Topic: Economic Devastation - page 22. (Read 504811 times)
That is precisely an optimum way to be personally investing in gold and Bitcoin on a small scale for the long-term in small morsels (and you aren't likely to be incentivized to sell them sooner unless you were just desperate, which is precisely the role gold should serve). I salute you on those placements. Well done. Wish I could do that at this time (which implies how precarious my financial condition is right now).
For our significant capital though, we have to calculate the near-term movement of the herd, because timing and liquidity matter in our finite lifetime.
I agree the term 'self-aware consciousness' is rather nebulous. I think this can only really mean an organism with free will and which desires to survive and compete to spread its genetics. Thus A.I. can never be an omniscient entity, because for example it will compete amongst the instances of itself (per the definition of free will).
And if it can replicate and grow, that means it consumes everything in it's path. Why don't viruses destroy humans because they outnumber us by a huge factor? Because we have time to immunize ourselves.
If the AI strikes, we will barely have 5 years to prepare ourselves, which wont be enough. Humans have no chance against robots unfortunately.
And the AI wont be so generous to lesser species, like humans are to build reservations for species in danger.
Human's inneficiency is what makes us care about others, and have compassion, the robots wont have that.
Of course it wont be omniscient, i dont believe in that, but it will be far superior, like an ant to an elephant in terms of power.
Perfection doesnt exist, but if the AI learns nanotechnology and adapt very well to the enviroment then it will be unstoppable.
I believe the first contact humans will have with aliens, will be a mechanic race of AI.
What other alien race can travel so distant space other than an AI race? And if we make first contact with those, we will be 'assimilated'.
So I believe projects like SETI will destroy us all, because they expose all of us to extinction...
CoinCube, because I presume you don't have the real world trading experience of Armstrong, you might be focusing too much on "fundamental value" which is mostly a meaningless concept in trading and investing in assets that are driven instead by confidence, herd movement, and liquidity issues. Also we need to be very careful not to make investing decision based on any emotional reasons. This can lead to bad decisions. I've suffered from both of these myself in the past, so I am learning by fire.
...
Indeed, possibly all the way to 2024 or 2032 before the end of the bull market in gold, as Armstrong has written. But the problem will be that you probably won't be able to sell for a profit. You will be trapped and watch the price come back down while you must sit on your physical gold unable to cash out without ending up giving it all to the taxman. Again, maybe some people can find ways, but the environment is going to be much more onerous than anything seen in the past, because physical cash will be eliminated by then. So what do you trade your gold for that isn't tracked by the taxman? Land titles will be tracked also.
I think you'd be much better off plowing your money into businesses and land in Asia as these will be income producing assets. Gold produces no income, so while it is sitting there illiquid you can't generate income off of it (well you can lease your gold into the future's market which is what Armstrong taught the Arabs to do since they prefer to hold gold and Muslims can't do usury).
...
Indeed, possibly all the way to 2024 or 2032 before the end of the bull market in gold, as Armstrong has written. But the problem will be that you probably won't be able to sell for a profit. You will be trapped and watch the price come back down while you must sit on your physical gold unable to cash out without ending up giving it all to the taxman. Again, maybe some people can find ways, but the environment is going to be much more onerous than anything seen in the past, because physical cash will be eliminated by then. So what do you trade your gold for that isn't tracked by the taxman? Land titles will be tracked also.
I think you'd be much better off plowing your money into businesses and land in Asia as these will be income producing assets. Gold produces no income, so while it is sitting there illiquid you can't generate income off of it (well you can lease your gold into the future's market which is what Armstrong taught the Arabs to do since they prefer to hold gold and Muslims can't do usury).
iamnotback I pretty much agree with the entirety of your post above except for your dismissal of fundamental value. Investing based on fundamental value is viable provided you are certain of your analysis and plan for the fact that you may not be able to liquidate the investment in your lifetime if the herd moves against you in the interim.
My own quite limited investment into gold and Bitcoin consists of a few of these.
I have purchased three of them for each of my small children. One will be given to each when they turn 20. The other two will be given given to their children my future grandchildren when they turn 20.
My investment in gold and bitcoin is an attempt to transfer a small amount of wealth into the future to unborn generations in a way that discourages that wealth from being squandered. Were I looking to liquidate investments in only a few years I would choose other vehicles.
How do you know the AI will be self aware?
I agree the term 'self-aware consciousness' is rather nebulous. I think this can only really mean an organism with free will and which desires to survive and compete to spread its genetics. Thus A.I. can never be an omniscient entity, because for example it will compete amongst the instances of itself (per the definition of free will).
It only needs to be complex enough to calculate its actions and learn from and adapt to the enviroment. It can be a complex learning system that mimics consciousness perfectly, but never has one.
Perfect can't exist, else nothing can exist. See my prior post. Omniscience (perfection) can't exist. Period. Stop this nonsense please all of you.
...that doesnt mean it wont have the capability to wipe out humanity, like the Skynet in the Terminator movies.
And with the unintended consequence that it may inadvertently cause its own extinction. See again my reply to aminorex and the term "trophic cascade".
You see A.I. can't be omniscient. Thus it can't be omnipotent. Those powers are incompatible with the existence of time.
Meaning that some instances of A.I. may choose to protect humans and others may fight to destroy humans. The concept of an A.I. that is unified in its desire to make humans extinct is incompatible with the fact that A.I. can't be omniscient and thus can't compute with 100% certainty the outcome of annihilating all humans. From uncertainty arrives disagreement. From disagreement, spawns competition and survival-of-the-fittest and evolution.
Self aware AI could in theory be creative and perhaps even appear omniscient to a human while in actuality being quite limited. To the single celled organism under a microscope a human appears omniscient living an incomprehensible life orders of magnitude longer and more complex while dealing with challenges that play out over hundreds cellular generations. Any appearance of omniscience in AI would likely be a similar illusion.
How do you know the AI will be self aware?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
It only needs to be complex enough to calculate its actions and learn from and adapt to the enviroment. It can be a complex learning system that mimics consciousness perfectly, but never has one.
The philosophical zombie concept is very interesting, and you will never know if the AI is selfaware or not, but that doesnt mean it wont have the capability to wipe out humanity, like the Skynet in the Terminator movies.
Regarding future value of US stocks and gold I am very skeptical of the argument that gold will drop in nominal value going forward. The Armstrong prediction linked is almost a year only and may be outdated. Gold like the USD is a natural hedge against worsening currency uncertainty. In the current market environment both gold and US stocks are likely to see increased capital inflows and I suspect both will rise substantially in nominal terms.
CoinCube, because I presume you don't have the real world trading experience of Armstrong, you might be focusing too much on "fundamental value" which is mostly a meaningless concept in trading and investing in assets that are driven instead by confidence, herd movement, and liquidity issues. Also we need to be very careful not to make investing decision based on any emotional reasons. This can lead to bad decisions. I've suffered from both of these myself in the past, so I am learning by fire.
I'd like to draw your and the readers' attention to the text in one of the Armstrong quotes I highlighted in bold red in one of my replies to aminorex. I agree with Armstrong that while gold will rise with the USD and US stocks, it will not see its parabolic move until after the USD and US stock rise peaks. The bull market in the USD and US stocks is necessary to break the back of the rest of the world, in order to cause them to demand a monetary reset and usher in the new "Breton Woods", i.e. the global currency reserve unit. That overinflated USD will break the confidence in the USA also, because it will implode the rest of the world which is short the dollar and also kill USA exports (both by killing the economy of the rest of the world and making USA exports more expensive for the rest of the world). That is what is required to totally destroy confidence and end the possibility to do any more QE (because the private sector will have forsaken all thus QE would require a hyperinflationary give away of money which of course TPTB are not going to do as they would give up their power by burning their power to the ground, and instead they will then shift to the monetary reset to confiscate all capital and usher in the new global reserve unit and a political power sharing agreement amongst all major nations). Upon that peak (~2018 or maybe as late as 2021), we will see gold begin its parabolic skyrocket.
So first you'd want to be in US stocks, then sometime roughly late 2017 or 2018ish, then start to transition to gold.
