Topic: Going after Trendon Shavers, Pirateat40, BTCST (Read 48538 times)

Off Fucking Topic Guys.

Goat, Just lock this fucking thread.

Christ.

According to you, "literally" is literally the same as "figuratively", then.

You must have really enjoyed your Freshman survey class "Western Philosophy from Socrates to Descartes"


"Permanently" you say ....?

Of course; Knowing that would be a paradox. Like saying "This statement is false". So in that sense you are indeed correct, that it is also something I'm unsure of.

Well then you know the fact that you don't know anything for sure.  Or are you unsure of that also?   

I guess people who 'know things for sure' must be much smarter than me.

I honestly can't think of a single thing in this entire world that I know for sure.

Permanently agnostic across all areas it seems.

Greed? Or, to put it more politely, the intense wish to get rich quick.


Very true. But the intensity of the rationalizations kept surprising me. (I don't tend to get emotional when dealing with money.)

Look at this discussion here. Even now, when we know for sure that the pirate ran a Ponzi scheme, somebody is arguing in the direction that it might not have been a Ponzi scheme. Seems rather ridiculous to me, but that is how our buggy brains sometimes work.

I think for some people the mathematics of Ponzi are just too counterintuitive so that they are not immediately obvious, even if they are able to understand the maths. They let their feelings of confidence and trust override their rational capabilities. It might be that if it seems hard to understand why some people think that something is definitely, without a doubt a ponzi, you need to think it through from a hypothetical scammer's perspective. It's actually very easy to run a ponzi scam (the hard thing is determining when to run with the money). The only thing that is needed is the tendency to let feelings override rationality. Many people who OUGHT TO HAVE KNOWN BETTER have been scammed. Being (susceptible for being) scammed is not the same as being stupid. No amount of intellect can save you if you let your feelings override it.

Any suggestions? Is there some other way to say "this is obviously a Ponzi scheme"?

Yes, if even those who already know that Pirate ran a Ponzi scheme now try to argue that he could have been legitimate, then you must be right. Somehow this is funny.

Code red! Someone is wrong on the Internet!

Warning the investors won't work if lessons aren't learned. We warned until we were blue in the face about Pirate, and not enough people listened. For reasons I cannot fathom, there appear to be people actively opposed to learning lessons.

It seems that the recent discussion is about whether the pirate, of whom we know that he ran a Ponzi scheme, might have run something else. Isn't that rather pointless?

It seems to me that JoelKatz is perfectly correct. He provided ample proof in the form of traceable citations. I only fear he is wasting his time. It might be more useful to detect the next Ponzi scheme and warn its "investors".

This idiotic thread keeps popping up to "New post..." list because you 2, armchair linguist, (still practicing armchair law?) are thread crapping as usual. 
LOL, you 2 really need to get a life outside of this forum. Get out, go have a pint in your local and talk to someone, face to face.

No. You can't. You have to look at how native speakers actually use the word. Really.

That is correct, widespread use is not quite equivalent to correctness. I'll happily point you towards sources that explain where the truth is between prescriptivism and descriptivism.

No, it doesn't. "Impossible" is not a measure of probability. It's not a mathematical concept. You can google "* is impossible" and take 50 random samples. The majority of them will *not* be using "impossible" this way.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Seriously, I just explained it. It's not hard to understand. If the person who claims there's a high chance of a profit is the very same person who claims it's low risk and expects you to trust them with your money with no legal recourse, that increases the probability that it's a scam. Yes. Really. (But the real point was that speculating in the price of Bitcoin is high risk and anyone who says otherwise should be ignored. If it was a sure thing, the price would already be higher.)

If you don't know how to use a dictionary properly, then it really doesn't mean much to me that you respect me. Dictionaries point you at the general concept of a word, actual use by native speakers is authoritative. Native speakers going to a dictionary to tell each other how they "should" use a word is flat out idiotic and flips the way language works on its head. (With the possible exception of words with which they're not familiar.) You are essentially arguing that the majority of uses of the word "impossible" by native speakers is wrong, which is insane.

