Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 273. (Read 2032248 times)

Sounds like the perfect sci fi scenario; reminds me of the "Illuminati" from Dan Brown. Seriously now; (and for the sake of discussion, I'll be the devil's advocate) don't you think the other scenario would've been more dramatic and disastrous? (ie: there are no PTB); Imagine the ship driving itself alone... Plus as a second argument, couldn't it be possible that they don't want our (human) extinction since we're both into the same boat?

What I do believe, is that they're no different like you and me. The only difference is that they have A LOT of money (thus nearly infinite power) but also infinite responsibilities. Driving THE ship requires knowledge and sometimes difficult decisions are ought to be made. Some strong hands are better than no hands at all. Speaking of which; do you think that (in the case Crypto succeeds) there are people among us with the required gear to run the planet and become TNPTB?

i'm pretty sure TPTB_need_war and Anonymint is more than one person.  probably a group of technologists sent here to disrupt Bitcoin.  maybe from NSA or banks?   the level of expertise would suggest as much given the threat level Bitcoin presents.  here's why:

he doesn't seem to sleep, in a nutshell.  

how many of you have been astounded by the incessant, seemingly around the clock posting of TPTB_need_war?  not only that, but the length and the ability to self reference his own posts going back weeks, if not more.  hell, i'm around here all the time and i can't do that.  the ability to respond to just about every single one of our posts in excruciating detail.  there are times when his posts alone take up entire pages w/o anyone else ever intervening.  even at nights.  there is a never ending energy and persistence that suggests this is well more than one person.  

here are a series of 24 h postings graphs gotten from the forum's posting stats from the top 10 posters in frequency, including myself.  all human.  to start, let's look at a known bot, the infamous Chart Buddy that posts round the clock in the Wall Observer thread.  it looks as you would expect with consistent hour by hour postings:



now let's go thru the humans from #1 poster Phinnaeus Gage.  



here's me



here's Balthazar.



here's D&T:



here's hilariousandco:



here's Adam:


here's smoothie:



here's Amph:



here's Come-from-Beyond:



note how all the humans above have 4-6 hr sleeping periods.  some deeper than others.  i'll admit that i for one will roll over in bed in the middle of the night to check the news and post occasionally with my Android accounting for some activity during those times.  apparently i'm not alone amongst the top posters as others can be seen to do the same.  that's how you get to be a top poster i guess!  

now for the intersting 2 charts of our beloved Sybil friends TPTB_needs_war and Anonymint.  TPTB_needs_war has already admitted that his was the Anonymint account.  perhaps their argument about Sybil nodes subconsciously derives from them deceiving us all by using multiple posters for a single acct?  living what they preach i'd say:

here's TPTB_need_war.  you might argue that he's got 2 hours there where the chart dips as possibly relating to sleep.  i don't think so.  the dip interval is only 1 hour and is abrupt unlike seen best in the smoothly sloped sleeping intervals in Balthazar's, smoothie's, and hilariousandco's charts.  really, all our single human charts if you can visually wrap them around themselves:



here's Anonymint.  here, it's even more striking.  i remember thinking he was a gvt agent when watching his early debates with gmax back in 2013.  he sounded like a gvt shill then, and he does now.  this is also, btw, why i don't think gmax is tied to the gvt.  why would he waste his time arguing with one if he was one himself?  doesn't excuse his Blockstream connection though which is arguably worse:



to top it all off, there is an inconsistency that i'm detecting in the message probably related to the different human technologists who alternate on his account.  one of them was saying that Bitcoin is likely to become widespread, taking over the world, then only to get hit with the dreaded Digital Kill Switch as the financial elite destroy all our wealth while they send the world into the 4th Turning of Great Depression and Despair.  now the tone and message has changed to that of Bitcoin not being built properly to gain any widespread usage or traction. the argument has become that Bitcoin can't scale. well, if it can't scale then how can it take over the world so they can hit the Digital Kill Switch?

i have a strong nose for bullshit and i think this is one of those times.  i think the above evidence is strong and warn you to take heed.