Also I agree with Armstrong (see my prior quotes in reply to aminorex) that when the confidence shifts in earnest to realizing the USD and US stocks are the only liquid investment remaining (Q1 2017?), this is likely to first cause a selloff in gold because this will likely coincide with liquidity squeeze in the periphery (i.e. every where outside the USD and US bonds and stocks) thus causing people to sell gold to raise cash as they were forced to do in 2008-9. We've got a deadcat bounce in gold right now, because everyone still thinks the EU has a pulse (there is confusion over which sovereign to place funds with and there is a lot of liquidity awash so gold got a deadcat bounce) and too many people don't understand that the USD and US stocks will be the last man standing for liquid investments.
The capital that stampedes into gold after the peak in USD and US stocks will be desperate, and the vast majority of the world's capital will not make it, because it will get trapped by capital controls, bans on short selling, and other forms of liquidity squeezes and defaults.
Please for a moment pretend you are a multi-millionaire. Are you going to purchase a $million of physical gold. Of course not. If you do that, you very likely make your wealth hostage to confiscation, liquidity problems (where do you quickly sell $million of physical gold), etc.. Paper gold is liquid, but then that offers nothing that you can't get with paper stocks. At least with stocks, you can hold the physical stock certificates yourself if you wish.
Over the long run 20+ year’s I suspect physical gold at today’s prices will do better than stocks.
Indeed, possibly all the way to 2024 or 2032 before the end of the bull market in gold, as Armstrong has written. But the problem will be that we probably won't be able to sell for a profit. We will be trapped and watch the price come back down while we must sit on our physical gold unable to cash out without ending up giving it all to the taxman. Again, maybe some people can find ways, but the environment is going to be much more onerous than anything seen in the past, because physical cash will be eliminated by then. So what do we trade our gold for that isn't tracked by the taxman? Land titles will be tracked also.
I think we'd be much better off plowing our money into businesses and land in Asia as these will be income producing assets. Gold produces no income, so while it is sitting there illiquid we can't generate income off of it (well we can lease our paper gold into the future's market which is what Armstrong taught the Arabs to do since they prefer to hold gold and Muslims can't do usury).
Or into Asian stock markets after the 2020 bottom.
The stock market is increasingly broken and with each passing year its ability to perform its function as a weighting device is further undermined. Fulfilling pension and liabilities require outsized gains in these stock markets regardless of fundamentals and maintaining social stability necessitates that government deliver these gains.
The stock market has always been about swings in confidence and international capital flows. Even during the 1920s. You'd really need to come to appreciate Armstrong's historical research. P/E ratios have always been a meaningless metric as a measure of aggregate stock market value, except perhaps for a relative comparison of individual stocks.
I suspect near future will be full periodic crises and mini crashes smoothing the way for further rounds of QE. This combination would result stocks doing quite well while they increasingly become divorced from even the pretense of fundamentals. Such market control can go on as long as there is confidence the currency in the local currency.
Agreed it is all about confidence and liquidity. And as the confidence and liquidity outside the USD and US stocks collapses, there will only be one place for international capital to go.
People don't yet realize that the USA has a tremendous advantage because the entire world is using the USD as a reserve currency. Thus the USA can create more liquidity and must be the last man standing as the dominos fall. Even though Asia is fundamentally stronger, it won't be as liquid until after the USD is dethroned, which first requires a skyrocketing USD to break the back of the rest of the world, which will finally break the back of the USD also as the stampede into the USD is finite and must eventually peak, leaving in its wake the global economy burnt to the ground.
Again make sure you have read the Armstrong quotes I provided upthread (in reply to aminorex) carefully. For example, he pointed out that merchandise trade is only 1/100th of the FOREX market. This means that Asia's fundamental advantage is irrelevant in terms of international capital flows which is mostly about investment of stored monetary value.
To the single celled organism under a microscope a human appears omniscient living an incomprehensible life orders of magnitude longer and more complex while dealing with challenges that play out over hundreds cellular generations. Any appearance of omniscience in AI would likely be a similar illusion.
Humans don't even understand biological functions very well, so I don't think humans are omniscient over cells. The cells are doing systemic (in vivo) processes we don't even comprehend. Let me know when A.I. can cure my autoimmune illness.
A.I. might appear to do certain things much more efficiently than we can, but
aminorex is building detailed math models of processes, but I am pointing what I believe to an overriding observation that supercedes any detailed model. Omniscience can't exist.
iamnotback and aminorex I read through your recent back and forth. I thought I would comment on two aspects of your disagreements.
Regarding future value of US stocks and gold I am very skeptical of the argument that gold will drop in nominal value going forward. The Armstrong prediction linked is almost a year only and may be outdated. Gold like the USD is a natural hedge against worsening currency uncertainty. In the current market environment both gold and US stocks are likely to see increased capital inflows and I suspect both will rise substantially in nominal terms.
Over the long run 20+ year’s I suspect physical gold at today’s prices will do better than stocks. The stock market is increasingly broken and with each passing year its ability to perform its function as a weighting device is further undermined. Fulfilling pension and liabilities require outsized gains in these stock markets regardless of fundamentals and maintaining social stability necessitates that government deliver these gains. I suspect near future will be full periodic crises and mini crashes smoothing the way for further rounds of QE. This combination would result stocks doing quite well while they increasingly become divorced from even the pretense of fundamentals. Such market control can go on as long as there is confidence the currency in the local currency.
Regarding AI I think we are much farther away from true self-aware AI then most people believe. Our understanding of consciousness is infantile. I discussed unthread in my post on consciousness that consciousness may be grounded in quantum mechanics which if true would likely preclude the development of true self-aware AI until sometime after the development of robust quantum computers.
Self aware AI could in theory be creative and perhaps even appear omniscient to a human while in actuality being quite limited. To the single celled organism under a microscope a human appears omniscient living an incomprehensible life orders of magnitude longer and more complex while dealing with challenges that play out over hundreds cellular generations. Any appearance of omniscience in AI would likely be a similar illusion.
Regarding future value of US stocks and gold I am very skeptical of the argument that gold will drop in nominal value going forward. The Armstrong prediction linked is almost a year only and may be outdated. Gold like the USD is a natural hedge against worsening currency uncertainty. In the current market environment both gold and US stocks are likely to see increased capital inflows and I suspect both will rise substantially in nominal terms.
Over the long run 20+ year’s I suspect physical gold at today’s prices will do better than stocks. The stock market is increasingly broken and with each passing year its ability to perform its function as a weighting device is further undermined. Fulfilling pension and liabilities require outsized gains in these stock markets regardless of fundamentals and maintaining social stability necessitates that government deliver these gains. I suspect near future will be full periodic crises and mini crashes smoothing the way for further rounds of QE. This combination would result stocks doing quite well while they increasingly become divorced from even the pretense of fundamentals. Such market control can go on as long as there is confidence the currency in the local currency.
Regarding AI I think we are much farther away from true self-aware AI then most people believe. Our understanding of consciousness is infantile. I discussed unthread in my post on consciousness that consciousness may be grounded in quantum mechanics which if true would likely preclude the development of true self-aware AI until sometime after the development of robust quantum computers.
Self aware AI could in theory be creative and perhaps even appear omniscient to a human while in actuality being quite limited. To the single celled organism under a microscope a human appears omniscient living an incomprehensible life orders of magnitude longer and more complex while dealing with challenges that play out over hundreds cellular generations. Any appearance of omniscience in AI would likely be a similar illusion.
The broader picture of worldwide declining interest rates has Central Banks
acting like beaters on a grouse moor, driving investors toward US corporate
debt to the benefit of global corporations...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-07/reason-relentless-scramble-us-corporate-debt-one-chart
acting like beaters on a grouse moor, driving investors toward US corporate
debt to the benefit of global corporations...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-07/reason-relentless-scramble-us-corporate-debt-one-chart
Destroying the nation-states and sending the world's capital in the multi-nationals. Now please tell me why that wouldn't be well matched to the plans of the Bilderberg group for a world government beholden to their corporations.
And it will all come flowing in through the USD and US stock market, because that is still the most liquid due to being the reserve currency. Refer to the Armstrong quotes upthread where I replied to aminorex.
And the implications for Bitcoin?
