The Bitcoiner's Press Manual

Saturday, 06 April, Year 5 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

Here are some basic thoughts that will allow you to correctly represent for your own use, correctly represent in public discussion, and correctly respond to press mentions of Bitcoin.

A. Anyone working in the press is a professional and intellectual failure. Whether they're a "journalist" for something happening on dead tree paste or a talking head on the tube, they are not there for their thinking.

To understand this better, consider the case of advertising copy, which is exactly what all media is. Some scientist somewhere comes up with an idea. This person is paid to think. Some engineer somewhere comes up with a way to make an object out of that idea. This person is paid for their experience. Some business people take this to market. They are paid a percent off the gross.

Part of the taking to market is going to a copywriter and saying "here's the object, write the copy". The copywriter is not involved in making the object, either in the ideal or the concrete. He is not even involved in making the meta-object, ie, the "advertising strategy" : the business people establish that. His job is roughly the job of a patient monkey which, given a bag of marbles, is ordered to keep shaking it until three red ones fall out.

This is what your "journalist" does : he takes fundamentally meaningless words and mixes them until his employer is happy with the general look and feel of the finished text.

Consequently, taking umbrage at their constant repeating of thoroughly discredited nonsense (such as for instance the "deflationary" argument), or at their quoting of thoroughly discredited phoneys (such as for instance Krugman) is a waste of your time.

More importantly, attempting to engage them in any sort of conversation is a pernicious validation of their own delusion. No journalist goes "I published a new article, five hundred people read it, four hundred ninety proceeded to explain, illustrate, demonstrate and clearly show what an idiot I am and how completely misguided and nonsensical my piece is." Nothing of this sort, it will be simply a "500 reads, 470 comments". That is all. Journalism is not about being right, journalism is not about describing facts. Journalism is the support of advertising, and just like advertising all about "reach". The more people read his nonsense, the better. Even if they think it's nonsense.

Spam doesn't work by making sense to its recipients, spam works by being nonsensical and reaching a lot of people. Journalism is exactly the same thing, working in exactly the same way. You don't really hit the reply button on spam emails, do you ?

B. Since Bitcoin is flawless, everyone is angling at "having found the flaw". This is just human nature. Nobody wants to do the work, everybody wants to get paid for either not doing anything at all or in the worst case to get credit for something happening with which they had nothing to do.

This explains why people "call" the price evolution of Bitcoin. Why not ? Statistically speaking they'll be right sometimes, which cases can then be selected over a long enough period and perhaps command a pay from somebody. Maybe. Please ?

This is exactly how "we've found the flaw in Bitcoin" pieces are born. No content is actually needed and it doesn't have to particularly make any sense. Just paste something in there, to have it at the ready for the case someone actually does the work and finds a flaw. This is also how "Bitcoin is a Ponzi" pieces are born. If the BCB fucks up next time and we do blow up... well. It'll be great to be able to go back to some unrelated, nonsensical piece where "we called it".

C. Bitcoin is killing the welfare state. I've been saying it for a while and it's pretty obvious. Without the ability to inflate the currency and without the ability to tax coercively (both removed by Bitcoin), the State finds itself unable to finance the programs which keep the poor voting the populists. There will be no more food stamps, there will be no more federal aid for college, there will be no more army pay and there will be no more government jobs. We're not talking about "sequestration" here, ie, 0.1% or less cuts in expenditure. We are talking about the president cooking his own food or else hiring his own cook, because there's no money in the public treasury to pay for it. Everything is going away. All of it.

This makes everyone who currently draws his paycheck from the state (such as, the journalist, his wife the social worker, or his girlfriend in the "women's issues" master programme, or his mother the pensioneer or his brother the IRS agent or his cousin the policeman) quite interested in depicting Bicoin as bad. We will hear all about how Bitcoin is "bad for democracy", and "racist", and everything else.

The fact of the matter is Bitcoin does not mix with big government, and the mathematical definition of "big" is anything larger than one. In the early days of the US a woman buying a set of china for the White House was a scandalous expenditure. These days are returning.

