This is the dilemma for 99% of financial guys out there.
Their "education" on economics is actually working as a stumbling block to their ability to grasp and accept Bitcoin.
They think they know everything, therefore something that doesn't fit the mold is automatically nonsense.
Good observation. I used to work in finance and noticed this, too. Whenever explaining anything from the area of economics, the last people to grasp the concept were people who studied economics - because they have had their heads filled with a lot of bullshit concepts during their edumakation, preventing them to see things for what they were, because there were just too many (mostly bogus) concepts getting in their way.
To be fair they were followed by people like lawyers and psychologists, who thought they understand and know everything and were mostly a pain in the ass to deal with.
I had the easiest time with people unsullied by "higher education" or people from computer science or engineering backgrounds.
Actually it's quite fun to watch. Even highly intelligent and knowledgeable gold bugs and Austrian economists are taking their time in understanding Bitcoin and are only slowly, one by one coming around. And that's the worthwhile minority of economists. The guys who swallowed all of that Keynesian stuff? I gather they'll be among the "laggards" which adopt BTC, together with my grandmother and my autistic nephew.
hahaha this is brilliant! +1
For two people to understand each other, one of them has to essentially start thinking like the other. My experience is that certain people -- the sort who you know have a PHD because they tend to work that fact into the conversation every few weeks -- are unwilling to think in other ways. They force you to cross the divide, start thinking like them and explain the concept using their terminology and framework.
This is exactly Schiff's problem. He cannot imagine that Gold's intrinsic value irrelevant to the price of gold and is actually a liability for commerce whereas Bitcoin both HAS an intrinsic value and it is advantageous for commerce. Analyze a few of his shows from the context of cognitive framework and you'll rapidly lose all respect for his intelligence and predictions. A person who can only see one cognitive framework will only be right IF the world follows his framework -- but the existence of other frameworks essentially disproves that possibility.
But people who do computer science have natural language, math, CS, and probably a half dozen different CS languages with semantic differences (procedural, functional, rule-based, document layout). To a greater degree (still pretty small for many) their minds are flexible enough to think in multiple frameworks.
Frankly, this is why cypherdoc's comment "the nerds do not know that which they have created" pisses me off. We know. Its the economics professors and media talking heads who were endlessly reporting and blogging negatively about Bitcoin. Before 2013 99%+ dismissed Bitcoin. But of that 1%, most were engineers.
But the "nerds" also know that, like daylight savings time the real world at times makes changes beyond the control of any system no matter how elegant. "We" know that bitcoin is awesome but at the same time we know what we don't know and can't control. So while I've been saying that bitcoin could become first global exchange currency I've been saying it quietly :-)