canoebuilder

underrated...

How is it superior to existing systems? For what applications?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gall_(author)#Gall.27s_la...

People like analogizing blockchain development to the development of the world wide web.

Tim Berners-Lee launched the first website in Dec 1990, Google launched in Sept 1998. And in between there were many companies founded that did things that lots of people liked. These companies found widespread use and patronage.

Satoshi Nakamoto launched bitcoin/and the blockchain idea in Jan 2009, it's currently Oct 2017.

What besides trading cryptocurrencies, and endless(half-bakedly) pontificating on, are people doing with blockchains?

What simple, functional, useful blockchain systems are people actually using today that have potential to grow into more useful and complex systems later?

Not to mention the richness of implying chinese exchanges are somehow uniquely bad! Exchange shenanigans on the english speaking web are a central part of the bitcoin story to this point.

One thing to note is that the vast majority of "mainstream" interest and institutional investment came about because of the surge in pricing caused by the willy bot[0]. People saw this and interpreted it as broad-based interest and demand for btc, while the actual situation was more about a French Jewish Japanophile, deploying some shenanigans in an unregulated market trying to get the head of his embattled exchange business back above water.

So in a way the willy-bot situation has triggered all the subsequent irrational exuberance.

[0]https://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-repor...

If you or anyone knows, which territories are trying to join a neighboring country?

We think. We think about thinking. We think about thinking about thinking.

Can you map these metaphors to their counterparts in China?

That's a very interesting idea. What do you mean by the "requirements conflict"?

Couldn't it be implemented with a dead man's switch where one would check in every year or so. Of course there would need to be some verification methods baked in to thwart pranksters.

I was simply explaining that many crypto-currency systems are demonstrably more adversarial and user-hostile environments than most other currencies. Not only are they more adversarial, they are more adversarial in a way that most computer users aren't equipped to comprehend.

I think nodesocket's point was that to expect the run of the mill computer user, who barely understands what a browser is, to have the security chops to withstand constant attacks from people who not only know what a browser is, but have also devoted substantial time to understanding as many exploits to the crypto-currency systems as they can and who have monetary incentive to continue refining that understanding in pursuit of most likely consequence free(apart from their soul) illicit monetary gains, to look at the dynamics at play here, it is not a stretch to assume that expecting widespread adoption in any form is likely to be a losing proposition.

What does "decentralizing security" mean? Everyone with any currency to protect will have to implement the digital equivalent of 36 inch fortified walls? Why would they want to do that when most people are satisfied with outsourcing this to service providers who specialize in such things?

For some scenarios there is a case to be made for "user defined security" or some-such, possibly even a few legitimate ones that aren't socially hostile. But it's hard to make any convincing case(without using any "semantic sugar," "empty calorie" buzzword-laden phrases like "decentralizing security") against nodesocket's point that the lay of the land of crypto-currency seems hopelessly tilted towards those who would like to exploit it in these ways.

A hypothetical object in motion under no external forces will remain in motion until a force acts on it, upon this acting, energy will be transferred, thus a cost.

In our more familiar world, a ball rolling down a trail will continue rolling until the friction of the dirt provides sufficient cost/exchange of energy, or the ball encounters a change in grade on the trail such that a gravitational force extracts enough of a cost on the kinetic energy of the system to cause it to stop. For the ball to regain motion some other force must be applied to the ball at an energetic cost to the entity exerting the force.

We can see these costs/exchanges and any change of state in a system as equivalent because the total energy in the system remains the same. Anytime there is a change, there is a cost.

A "thing" is something that is identifiably different from other things. What causes differences to arise is fluctuation of energy in the system. A thing is a fluctuation, a fluctuation is an exchange, and exchange is a cost, things have/are costs.

At a less cerebral level, anytime you do a "thing" it comes at the cost of other "things" you could do. So whatever thing you're doing has this opportunity cost.

We've mapped the abstraction of money onto many types of costs, but costs can be at a level other than monetary.

"Capital should own things" because capital is the name we've given to the unit of energy in economic systems, and as we've seen above "things have costs," all things have costs. And as we've also seen above, "ownership" is the name given to the new state assumed following an exchange. The ball owns "at rest" after the exchange with the dirt.

