Spot on! I skimmed it very quickly and I also got the feeling that portraying "shiny metals" as something that, in the beginning, only "a few crazy ones" liked to possess (attempting to draw a parallel with BTC's origins) does not stand to scrutiny. Desire for shinny metals and, in general, beautiful objects (diamonds, pearls etc) is hard-coded deeply in the human psyche, is found in myths since the dawn of time and is part of our human nature and our ability to appreciate beauty and being drawn to it. It's preposterous to claim the same for random strings of bits.
I beg to differ. I did have "no exchange value on account of other employments" at the time the very first BTC was mined, and I suspect quite a few months after that. The same cannot be said of paper money as from the moment of its inception and for many long years thereafter it was redeemable in gold, thus satisfying the regression theorem. Even today a tenuous link is still maintained as the gold reserves of every central bank factor, to a limited extend, in the assessment of a currency's health.
The passage above should be clearly be understood as "No good can be employed _for the long run_ ...". Otherwise various local currencies that have risen and died over the years (e.g. "Ithaca hours") could also have been construed as counter-examples to the regression theorem.
Has anyone yet been able to articulate a defense for BTC against von Mise's "regression theorem" for the origin of money? or show that von Mises was wrong? "this time it's different" is not good enough.
"After serving two years in prison during his mid-twenties for inadvertently killing someone during a bar fight, Aaron Jones turned his life around ...". To be honest, at that point I kind of wondered whether I was reading a parody piece or not. The 3-strikes laws are not totally irrational provided the legislators carefully decide what counts as a "strike". Even so, "inadvertently" killing someone during a bar fight should count as a strike in my book. Granted, having such laws in a legal environment where almost everything is a felony or can be charged as such, results in great many wasted lives and a huge societal cost. But it's the felony character of some of those underlying offences that should be questioned, not the three-strike principle per se.
It's so much comforting to know that the unwashed masses can look up to people such as you or the "experts" to protect them (with compassion) from themselves or from those who seek to manipulate or take advantage of them, such simpletons that they are. Makes it a better world.
Bogus analogy. You have no business repairing airplanes because you may endanger lives. People should be free to squander their money in their folly if they so choose. Otherwise outlaw lottery, gambling and horse-racing as well.
All other fiat currencies are similarly backed by a government that enjoys monopoly of legal force over some geographical area. That's why when governments die (lost war, revolution) the value of their fiat goes to zero and only "money" with intrinsic value is accepted (gold, silver, gems, works of art, cigarettes). In 6000 years of recorded history money always either had intrinsic value or was backed by a strong guy.
I argued that the US govt. can deploy its force to protect the dollar (as has done in the past even to the point of going to war) and the assurance of such a powerful guardian undergirds the trust in US dollar. Other have already answered as to how it can deploy force against Bitcoin (although not part of my argument). Governments can also act in concert. Invoking images of pedophiles or drug dealers using BTC would be more than enough to secure public support for such measures as blocking BTC port numbers, Deep Packet Inspection for BTC protocol content and ensuring that no legitimate retailer wants to be seen associating its name with the "pedophiles currency".
Exactly, Bitcoin will ultimately fail as money as it has no intrinsic value or real scarcity. As to those who might argue that fiat money has no intrinsic value either I beg to differ. The "intrinsic value" of, e.g., the USD is that there exists an organization (US government) with gargantuan physical force that stands to lose a lot if the value of USD goes to zero too fast and so holders of USDs can rely on that organization to deploy that force against rapid devaluation of their currency. There is no such comparable organization in the case of Bitcoin. In the absence of that, only real intrinsic value (the kind of gold or silver has) may prop up a currency and Bitcoin has none of that either. Tulip mania was very rational compared to Bitcoin.
I 'm not convinced. Such a "media" for thinking the unthinkable already exists. It's called "written language" plus maybe a drawing here or there. Has been used for millennia and once internalized by a mind willing to spend the effort to parse it has never failed to convey the unthinkable, the sublime or the transcendent.
