When Martin Dittus and I held the Bitcoin Weekend at the London Hackspace, Catherine Flick sent us this video on her research into bitcoin as a computer ethicist.
Catherine is a researcher in technology ethics at Middlesex University. She started investigating the potential social and ethical impact of Bitcoin, and is currently evaluating a first survey.
Repeat after me: “as anonymous as you want it to be”.
Catherine presents well but arguments like this are silly. A currency doesn’t have a morality. Paper cash Dollars and paper cash Pounds can be used also for any of the mentioned use cases.
This is like saying that pencils cause spelling errors.
You make a good point, and I can totally understand what you’re saying. But ethics is more than ‘being good’. Ethics is about helping good people make good decisions when the best decision isn’t always clear.
There are hundreds of small ethical decisions everyday that build up to outcomes. Catherine wasn’t talking about bitcoin’s anthropomorphic morality, but about the people driving bitcoin forwards. The community.
There are many small decisions now about bitcoin’s future that can have massive future ramifications if bitcoin becomes big. Computing, the internet and web itself are an empowering tool simply because of those early engineers who had the prescience to design it that way, understanding the future impact such tools would have.
Their ethical decisions are a gift to us today. And a valuable and humbling example to follow.
Bitcoin is unique in that it has a decentralised community rather than a centralised currency authority. The most important small decisions now that can have massive future ramifications are design structures that enhance and extend user-defined anonymity and user-defined untraceability. One day in the future, when the world crosses the threshold from paper currency to full ‘cashless society’, we do not want to wake up to a dark nightmare and realize that we have also lost those essential qualities that made paper cash so attractive and important to our personal freedoms.
Catherine’s thesis would have been better exemplified by highlighting transactions like the financial support of politically-unpopular or politically-incorrect causes, the father who discretely wants to support an illegitimate child, the woman exercising her right to choose to have a private abortion, and the persecuted minorities fleeing a dictator that attempt to secretly transport their small remaining wealth to safety. An infrastructure that supported those transactions would be the most valuable gift of all to a future society.
This is an appalling presentation on many levels. It betrays what I can only describe as a very restricted world view, taking into consideration a narrow and blinkered perspective. It’s useful as a sounding board for people with a better understanding of the topic, and so I welcome it as a springboard.
Ethics is not “about helping good people make good decisions when the best decision isn’t always clear.” Here is a good definition of what it actually is: “Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
Ethics is therefore, not about ‘helping good people’.
What is good and bad in subjects like money is interpreted differently from person to person and country to country. People like Catherine Flicks display demonstrably unethical and immoral thinking in the case of Bitcoin and money and exchange, since she advocates the use of force to control human beings who are interacting with each other voluntarily.
The observation that it is unethical to use force to control people’s private financial transactions is not an opinion. People who advocate the control of others by force and by default can be demonstrated to be immoral and unethical from first principles and logic.
These people are the Statists, who rely on hand waving, generalizations, rules of thumb, received wisdom, poor logic, fear-mongering and whatever irrational motivation is to hand to make their case for the immoral and violent control of other people.
The approach Ms Flick has taken to examine Bitcoin is completely wrong. There is no such thing as ‘the Dual Use Dilemma’ in relation to Bitcoin. This is language carried over from the debate about nuclear technology, where nuclear reactors, which can be used to produce goods for medical examinations and killing cancerous tumors have a ‘dual use’ of also being able to supply fissile material for explosives. Using this term in the context of Bitcoin is an attempt to impart a feeling of imminent danger to Bitcoin, in the same way that FUKUS is trying to do with Iran and its peaceful and perfectly legal nuclear programme; ‘Its not a threat now, but it may be in the near future’.
Bitcoin, like any technology, is neutral. It is a discreet piece of software that can be fully examined without a questionnaire of its users. It is literally like a hammer or any other inert object. If she was undertaking a simple survey of bitcoin users, then this approach would be the correct method, but she is attempting to discuss ‘the Dual Use Dilemma’ of Bitcoin, and this is her error. What people use it for does not in any way change what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is neither ethical nor unethical.