Trying to find order within chaos is a sure path to insanity(even if some of it is true)

You may be compartmentalized or we have the same stance. Once you have cross-correlated as much information as I have, you begin to see the patterns and they are indeed coordinated towards a NWO.

They aren't in control in the sense that they have no choice but to do the coordination and evil that the natural system demands. It is also not natural for we humans to wilt and not create seepage and prevent them from driving humanity into extinction.

And they are not perfectly coordinated. There is competition and seepage within their ranks too. And it is not perfectly pyramidal structure either. It is complex and not monolithic. I never pictured that you alleged. The overall outcome is that certain results fit the economic demand of the natural system. I comment on those coming result where they naturally align.

They don't exist as the monolithic self conscious entity that you picture.

Bitcoin can't scale. There is no need to convince any one in order to prove which is better. Mine (or similar redesign) will scale and Bitcoin won't. The one that can scale will continue growing, the one that can't will peak and decay.

I also agree with you there must be an entirely different and powerful impetus to drive interest. I believe I have that figured out also.

Some will argue that BTC (as differentiated from Bitcoin Core) can scale with side chains, but scaling requires decentralization. That was the entire point of my posts about End-to-end Principle and Principle of Least Power (internet wouldn't scale nor attain network effects without those key attributes). Side chains won't be decentralized because TPTB are going to move the masses into the Fascist side chain then 50% attack the other decentralized side chains. TPTB will in effect insure Bitcoin can't scale.

If you try to argue TPTB can't do this for sure, then I refer you to my watertight upthread logic.

If you try to argue TPTB don't exist or don't intend to do this, then I have no rebuttal other than  

P.S. there has been some abuse of the term 'network effects'. Network scaling and network effects were conflated by Cypherdoc and I went along with it, because it is a close enough conceptualization any way.

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Edit: Here ares the scaling problems that top-down control creates:


Bitcoin is both a Trojan horse to drive consolidation of fragmented system, yet it too will be consolidated into top-down control.

Apologies I am very sleepy so not articulating clearly as I could.

Innovation and experimentation are great. But let me tell you just one thing that I hope the incredibly smart people reading this thread will note: Satoshi's creation is not perfect -- none is nor will be -- ; I think it's better to think about it as the spark that ignites the spontaneous order around it.

In order to overcome the network effect of money you need a completely new paradigm; nobody will adopt a system that in the eyes of some expert maybe better than Bitcoin in some way ("but who knows").

This fire is almost a miracle (a few years ago nobody thought it was possible). Take advantage of it.

I do use reverse psychology with certain colleagues who are contrarians to even their own thoughts. I assure you this is not the case. Not every time stereotypes do conform with our inner thoughts, nevertheless, one's prospect could be different, on a debatable subject from the opponent's one; yet still, the essence of both musings could actually formulate the same idea. Think about it.

If thats not reverse psychology, then i have definitely lost the plot.

I was pointed here by a answer of yours to a friend's post. Since then I've been incessantly reading your posts and -man- it's been a wonderful drawing of sane thoughts so far (still have a lot to read - but not currently have the time, will definitely will, though). I quoted the above lines from you because I utterly think it's one of the most important quotes one can read on this forum / thread.

Perspective. That's what we humans as species lack of. Only a handful of people have it and it's not because of their excessive IQ over the rest, but because of their plane of view. Take for example an ant. It works with its colleagues while a drop of water falls right beside it. Under no circumstances this ant could be certain if a rainfall is coming or this was a drop of water from a leaf. Another ant which is on the top of a hill can certainly be more accurate.

Critical mass is also a thing. Our physis implies that the smarter is the most resilient throughout the years. Take for example the ice age; there were many stronger races than ours (ie:homo sapiens) yet; we survived because of our adapting capabilities AND team work. The direct connection of those towards the years to come is based on the very same capabilities as species. Not everybody has to make the choice. A critical few though, that will form the critical mass, will definitely will have to.

Thanks again for your great posts. I'll be diving in again, sooner than later.