It's not really "capital" that owns things, but the spenders/deployers of capital[0]. Just like it's not friction that owns the at rest state, friction was just a name for energy exchanged. The ball and the dirt conducted a transaction in friction, the ball got "at rest" and the dirt got "increased heat."

[0]So I guess at this point you'd say, in Socialism we'd prescribe that you can't spend money on things that confer ownership of future exchanges for money, or things that increase in value. But here is where the nature of reality is critically important, the universe is not perfectly flat, there are always going to be peaks and troughs in the distribution of energy so long as the universe is the one we recognize today. Not every cost will dissipate in it's returns because the total amount of energy in system is conserved. So if there are some costs that are net losses some must be net gains. And there must be variation in results of exchanges because otherwise we wouldn't see anything around us, we see things around us because of fluctuations in energy.

While Piketty's equation might need to be addressed, not understanding the reality from which it arises doesn't help in addressing it.

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II

You may have a broader understanding of this than me, but isn't "capitalism" simply the name we've given to the dominant economic system we've found that came to be through emergent processes of human social interaction stretching back thousands of years? Nobody ever said I'm going to start Capitalism!

Yes, there were some abstraction layers added on with the development of capital/share markets and limited liability corporations around 1400-1500AD, but it seems to me what we call capitalism is simply the name given to the economic system we've deduced to be present wherever we find things like coinage and contracts/exchange agreements in history. Were the ancient Greeks "capitalists"?

Adam Smith was for the most part describing what he saw around him and what already existed, was he not? I don't believe he was prescribing whole new systems of being.

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III

So you're saying Socialism is simply a restricted form of Capitalism?

Because the characteristics you give for Socialism, workers owning what they produce and co-ops, are not only possible in our capitalist system, but they are present in significant number.

In fact, in capitalism everyone owns the fruits of their labor. Were that not true, it would be more appropriately called slavery.

A computer programmer may or may not take home his code at the end of the day, depending on if he is employed by someone else and the agreements made between him and whoever may employ him, but he still owns what he has created even if he doesn't take the bytes home. He has just agreed to exchange it for something else upon creating it, most likely capital/currency.

So you're saying things would be better if such agreements were restricted by law?

It does more harm than good to the individual and society to entertain the delusions of mental health conditions.

The condition of gender dysphoria is a personal issue best dealt with between the affected individual and their health care provider.

But the key driver for Peterson was that pronouncements on these issues have absolutely no place in the Canadian constitution.

I think it was only with this issue(legislative lunacy) that he started discussing this, and it wasn't out of some contempt or animosity for people inclined to dress and behave a particular way, but rather because when societies start legislating what people are and aren't allowed to say and think, things tend to go real bad, real quick.

Peterson felt a strong duty to take a stand here due to his long study of the horrors and atrocities of communism the 20th century that often stemmed from mandates imposed on acceptable speech and thought.

There is nothing in the current system that prohibits people performing work from owning the fruits of that work.

How does socialism supersede capitalism's benefit of promoting the transfer of economic value in the form of currency, or capital, from one creative realm to another which has immense creative potential over a less abstracted approach?

Are you saying that socialism basically boils down to prohibition of people owning anything that they did not make with their own hands? And I guess handmade goods can be traded? Do they lose trade potential after they've left the hands of their original creator?

I've generally seen capitalism, not as some sort of cause that emerged from some Magnum Opus and was subsequently cheered on by ideologues in the way of socialism/marxism/communism, but rather as essentially an outgrowth of fundamentally true aspects of nature. Things have costs, energy is cycled and exchanged, etc.

Not to say societies shouldn't have laws and regulations, but when you try to impose laws and regulations that run counter to natural orders and fundamental truths you inevitably run into trouble.

Has anyone even formulated and proposed any notionally viable alternatives? Apart from the vastly destructive and murderous attempts of communism in the past century.

Not saying the implementation of the current system is optimal, of course, but I think over time things tend to converge on that which does the most good for the most people.

It would likely get your point across better and might spur some useful discussion. With the type of info asymmetry inherent in most discussions, people lacking your knowledge on this subject are likely to quickly dismiss statements like this.

So in effect for these similarities to present, they have to be cousins on some level right? Whether that is sharing N slots at the 2048 level, or some other combination?