Bitcoin is fiat, it's not backed by anything of real value and doesn't have a government or a strong (and I mean national-government-kind strong) player behind it that is willing to devote actual resources to prop it up (which is what all other fiat monies have and which is why they usually stay around for a century or so, after that they either become obsolete or their value greatly diminishes due to inflation). It has all of the Aristotelian properties of money (durable, portable, fungible), and some extra ones too, except intrinsic value. So it's not money according to Aristotle. When a better system comes along (and it would be trivially easy for that to eventuate, imagine, e.g. China or a major corporation or - even better - an industry association offering an altcoin backed by gold, agricultural land, shares, face time with celebrities, mentoring time - hey these are good ones! etc.), the value of bitcoins will go to zero as everybody will want the new, better altcoin that has at least some intrinsic value. The same death spiral cannot happen in the case of government-backed fiats when a new fiat is introduced, for a number of reasons. Bitcoin is inertia-backed fiat. I'll take the government-backed variety any time.
How many legitimate real world services and products currently accept Bitcoins? I understand it is only the Chinese search engine. I also take it for granted that any major Euro/US-based organization (be it Google or Domino's Pizza) that starts accepting Bitcoins will instantly face very serious political repercussions. Given these facts it is astonishing that Bitcoin seems to be heading from strength to strength.
Actually I was not sarcastic at all. I really loved that sentence as I too have a penchant for long-winding sentences that are hard to parse but in closer inspection have no noise and every word in them is essential. Comes from my days of reading Aristotle where it is not uncommon to have a page of only two sentences. Or look at the Declaration of Independence or the Treaty of Paris for more recent examples of page-sized sentences. I think it shows how far downhill we've gone in terms of literacy or perhaps even mental capacity. Yours, while not in the same league, was a sentence I really liked and it never occurred to me that people might construe my comment as sarcastic.
It's a very real problem for some individuals, no quarrel there. But it's not a "real social problem". As a matter of fact I could so far as to say that I would be hard-pressed to find any "real social problems". They really all boil down to individuals making bad choices but asking society to foot the bill. And of course "social problems" are very much welcomed by the political class and various others busybodies , do-gooders, etc. who earn their livelihoods (and sometimes much more than that) by "fixing" "social problems". And please don't play the "it's about the kids" card. If the effects spill over to non-consenting adults or minors, custody can be removed or charges can be brought just like the case of parents copulating in front of their kids without having to criminalize sex.
We should really stop calling it "war on drugs". It's really the "war on what people are allowed to consume, for their own sake" and so is on par with the "war on raw milk" and who knows maybe the "war on fat" or the "war on meat" in a few years. I'm not even a smoker but if somebody wants to consume/ingest all kinds of substances I don't lay any claims to his digestive track or blood stream and it's really his business to destroy himself if he so wishes, at any rate he pleases. In fact it might even be good "for the environment" since drug addicts are unlikely to have many kids and they usually have shorter life spans thus leaving a smaller carbon footprint on our precious Gaia. Clearly the society should not subsidize their medical treatment either and if they kill while hallucinating or steal to pay for their fix, being a drug-addict should not be treated as extenuating circumstances. Personal responsibility cuts both ways.
Did these guys ever exercise more control over the "spaceship" than the various primates and the Soviet space dogs we've put to orbit? Don't get me wrong, they were heroic and all that cause unlike Laica they knew exactly what they were getting into, I am just wondering .. For instance, could they do something wrong and crash the damned thing?
Even assuming that man-made global warming is true and that high concentrations of CO2 is a bad thing, what does science tell me that's really actionable? Coordination is impossible in prisoner's dilemma type games. No solution, no problem. The only way to "solve" the "problem" is with world-wide totalitarian measures which would produce untold misery as a side effect. I 'd much rather have the sea level go up 2 meters. The crying meteorologist is to me on a par with the British young woman who had an abortion "for the environment". To recap: powerful interests, alarming indications of intellectual fraud (e.g. accusations of data massaging, gradually speaking more of "climate change" than "global warming"), nothing to do that's compatible with me pursuing my interest, yes selfish interest - is there another kind? -, in a market economy. Case closed for me.
Man-made climate warning is most likely a hoax that fuels a multi-billion-dollar industry and is used, among other things, to erect protectionist barriers against Chinese and Indian cars. So there are extremely powerful vested political and economic interests to ensure that there's no possibility of an honest debate, even to the point of falsifying data I would suspect (never mind the indoctrination of young children across most of the western world).