If the captain is offering the booty to only the top 51%, the other 49% will vote against him for sure. If more than 1% of the top 51% decide to try their luck at getting more after the captain is eliminated, then the captain dies. That is not very good odds for the captain (more probable than a coin toss the captain dies). Someone in the 51% may be smart enough to realize that making proposals where death is the result of a No consensus means the odds of getting more loot by continually voting No on each iteration of proposals is going to eliminate the competition for the sharing of the loot (even if there is only one iteration). And that person votes No but doesn't get enough support from the other 51%, he still gets his share of the loot.

Whereas, if the captain says that anyone who votes No does not get a share of the loot, then 100% of the pirates have to weigh the odds that 50% of the others won't vote Yes (a coin toss probability they lose out on the loot, thus much less than a coin toss probability that they risk it and the captain dies).

You speculate about what happens about after the captain dies, but that is not necessary to determine the ratio of the probabilities of the two answers. Since what happens after the captain dies is unspecified, then the odds of just 1% of those in the 51% speculating on the potential to get a better deal is not as good of odds for the captain as my answer.

Clearly my answer was correct on the probabilities in all possible interpretations. However I can't fathom how to access the comparison between my answer and a proposal to share amongst say the top 75% (and it also depends on what % the captain himself constitutes, i.e. the group size) and I think the question is underspecified for that type of proposal for other reasons such as the expectation of the pirates. Thus my answer was the only sure one that was superior to the one Google provided. Thus it is the only unambiguous correct answer.

Two can play: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/ethereumproject/the_p_epsilon_attack/#comment-2028779600


I read this puzzle as intending that only the captain can put a proposal to a vote (and he only gets one shot; presumably it's something like a perfect equal split among the crew if the captain gets voted down and killed*), in which case Google's original answer is right since each winning pirate does stand to lose if they vote no.

*Even if we instead assume that any pirate is allowed to make a counterproposal after the captain is dead, a pirate could just propose voting down the captain and the loot being divided among a different 51% set that includes him (the pirates in the overlap group should side with counterproposal, since they get slightly more loot without the captain around anymore). Of course then another pirate will do that with 52%, knowing his proposition will win. Then 53%, etc. until they end up at an even split among 100% of the crew as the winning proposition by vote count. So assuming the crew is rational they will vote yes if they luck out and make it into the 51%. So either way it seems Google has it right. The "no-voters don't get the loot" proviso is unnecessary, unless maybe we are not assuming rational pirates. (And in fact, this shows you can keep nearly half the loot (assuming you have a decent-sized crew), giving 51% of the crew the other half plus a tiny bit more, which is a bit more than they get if they vote you down. So Google's answer is also too low.)

Too many ways to read it, though, so it's basically indeterminate/underspecified as far as I'm concerned. I think it's called an "IQ test" to obscure the real purpose, that it's way for them to see your thought process during an interview. It's perhaps intentional that everyone will add in their own assumptions, or maybe even harp on the need to specify assumptions, or about the how killing the captain or having 49% be jealous would leave them in worse shape. Each of these kinds of reactions gives useful information to the hirers.

Proof-of-Work vs. Proof-of-Stake

Extending from my prior post, the bolded portion is an unnecessary assumption (i.e. a weaker assumption is also valid):

https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf#page=7


What part of "subjective condition" did Andrew (and Maxwell) not understand? Vitalik demonstrated an example whereby PoW suffers an analogous requirement for assumptions of mutual incentive for optimization of the public good as PoS does. Andrew is trying to argue that PoS is self-referential thus can never be absolute proof. But Vitalik shows by example that PoW is conditioned on subjectivity also.

The subjectivity claim against PoW may be weaker than against some variants of PoS (e.g. one-time spend addresses with check points), but the devil is in the details. PoW requires checkpoints to guard against 50+% attacks too. Checkpoints are a form of social trust (aka "assumptions of mutual incentive for optimization of the public good"), subjective (SPV-like) trust model which Maxwell alluded to.