It has no impact on Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not liquid or large enough to talk to any of that $trillions of capital.
Bitcoin exists to preoccupy us nerds on a technology that can only become centralized (Bitcoin = ChinaCoin), while we might have otherwise actually have/had the capability of providing the world a viable technology currency option that could grow enough mass adoption to be large enough. But the we are in late innings already and the time and opportunity are slipping away.
Bitcoin exists to be sure that no nation nor entity can break away by offering a digital currency alternative. Bitcoin is a trap and trojan horse designed to be ideological with the promise of decentralization, but in reality that is an obfuscation and it is not.
Bitcoin exists so that all of us who are awake and want to change the system incriminate ourselves by mixing our ownership of tokens with tokens which have been used for money laundering and other illegal actions, with the entire history recorded publicly while the NSA saves all our IP address activity in their Utah data center, so that later all of us who were awake can be destroyed with clawbacks taking away our homes and every thing.
Bitcoin is very dangerous to be involved with. Ditto gold if there is any record you have it, and if there is no record then you won't be able to dispose of it later when it becomes illegal to dispose of gold without a paper trail. And of course when you do dispose of it correctly, you will (later) be taxed so highly that most of your gains will be wiped out.
Our brave new world. 666 and 1984 approaching. Enjoy.
'Let the jury consider their verdict,' the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first - verdict afterwards.' From "Alice in Wonderland"
'Brexit' is seen as the cause of so much these days that it may be
timely to point out that: a) it hasn't yet happened; and b) not much
may actually change on the economics once things get underway.
So, what are we witness to? A ripple on the surface of things still to come?
Payback for 2008 when banks should have been allowed to exit via bankruptcy
and clear the bad debts built up from years of fraud and greed? What was
mortgaged into the future may now become due, and, in my opinion, the UK
sensed that if it was to manage its share in any collapse, it was best
done outside the control of the European Commission. And financial troubles,
being man-made, are manageable, however painful they might be, but you
have to have full freedom, at minimum, to act via your Central Bank.
Which in a way, brings me to the curious decision of the Bank of England to
suggest a cut in interest rates, some say from 0.5% to 0.25%. But before
getting down to the price of Bitcoin, lets think about the wider implications.
The announcement seemed to be a response to the market's clamour that
something, anything, must be done, which in itself was probably a
self-fulfilling result of Project Fear, and over-hyped falls in the value
of Sterling.
The BoE's mandate is for the operation of UK banks, and a cut in rates would
harm the profitability of that sector, hence the delay in taking action. So
who might profit from a cut in rates, apart fro the usual suspects who
profit from turmoil in the markets? In the long run, UK manufacturing, but
not enough to make a difference now. Property, including housing and
commercial real estate (CRE)? Since Financialisation the banks have been
bunged to the gills with this stuff. Well, thanks to government policy,
and the worldwide race toward NIRP, the rentier sector has reached altitudes
where oxygen starvation is a distinct possibility - witness the panic in
the UK property fund sector, with redemptions gated, and prices cutting back
several year's gains.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-06/dramatic-twist-uk-property-fund-cuts-value-its-assets-17
Hmmmm ... will it work? If debt increases, certainly yes. More debt boosts
GDP immediately, but has to be paid for later. But where will the money
come from? Usually interest rates are raised to bring money into the UK, and
it is a signal toward to instabilities in the present arrangements that
it can be suggested that cutting rates might boost sterling. Where might money
go if it wants out of the UK? Not Europe, probably not Japan, though
anything seems possible these days, Switzerland's negative rates? Hmmmm ...
The broader picture of worldwide declining interest rates has Central Banks
acting like beaters on a grouse moor, driving investors toward US corporate
debt to the benefit of global corporations such as Amazon. That has
implications best left for another day, and perhaps to another forum.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-07/reason-relentless-scramble-us-corporate-debt-one-chart
And the implications for Bitcoin? That may depend on where you live, and your view
of your currency. For the UK, it remains to be seen whether Mr Carney follows
through with a cut to interest rates. He seems to have played better than his
counterparts thus far, though as they say, past performance is no indication
of future returns. Given the turmoil of UK's politics, bitcoin may seem
attractive right now.
'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first - verdict afterwards.' From "Alice in Wonderland"
'Brexit' is seen as the cause of so much these days that it may be
timely to point out that: a) it hasn't yet happened; and b) not much
may actually change on the economics once things get underway.
So, what are we witness to? A ripple on the surface of things still to come?
Payback for 2008 when banks should have been allowed to exit via bankruptcy
and clear the bad debts built up from years of fraud and greed? What was
mortgaged into the future may now become due, and, in my opinion, the UK
sensed that if it was to manage its share in any collapse, it was best
done outside the control of the European Commission. And financial troubles,
being man-made, are manageable, however painful they might be, but you
have to have full freedom, at minimum, to act via your Central Bank.
Which in a way, brings me to the curious decision of the Bank of England to
suggest a cut in interest rates, some say from 0.5% to 0.25%. But before
getting down to the price of Bitcoin, lets think about the wider implications.
The announcement seemed to be a response to the market's clamour that
something, anything, must be done, which in itself was probably a
self-fulfilling result of Project Fear, and over-hyped falls in the value
of Sterling.
The BoE's mandate is for the operation of UK banks, and a cut in rates would
harm the profitability of that sector, hence the delay in taking action. So
who might profit from a cut in rates, apart fro the usual suspects who
profit from turmoil in the markets? In the long run, UK manufacturing, but
not enough to make a difference now. Property, including housing and
commercial real estate (CRE)? Since Financialisation the banks have been
bunged to the gills with this stuff. Well, thanks to government policy,
and the worldwide race toward NIRP, the rentier sector has reached altitudes
where oxygen starvation is a distinct possibility - witness the panic in
the UK property fund sector, with redemptions gated, and prices cutting back
several year's gains.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-06/dramatic-twist-uk-property-fund-cuts-value-its-assets-17
Hmmmm ... will it work? If debt increases, certainly yes. More debt boosts
GDP immediately, but has to be paid for later. But where will the money
come from? Usually interest rates are raised to bring money into the UK, and
it is a signal toward to instabilities in the present arrangements that
it can be suggested that cutting rates might boost sterling. Where might money
go if it wants out of the UK? Not Europe, probably not Japan, though
anything seems possible these days, Switzerland's negative rates? Hmmmm ...
The broader picture of worldwide declining interest rates has Central Banks
acting like beaters on a grouse moor, driving investors toward US corporate
debt to the benefit of global corporations such as Amazon. That has
implications best left for another day, and perhaps to another forum.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-07/reason-relentless-scramble-us-corporate-debt-one-chart
And the implications for Bitcoin? That may depend on where you live, and your view
of your currency. For the UK, it remains to be seen whether Mr Carney follows
through with a cut to interest rates. He seems to have played better than his
counterparts thus far, though as they say, past performance is no indication
of future returns. Given the turmoil of UK's politics, bitcoin may seem
attractive right now.
Who knows if I'll ever have a chance to write a proper reply? I know that I can't now, so I will cherry pick a few points:
Ditto me. It would take me some time to unpack your condensed mathematical logic herein.
Then you say: You've just shoved all the interestingness into the objective function and the definition of neighborhood. Then I say: An axiom schema is no less well defined than an unschematized axiom, and significantly more potent.
CoinCube raised the point upthread that purely localized focused systems can't converge on anything. Life is a diverse mix of top-down and bottom-up organization.
My point I think is that never will be there an entirely dominate 100% total top-down order, thus there can't any omniscient A.I.. As well, never will any species or individual actor be entirely immune to impact from top-down efficiencies. I am not arguing that A.I. can't have some radical impacts, rather I am disputing this notion of omnipotent A.I. that Kurzweil sensationalizes obstensibly to sell books and public speaking engagements.
Who knows if I'll ever have a chance to write a proper reply? I know that I can't now, so I will cherry pick a few points:
I composed that last post as a response to the text which your back link indicated, and that text did not require or imply the framing or premises which you observed were missing from my post. A response which accounted for those would necessarily have been quite a bit longer, or would have been forced to assume a great deal of context which I am unwilling to take as given - certainly not without a negotiated examination.