This is not something up for debate, or something that can be modified or "improved upon" or altered in any way. Much like the Internet changed sexual behaviour whether anyone agrees or not, just so Bitcoin is changing political behaviour, want it to or not.

It will obviously be debated to high heavens, great imaginary victories will be won on the virtual field of "Bitcoin issues" just as it presently happens on equally virtual fields of whatever the social "sciences" are doing. Nobody cares. It makes not one whit of difference. Some woman that thinks she was sorta-raped by Bitcoin writes a fifty page essay about this, instead of about polar bears or poor Africans ? Great. Not worth reading, not worth discussing, not worth the mention. Bitcoin will proper-rape her soon enough, and then she'll learn to like it, and then she'll learn to love it. Or maybe she won't. Either way, Bitcoin will do it again. And again, and again. And forever.

In the end, representing the problem in terms of hurting X, Y or Z special interest group, or in terms of "bad for Democracy", or in terms of anything else is equally uninteresting. Bitcoin is doing away with big government, and everything big government supports. Everything pretty much is going away, and there's nothing anyone can do about any of it.

D. Doing is better than talking. About six months after MPEx was - safely, carefully and discreetely - opening Bitcoin to Wall Street, Coinlab came out with a lot of press blather about how they're bringing Wall Street to Bitcoin, via Silicon Valley Bank and an arrangment which was announced for two weeks ago and nobody's heard of since. So ?

This pattern will repeat just fine. Journalists can talk themselves dizzy over Bitcon, at the end of the day they'll be sticking pens in their ass for 10 BTC, because anything is better than hunger. Including rape.

In conclusion, the best course of action is to just forget about the press. They don't matter, can't help or hinder and in the end talk is cheap and nobody cares what anyone saysi. Bitcoin is not persuasive, it's not a construct of language. Bitcoin is a construct of math, and those are always coercitive.

———
  1. The opposite of talking is not listening, the opposite of talking is waiting for your turn. []
Category: Bitcoin
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43 Responses

  1. Agreed, me too not hoping anymore to explain whole thing accurately, whether press or else.

    And looking forward to some real wallstreet+mpex information...or at least another brimstone trilema post "wall street is not what it were anymore, no one there is up to the task" lol.

  2. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    2
    Mircea Popescu 
    Saturday, 6 April 2013

    Heh.

  3. The notion of Bitcoin eliminating taxation is an odd one. The king's tax collector (or your local protection racket, perhaps just a few guys armed with sharp sticks) can still come to your door and demand payment in gold dubloons or whatnot - which you will purchase in Bitcoin, USD, or sexual favours, it doesn't really matter which.

    The fact is that convincingly threatening people with violence is, and is sure to remain - very profitable. The only effect of cryptocurrency on the status quo will be to make tax collection an "up close and personal" business again, the way it was in ancient times: when the king's men come straight to your door once a year, and the only way to tell them to go to hell and make it stick is to swear allegiance to a bigger/badder overlord who can afford to feed a greater number of sharp-stick specialists (no prizes for guessing how.)

  4. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    4
    Mircea Popescu 
    Saturday, 6 April 2013

    Are you familiar with that sketch where some super-"capitalist" stock character interacts with a timeworn beggar only to have the beggar be impressed with his story to the point of making a gesture ? Donate some money ?

    This is the exact problem here : some guy dressed in a Ronald McDonald costume with a large crown on the chest knocks on your door, asks for money. Well... you don't have any, but it's great that he showed up cause maybe he could lend you fiddy bux for which you will gladly pay on Thursday ?

    I understand that this depiction of the government as Pantalone is both unfamiliar and indigestible in the US and generally in the dieing West, however, it is very much and very plainly the case. Were the Western government this perfect preditor you imagine and always depict, where it the indefeatable 1984esque big brother Moldburg represents it to be with the clinging, grabby desperation of a drowning man, were it quite as great and powerful as the various socialists think it (and yes, any notion that the government is noteworthy makes you a socialist, just as any notion that god is great makes you religious - irrespective of how you come to practical terms in your daily life with that deep theological conviction) then the West wouldn't be collapsing. It would be expanding its colonial empire abroad and bringing slaves by the boatload to work the cotton field at home.