The main argument I had against Proof-of-Stake since my 2013 debates with Etlase2 was the entropy of the randomization function. I still have to look at how that is done in variants and see if my former criticism still applies.

P.S. Andrew's paper and Vitalik's blog are both excellent for raising clarity on the issue and much appreciated.

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Edit: Ah I see my long-standing reservation against PoS has remained true thus far:

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/#comment-1730404390

Another more mathematical way of stating the Logic of Collective Action which I summarized as participants being more self-interested than aligned for the optimization of the public good.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/


Example:

https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/01/28/p-epsilon-attack/


In Nov. 2009 (years before I got interested cryptography) I corrected one of the incorrect answers on Google's IQ test on an analogous observation:

http://unheresy.com/Essence%20of%20Genius.html

If someone invents it, I am all for it, just like flying cars. Bitcoin is already invented, and I want to use it because it is advantageous.

Micropayments is (in theory) an orders-of-magnitude larger GDP economy in the future and thus it will (at an exponential rate) subsume any design that can't do it.

The greatest failing of the human race is to misunderstand the exponential function. Humans view exponential change as virtually linear nominal change until suddenly at the end game, the compounding suddenly appears to be waterfall nominal change and the humans are deer-in-the-headlights dazed and confused.

Micropayments are nice, and the prospect of micropayments have created many business ideas.


The fact is that we don't have micropayments in the fiat realm. If someone wants to dispute that, here is the reasoning: With a credit card, the minimum is practically a few dollars. With more effective debit card systems costing about a fifth of a dollar per transaction, the practical minimum is maybe five dollars. Some shops might want to take a loss and sell less, but that is not viable for all the trades in a business. You can not buy electric power by the kWh, and not gas by the BTU. When measured, it is added up and paid by the month or whatever the custumers prefer and the business can supply.

With base money, the actual fiat paper rectangles and the token coins, there is also limit to how small a transaction can be, due to the cost of handling the money. That is one of the reasons you buy twenty cigarettes and not one, (the other reason is that handling cigarettes one by one is also impractical and therefore costly, but lets focus on the money management costs). Another example is bus tickets, cards of 20 or so is more practical than paying for each ride.

So we don't have microtransactions neither in bitcoin nor in the fiat realm. But what we have with bitcoin, is lower cost for certain types of small transactions. So with bitcoin, we can go some small steps toward microtransactions, but not all the way. This might be temporary, but it works now, and just like alpacca socks, gambling, and narcotics, it is a vector for bitcoin to expand.

So we don't have it, but we have progress, so why complain? It looks like obsession to me.

The specific damage I think the cartel would do with a 50% attack on the Core side chain is to require KYC identification on all transactions. I don't think they would risk politically to shut off all transactions on the Core side chain and because that would set the precedent of making BTC non-fungible which would retard their aims with Bitcoin.

They key problem in Bitcoin's PoW is there is no criteria by which the evil 50% can differentiated from good nodes which don't attempt to censor the transactions. My design is able to make this distinction and filter the 50% attack from the network by way of a clever paradigm shift proxy and afaics there is no way to game the filter.

Read Charles Hoskinson's (one of original founders of Ethereum and someone whom I used to talk to before he discovered Vitalik) astute comment there:


Which leads me back to the linked document I had read last year:


Please unpack. I don't understand. Perhaps you are confusing my detailed explanations on how the participants have walled themselves in and I see only one way out, with the thought that you think I am trying to control the participants. I am trying to drive some rationalization that is time to break out of the corral and I am advocating open source pastures.

Such an egregious unsubstantiated ad hominem accusation demands that you justify it with compelling explanation. I consider that statement to be a hate crime equivalent to pointing a gun at me, because in some countries they commit people who are not insane to mental institutions to take away their life. Note I have flagged your comment as "unsubstantiated hate crime against personal liberty in some jurisdictions" to the moderator which is an action I almost never do because I fundamentally disagree with censorship. I would not flag your comment if you made an argument which I can refute or concede.

This beg the question: does the 20MB hardfork require increasing the block version?