I disagree with the representation that determinism and intelligence are not well-defined, in a general sense. (They are admittedly polysemous, and some of those senses are pretty fuzzy, but as terms of art they can be quite clear. Infinity, an analogous example, is about as well defined as a term of art as any formal object can be, and also maximally polysemous.)
A system is deterministic when its state at time t suffices to exactly infer (fully specify) its state at time t plus delta, for all t, and for all delta greater or equal to the infimum of the set of finite deltas. (Explicitly: State need not be finite, and no Markovian property is assumed.)
Intelligence is a lattice coordinate in a partial ordering of agents, such that A <=[c] B with probability P iff P(e(A) <= e(B) | c), where e(X) is the loss of the action sequence of X given hyperparameters c. (Interpolation over property distributions of lattice neighbors allows for a metric approximation, and dimension reduction techniques can certainly be used pack
the metric into a 1-d continuum, when context requires it.)
Then you say: You've just shoved all the interestingness into the objective function and the definition of neighborhood. Then I say: An axiom schema is no less well defined than an unschematized axiom, and significantly more potent.
Even more controversially I will propose a prototype definition of creativity as the surprisal of an observer model for the likelihood distribution of the response function of an agent. So far, I like this because it allows one to dial-in a trade-off between formal clarity and alignment to ordinary language use of the term. It generalizes in useful ways.
As delightful as I find Verlinde to be, I am pretty skeptical of the physicality of his theory. There are some respected counterarguments which I have not done the dilligence to examine. I am hoping he's very close to right, because it would confirm my own long-held metaphysical biases in a particularly gratifying way, but I am not making book on it yet.
If you expect me to prove that space is metric, I'll just shrug, since I don't even believe that it is. Metricity is just a useful model, and there are no experiments feasible to exclude that the reality is only approximately metric. I think that's why I balk at your ab initio calculations so often: I am much more skeptical of the reliability of metricity assumptions. I usually try to restrict my assumptions to weak topologies, which seem less likely to be mistaken, as they exclude fewer possibilities, and are in the main not relevantly less powerful. In general I find myself with too much bias and not enough variance, so it is my preferred direction of model error.
I composed that last post as a response to the text which your back link indicated, and that text did not require or imply the framing or premises which you observed were missing from my post. A response which accounted for those would necessarily have been quite a bit longer, or would have been forced to assume a great deal of context which I am unwilling to take as given - certainly not without a negotiated examination.
I disagree with the representation that determinism and intelligence are not well-defined, in a general sense. (They are admittedly polysemous, and some of those senses are pretty fuzzy, but as terms of art they can be quite clear. Infinity, an analogous example, is about as well defined as a term of art as any formal object can be, and also maximally polysemous.)
A system is deterministic when its state at time t suffices to exactly infer (fully specify) its state at time t plus delta, for all t, and for all delta greater or equal to the infimum of the set of finite deltas. (Explicitly: State need not be finite, and no Markovian property is assumed.)
Intelligence is a lattice coordinate in a partial ordering of agents, such that A <=[c] B with probability P iff P(e(A) <= e(B) | c), where e(X) is the loss of the action sequence of X given hyperparameters c. (Interpolation over property distributions of lattice neighbors allows for a metric approximation, and dimension reduction techniques can certainly be used pack
the metric into a 1-d continuum, when context requires it.)
Then you say: You've just shoved all the interestingness into the objective function and the definition of neighborhood. Then I say: An axiom schema is no less well defined than an unschematized axiom, and significantly more potent.
Even more controversially I will propose a prototype definition of creativity as the surprisal of an observer model for the likelihood distribution of the response function of an agent. So far, I like this because it allows one to dial-in a trade-off between formal clarity and alignment to ordinary language use of the term. It generalizes in useful ways.
As delightful as I find Verlinde to be, I am pretty skeptical of the physicality of his theory. There are some respected counterarguments which I have not done the dilligence to examine. I am hoping he's very close to right, because it would confirm my own long-held metaphysical biases in a particularly gratifying way, but I am not making book on it yet.
If you expect me to prove that space is metric, I'll just shrug, since I don't even believe that it is. Metricity is just a useful model, and there are no experiments feasible to exclude that the reality is only approximately metric. I think that's why I balk at your ab initio calculations so often: I am much more skeptical of the reliability of metricity assumptions. I usually try to restrict my assumptions to weak topologies, which seem less likely to be mistaken, as they exclude fewer possibilities, and are in the main not relevantly less powerful. In general I find myself with too much bias and not enough variance, so it is my preferred direction of model error.
Going into deeply negative interest rates can be seen as a failure (a form of expropriation and slow default), when the stampede into the USD, and US assets appreciation is making negative ROI looking pretty fucking stupid in comparison. Capital tends to not be that stupid and follows capital instead to last-man-off-the-boat (aka greater fool theory of investing) appreciation wealth effect.
To which I would add the balancing observation that the U.S. 10 year is currently yeilding -1.5% after CPI indexing and marginal taxes. Anybody buying treasuries today is (1) speculating on policy actions, (2) forced by a mandate, (3) gaming something linked, or (4) happy to lose less money than they would lose elsewhere. Frankly I find it hard to put myself in their mental space.
I was not framing my analysis as a choice between EU nation sovereign bonds and US Treasuries. I was explaining the rationale for the exodus from the Euro and the ZIRP of the EU core bonds (e.g. Germany) to the USD and US assets, primarily US stocks that will cause a massive bubble approximately to a double to triple of the current level of the DJIA.
Those who need maximum liquidity are moving to the short end of the curve so the NIRP is one of the costs of liquidity. Liquidity is collapsing in the EU (and everywhere so capital will concentrate home in the reserve currency which is always the most liquid), and this is one of several factors that will drive capital to the USD to jumpstart the process of capital chasing capital for gains, liquidity, and safe haven.
Those who are free to maximize yield vs. risk tradeoff and have the balls to do so, have long since left sovereign bonds and moved to AAA corporate or emerging markets. So those who think interest rates haven't been rising, haven't factored in the composition of fixed income portfolios.
The public has largely been on the sidelines since 2009 and is attempting to put some money under their mattress or holding cash (velocity of money is collapsing). The money that does come into the markets is chasing bubbles. The general public in the West is ripe for chasing another "sure thing" bubble in US stocks as US stocks surprisingly go against the direction expected by all the pundits.
Germans are already doing insanity with Merkel at the helm inviting millions of Muslim migrants in a form of delusional socialism that is analogous to the Weimar Republic's mass delusion. They even shut off all their nuclear generation plants and will be at the mercy of Putin for electricity. This is repeat of Hitler's problem of not having enough FOREX to pay for oil, so he had no choice but to go take by force.
Yeah, it's amazing the crazy stuff people do to hew to some broken self-concept, which they can't even consistently embody. Politics does that. I still have great respect for the practical intelligence of the German entrepreneurial class and petty bourgoisie. Enslaving southern Europe from Slovenia to Portgual without firing a shot was one shrewd piece of work.
Enslavement has a boomerang effect and now the Germans are paying the inertial (political, etc) cost of that "shrewdness". I have some German ancestry and I know that side of myself that fucks myself over by being too shrewd against others.
Nothing is free or without a footprint. Choose a poison or ramifications. "You can't do just one thing".
SPX will likely double or triple in a massive bubble, which may take some of the steam out of gold for the interim (2017-18ish) because a booming USD and US assets, will be seen as a less risky bubble to pile into, than gold. So it is possible we haven't yet seen the high for SPX/AUG, but eventually the USD stampede will peak and then the wheels will entirely fall off the current financial system, so then expect gold to rally into 2024 at least and the SPX/AUG will have peaked 2017/18ish.
Here's where we are in unequivocal disagreement. I say xauusd bottomed in January, and consider the fundamentals too dismal to allow equities to make new real highs (not nominal), and the political situation too fubared to allow even a kamikaze move like BoJ buying half the real estate in Japan to offer reflationary substance. Blips yeah. CPI yeah. Pockets of growth, sure. System down down down.