    This is not happening in practice. Mental equivalencing, trying to explain that "it is what is *really* happening" does not count, at least not for more than an attempt by the weirdo kid in highschool to explain how his filthy masturbatory habits are *really* an active, enviable sex life.

    The first and the last point where you may verify this is the impression this state of yours leaves among the genuinely strong. There's a reason the US has not won a war since Vietnam, and that reason is simply the fact that every time it went to fight real men, and every time these real men failed to be impressed with the drony, high pitched, ankle sock wearing "soldiers". This is why Americans are still bombed in Afghanistan to this day : those doods aren't impressed with their manliness. To the beardy tribesmen the American soldier is a comedy act, marauding Pantalone. Ask the slender, tall, Serbian ballerina you're diddling what she thought of the "americans" back when she was a little girl hiding under the bed cause they were bombarding Belgrade and by the sound of the silence of the answer you'll realise why it's not you banging the tall, slender, Serbian ballerina girl. Hint : it's not that she's frigid, by any means. Quite the little sack panther.

    So, back to your question : they can come and demand. And ? As long as they can't confiscate what are they going to do, the rack ?

    Sure, threatening people with violence is a great way to separate the stupid from their capital. Arguably scamming is much more efficient on equal cost basis. Also, since violence is such a cheap thing (seriously, if I want to extract money from the "king's tax collector" personally all I need is... a key ? a toothpick ? his own canine ?) the competition for it will be fierce, and consequently prices will be driven well down by simple workings of the free market.

  5. We have a winner: "the rack" is, in fact, the correct answer. Nobody cancelled the rack! Or, to get with the times, the soldering iron.

    Let's generalize "government" to mean something more than the senile buggers in Washington, DC. A better definition is that anyone who is in a position to tie you to a chair and *competently* plug a soldering iron into your arse ("rectothermal cryptoanalysis") until he is given what he wants - is in fact your government.

    By this useful definition, everybody on the planet is governed. In Somalia, on the high seas, wherever. The soldering iron is never more than a few steps behind.

    There will be soldiers collecting goodies door-to-door. But they won't be wearing clown suits - or American flags, necessarily. Once the doddering old idiots holding the leash finally drop dead, their dogs will run feral. And the coin of the realm won't be USD, Bitcoin, or gold: food, AK rounds, and slaves.

    You're quite right that the collapse of the great empires will drive down the price of violence per se through competition. In some parts of 1990s Russia, the price of a contract hit scarcely exceeded that of a round of ammo. It does not, however, follow, that the cost of "protection" charged to "clients" will be proportionately-lower. Or that this situation is any kind of improvement over the sclerotic paper tyranny of the dying bureaucratic empires.

    Once the warlords finish divvying up their territories, they can proceed to charge whatever the peasants can bear without starving entirely, with scarcely any pressure from competition. The latter withers away, winners emerge, etc. Where do you suppose empires come from in the first place?

  6. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
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    Mircea Popescu 
    Saturday, 6 April 2013

    You seriously imagine some sort of "State" is sending people around to torture the population for the purpose of extraction ? What's to keep me from ambushing them and making them into salami ? Understand the tactical situation here : the "government" is a known quantity, visibly marching on the field. They will be ambushed. The cost of ambush exceeds the benefit from extraction, and consequently the entire process is self-limiting.

    This will force government into fragmentation (simply to gain some terrain-mingling advantages), which takes us exactly where we want to be : all politics is local politics, small government and all that. In short, I will be the local government, and I won't bother taxing anyone. I can already afford to pay armies to stick things in people's asses (proof) and yet I do it for aesthetic rather than economic reasons. Think in terms of the old Italian states, Venice was not rich because it was taxing anyone, Venice was rich because it was the country club of some rich merchants, who made plenty of money in their trade. That is coming back.