In a sense all of humanity are cousins, and races are clusters with a higher coefficient of cousin-ness than the global average.

But as far the relation of genetics and genetic similarities to race, all genetics are related to race.

In terms of the fact that a single Adenine molecule alone is fairly useless, it is only when that molecule is combined into the structure of a genome that it takes on meaning[0], and genomes have a race, so I don't think in that sense there are any genes or genetic similarities that aren't related to race.

Every member of a race is more genetically related to every other member of that race than they are to any member of any other race.

What "genetic similarities" could there be that are more similar across races than within races?

[0]"Meaning" at the level under discussion in terms of human relationships and whatnot.

That's exactly what it means. Knowing what we know about sexual reproduction and trait heredity what else could it mean? It's not like half your genome spontaneously arises in a zygote in some random location half way around the world.

If your talking about the often vaunted genetic diversity on the continent of Africa, that has no bearing on the existence of clusters of relative genetic similarity around the world we have come to refer to variously as ethnicity, race, population group, etc. In fact that African genetic diversity supports the reality of distinct population groups and ethnicities because it is a bunch of genetic material that other groups don't have.

The very basis for ethnicity/race/population groups is a genomic "alphabet"/string within certain bounds. In considering the global level distinctions between populations it makes no difference the level of genetic diversity in any particular group.

The defining factor is that various groups share traits that no other group does.

Asians and Europeans have stretches of DNA that we've determined through the magic of modern science come from an extinct species of human called Neanderthals. None of these stretches of DNA are found in Africans.

Likewise, Africans have stretches of DNA that come from as yet identified extinct species, these stretches of DNA aren't found in Asians or Europeans.

Then of course there are the myriad other genetic structures that while having origins in the ancestors of all living humans have nonetheless diverged through the process of evolution over the millennia into reliable genetic markers for the various population groups.

And it is true that ethnic groups are defined as well by visual appearance, for example cranium shape and size, nostril diameter, length of nasal bridge, hair color/texture etc. but these things aren't the result of members of your culture gathering around at your birth and molding these things like clay, these things are encoded in genes and what molded their shape into your genes are evolutionary pressures in your ancestral environment.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-finally-confirms-barcelona-ter...

Your circulatory system is a fractal for similar reasons that trees are fractals for similar reasons that watersheds are fractals.

Fractal structures are probably the rule rather than the exception for basic reasons of space and energy efficiency.

Here's another interesting fractal thought, where is the universe? In your head, or outside of it, or both?

So the neuronal structure representing the universe in your head is at least in some ways similar to the objective outside universe, if there is such a thing, and if there is such a thing then that neuronal structure in your head is also in(and of) that objective universe while also being similar to it.

A good term for fractals is self-similar.

Self-similarity all the way down.

I am a strange loop. - Douglas Hofstadter

It's in you, and you're in it. - Alan Watts

I was simply pointing out that when talking about potential danger from a given substance, the absolute amount, X ft^3, doesn't tell us much with knowing more about the substance's potential for deleterious effects at a given quantity of the substance.

If deleterious effects start at X * 4, X is less concerning. If deleterious effects start at X * .0000000004, X is more concerning.

I've got this little thimble full of material, just a small thimble. No big deal right? I'll just leave it laying somewhere around your house.

Would your assessment of this situation change if you knew it was a thimble full of cyanide?

P.S. I didn't mean for my original post to sound hostile, though with it's conciseness and using 'worthless,' I could understand such an interpretation. I have no problems with this line of analysis, I'm a fan and found the visual it provided interesting. I just intended to point out that if the intention was to give a sense of the danger posed by nuclear waste produced over the past 60 years, then the analysis was incomplete for the reasons stated above.

P.P.S Is the amount of toxic waste produced by solar vs nuclear per unit of energy produced in any way comparable? If so that would no doubt be of interest to the world at large.

When you say google and microsoft have this advantage in creating data sets, is it just the massive size of the web indices they are able to compile or do they use their crawlers in specific ways for compiling structured data that would be more useful for certain ML projects than a general web index?

Are there any tweaks you'd make to a crawler if you sent it out with the purpose of creating a dataset for a specific AI / ML project, rather than a general purpose web index?