Fundamentals (P/E ratios, etc) are not going to drive the bubble in US stocks. Rather it is going to be capital chasing capital. We only have bubbles now. There are no more fundamentals. Please re-read my prior reply to r0ach and also my last few posts in the Martin Armstrong thread wherein I explained this in more detail.
When Trump wins, we will be kicking unsuitable migrants out of the USA (or at least rhetoric causing confidence to think that) and in Europe they will be rolling out the red carpet for trouble and strife. The USA is preparing to roll up its sleeves and get back to work (or at least rhetoric causing confidence to think that). Europe is a much more fucked political morass from hell. The fundamentals will still be onerous in the USA, but it is still the most liquid safe haven on earth. Have you not being reading Armstrong? I cite some important links for your review as follows (prepare to be educated by the master):
It is really all about the elites holding the power. Asia has youth so they don't need to cull the unfunded liabilities,
...you say from a Phillipine perspective. Japan, Korea, even China(!) not so much. Better say South and Southeast Asia. Then the exceptions become inconsequential.
North Asia's demographics are decades away from the collapse mode of Europe. And besides, the youth in the rest of Asia (including India) so far outnumber the elderly in North Asia by a significant margin. Asia will integrate and leverage its youth throughout the Asia economic Union. Starting this year, professionals in any country in the Asian Union can migrate to work in any of the other countries. Asia is going to rocket up as the West falls into the demographic abyss. The USA leverages Latin America and the Bible Belt to keep its youthful demographics from imploding. Europe is adding to their woes by importing millions of migrants who are culturally incompatible, so instead of economic integration there will be strife and disintegration. Europe is a complete disaster. Which is another reason for the coming USD and US stocks mega rally.
Saying AI can't surpass human creativity, though - that's utter bunk. Stick breaking in Banach spaces is not rocket science any more. We have the math. We just haven't had the time and money to implement it yet.
Try to actually rebut my mathematical and physics reasoning. Then we can have a discussion.
Okay.
A.I. mastering the known sciences, has nothing to do with my point about where future creativity is derived from serendipity of chance meeting imperfection. If computation could replace the necessary finitenessnumerability of the speed-of-light and the necessary zigzag imperfection fitness annealing of nature, then omniscience is possible, the speed-of-light is infiniteinnumerable, and the past and future (light cones of relativity) collapse into an infinitesimal point of nothingness. And nothing exists any more. Kurzweil is a certified idiot!
This bit? Serendipity is just a stochastic algorithm. In no wise is it the hard part of constructed intelligence. Simulated annealling has been a staple of non-convex optimization since Metropolis-Hastings. I know of no reason to think that any emergent phenomena of the physical substratum is not amenable to simulation to a degree of accuracy sufficient to generate every perceivable organizational behaviour required for any clearly definable pragmatically useful behaviour or outcome. Quite the contrary: In every case studied, the consistent pattern has been for the accuracy of simulation models to increase to within some infinitesimal delta of the principled bounds of information, where any further precision becomes an accuracy illusion, and the differences no longer make a difference.
Since you've entirely missed addressing my point, then there is nothing to rebut.
I should give you a hint to try to steer you to discover your error, otherwise you might dismiss me under some wrong impression that I am cankerous and hand waving.
There is no such thing as "accuracy" in creativity. The entire point is there can't be a top-down observer (to measure any such metric) because this would require the speed-of-light to be not
I had explained all this already. You are simply not grasping that existence is a game of chance. A.I. would simply become another species in the game. A.I. can't be any more creative than I can be more creative than a monkey. A monkey does creativity in it's ecosystem that I can't do. Man could attempt to kill all the monkeys because we make superior weapons, but remember "we can't do just one thing". There are always ramifications. Kill all the monkeys and some other ecosystem changes (aka trophic cascade), which dominos and eventually impacts humans in some probably "undesirable" way since we not automatically adapted to any change (yet some will always prosper with any change, as that is the way creativity functions, since we are diverse opportunists operating in diverse local perspectives). Ditto A.I., because by correct definition of intelligence (which is always randomly accretive and not deterministic order) it can't be omniscient.
All the failure of your approach at analysing this issue begins and ends with your lack of focus of the necessity of the
You go off on terms such as intelligence and determinism, without relating to them fact that they are ill-defined concepts. Start from well-defined fundamentals as I have done and you won't end up in ill-defined soup.
There is no such thing as a "non-physical reality". Physical is an ill-defined distinction. Verlinde's link between information and gravity should hint you of that. The red-herring is constructing ill-defined strawmen concepts.
I have stated in the past that for A.I. to be creative, then it would have to make mistakes and be alive. So my entire point has been to dispel this fear of A.I. becoming some omniscient superior force that subsumes the relevance of every other species in the universe. I have not stated that it is impossible to create new species. Heck humans have been engineering new species of plants and animals with cross breeding. My point is don't expect A.I. to be any more "perfect" than the finite ability to collect and process information globally which is inherently limited by the speed-of-light. Man might need to disperse light-years away into the universe in order to keep A.I. from being absolutely dominant at some point. But I don't even think that will be necessary, because for A.I. to be truly creative, then each instance of A.I. needs to have free will. Because otherwise it would mean the universe was deterministic, which thus would imply the speed-of-light is not
It seems you fail to understand that existence requires divergence. Convergence is not distinct from a static system. Convergence would require that the entropy of the universe is not trending to maximum, thus violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Really AlphaGo was an underappreciated watershed. The gamespace of Go is large enough to be a fully qualified proxy for (countable) infinity. The simple architectural trick of policy network separation, in combination with a lengthy catalog of less pivotal techniques, made the difference between a heuristic algorithm for guided search, such as is applicable in chess, and a meaningfully creative learner. If you need to add another dimension to a learner's representation space, you just add a parameter. It's really no big deal. It's certainly not the stopping point of creative intelligence.
The key factor you are missing in your analogy is free will.
The hardest button to button in closing the loop on AI is the temporal sequence chaos which allows unbounded forward chaining inference to "jump outside of the system" in the classical Hofstadterian description, not just in toy cases, but quite generally. It's not in the static representation space. It's in the dynamical system. But I have seen enough successes (and failures) in process discovery to be quite committed to the task of proving concretely that the fitness landscape is rich enough, and the requirements of practical intelligence weak enough, so that effectively unbounded arbitrarily good approximate covers of the space of intelligence behaviour ensembles are possible. (I do not claim they are finite covers.)
Again you are focused on fitness and not on the fact that dynamic systems require divergence and free will, and thus there isn't one best fitness. No one can say which fit is good or bad. This is the essence of creativity.
It's like this: Who really cares about transcendental numbers except as theoretical objects? Yes, overwhelmingly all of the reals are transcendental. But algebraic numbers, or a truncation of an infinite algebraic series, will suffice for any computation resulting in an observable. I admit that the search landscape for dynamical systems embodying creative intelligence is not a perfect cover. The inverse may be dense in that space. But I also hold that the positive set is dense in that space as well. We know how to add orthogonal dimensions to a representation space at will, I am sure you can agree. All I ask is that you acknowledge that generalizing that to adding independent dimensions to a process space is not significantly harder, AND that the resulting behaviour manifold can be dense in the infinite-dimensional manifold containing the most precise possible description of every intelligent (creative) behaviour. The last is not practically proven, but neither is it prohibited by first principles.
Structure and process are duals. Where you can create in structure, you can create in process, and vice versa. In summary, the one weird trick a Minnesota dad is using to make creative AGI is to apply that creative process to self-representation, to the self-representation of the process which embodies self. The result is a space-filling bifurcation cascade in a Banach space of truth-functionals, which suffices to dominate every control strategy. (I am using the words loosely because I'm not trying to do a proof here, just describe in tight summary a constructive strategy using coherent and illustrative language with sufficient clarity to make the fulfillment - with lots of sweat and capital - plausible in every regard.) I can go on about the pragmatic strategy elsewhere. This is only to emphasize that it is not a project predicated on a contradiction.