    The dogs didn't run feral in Russia, in spite of there being an exact and clear representation of your idea in that Yeltsin character falling over drunk from atop that building in Dzerzhinsky square. There's literally no dogs in the dieing West, as the recent ridiculousness with Petraeus & co clearly showed. What do you imagine'd have happened in someone proposed Putin quit because he's fucking around back in 1991, hm ? We're not making a film here, the usual rule of fiction whereby you may ask me to believe the impossible does not hold.

    The situation is a. always better with an increase of violence and b. always better after anything collapses. As proof I submit : for a. the orgasm per high heel per year flow pre and post WW2 ; for b. the nutritional records in Galia Narbonensis, Gaul and Hispania pre and post Alaric.

    Surely winners emerge, you're talking to one. The point here is exactly that : the sovereignity of MPEx is what you need to be sucking up to if you wish to have a pleasant time in the future.

  7. The successful ambushers wielding the salami knives are (almost by definition) the "governors," while those being slices into salami are by definition - the governed.

    Venice was very definitely a slave trading empire, and I agree: that kind of thing will indeed come back.

    The "dogs" did indeed run feral in Russia, at least for a while. Dudayev is one well-known example. Also consider the War of Transnistria.

    The idea of an increase in violence being a positive change over the sclerotic civilizational decline we have now is somewhat a matter of taste. For your sake, I hope that your day job is that of a meatspace mafia don, and your dealings with Bitcoin are just an evening diversion. Because the infrastructure which allows BTC to function is amazingly fragile - and may not be rebuilt for many generations (if ever) in the event of a proper, old-fashioned, "orgasmic" world war (or even a great many localized skirmishes.) Fiber is easy to cut, very difficult to repair. Communication satellites cost fortunes to construct and launch, and considerably smaller fortunes to shoot down. (A ton of C4 and ball bearings exploded in orbit would thoroughly "clean up" the usable space, perhaps permanently.)

    You may want to look into the possibility of running the blockchain over shortwave radio.

    Also keep in mind that "peacetime winners" are not necessarily identical to successful warlords. Personal loyalties among men of arms will count for more than plain access to wealth.

  8. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    8
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    Bitcoin will run just fine over ham radio, and electricity being disused for practical applications on the planet will have the positive effect of ensuring a lucrative dayjob for a bunch of otherwise unemployable youths. Hashing can be done by hand, and I will have it done by hand. Think monks copying the sacred texts, I can literally see fields full of kids in robes chained to desks going fa34 540a 90da etc.

    Dudayev. Come on, pick something more irrelevant, marginal and wtf. Sure, the dogs will run feral in New Hampshire and some crazy parts of Utah. Seriously, who cares ? Show me the "dogs went crazy killed 2/3 of Leningrad which is more than what Stalin did in his heyday by 50% and thus worthy of your attentive consideration".

    I have the experience of having already thrived through a situation of complete societal collapse. It was fun, very lucrative and - contrary to what everyone innocent of the experience imagines - the best time the country ever had. Certainly the happiest times in female memory. I am not concerned of my safety for reasons that are apparently obvious, but I'd go as far as to say that pretty much nobody has any serious cause to be concerned, first to last sheep in the herd. It's really not that bad.

    Your C4/bearing ball example is particularly bad, not because a bullet even kissing a satellite wouldn't be the very end of that satellite, but because of simple geometric reasons. The mathematics explaining how distance shielding works are to be found here if you need the inspiration.

    I don't know of anyone more apt to be or more blessed already with the loyalty of active men than myself, even considering active service army officers and whatnot. You, for instance, are just about ready to shoot for me. It's not even a question of personal merit, it's simply a question of raising a banner that's worth being under.

  9. The American collapse is certain to play out quite differently than the one you had so much fun in, for reasons that are interesting and worth reading about:

    http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us

    Think Yugoslavia, rather than Romania.

