this is no ad hominem - I am attacking your statements here not you as a person. you are flaunting your ignorance and using some weird appeal to authority by posting a vague quote from V. B. which itself is like, not even wrong.
I am not defensive, I am embarrassed for you and all of the people poisoned by this antisocial propaganda, and it makes me despair for humanity.
I wasn't making an appeal to authority, nor was I agreeing with V.B. I was trying to point out that finance may mean different things in different contexts. Not sure why you keep obsessing over this propaganda narrative, as if I'm a brainless NPC. I'm open to learning new things, and if you're more knowledgable then I'll listen.
For instance, I really like your view of finance as these emergent properties of human behaviour. My question is then: how do you propose we refer to the entities we currently have in place for trading of securities, market making, fractional banking, clearing houses, central bank issued fiat, etc? Clearly there is a difference between those "things" and what we do in DeFi, right?
So what label am I allowed to use to distinguish these entities from DeFi?
I am not defensive, I am embarrassed for you and all of the people poisoned by this antisocial propaganda, and it makes me despair for humanity.