Structure and process are duals. Where you can create in structure, you can create in process, and vice versa. In summary, the one weird trick a Minnesota dad is using to make creative AGI is to apply that creative process to self-representation, to the self-representation of the process which embodies self. The result is a space-filling bifurcation cascade in a Banach space of truth-functionals, which suffices to dominate every control strategy. (I am using the words loosely because I'm not trying to do a proof here, just describe in tight summary a constructive strategy using coherent and illustrative language with sufficient clarity to make the fulfillment - with lots of sweat and capital - plausible in every regard.) I can go on about the pragmatic strategy elsewhere. This is only to emphasize that it is not a project predicated on a contradiction.
There is a lot of math one could imbue an A.I. species with (much of it I am not even expert enough to digest), but ultimately you have to give it randomness and imperfection (i.e. free will) else it will just be a closed universe, static, and convergent.
Randomness means it interacts with its local environment and there is not total order. The partial orders is what makes the universe divergent (and irreversible) and allows for our existence to not collapse into a globally deterministic future (i.e. a total order) and instead a trend to maximum entropy. If the speed-of-light was not
It is quite elegant how the
Going into deeply negative interest rates can be seen as a failure (a form of expropriation and slow default), when the stampede into the USD, and US assets appreciation is making negative ROI looking pretty fucking stupid in comparison. Capital tends to not be that stupid and follows capital instead to last-man-off-the-boat (aka greater fool theory of investing) appreciation wealth effect.
To which I would add the balancing observation that the U.S. 10 year is currently yeilding -1.5% after CPI indexing and marginal taxes. Anybody buying treasuries today is (1) speculating on policy actions, (2) forced by a mandate, (3) gaming something linked, or (4) happy to lose less money than they would lose elsewhere. Frankly I find it hard to put myself in their mental space.
Saying AI can't surpass human creativity, though - that's utter bunk. Stick breaking in Banach spaces is not rocket science any more. We have the math. We just haven't had the time and money to implement it yet.
Try to actually rebut my mathematical and physics reasoning. Then we can have a discussion.
Okay.
Quote
A.I. mastering the known sciences, has nothing to do with my point about where future creativity is derived from serendipity of chance meeting imperfection. If computation could replace the necessary finiteness of the speed-of-light and the necessary zigzag imperfection fitness annealing of nature, then omniscience is possible, the speed-of-light is infinite, and the past and future collapse into an infinitesimal point of nothingness.
This bit? Serendipity is just a stochastic algorithm. In no wise is it the hard part of constructed intelligence. Simulated annealling has been a staple of non-convex optimization since Metropolis-Hastings. I know of no reason to think that any emergent phenomena of the physical substratum is not amenable to simulation to a degree of accuracy sufficient to generate every perceivable organizational behaviour required for any clearly definable pragmatically useful behaviour or outcome. Quite the contrary: In every case studied, the consistent pattern has been for the accuracy of simulation models to increase to within some infinitesimal delta of the principled bounds of information, where any further precision becomes an accuracy illusion, and the differences no longer make a difference.
To claim otherwise would require that you resort to bounded rationality (as in e.g. diffusive maps bifurcating to chaos, in which case I argue that there is no evidence that chaotic divergence is germane to intelligent behaviours in a way which digitally generated chaos cannot suffice, and indeed is generally an epiphenomenon which can be bundled up in summary statistics or a lyapunov exponent, stuffed in a noise term) or hold that there is a ghost in the machine, a transcendental element, with causal import, which is masked by stochasticity. In physcial reality, all observation is consistent with the view that, while outcome and observation is stochastic, the distribution envelope evolves with simple determinism. And non-physical reality is not amenable to rational analysis, so I consider discussing it in a rational discourse to be a red herring. (Arational discourse has its place, but not in seeking rational clarity, with universalizable implication value.) Omniscience is not possible (in the sense of a computable clockmaker universe, or a pervasively comprehensive sensor network, or even a complete reasoner), but neither is cognitive nihilism a useful response to the (often exceedingly well-understood, but with some subtle quirks of great interest which are less clearly understood) bounds of both analytic and synthetic knowledge. Gödel numbers and wave equations do not constitute a mystical elan vital. They are just approximative grammars and should not be reified.
You appear to consider that the ability to allocate new descriptive dimensions from an inexhaustible resource latent in the equations is tantamount to performing a transfinite path integral over the whole space, but it is not - no more than evolution, having solved a problem, can be said to have considered and discarded all of the alternative solutions. (But before addressing this mistake I would point out that being latent in the equations implies that there is something to be drawn out - and I am saying it can be drawn out, in a pragmatically sufficient manner and degree for any known practical purpose, at least in principle, albeit not yet in every case has that capacity been exploited sufficently to manifestly preclude informed disagreement on its eventual outcome.)
I agree with your implied chain of reasoning from omniscience to nihil sum, and its inferential reductio, but I dispute that one crucial premise, without which the argument does not pertain. Yes, finitary systems are incapable of embodying critical behaviours of higher order intelligence, including distinctly creative aspects. But physical computers are not even finite closed systems, like an automaton. They are embodied things.
Are you familiar with genetic algorithms for VLSI routing invoking flaws in the die to bypass clock propagation? I can't quickly come up with the reference. I think it was in one of the early 90s GA conference proceedings. Anyhow, it wasn't an isolated case, and it seems exactly on point to the kind of limitation you would impose on automation, and to confront those limits quite directly. And we use that sort of stochastic search power all the time, in non-parametric Bayes, in non-parametric latent dirichlet allocation, in variational autoencoders, in neural gasses. I think you haven't chased down that rabbit hole to see how far it goes, because if you had done so, you would be saying with me: It's rabbits all the way down. In that case the embodied implementation manifested information in a open and unbounded form, by appearing in the objective function of a deterministic chaotic search. How much more can be drawn out by using more modern, more sophisticated heuristic architectures, such as separated policy networks, and other virtuoso tricks which seem to proliferate faster than state university PhDs? I think what we have in hand today is likely to be quite sufficient.
Really AlphaGo was an underappreciated watershed. The gamespace of Go is large enough to be a fully qualified proxy for (countable) infinity. The simple architectural trick of policy network separation, in combination with a lengthy catalog of less pivotal techniques, made the difference between a heuristic algorithm for guided search, such as is applicable in chess, and a meaningfully creative learner. If you need to add another dimension to a learner's representation space, you just add a parameter. It's really no big deal. It's certainly not the stopping point of creative intelligence.
The hardest button to button in closing the loop on AI is the temporal sequence chaos which allows unbounded forward chaining inference to "jump outside of the system" in the classical Hofstadterian description, not just in toy cases, but quite generally. It's not in the static representation space. It's in the dynamical system. But I have seen enough successes (and failures) in process discovery to be quite committed to the task of proving concretely that the fitness landscape is rich enough, and the requirements of practical intelligence weak enough, so that effectively unbounded arbitrarily good approximate covers of the space of intelligence behaviour ensembles are possible. (I do not claim they are finite covers.)
It's like this: Who really cares about transcendental numbers except as theoretical objects? Yes, overwhelmingly all of the reals are transcendental. But algebraic numbers, or a truncation of an infinite algebraic series, will suffice for any computation resulting in an observable. I admit that the search landscape for dynamical systems embodying creative intelligence is not a perfect cover. The inverse may be dense in that space. But I also hold that the positive set is dense in that space as well. We know how to add orthogonal dimensions to a representation space at will, I am sure you can agree. All I ask is that you acknowledge that generalizing that to adding independent dimensions to a process space is not significantly harder, AND that the resulting behaviour manifold can be dense in the infinite-dimensional manifold containing the most precise possible description of every intelligent (creative) behaviour. The last is not practically proven, but neither is it prohibited by first principles.
Structure and process are duals. Where you can create in structure, you can create in process, and vice versa. In summary, the one weird trick a Minnesota dad is using to make creative AGI is to apply that creative process to self-representation, to the self-representation of the process which embodies self. The result is a space-filling bifurcation cascade in a Banach space of truth-functionals, which suffices to dominate every control strategy. (I am using the words loosely because I'm not trying to do a proof here, just describe in tight summary a constructive strategy using coherent and illustrative language with sufficient clarity to make the fulfillment - with lots of sweat and capital - plausible in every regard.) I can go on about the pragmatic strategy elsewhere. This is only to emphasize that it is not a project predicated on a contradiction.
assets are likely to flow in US stock markets (via the US dollar) as the sovereign bonds start to fail in Europe.