    As for the ball bearing example, the inverse-square equation is inapplicable: the projectiles will enter orbit and recirculate at full speed, possibly for decades. In principle, one doesn't even need ball bearings: sand would suffice. I have some good reasons to believe that orbital "scrubbers" based on exactly this design have been quietly placed into orbit by each side in the Cold War. They sit, waiting for the right VHF packet. But of course, this is quite irrelevant to the collapse scenario: there will be no working comm satellites within a decade if no new ones are being built and launched.

    And an effective tyrant would have his men train for war - or at the very least, pull plows - rather than computing SHA256 by hand to play a glass bead game for a civilization which has gone down without being rebootable.

  10. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    10
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    Out of your full sphere at least some are shot directly towards the Earth. Those won't enter any sort of orbit. You can calculate if you wish what % of the surface of an ideal sphere made out of bearing balls moving at an arbitrary speed away from the center will make the orbit and what % will fall on the planet, it's a trivial mechanics exercise but I guess the results may be surprising ?

    Your sand example happens into a lateral proof of why the entire plan is untenable. For what reason do you believe there isn't sand in orbit currently ? Certainly there was sand there originally, it's how the planet formed in the first place.

    Yet Peppin had his men chant in monasteries. You neglect many of the sublter points of running the damned country. Glass beads from the past are the future.

    All that aside : I am certain the US collapse will be very very painful to the average American. I am pretty sure the vast majority won't survive, even in slavery. The reason for both of these are simply that the average American is worthless. That's it, all there is to it : on the balance of things not worth the price of a decent burial. The same wasn't the case of the much more adult, well rounded, capable and competent if famished soviets. There's a reason I moved away from that screwed corner of the world, and that's exactly it.

    But... why should we care ? So it'll suck to be an American, or in America. Aaaaand ? It never was the center of the world, it never will be the center of the world. It sucks being Sudanese now, who cares ?

  11. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    11
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    Burried somewhere there in your link is a shining

    Further economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Modern industrial economy is not required for cultural or spiritual growth and poses a threat to human survival.

    I happen to agree with the sentiment. Obviously rats in the maze (such as Altman) will readily imagine the soltion comes from "more innovation", conveniently bestowing that title upon little bits of colored plastic. That's "innovation", don't you know, ipods, ipads and "retinas".

    All this seems patently false. I still use a desktop to this day. Compared to it, a laptop is a certain inconvenience (it cooks your balls, which to me is distinctly incomfortable, it promotes unhealthy positions, it's smaller and stupider and premade rather than selfdesigned). Compared to a laptop, a tablet is an even worse inconvenience. Compared to that, the eye plug thing is the pits. I'm thoroughly uninterested in seeing what further comes down that pipe, whether it's urethra-insertable or colon-insertable. I just don't care, this is neither innovation nor progress. I've never bought any of them and I doubtlessly aren't ever buying any of them.

    Moreover, there is no benefit for me whatsoever stemming from the past 50 years and 50 trillion dollar's worth of agriculture research. All they do is make food cheaper to produce if slightly lower quality. This is exactly backwards. The only - strictly the only - aspect that interests me in regards to food is quality. I don't care how much it costs. The only advantage of cheaper food is that you can feed more people - but I am not interested in feeding more people. The only thing that creates is more problems, in the sense of even more people that wish to be fed even cheaper. This vicious circle is already out of control. I see no benefit to there being another 10 billion idiots alive contemporaneously with me. Ten million would perhaps be tolerable an excess, even if I'd never get to talk to all of them. Anything over that is a waste of space and nothing I'd encourage.

    The exact same is true of medical research. I am not interested that they're ever so slightly closer to curing cancer than they were. Statistically speaking, I will die of something, and it's indifferent to me if that something will be sheer boredom or pancreatic cancer. Actually, I will gladly die of pancreatic cancer rather than boredom if in exchange I have neither occasion or chance to talk to a "human health professional", but only to actual doctors. The difference is that medicine is a liberal profession, whereas whatever they do these days is administrative bureaucracy, and it's giving me hives on the isles of Langerhans.

