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Topic: keep seeing 'thought experiment' in reference to bitcoins (Read 972 times)

legendary
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1006

There have been two new currency exchanges launched (and at least one more coming this week):
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/VirtEx
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/GetBitcoin


Friendly correction: Virtex has launched out of beta. (Its been live for a several weeks.)
full member
Activity: 126
Merit: 100
i haven't noticed that myself.

who refers to Bitcoin as a thought experiment?
legendary
Activity: 2506
Merit: 1010
true. it's more of a "proof of concept" than a thought experiment.

In the past 24 hours:

There have been at least 25,000 nodes participating:
 - http://smsz.net/btcStats/accepting

There has been over 10,000 transactions that occurred:
 - http://bitcoinwatch.com

There have been two new currency exchanges launched (and at least one more coming this week):
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/VirtEx
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/GetBitcoin

There have been over a dozen additions to the Trade page:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Trade&action=history

etc.

A proof of concept's purpose is to verify that some concept or theory that has the potential of being used.  Bitcoin left that stage months and months ago.  This is no longer a proof of concept.  Bitcoin is the real deal.

As a distributed computing project its computing power is bigger than the combined power of the top 500 supercomputers out there (all 500 combined)

If Bitcoin were a "startup" it would be labeled as the fastest growing startup in 2011.

There are people working aggressively to improve Bitcoin's core, to build entensions and serve niches.  That doesn't happen with a proof of concept, nonetheless with an experiment.
hero member
Activity: 527
Merit: 500
true. it's more of a "proof of concept" than a thought experiment.
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
please.. its NOT a thought experiment, its becoming en vogue to overuse this term... a thought experiment is like schroedingers cat, where nothing is actually done, just all in their head.

there are two ways i see this term overused one is 'thought'.. bitcoins isnt just a thought, there are thousands of people using it today
and the other is 'experiment'.. an experiment isnt just an idea or a hypothesis, it's a scientific procedure whose purpose is to MEASURE results.
With a thought experiment you play out the experiment mentally with the purpose of getting at RESULTS - not to pontificate or muse with stupid theories.

so if u have an idea or a HYPOTHESIS call it that.. dont call it a thought experiment, it cheapens einstein, schroedinger, etc.. when you overuse this term and yer too retarded to even know what it means.



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