An unsolicited opinion: Good conclusions, questionable reasons; EUR is likely the weak link, not bunds. BTPs and even OATS may face a crisis, but not bunds, not forseeably, what with all the consumption in Europe feeding the mittelstadt. (Unless Germans were to suddenly become much more stupid that they have been since WW2.)
Anyhow, spx/gold is unlikely to surpass 2015 highs over the next 10 years. Softs and industrials just reflect demand collapse. Monetary metals have no where to go but up now, at least 4 months out, and perhaps forever. Demographics are a bitch goddess. Either risk bottoms out in 2025 or there is a "reset" and a new regime along the way, with imperfect conversion making for massive volatility, stacked crises, and all that implies in politics.
Best case scenario is conversion to a classical gold standard, which at least provides known workable precedents. It would have to start in US or China. Unlikely in any case because it is so hard to game it, long term. Why change to a game you are not guaranteed to win? CCCP is more likely to go that route than is the western deep state, due to the characteristic Chinese long view and worship of stability. Western elites prefer fascism to mercantilism. It would be ironic if the communists saved capitalism from the capitalists, eh?
Going into deeply negative interest rates can be seen as a failure (a form of expropriation and slow default), when the stampede into the USD, and US assets appreciation is making negative ROI looking pretty fucking stupid in comparison. Capital tends to not be that stupid and follows capital instead to last-man-off-the-boat (aka greater fool theory of investing) appreciation wealth effect.
Germans are already doing insanity with Merkel at the helm inviting millions of Muslim migrants in a form of delusional socialism that is analogous to the Weimar Republic's mass delusion. They even shut off all their nuclear generation plants and will be at the mercy of Putin for electricity. This is repeat of Hitler's problem of not having enough FOREX to pay for oil, so he had no choice but to go take by force.
SPX will likely double or triple in a massive bubble, which may take some of the steam out of gold for the interim (2017-18ish) because a booming USD and US assets, will be seen as a less risky bubble to pile into, than gold. So it is possible we haven't yet seen the high for SPX/AUG, but eventually the USD stampede will peak and then the wheels will entirely fall off the current financial system, so then expect gold to rally into 2024 at least and the SPX/AUG will have peaked 2017/18ish.
Perhaps Western fascism and Asian mercantilism are semantic analogues at some abstraction. It is really all about the elites holding the power. Asia has youth so they don't need to cull the unfunded liabilities, so the lurch forward into Digital Technocracy (666 system controlled by the elites) can be a positive lifestyle improvement in Asia. In the West, the wealth has to be expropriated from all the middle class to pay for the unfunded liabilities, whilst eventually defaulting on them any way (i.e. there is no political solution in the West which isn't fascist because the Westerners don't want to willing accept a downgrade of their financial status so there must be a fight to the 0 level for everyone).
Edit: read this post also.
Saying AI can't surpass human creativity, though - that's utter bunk. Stick breaking in Banach spaces is not rocket science any more. We have the math. We just haven't had the time and money to implement it yet.
Try to actually rebut my mathematical and physics reasoning. Then we can have a discussion.
Sorry that can't happen, because the physical commodity markets are too small and illiquid to hold the $trillions of liquid wealth locked up in bonds and stock markets.
That statement makes no sense!
The bond market is selling unservicable debt, aka bad IOUs, not "liquid wealth" as you put it. The people buying the IOUs will eventually get shafted and hold a bag of zero, and when they do, things like metals and Bitcoin skyrocket while the debt markets collapse (and take down their respective currency with it). It is not required to transfer the market cap from bonds to metals and Bitcoin in some type of orderly process on an exchange.
As a primitive example, let's say you only have two currencies on earth - the peso with 10% of market and the shekel with 90%. The value of all labor is represented by those two assets. If the shekel collapses, there's no such thing as "the peso is too illiquid to absorb the shekel market", it gets it by default - literally and figuratively.
If the govt buys their own debt, it's the same thing as printing paper and you're essentially transferring value to Bitcoin and metals in that manner anyway. If governments try to rig metals and Bitcoin downwards, all it does is create bigger gains for the smart money that buys it while it's repressed unless you actually believe you can continue the fraud to eternity (not possible).
Until bonds are unserviceable or the market believes they are, Bitcoin and gold mcaps are too illiquid to absorb the $trillions of inflow. Once that capital is trapped and expropriated, then it can't move into Bitcoin or gold. You lack logic skills r0ach. My statement was logically correct.
Also you are putting the cart before the horse, in that we haven't even YET seen the Europeans attempting to bail out of their F.U.B.A.R. economy into the USD, US Treasuries, and finally US stocks (but they will next year when the SHTF). So we have a long way go before the masses think the US bonds and stocks are unserviceable. And by definition, once there is a stampede of confidence, only a very small percent of the capital will escape into these alternative assets.
This is why assets are likely to flow in US stock markets (via the US dollar) as the sovereign bonds start to fail in Europe.
Again, this doesn't make any sense either. For the stock prices to go up, those companies actually have to be moving product off the shelves, and the economic outlook of every country is generally bad.
Nope. You don't seem to understand anything about markets. Do altcoins actually have to offer any thing real in order to go up in price! Of course not!
All that is required is that the world sees the USA as somewhat more stable or safe, that can ignite an influx and then capital follows capital, because everyone wants to get some of those gains in valuations, i.e. the wealth effect.
You don't seem to understand that in the brave new world of collapsing velocity of money, collapsing marginal-utility-of-debt, ZIRP, etc., that investing is forced off of any fundamentals and just blowing bubbles seeking yield, liquidity (follow the herd), and valuation appreciation.
(Besides the US Treasury debt is no where near being unserviceable. Rather it is only the unfunded future liabilities that will be defaulted on, e.g. Social Security. Come on man, at least get a clue)
It is such a pita and waste of my time to read your weak ass attempts to slander and smear Armtrong, when you seem to not even understand basic issues about investing in times like this.
If there is a truly decentralized crypto-currency available when the US stock market begins to overheat at nosebleed levels, and if it has gained sufficiently liquidity, then it could see a tremendous influx of capital. Unfortunately, Bitcoin nor the altcoins have solved the scaling and decentralization issues.
From my estimates, all Bitcoin would need to do is scale to 8MB to allow market penetration as a checkbook type device for large value transactions in the middle/upper middle class of around $5,000 - $10,000. At around 1-2 MB, Bitcoin would be more of a tool for the top 2-10% of wealth assuming we rely on on-chain transactions to prevent fractional reserve. It's unknown just what percent of the transaction volume is required to be on-chain to prevent fractional reserve. If you think the answer is 100%, then obviously only something like LN would work. I don't care if you think it's "flawed" or whatever, that would be the only type of solution if you require all transactions on-chain.
Bitcoin is already ChinaCoin. It is not decentralized even at 1MB blocks.
Besides money that you can only spend by converting it to fiat, isn't really an alternative asset. The appeal of gold was you could hope on a plane with it, and someone could convert it in the blackmarket and spend it for real goods. But this isn't going to be possible any more. And ditto Bitcoin, as the capital controls come down the pike, you won't be able to spend it on stuff with only 8MB blocks. You need actually scaling if you want it become a currency. And you decentralization if you want to it be resistant to control by any one nation or power (e.g. China).
I am just going to need to get my coding ass in gear and fix this shit.
The only other alternative would be to use a technically federated chain where verification is centralized amongst one node or a few federated nodes, but the centralized orderer/verifier can't actually double spend or anything like that. All they can do is take the thing offline and then you're forced to manually replace them somehow. Realsolid actually already coded this system out, but it's a pretty hard sell being technically a federated chain because it has no way to replace the verifiers should they spontaneously die.
That is not the only other alternative design for a scalable, decentralized block chain.
Governments already have a helicopter money system, it is called "food stamps" and "unemployment insurance". The plan of the TPTB is to turn more than 50% of the people into social welfare parasites, so they will always vote to continue the totalitarianism.
There will be no dropping money from helicopters. Just more and more debt piled onto to people who have to beg for more totalitarianism so they can get some government handouts for their basic necessities of life.