    Moreover it'd seem that the cost of the entire system in terms of sublte pollution makes any chronic disease treatment improvements a game of catch-up. I'm glad to hear modern medicine improves my chances to survive a host of horrid diseases by 50%, but then I realise that the economics on which modern medicine relies increase my chances to get such a disease by 500%, and suddenly it fails to impress.

    The exact same is true of everything else. Car engines are very advanced now, which is nice in that they're silent. They're also very cheap now, which is unpleasant in that every idiot can afford one. Back in the day cars were somewhat rarer and therefore useful - at the very least to signal to some teenager that you're one of those she's to suck the cock of. These days they are all rounded abominations which look like some sort of alien birthed them. Not useful at all.

    And so no, from a purely civilisational approach there are absolutely no solutions to be found in the physical world. The solutions obviously exist, and obviously are to be found in the virtual world - the development of things such as MPEx is where the economy of the future will find its engines. But that aside, we're done. We have solved all the problems that are worth solving. Making it "more accessible" or "universal" or "cheaper" are not valid goals. Let the poor, the marginal, the underserved etc just die off and that's that. Basically... we're done here.

  12. You have thrown out the baby with the bath water, at least in agriculture department. Just one example of hugely beneficial innovation therein: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/?single_page=true

    Yet not all innovation is beneficial, and the process this civilization does have is messy and ineffective, but often for other reasons than are apparent from our first world POV.

  13. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    13
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    I fail to see the argument here. What exactly is positive about feeding more people ?

  14. Let me cite from TFA:

    Yet statistics suggest that high-yield agriculture brakes population growth rather than accelerating it, by starting the progression from the high-birth-rate, high-death-rate societies of feudal cultures toward the low-birth-rate, low-death-rate societies of Western nations.

    Your choice which kind of societies do you prefer.

  15. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    15
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    Well let's see... would I rather be surrounded by a few obese old women or by a lot of famished young girls.

    It is - I confess - a hard choice. In the hardening sense of hard.

  16. subSTRATA`s avatar
    16
    subSTRATA 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    Done with what? As far as I can see, we are on the end of the road we should not be on in the first place. Someone fucked up sooooo long ago, but herd didn't noticed - instead, it just continued pushing toward "better" future, "The Promised Land" or whatever, with utter idiots behind the wheel. One part of me is all for Agenda 21, but the other part, which transcended the reality, the life and everthing long ago, is telling me it all does not matter. It does not matter at all if there will be 100 billions people eating shits or 10,000 people eating the best food Earth can provide. There is no true value in anything outside of ourselfves, and that can be witnessed everywhere. Everything decays and everything changes. There is no true value in something that IS and tommorow IS NOT.

    I agree with most things you wrote, here or elsewhere, but I don't have a need for Earthly pleasures as much as you seem to be having. I consumed and experienced everything I wanted. Everything else is just a twist on already consumed and experienced, and I think there is no value in going for it - ROI does not justify investemtns in the first place. To be true, I don't really give a damn about power, wealth, control and so on beyond one and only one point - just gimme my secluded island in the Philipines and I'll be fine :o)

  17. subSTRATA`s avatar
    17
    subSTRATA 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    "Benefactor of humanity" instantly reminded me of J.P.Morgan. The herd seems to be in a need for more of people like him, and I hope they will get them. Let the herd get everything they wish and crave for, because at some point they might realise the life is not about getting everything you want from others. Actualy, the life is not about others at all. Here is the cool movie, with the bomb actualy telling the truth:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPir7N1_-s

  18. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    18
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    But it's not a matter of need. It's a matter of, why fuck up a good thing.

  19. Well, most people do need some goal and end purpose, only in last century in certain parts of world "God" got replaced with "progress" and "better future". That is what we are given to live with and lamenting about "herd with utter idiots behind the wheel" is not making me feel better. For this seems to stay so for thousands of years.

    "It does not matter at all if there will be 100 billions people eating shits or 10,000 people eating the best food Earth can provide." Such a fallacious statement, I know for certain most of my ancestors ate inferior food for large part of the year, suffered curable diseases and died young, despite there were much less people on the planet than it is now. Maybe you indeed came to the stage where you'll happily live in a insulated ancient Greek town, or all by yourself on an island. Congrats then, but for me, having billions people at disposal means much higher probability to find someone able to do stuff together with, whether the outcome will all decay in the end or not.

