Excellent response:)
After doing the survey, I can smell the bias almost every question asked.
As with any research based work you do at university level, if it's seen as biased [comma] you better have a really good reason to be able to still use it as supporting evidence for you opinion on a idea or statement.
Sorry you smell bias - as I said, I'm not trying to prove any hypothesis with this survey. It's a follow up to results I've got already in the study. I don't quite understand what you mean how if it's seen as biased then it's better. Showing biased in research, particularly when gathering the data is a very bad thing, because it affects the validity of the results.
Slight misunderstanding there? Everyone's saying that bias is bad. However, in this case, I think that even if it's accidental, it seems you have stirred up a bit of controversy. As a result, you've gotten lots of replies and intelligent discussion here.
Doing successful surveys seems like an artform/ social science in its own right. In much the same way that pharmaceutical companies give some of their test patients placebos instead of the real thing, maybe future surveys could cover a variety of different topics so that the participants are less likely to be guarded against one particular aspect?
(small aside: we had some interesting discussion on technological determinism vs social construction of technology, and personally, the most legitimate sounding theory is social shaping - e.g. people create technology based on social requirements and such, and the technology changes the social requirements and such, so it's cyclic.)
Perhaps you could try to analyse what things (if any,) the creators of Bitcoin and the participants are most concerned about regarding existing social/financial/political frameworks? If we try to think of Bitcoin as the
answer that tries to fix certain problems, maybe we can work backwards and figure out what those problems are.
What are some of Bitcoin's key features?
Pre-programmed, publicly known inflation scheme that is virtually impossible to change without a majority consensus. Unwarranted currency debasement by a central party (such as a reserve bank) could be seen as one of worst crimes in the world. It
is grand theft from millions of people, isn't it? And to make it worse, it seems that within existing frameworks, society can do absolutely nothing to stop the rot. Can we at least vote for better reserve bank governors or get corrupt ones thrown out of office?? And what about other parts of the system that allow banks to also create money with little or no deposits required as collateral?...
Low cost fast transactions. Most transactions in the world are dominated by a small oligopoly of credit card companies and banks. The high interest and fees they charge guarantee huge incomes for these companies. Yet governments never step in. They never crack down on those monopolies, even though there are plenty of laws regarding anticompetitive behaviour. Isn't that criminal negligence on a grand scale? Even worse, the existing cartel is protected by a wall of red tape that makes it extremely difficult for new competitors to emerge. I could go on, but you get the point.
I agree - that's one of the things I'm having to learn. I found computing science to be largely logical, and found it relatively easy. Social sciences, and human based sciences to me require a lot more of something that doesn't seem like straight forward logic - like an art form as you say. One thing I've definitely learned from this survey on these forums, is that in future, I will try and approach the community with a problem or question before or at the same time as considering the methodology. Something I've been very aware of, which I think is hugely underestimated by governments etc, is the amount of knowledge and intellect present in communities, particularly open source ones.
The points you listed regarding features are things that I already planned on discussing. As part of integrating the computing science approach with the social/criminological approach, I'll be talking about the technical side behind the features, and how then some of these features work as a doubled edged sword, providing and excellent, free, distributed anonymous service for the everyday individual, as well as providing a good platform for more nefarious intentions. I'll also ensure I emphasize that this double edged sword isn't necessarily a unique feature to Bitcoin, and is present in recognized countries because of cash.
I appreciate defining crime and such is a problem, and that a lot of large corporations get away with things that done on a smaller scale by less powerful people would be considered a crime. This is something I must address briefly, but at the same time, this research is slightly higher level (but obviously still affected) than the lower level criminological issues such as what is crime? It's the same way in computing science research, you typically don't have to talk in too much depth about how semi conductors come together to form logic gates if you're doing research on say, efficient compiler engineering.
Thanks again for the feedback, responses and discussion. This is all proving to be a really valuable learning experience for me. As I said, I intend on doing more research into Bitcoin, so even if I learn nothing else, just conducting this survey is helping me understand better how to approach the community.
Dom.