Valiant prince MP explores the mother of all echo chambers. A saga of our times.

Monday, 20 May, Year 5 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

Chapter I (somewhere deep in the dungeons )

mircea_popescu

Except I went the being not an asshole route while I can only imagine what it's like dealing with your smug ass in a play setting.

Lol play setting. Oookay...
Human Trafickingi Victim #1 Having fun?

mircea_popescu Mhm. Isn't it hysterical how all it takes is for me to show up, it suddenly turns into an all about me thread ?
Human Traficking Victim #2 Mhm.
Human Traficking Victim #3 I thought you were done with Something Awful.

mircea_popescu Too good stuff lmao.
Human Traficking Victim #2 Why not done with sa tho?

mircea_popescu Cause I suspek Pietila is a goon.
Human Traficking Victim #2 Oh srsly? You know you suspected it when I sent you a pm from him and titled it "from uppity tortilla", you sure that's not just residually convincing you?

mircea_popescu How can I be sure other than being there ?
Human Traficking Victim #2 No idea.
Human Traficking Victim #1 I really dunno why the sa people don't fall on their knees already.

mircea_popescu They have. Look at [redacted].
Human Traficking Victim #1 Ah I guess that's true.
Human Traficking Victim #3 I'd think if I was stuck in that miremiasma and you came along....

mircea_popescu But this is you, and that's exactly what you were famous for.
Human Traficking Victim #3 Well naturally I think people should follow my excellent example :D
Human Traficking Victim #2 "Assuming your the real MP what are your thoughts on the wacky Finnish 'supernode' guy?" << aha.
Human Traficking Victim #1 "Your flesh beckons to scream and lash out"....what. Apparently badly written video games are bad not only for being boring and obnoxious in themselves, but also in that they teach boys it's a good idea to copy 'em.

Chapter II (somewhere-else, deep in the swampii)

    M_P
    Mkay, let's try this again.



    Cursed Lumberjack
    We would really REALLY rather you didn't.


    Interlude
    I love how this thread is consistanatly on the first page and yet my $100 investment in bitcoins is now worth 1800. I've been smoking for free for years now.


    ...!

    Nebby parachute account spotted.

    Wow, you gambled and won! Surely this means you should put all your money in it! No, seriously, put all your money in it and let us know how you're doing in a few years.

    Out of curiosity, other than your gambling, what do you think are the virtues of bitcoin? Be specific.


    ChickenOfTomorrow
    Hooray! Free cancer!


    Cursed Lumberjack
    Yeah after all these threads have all been named 'Bitcoins are awful and Interlude will never ever make any money off them ever so ha we sure showed you!'

    Man, you got us good. How red are our faces?


    Weatherman

    I remember a full-page advertisement in a national newspaper, back when I was in high school, from the state horseracing-betting agency. It tried to say that investing $20 in gold, or rare books, or spending money on cultural activities was exactly the same as "investing" $20 in bets at the track. "You learn valuable skills and information that will be useful in future bets! "

    "Investing" in buttcoin is the same. It's gambling/speculation, not investing.


    Russell William Thorpe

    I work with poor people from a third world, Spanish speaking island called "Holyoke, Massachusetts". If they have Internet, it's through their phones, because they can't afford that and a modern pc, cable Internet, or a car, etc. How the hell are they supposed to download a 10 gigabyte block chain? I guess they could give out the block chain on DVD or Blu-Ray. Ok, to use this currency, first you need a copy of every transaction anybody has ever made...

    There seems to be no way for poor people to use bitcoin without exposing themselves to all the risk BC is supposed to avoid


    skaboomizzy
    You don't need to d/l the whole massive thing to use BitCoin. You just set up a wallet on blockchain.info. You only need the blockchain if you plan on mining.


    Cursed Lumberjack
    I bet there are lots of people in developing countries across the globe who would answer with a hearty "Hell yes!" if you asked them, "Would you like to carry your own money around and be responsible for its safety at all times rather than entrusting it to a richer and more heavily armed corporation of people dedicated to holding and keeping money safe?" I mean, why would you want your currency held by someone whose job it is to hold it? Sounds inefficient to me.