  20. subSTRATA`s avatar
    20
    subSTRATA 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    For the sake of showing that neither good nor bad does really matter, or for the sake of showing - for the billionth time - that good and bad are subjective categories. We can fuck up good thing or we can preserve good thing - it does not matter, since it will be fucked up anyway at some point in time. Just think in terms of big meteor hits, Ice Ages, pole shifts and so on. There is a reason those exist and periodically happen. There is an order in the everything around us but most humans don't see it because most humans are out of order.

    There is one and only one quest - improve yourself. The reality matters as much as it matters jumping from Path of Exile to Diablo 3 to FarmVille.

  21. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    21
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    @jurov Yes, superficially it'd seem larger world population improves your chances of finding your twu wuv, soulmate, destined pair. The problem with that nonsense is that if you're half competent you can pair up admirably well with pretty much anyone. And after you've paired up admirably well with pretty much everyone you find it difficult to take childish notions such as the soulmate seriously.

    @subSTRATA It'd seem that absent good or bad improvement is a moot point.

  22. @Mircea: I didn't have mating in mind, but intellectual pursuits and self-expression instead (although even the former case is disputable).

  23. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    23
    Mircea Popescu 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    So how are those not mating.

  24. subSTRATA`s avatar
    24
    subSTRATA 
    Sunday, 7 April 2013

    If you think your personal goods are everyone's else personal goods, you are wrong, and in that lies the bigger wisdom. What I'm pointing at is that regardless of one's goods and bads, everyone will be gonne if big meteor hits the Earth and cuts it in half, which is possible event. From your current perspective, would that be good or bad? You can surely judge on that but that does not mean you are correct in grand scheme of things. To self-improve means to work toward understanding that grand scheme of things, and as you walk that road, you will see that any and all beliefs and value systems are nothing but distraction and dead weights.

    There could be universal goods and bads but I can't tell yet, but if I hold onto my personal goods and bads, chance that I will find out is zero.

  25. Re: agriculture & medical research:

    There is an old tale about two drunkards. One says to the other: "I will pay you $XX to eat a spoonful of shit." His buddy eats and gets paid, and proceeds to say: "Now, how about I pay you $XX to eat a spoonful of shit." Eats, pays. They both ate a spoonful of shit - for free.

    And arguably this applies not only to modern high-tech agriculture, but to agriculture per se:

    See: "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" (http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html)

    Re: everything else:

    You are on a jumbo jet; 600 passengers. 12km up. (For the sake of argument) there are 20 parachutes on board. (A parachute club is travelling to a meet, say.) 100 passengers snuck knives in their boots. A few dozen - pistols. The bar is fully stocked, liquor flows like water, the stewardesses are ready & willing, etc. The pilot and co-pilot are unconscious over the controls in a drunken haze; the engines are on fire. The 600 damned souls carouse and spend their time in idiot chit-chat, mostly about random human minutia but also about what a swell fellow the pilot is and how the machine will never hit the ground, the latter being crazy conspiracy talk. The parachutes and even the pistols occasionally change hands.

    Is this a fun place to be? Well, it depends. Do you have a parachute? Pistol? Knife? Are the other passengers good shots? And how good are they with their knives? Knives can cut parachute straps as well as flesh.

    Mircea, at the moment you're wearing a spiffy parachute which you firmly believe is un-cuttable - for all I know, correctly. Or not. And so, your perspective is likely to be quite different from that of the rest of us.

  26. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    26
    Mircea Popescu 
    Monday, 8 April 2013

    By now two patterns emerge. One where you're concerned with warm cylindrical objects gaining rectal admission and the other where you're concerned with falling from a great height and smashing against the jagged teeth of reality. They tend to crop up when covering the bad juncture spots of failed analogies, which'd suggest they carry significant emotional heat for whatever reason, which the mind is aware of and consequently uses them to throw itself off critical track.