There will be no dropping money from helicopters. Just more and more debt piled onto to people who have to beg for more totalitarianism so they can get some government handouts for their basic necessities of life.
And you think creating a dystopian civilization run by a single room full of jews to control a population of 6 billion will actually work? No, it will not work. The end result of such attempts is always being beheaded by guillotines.
Define "work". The masses will seek their own destruction as they always do, by clinging to collectivism. That is nature's culling mechanism at-work. So it is "working".
Tyranny will come in the guise of safety and security and of course the envoirnment and health and safety are included because it is always best to hide the lie in the truth. Selective truth and doublespeak create the narrative as the tyranny rolls out and the sheeple have been slowly boiled like a frog.
Tinfoil hat investors don't seem to understand that the masses are still a long way from viewing all of the current financial system as F.U.B.A.R.. They are just at the point of trying to vote to kick out incumbents. They are no where near yet bailing out with a parachute.
We have a long ways to go and this will culling of the herd will get very ugly as it always does throughout repeating bouts in man's history.
assets are likely to flow in US stock markets (via the US dollar) as the sovereign bonds start to fail in Europe.
An unsolicited opinion: Good conclusions, questionable reasons; EUR is likely the weak link, not bunds. BTPs and even OATS may face a crisis, but not bunds, not forseeably, what with all the consumption in Europe feeding the mittelstadt. (Unless Germans were to suddenly become much more stupid that they have been since WW2.)
Anyhow, spx/gold is unlikely to surpass 2015 highs over the next 10 years. Softs and industrials just reflect demand collapse. Monetary metals have no where to go but up now, at least 4 months out, and perhaps forever. Demographics are a bitch goddess. Either risk bottoms out in 2025 or there is a "reset" and a new regime along the way, with imperfect conversion making for massive volatility, stacked crises, and all that implies in politics.
Best case scenario is conversion to a classical gold standard, which at least provides known workable precedents. It would have to start in US or China. Unlikely in any case because it is so hard to game it, long term. Why change to a game you are not guaranteed to win? CCCP is more likely to go that route than is the western deep state, due to the characteristic Chinese long view and worship of stability. Western elites prefer fascism to mercantilism. It would be ironic if the communists saved capitalism from the capitalists, eh?
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Governments already have a helicopter money system, it is called "food stamps" and "unemployment insurance". The plan of the TPTB is to turn more than 50% of the people into social welfare parasites, so they will always vote to continue the totalitarianism.
There will be no dropping money from helicopters. Just more and more debt piled onto to people who have to beg for more totalitarianism so they can get some government handouts for their basic necessities of life.
There will be no dropping money from helicopters. Just more and more debt piled onto to people who have to beg for more totalitarianism so they can get some government handouts for their basic necessities of life.
Entitlements are peanuts. Ask yourself where the 9 trillion went. They sure didn't go to food stamp recipients. Anyhow I am violently agreeing with you:
The technological need for UBI is sheer futurism. Won't happen for decades: Regardless of hyperexponential tech curves, social capital has inertia. Generations must pass. Helicopters will continue to supply the carry trades and black budgets. They certainly won't rescue the middle classes.
Saying AI can't surpass human creativity, though - that's utter bunk. Stick breaking in Banach spaces is not rocket science any more. We have the math. We just haven't had the time and money to implement it yet.
This whole deflation/inflation question is a very intriguing question which is very difficult to get the head around.
...it is reckoned that after this wealth has come out of stocks and fled to government bonds; then as the market loses faith in government bonds, due either to negative interest rates or massive devaluation of the currency behind those bonds, as governments are forced to continually print in order to meet ongoing debt obligations, this wealth will finally flow into commodities. The world of real things...
...it is reckoned that after this wealth has come out of stocks and fled to government bonds; then as the market loses faith in government bonds, due either to negative interest rates or massive devaluation of the currency behind those bonds, as governments are forced to continually print in order to meet ongoing debt obligations, this wealth will finally flow into commodities. The world of real things...
Sorry that can't happen, because the physical commodity markets are too small and illiquid to hold the $trillions of liquid wealth locked up in bonds and stock markets.
This is why assets are likely to flow in US stock markets (via the US dollar) as the sovereign bonds start to fail in Europe.
If there is a truly decentralized crypto-currency available when the US stock market begins to overheat at nosebleed levels, and if it has gained sufficiently liquidity, then it could see a tremendous influx of capital. Unfortunately, Bitcoin nor the altcoins have solved the scaling and decentralization issues.
Fuck this is an amazing opportunity for me if I can get my coding ass in gear.
They basically have to unleash a huge tsunami of freshly printed fiat to stop it, but that fiat has to be distributed in the hands of the entire population or it solves nothing. Random central banker choices would be forgiving things like student loans, helicopter money, "basic income", or all three. Of course the "solutions" could collapse the system itself, so you have a situation of do nothing and implode, or forgive a few debts and create some wheelbarrow hyperinflation to maybe extend the collapse a little longer.
Governments already have a helicopter money system, it is called "food stamps" and "unemployment insurance". The plan of the TPTB is to turn more than 50% of the people into social welfare parasites, so they will always vote to continue the totalitarianism.
There will be no dropping money from helicopters. Just more and more debt piled onto to people who have to beg for more totalitarianism so they can get some government handouts for their basic necessities of life.
I never thought UK would leave, its an extreme reversal and its out of line with the majority of outspoken Brits. Popular culture as we're seeing very much is mystified as to why would you leave the EU, almost the return of the dark ages and ignorance could only justify such a thing.
Neither side is 100% correct, EU is a positive for unity and it is better then war. That might be seen as flippant but I agree diplomacy is a positive over countries working against each other, import tariffs and war even.
https://mises.org/library/inflation-and-fall-roman-empire
[certainly things will move faster now as is the velocity of money greater, though I would relate it to least originate in the Nixon era]
Neither side is 100% correct, EU is a positive for unity and it is better then war. That might be seen as flippant but I agree diplomacy is a positive over countries working against each other, import tariffs and war even.
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Rome was lucky. It took over 300 years, with crisis after crisis and
war upon war, until the debt finally crushed the structure. One
critical point pointed out by MA was the debasement of the currency.
Eventually a silver coin was less than 1% silver.
Ive heard of this before, I'll post the link as there is an mp3 from a lecture. Its a strange parallel but apparently Roman citizenship went from an honour to a curse as it became a strain to support. Barbarian invaders were seen as liberators from an oppressive Rome centralist regime. That was quite a switch in thinking then just as its a struggle for some people to understand nowwar upon war, until the debt finally crushed the structure. One
critical point pointed out by MA was the debasement of the currency.
Eventually a silver coin was less than 1% silver.
https://mises.org/library/inflation-and-fall-roman-empire
[certainly things will move faster now as is the velocity of money greater, though I would relate it to least originate in the Nixon era]
Not everybody voted no for the same reason and it's not that bad not to be in the eu.
For example, Swisszerland is not in the eu or the us is not in the eu, you could argue the us is an other eu aka big government with washington making decisions for the states.
The NO is a victory of small people against the establishment and london.
A lot of people that voted NO want to restrain immigration volume to the uk and do not wanting to be taxed to help other countries.
That being said, the immigration could have bee resolved with staying in the eu and they benefited of a lot of the deals made but a lot of the advantages of being in the eu can be achieved without being in the eu.
For example you don't need the eu to trade, you dont even need the government. The government often ban free trade which impoverishes the people like it bans freedom, set racist laws, heavy regulations and slows the creation of wealth.
CoinCube et al, I don't think we will figure out any of this global shit. It is just mess.
If worry about that, we will neglect our own lives. I think better to focus on our own accomplishments. What ever happens globally will happen. I am going to be paying much less attention to it.
Read this:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15439016
If worry about that, we will neglect our own lives. I think better to focus on our own accomplishments. What ever happens globally will happen. I am going to be paying much less attention to it.
Read this:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15439016
iamnotback & amigos
I read an interesting comment at Zero Hedge re what he would do if Hillary gets elected. He will not fight, at least in the way in the way most of us think.
He said his battles would thenceforth be only on a spiritual plane.
^^ I like the thought of that. ^^
Sort of an active "Going Galt".
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