshares because it breaks a few norms that are shared by a vast majority of people especially if it comes to business and financial services (conservative realms which is reality up to now).

In the end it's a philosophical question about intention or effect driven action. I personally think there is no contradiction.

[toast]

To be fair, I stated that all I know is that "earthing will not HURT and might help".    I don't believe EVERYTHING in every book I recommend, I mostly recommend them because I find it fascinating and worth looking into.

What we are trying to say is that it is a bad move even if you were certain that it has positive health benefits. It makes the difference between wanting to point people to your blog vs wanting to point them at a select subset of your articles mirrored somewhere else.

[bytemaster]

To be fair, I stated that all I know is that "earthing will not HURT and might help".    I don't believe EVERYTHING in every book I recommend, I mostly recommend them because I find it fascinating and worth looking into.

[santaclause102]

I have learned a lot from you because you convincingly and rationally present a perspective on society that I did not investigate much before and which is at least not mainstream. I am thankful that this is the case.
Here are my worries: I tried to emphasize that I have no idea whether earting is valid or not. The point I was making was that 99% of people will perceive it as an indicator of incompetence which has nothing to do with whether it actually is valid or not. 99% of people do not stop at the observation and say that they just don't know whether it is valid or not. Most will form an opinion to "gain certainty". The effect (independent of your intentions!): It does the opposite of creating trust in the competence of Bitshares and people will use it to denunciate Bitshares.

What about this:

1. Set goals:
- Replace governments with software that allows for voluntary cooperation.

2. Assess circumstances:
- Competition among those that want to provide financial p2p software leading to a more or less free society. I can well imagine a more government friendly direct competitor.
- Irrational / emotional / ego driven / public attention grasping investors, commentators and competitors.

3. Set strategy to best reach set goals
-  Provide as little attack surface [1] as possible so that people that know how to play human / social psychology do not run with your ideas, concepts and software and give it a more "trustworthy" outer shell (+ legal advantages maybe) ending in a less free version of what you imagined the software could do for society.

I am with you with respect to the "mainstream bias" and I share the value of standing for what one believes in. I might disagree on how this will play out since it also is a social experiment!

[1] Attack surface / provocation can be a powerful thing. It is effective when one (person or company) is provocative but powerful. A lot of attack surface makes one vulnerable / less powerful. 

[donkeypong]

Some studies have shown modest benefits from walking barefoot, but there may be various reasons for this. Dr. Weil has an open-minded discussion of earthing on his website:

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA401221/Is-There-Anything-to-Earthing.html

[toast]

I was also super annoyed about the earthing recommendation. I promise people will use that as an argument for why you shouldn't listen to anything you have to say.

It is very different from the austrian/non-austrian perspective because 1) it is a health recommendation and 2) the authors of the book are involved in selling products based on their books.

This criticism is equally valid whether it actually has health benefits or not (edit: heck I'll even humor you and say that it has *provable* health benefits - doesn't matter). If this were anywhere but your personal blog I would demand that you take it down for the sake of bitshares. Actually I'm going to "politely request" that you think about the cost/benefit of listing it. My track record for predicting PR blunders is very good.

[bytemaster]

Hey bytemaster, I was reading through your recommendations and was intrigued that you picked sacred geometry. Out of curiosity have you come across Rodin Vortex based mathematics? It's very interesting math that you may enjoy following up on!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Never heard of it... sadly, I haven't had the time since starting BitShares to explore as much as I use to  in the past.

[bytemaster]

I enjoyed reading the list! It's also great for building trust because it is personal.
Putting an anti-scientific book about earthing up there is maybe not the strongest indicator of a solid ("scientific") project.
I don't have any clue about earthing! It may work. My point is just that someone that does a 5 minutes research (like I did) or just looks at the title of the book will get the impression that earthing is a product people are sold by pseudo science.
So all I am saying is that it doesn't serve the purpose of giving the reader of your blog confidence in that BitShares works (meets "scientific" standards). Many people won't understand exactly how Bitshares works so they form an opinion based on little indicators like this and/or trust people who tell them that it is safe to store you money with it or not.

Indeed, earthing has all the indicators of a pseudoscience, and I must say I'm disappointed this thing appeared on your reading list. Falling for scams doesn't inspire trust, and independently of whether earthing is a scam or not, it is definitively perceived as a scam by many.

If I have learned anything over the years it is that "official science" is far more likely to be pseudoscience because it often gets funded by government to produce government desired results.   Many people also consider Austrian economics to be psuedoscience because it doesn't use math like mainstream econ.

If you read the book, do the research, and try it yourself then you will realize that Earthing is not pseudoscience.   Run some experiments.   If you understand electrical systems then you know earthing is very important for the health of electronic devices such as computers.  Our bodies are huge electrical systems and earthing helps shield us from having our electric potential swung around by all of the RF being pumped around us.

I am not going to take down a book I recommend simply because it is "politically incorrect" in the eyes of some people.    After all my view of subjective reality is equally "unscientific" in the eyes of some people.