Think about it this way. If Flics was examining hammers, and surveyed a set of people on them, she might get carpenters and burglars in her survey sample. Burglars use hammers to steal. Carpenters use hammers to build. She could create pie charts and type out their responses and give a talk on her academic results, without actually touching upon hammers at all. This is exactly what she has done with Bitcoin.
She would say that burglars using hammers to steal is, “rather worrying” and then say that carpenters do good work with hammers. None of this has anything to do with hammers as a tool, and yet she would offer that the regulation of hammers is a possibility that is reasonable, rational and perhaps desirable. No one with any sense would advocate the regulation of simple tools, and yet, because Bitcoin is a simple tool that can transmit ‘money’ it is immediately assumed that the State must have something to do with it. It simply does not follow.
Since people insist on conflating Bitcoin with money, ‘The Ethics of Money Production’ by Jörg Guido Hülsmann:
http://mises.org/books/moneyproduction.pdf
is worth buying and reading. Money is a good like any other. As is true with hammers and saws, there is no reason whatever to expect that money should not be manufactured by private individuals and it is entirely correct and beneficial for the public that it should not be regulated by the State, or anything other than market forces.
The problem with discussing Bitcoin as a form of money is that it is not money at all… but this is a digression. Bitcoin, whatever it is, is neutral, just like guns and hammers and all tools are neutral. You as a human being can take actions with it that are either ethical or unethical.
No one has the right to tell you what you may or may not do with your Bitcoins or your goods. If you are trading voluntarily, inside mutually agreed terms and not harming or defrauding other people, then no one has any sort of moral claim against you or your property.
If you do not accept this, then you, by extension, accept that the State (for example) has a claim on the things you own and do, and they have a legitimate reason to control you and your possessions and transactions, wether you act through voluntary exchange or not.
This is the fundamental difference between people who advocate that the State should regulate everything and the people who have a complete understanding of the true nature of human beings and right and wrong.
We, the ethical people, do not want to enforce our will and personal beliefs upon others. The Statists on the other hand, are hell bent on controlling everyone, in every area of their lives in every thing that has been invented and which has yet to be invented.
It is clear who the ethical people are in this equation, and more than that, as a purely practical matter, the State ruins everything it touches. Just look at the built in 2% inflation rate of Sterling as an example. It is designed to steal two percent of everyone’s stored wealth year on year. The absolute last thing that any new invention needs is the corrupting and destroying hand of the state upon its neck.
Academics like Catherine Flicks are used to justify the intervention of the State in everyone’s affairs by spreading FUD through their poorly designed studies and briefings. In the age of the internet however, these presentations can be refuted wherever they appear, both by inline commenting and hyperlinking.
Bitcoin and the systems that are sure to evolve from it and run in parallel with it are now an inevitable reality that is going to permanently disempower the Statists and dismantle the violent ‘society’. One day, Bitcoin will seem as natural and beneficial as sunshine, and the good of it, untouched by the State, will be apparent to all.
Bitcoin facilitates Barter
Barter facilitates Public Good.
Public good used inappropriately is unethical. (Terrorists must serve the public before they can get money to do anything else)
Centralized Power be it a State, Feudalism, Fascism, is the concentration and control of public good, that concentration can be used, but if it is used inappropriately history calls it barbarism and evil.
On the flip side if the public good is distributed among the public can be used equal to that of concentrated in a State, however when it is inappropriately used the negative impact remains an isolated instance (a bad apple – not a bag truck load of apples).
A lot of the confutation comes around anonymity; you only need to be anonymous to avoid unjust public judgment and persecution. That problem of being jugged is another stoical problem altogether while bitcoin eliminates some of the symptoms it is not the cure. Being free of judgment has nothing to do with the principals of bartering. When you barter you are trading your time for someone else’s. When you barter with the need for anonymity, you are using you time with the knowledge that you will be judged by other or possibly persecuted. This principle of judgment has over time encourages moral behavior and evolved to form our society. However we have today a perverted sense of moral behavior and we live in a perverted society corrupt with religious fundamentalists and many destructive rules. Many people can’t exist in our society naturally without being jugged, and that is the problem, while I have been horrified by some libertarian principles, they offer the closest thing to stoical equality and justice.