    We're in no plane. It's true that I also happen to carry a trusty psychopath with a gun and wear a parachute under my suit and so forth. But irrespective of all that... there is no plane. Not over here.

    Somewhere, sure. There's always a plane somewhere. All you have to do is turn left at the boarding gate and never look back.

  27. Russian saying: "For every wily arse, somewhere there is a threaded cock."

    "All men are mortal," and no rectum is entirely inviolable by warm cylindrical objects. And anyone might have the occasion to fly on an airplane. Sometimes, without being asked nicely first.

    Check your parachute cords often, Mircea. And don't forget to clean the pistol. ("M-Pro 7" oil, recommended, if you can get it.) The "clever poor" are quite real, and you seem to make a hobby of laughing at the very idea.

  28. A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

    Two mice, one white and one black, little by little, started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

  29. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    29
    Mircea Popescu 
    Monday, 8 April 2013

    @Stanislav Datskovskiy My solution is radically simpler : I really don't give a shit either way.

    @pletzalcoatl Aptly put.

  30. Vexare`s avatar
    30
    Vexare 
    Monday, 8 April 2013

    You have friends Mircea or do you hate anyone?

    Your close... acquaintances, how did they come to existence: by the famined mass or l'obese bourgeois?

  31. bracelet cartier love replica`s avatar
    31
    bracelet cartier love replica 
    Saturday, 30 January 2016

    You’re information is ‘useless’ as it’s ‘inaccurate’. Both those words makes me think ‘law enforcement’ or a related field…

  32. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    32
    Mircea Popescu 
    Saturday, 30 January 2016

    Hey everyone, check out the redditor!

  33. People tend to be dazzled by the new, but it is extremely rare that the new actually is very new. Taxation happens where the person interacts with society. This has always been the norm, not the other way around, and I have no idea why so many are confused about it. The wealthy contrarian of the past age could just as well go out in the woods and dig a cache for his gold. And most certainly he did, because these abandoned caches are all over the fucking place; you'll find them just by applying a very rudimentary and naive understanding of the human behavioural patterns of "cunning," combined with digging at semi-random like a retard along historical routes of movement and settlement. This used to be my go-to back when I was young. That type of undertaking gives certain perspective. Money affords no security and confers no real power. This is the reason why the merchant caste is the third caste of civilization, not the first.

  34. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    34
    Mircea Popescu 
    Wednesday, 29 April 2020

    Get the fuck lost with your idiotic attempts at socialism normalization.

    Taxation was always the norm for losers, and no-one else.

    You wanna live in a taxing world, I'll let you know how much you owe me. That's the outer limit of that fantasy. I ain't paying anyone anything to be here. You may.

    Actually, you'd better.

  35. No, you misunderstand me. Socialism is not a real thing. Observe nature and you will see that nothing in nature is equal. And so egalitarianism is a fallacious ideal that can never exist outside of fantasy. It's not about what I "want," I'm just describing reality to you.

    The strong tax the weak. This is an old game we live in and you pay to play. Ideals and dreams are fine, but they're not the reality we live in. Might is right, as they say. You can pretend this is not so, that is inconsequential.

    What do you do when they add the tax to your meal at the restaurant? Stomp your foot? You may send me your invoice and I shall proceed to laugh at it.

  36. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    36
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 30 April 2020

    Strange jumble of notions ; but be that as it may. How did I end up counted with the weak in your retelling ?

  37. Strange and jumbled perhaps, but what's more important when it comes to notions is whether they are correct or not. Do you really think money is the primary power in civilization? Isn't violence greater? Shouldn't I laugh at dust in a tomb, whose doubloon sits on my desk, while his legacy toils as a peasant somewhere?

    I haven't counted you for anything, yet. What do I know - perhaps you only eat at home?

  38. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    38
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 30 April 2020

    There is no such thing as the correctness of a jumble.

  39. Ornu`s avatar
    39
    Ornu 
    Friday, 1 May 2020

    Oh well.

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