Okay, so if your time felt wasted, that must mean there were better uses of your 20s.
But, how else would you have driven towards your goal of building a new financial system?
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But, how else would you have driven towards your goal of building a new financial system?
What if the end result is harmful to society?
You're changing the subject. Nobody is arguing that the author is irredeemable. On the contrary, the author seems to have recognized his own mistake and changed his course, at least to an extent. The question is whether the author's years in crypto were a waste, and I would say that it's indeed a waste to spend 8 years on something just to "learn" that one shouldn't have done that thing.
> Everyone makes mistakes
This is also changing the subject. Everyone does not spend 8 years in crypto.
I've made some big mistakes, and I think I've also wasted a lot of time. The wasted time was not "valuable" by learning that I wasted my time. It was simply regrettable.
On the other hand, I don't think I've ever spent a lot of time and effort on an activity that broadly harms society. I don't need to do that in order to learn that I shouldn't do that. Some things are just blatantly obvious in advance, or should be. You shouldn't need to dedicate your life to crypto to realize it's all a big casino.
> I don't think I've ever spent a lot of time and effort on an activity that broadly harms society
Me neither. I worked in the cryptocurrency industry, sold drugs, interacted with gangs, and a bunch of other stuff but none of them broadly harmed society, so seems we're more or less the same on that point.
But everyone's frame of reference and reality is difference, there is no absolute truth here, trying to paint it as such is actively doing a disservice to any sort of discourse we could have about the subject.
One could surely argue that making "paid browser extensions" somehow have a net negative impact on the world, and if that was proven, would that mean all the time you spent on those sort of projects were suddenly wasteful and you should have realized this up front? Seems inhumane if so.
Of course you can learn from your experience, and the author did learn from his experience, which is the entire point of the tweet, so the author doesn't need to be told that he can learn from his experience. He already knows!
Nonetheless, the author considers his time to have been a waste.
> meaning it wouldn't be a waste
This does not follow.
> I worked in the cryptocurrency industry, sold drugs, interacted with gangs, and a bunch of other stuff but none of them broadly harmed society
Ok...
> One could surely argue that making "paid browser extensions" somehow have a net negative impact on the world, and if that was proven, would that mean all the time you spent on those sort of projects were suddenly wasteful and you should have realized this up front?
If that was proven? Well, prove it. Go ahead, make my day. Otherwise, this is just a silly piece of sophistry with no applicability.