Mega +1 to Irdial (London)
Financial anonymity and privacy are absolutely necessary for free and fair trade, the evidence being authoritarian regimes often fail economically precisely from the lack of open trade (it shrinks and goes black). There is no true freedom without individual financial freedom and that only comes about with financial privacy. The optimal public good can only be achieved through individual freedom.
In any case, the free market for money will decide what it will use, the most superior form of money will be the most valuable in the market. Monetary forms that lack desirable attributes will be discounted to other forms. By increasing tracking and tracing of financial transactions with govt. fiat money the govt.s have unwittingly devalued the usefulness of their digital scrip by reducing the fungibility it had in a cash form. (One piece of money becomes distinguishable from an other due to the history of its transactions.) They have evolved a worse form of money in their lust for power and control, divorcing it from the legitimacy of the legacy system, a superior monetary form based on gold notes and cash.
Money is in essence an information technology, from shiny rocks through cowrie shells, tally sticks and ledgers. Technologies are amoral (blame the user not the tool) and the market will decide what technology is the best for money, not govts.
Bitcoin is better than fiat money because Govt’s and Bankers can’t manipulate it to their exclusive advantage, probably not strictly true, I’m sure they could buy a large slice and start manipulating to their advantage, but it’s less easy for them.
I think even better than Gold, because even if we had a Gold standard, we’d still have to trust them that the Gold was still in the Vault, and that it wasn’t just Gold plated Tungsten.
So I think the trust element of Bitcoin makes it even better than Gold.
If only one Govt would say yes to Bit coin, if only in a cautionary, experimental way, humanity might at last be free of economic servitude and we could spend our efforts on, science and art and technology, rather than struggling to survive these vampires.
Our economies are mostly based on shuffling money around Ponzied Casinos, they should be based on technology, industry, art, creativity, adventure and exploration.
I agree with what moi said but would like to re-emphasise Catherines last point (which should perhaps have been her first). We have tried for 6000 years to give up our individual freedom and control over certain aspects of our lives (social and economic) for the greater good of society. It demonstrably just does not work. If you give one iota of your own personal intellectual property to another then by definition it can be abused , miss-appropriated, diverted to uses with which you fundamentally disagree! NO – the line must be drawn somewhere and bitcoin is as good as anywhere else I have seen. reg
I totally agree, and to add insult to injury, we have created a system of inflation and inefficient monopolies in government, Finance and industry to manage everything.
Bitcoin, Catherine Flick and The Dual Use Dilemma – a Failure of Ethics
http://www.libertariannews.org/2012/02/06/bitcoin-catherine-flick-and-the-dual-use-dilemma-a-failure-of-ethics/
Michael Suede has posted a great response to this video at his blog: http://www.libertariannews.org/2012/02/06/bitcoin-catherine-flick-and-the-dual-use-dilemma-a-failure-of-ethics/
They had a similar discussion back in Stone age when the knife started to appear as a tool:
“The knife and the dual-use dilemma
We are seeing the emergence of this new tool called the “knife”. It can be used for good things like chopping vegetables, cutting out meat, cutting off branches from a tree and so on. On the other hand it can also be used to kill and harm other human beings.
Should we ban the knife because of the possibility of misuse?”
LOL, after the invention of the Knife they felt more powerful and a new level of respect emerged.
In some parts of the world, it was sad. Ultimately the people without knives were plundered, until they invented a bigger one.
Surveys like the one Catherine created can influence the psychology of people’s minds. What if I substituted “Bitcoin” with another phrase?
1.) Do you think it is good or bad for Catherine Flick to donate to hate or terrorist groups?
2.) Do you think it is good or bad for Catherine Flick to donate to legal political or other organizations?
3.) Things that Catherine Flick can do for good?
4.) Things that Catherine Flick can do for bad?
Asking questions like this can unfortunately associate Bitcoin with “bad” subjects, just like how Catherine Flick can be associated with these negative subjects.
bitcoin is a financial tool, no more no less. It’s use is no different than trading fish or coined gold. Yes it’s decentralized and provides semi-anonymity but that doesn’t mean it HAS to be used for immoral use. Catherine herself says “a very small number” use it illegally…
a great number more use the dollar illegally.