You can't refer to a dictionary to determine the meaning of a word? Crazy.


Seems unlikely, but I'll take your word for it. After all, I can see the predominance of people using 'loose' when they men 'lose'. Just because it is widespread does not make it correct.


Thank you for that admission.


Yes - impossible conveys a probability of zero - to infinite decimal places. So says the dictionary.


Don't be obtuse. Of course there is a simple single word for probability = 0, as it is such a simple and useful concept. As the dictionary so says.


Well, no. I was not being deliberately idiotic. Are you now saying that the relative probability of an event occurring depends directly upon whether or not certain parties are claiming you can make a profit off it? Now who's being metaphysical? Actually, I know that is not what you mean to assert - but I cannot devine what it is that you mean to convey in your retort.

JoeKatz, I respect you in many things. However, If your plan is to argue that the dictionary is employing an incorrect definition, I just don't know how to carry on a meaningful discussion.

Definitions don't work that way. You can't parse them like a lawyer to figure out what does or doesn't quality.

They were randomly selected. Impossible and improbable don't mean the same thing. Impossible conveys a much higher level of unlikelihood than "improbable" does. There is no common English term for actual metaphysical impossibility because it is only useful in metaphysics.

I know you're being deliberately idiotic but just in case anybody thinks you're being serious rather than playing a childish game of "gotcha", the difference is that nobody claimed that you should trust them to invest your money in Bitcoins because Bitcoins were certain to appreciate in this way and that such an investment was low in risk.

Yes, thank you. I'm dumbfounded that a grown adult (especially one who has decided to use the word 'childish') could define it any other way.

impossible |imˈpäsəbəl|
adjective
not able to occur, exist, or be done: a seemingly impossible task | [ with infinitive ] : it was almost impossible to keep up with him.
• very difficult to deal with: she was in an impossible situation.
• informal (of a person) very unreasonable: “Impossible woman!” the doctor complained.
ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French, or from Latin impossibilis, from in- ‘not’ + possibilis (see possible) .

not. able. to. occur.

It matters not one whit to me that you have been able to find four articles on the interwebs that misuse the word. We already have a concise and compact term for the improbable - and that is.... 'improabable'. Why on earth would we overload the meaning onto another word (impossible), leaving us no compact and concise word to use to convey the meaning of 'not able to occur'? It defies all reason.

As an aside, the real performance of bitcoin against a numeraire of USD is not that far off of Pirate's advertised performance of his so-claimed investment against a numeraire of bitcoin. Using the concept of the numeraire to factor out the evident compounding of BTCST against USD, should we not then logically conclude that the performance of bitcoin is so outrageous as to make it an obvious scam by your stated criteria?

No, that's not what "impossible" means. That's a childish word game. In fact, that's a concept that is so rarely useful there is no need to give it is own word. I just picked four completely random uses of the word "impossible" in a Google search:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/09/10/impossible-to-default/
"It Is Impossible For The US To Default"
This clearly means it is impractical under the current circumstances. But this use of the word "impossible" is not wrong. To respond to the writer of this headline that there are conceivable circumstances under which the US would default would be idiotic, and everyone knows it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/david-calling/355981/compromise-impossible-egypt-david-pryce-jones
"Compromise Is Impossible in Egypt"
Really? Compromise will never happen in Egypt under any conceivable circumstances? Really? Is this headline wrong?

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238710
Okay, this is a poem.

http://news.yahoo.com/blackberry-impossible-value-now-165548321.html
This uses the word "impossible" to refer to something that is merely difficult to do well. Wow, so many people don't understand how to correctly use the word "impossible".

Because that's how the English language works. That's what the word "impossible" means.

Can we stop the childish word games now? Please.

I think you may be confusing "impossible" with "improbable". Impossible means that it will never ever happen under any conceivable circumstances. Improbable is just highly unlikely - like guessing a private key is about as unlikely as walking through a wooden door.