beforeolives

I've read some of the cryptocurrency subreddits recently and it has been absolutely fascinating. The degree of group cognitive dissonance is something else.

So if it's a scam but everyone knows that it is, you think there is no risk?

> it’s a currency not a stock.

It's a digital asset that you buy with dollars (or equivalent). If your position benefits from the price in dollars increasing, then you're long.

This thinking only holds if you feel positively about who you currently are and your place in life right now. If you don't, then these "what if" questions can be a lot more appealing.

I genuinely gave up after two unsuccessful clicks. It probably says something about my personality or current state of mind.

> Jobs are handing out more money with more flexibility than ever seen before.

I'm in the UK and not seeing any of this.

I don't think that my point is getting across because you're focusing on the people that you have most commonly observed in the environment around you. Sure - people can work harder, most of us are average and we don't need to get close to our limits in our jobs. That's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking the extreme outliers on the lower end of the intelligence distribution. Those are the people for whom the innate intelligence limit is low, by definition.

People with IQ below 75 can be classified as having a mental disability. That's just under 5% of the population. Do you think those people can take your advice and just put in more effort? What about the people who score just above that threshold? Do you think they could do your job only if they had better teachers? I don't think they could.

We all have natural limitations - it's much better to recognise that some people's limitations are holding them back so much that they can't function normally in modern society. That seems healthier to me than pretending that people just need to apply themselves more.

> In my own perhaps limited experience, I've never really encountered anyone who is simply incapable of deep thought / critical thinking.

I don't know how we're defining deep thought and critical thinking but it's important to recognise that people have limitations to their intellect and for some people that ceiling is very low. If we assume that you have some kind of software job since you're on HN - there are many people out there whose brains don't have the computational power to do your job. And for a subset of those people keeping any job would be a challenge. That's not something that they control or that anyone can change. If human intelligence is continuous and somewhat symmetrical, for every outlier that you meet on the high end of intelligence there is someone out there who can barely function in modern society (or maybe they can't).

Aren't you sharing that key with anyone that you transact with?

No, it's not the same at all. Tether is not a bank. Banks are audited and bank deposits are insured. Banks can't print money unilaterally. Tether doesn't have the same regulations apply to it.