Even if that weren't the case it would still be pointless to worry about it as trying to change people's behavior outside the marketplace can only be done with totalitarian methods, which is exactly what environmentalists propose. Not to mention, since this is Hacker News after all, that I would love to see CO2 concentrations go up 50 times to reach those recorded during dinosaurs' time (sorry, too lazy to check exact era), as a much denser atmosphere would allow almost car-sized airships to be built, or even human flight with wings and how cool would that be.
Environmentalism is the new communism and Gaia-worshiping is a religion with Al Gore as its main tele-evangelist. The guy has even set up his own company selling carbon credits. I am certainly not going to write a lengthy exposition identifying the errors in Benn Hinn's theological doctrine. Ridicule saves time.
I wouldn't normally want to comment on that since it's not relevant to the original thread but what exactly do you mean "no birth right to it"? Like, I can't bequeath anything to my kids cause that would confer an "unfair" advantage on them? Or maybe we need a "fair" inheritance tax. Like 95% maybe? Somehow it is your political / worldview bias that's transparent in your post, not mine.
I said nothing about genetic overall superiority although it is plainly evident to anyone not blinded by PC that some peoples are genetically more likely to produce sublime music or advanced mathematical frameworks / complex works of art or advanced technology just like other peoples are genetically more likely to be stronger, better jumpers, runners, sturdier and so on. Environment certainly played a role but after many hundreds or even thousands of generations the genetic makeup of a people changes as well (as an aggregate statistical entity).
I've no doubt these genetic differences were non-existent when we were all together in the primordial soup but we've moved past that phase and these differences now exist. I am saying nothing about overall superiority and certainly nothing about rights of individuals.
If you make the extraordinary claim that the genetic makeup of a people played no role in the difference of achievements between cultures the onus is on you to prove a negative. Explain why we take it for granted that people of Samoan heritage are huge but it's somehow racist to argue that hey, that DNA thing may be affecting brain cells as well and not just bones / muscle tissue.
> John H. Lienhard is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and History, getting his PhD from UC Berkeley.
Close enough for me. Frankly I doubt that he honestly believed every word he wrote. People in high places have to routinely perform public worship of the PC god, "all cultures are equal", etc.
It couldn't have been efficient since it is patently idiotic. Just spread 34 groups of 7 stones each on the ground and count them! That's all you have to do. No algorithm at all, just symbolic logic, and you need fewer stones, and probably takes less time as well. The only way to use this algorithm to portray the mathematical prowess of native Ethiopian culture in some positive way is to argue that the Shamans purposefully used this algorithm to obfuscate the process and maintain the life style and privileges of the priestly class. I dare you to claim with a straight face that this "algorithm" is even remotely comparable to what the Greeks did, e.g. Archimedes' proving, PROVING I repeat, in a mathematically rigorous way, in the 3rd century BC, that a sphere has 2/3 the volume and surface area of its circumscribing cylinder.
I fail to see the ingenuity, or even any common sense in this. If to "run" the algorithm you are required to have as many stones as the end result (actually quite more if you count those spent on "evil" holes), you might as well spread out on the ground 34 groups of stones with 7 stones in each group and just count them. Or create a 34X7 rectangle and count the stones. So I dare say we differ a lot from the Ethiopian shaman. Reality doesn't always conform to the PC narrative of how all civilizations are equal. Unless you are a sociology major that is.
Thanks for articulating so eloquently what I failed to communicate in [0]. Great post. Moreover, I feel we may have been horribly misled by Asimov's vision of robots. Come to think about it what we really need is not machines to be our slaves and fight our wars, but rather more intelligent animals. Perhaps biotechnology can deliver some kind of clever ape that can be useful around the house and do some fighting or carry ammunition in battlefield too. Yeah, I know unethical and all that. All these qualms will die instantly the moment a country is able to field a conventional army boosted with such apes. US has already done that as a matter of fact using mine-carrying seals / dolphins in WWII. And I know for a fact that a NATO army has plans to use pigs to clear minefields.
I am not convinced that that's the way to go. I know nothing about robotics but it seems to me that research into a chimp-donkey hybrid might have more potential for success and also for producing lasting results and solve real, elementary problems that will be relevant for future generations (also with a better chance for civilian / medical applications). The intelligence of a primate to allow it to obey simple commands and follow his master and the agility, biological power source and millions of years of evolution of a donkey or some other sturdy quadruped that can negotiate rough terrain.
Not to mention that with a biological "robot" you also have a very low cost of producing subsequent units if you manage to create a non-sterile hybrid.