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This whole thing reminded me of the lesswrong.com post on Amanda Knox [1]

Even the initial assumption that the creator of Bitcoin used his real name, contained in the headline, was extremely unlikely, and all other evidence was completely circumstantial. In my mind, it was nearly obvious that Dorian is not Satoshi after a few hours and was shocked to see that many believed the news story.

I'm still not sure if this was irrational on my part due to my own bias of preferring that Satoshi remain anonymous, or the irrationality of internet discussions is worse than I thought.

1: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1j7/the_amanda_knox_test_how_an_hour...

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the initial assumption that the creator of Bitcoin used his real name, contained in the headline, was extremely unlikely

I'm curious: Why do people actually believe that this is so unlikely? By the time that I first read about Bitcoin, it seemed to be already accepted canonical knowledge that Satoshi Nakamoto must be a pseudonym, and I guess I just accepted that. But now that this discussion has come up, I don't think I remember any positive argument to that other than "he does not like to talk about his private life" (not a particularly strong argument given the amount of discussion of private life in typical open source projects) and "the inventor of Bitcoin must be some pre-established genius, and there is no such genius named Satoshi Nakamoto" (also rather questionable, and quite contrary to the startup culture usually seen here).

Are those pieces of evidence enough to make the use of his real name "extremely unlikely"?

It's unlikely that it is his real name because (1) the name does not appear outside of Bitcoin in any mailing list or forum and (2) bitcoin.org was purchased with anonymity in mind

To be fair, Leigh claims that Satoshi unambiguously admitted to her his involvement with bitcoin, and she was supposed to be a reputable journalist.

This gave some justification for initially accepting the story at face value.

Untrue. Leigh claims that Satoshi "tacitly" admitted his involvement, in the most ambiguous part of an extremely ambiguous writeup.

This is hardly stated "tacitly":

  "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

Your comment is very difficult to read.

>this is hardly state "tacitly":

>>"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

>>-Dorian S. Nakamoto

"In that," he says. Not "in Bitcoin". Not even "in cryptocurrency." As Dorian claims in his letter, he thought Leah was asking about his classified work for the federal government, and he was merely saying that his years of doing classified work were behind him.

Are we somehow to believe that someone who can't even get the name of the currency right (he called it "Bitcom" repeatedly), is the inventor? Nothing in Leah McGrath's articles or the follow up interviews with the AP or in this letter suggests to me that Dorian Nakamoto is anything more than who he says he is: just an old engineer looking for work.

The Newsweek article, in my view, is a disgusting piece of yellow journalism produced by a hack journalist who was doing whatever it took to get a flashy cover story for Newsweek's inaugural issue. In that, it succeeded. But in establishing Newsweek's journalistic bona-fides or establishing Leah McGrath as a decent human being, it failed utterly.

I agree with you completely. I was attempting to point out that author of the article wasn't exactly beating around the bush and basically said Dorian admitted to being involved.

  Reporter: Tell me, are you the inventor of Bitcoin?
  Dorian: I don't want any trouble, please leave me alone.
  Reporter: As an engineer working for defense projects, 
            you clearly had the skill to build this type 
            of technology.
  Dorian: I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it,...

All the reporter had to do was click "voice memo" on her iPhone, and there would have no doubt as to what had actually transpired...

Actually, speaking of Amanda Knox & LW... http://lesswrong.com/lw/ju0/amanda_knox_redux_is_satoshi_nak...

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