    Too Poetic
    Congratulations on gambling and winning. The other day I bought a scratcher and won 10 dollars I guess they are a pretty solid investment.


    xarph

    The rules of the game are impenetrable and the result is always contested.

    Greyhawk posted:
    They are infinitely divisible. The 8 decimal places are just a current arbitrary limit.

    I can't wait for the exchanges to learn about floating point.


    CampingCarl
    Apr 28, 2008

    Interlude posted:
    I love how this thread is consistanatly on the first page and yet my $100 investment in bitcoins is now worth 1800. I've been smoking for free for years now.

    How are these things related at all? The real question is if you are using that $1800 to continue investing in bitcoin or did you cash out? You can admit you gambled back then and how lucky you were to win or you can argue how your bitcoins are truly a smart investment. Neither of those are smart decisions anyone should try to emulate even if you made a profit this time.



    M_P

    jalopybrown posted:
    Mircea Popescu is the owner of MPEX which is pretty much the buttcoin stock exchange, he's famous for lasting longer than most bitcoin businesses without failing and hiring an ex-spammer to do PR on bitcointalk despite her having the same level of charm and interpersonal skills as Josh.

    No, actually, most recently I'm famous for fixing the price of Bitcoin back in early April, muchly humiliating Max Keiser in the process, and for leading the MtGox collapse by about two months. The rumour du jour at the Google I/O sloppy seconds conference thing they're doing currently is that in fact Gox' demise was pre-arranged and then announced privately to a secret group during my private and at the time secret conference last month.

    Before that I was famous for calling various other "news" and "shocking & surprising developments" a month or two in advance, the girls are keeping a list somewhere.

    Russell William Thorpe posted:
    I work with poor people from a third world, Spanish speaking island called "Holyoke, Massachusetts". If they have Internet, it's through their phones, because they can't afford that and a modern pc, cable Internet, or a car, etc. How the hell are they supposed to download a 10 gigabyte block chain? I guess they could give out the block chain on DVD or Blu-Ray. Ok, to use this currency, first you need a copy of every transaction anybody has ever made...

    I'm pretty sure nobody involved actually cares about these guys you work with, or poor people in general. This is a little like asking "but how are the thirld worlders from Holyoke Mass going to handle their own private jets". Well... they aren't.


    Lucy Heartfilia

    Spiderjelly posted:
    The point stands that he made money by betting on horses, and you guys could have done so as well if you weren't so busy sperging about how retarded it is.


    The Bible

    Thanks to bitcointalk, he could have done both.

    It's great he has done so well, but that doesn't mean it was a smart investment. He could have bet that money on a coin flip and come out ahead, but that wouldn't be a sound plan.

    People made money on beanie babies too, but it was still a poo poo investment plan.


    Spiderjelly
    Speculation is indeed informed gambling. Oil futures are cool, but you're dumb if you make money from bitcoin because,lol, libtards.

    The Bible posted:
    Thanks to bitcointalk, he could have done both.

    It's great he has done so well, but that doesn't mean it was a smart investment. He could have bet that money on a coin flip and come out ahead, but that wouldn't be a sound plan.

    I wonder, though. In hindsight, do you think this thread had enough information and knowledgeable posters in it to predict the bubble?


    Lucy Heartfilia

    Spiderjelly posted:
    Speculation is indeed informed gambling. Oil futures are cool, but you're dumb if you make money from bitcoin because,lol, libtards.

    So, so, so dumb.

    Gambling with bitcoins is the same as investing in oil.

    Just to make me laugh more: What are the relevant information that make bitcoins go up or down?

    I'll give an example for oil: projected future demand, projected future supply, energy technology developments, adoption of other energy technologies (coal, solar, wind, nuclear), developments in car manufacturing and so on.


    The Bible
    Oil has real uses that can be predicted. Bitcoins don't really even exist. They exist solely for speculation.



    M_P

    Metamucil posted:
    So... did you? fix Bitcoins?

    Not really. People are seldom famous for what they actually did.


    Lucy Heartfilia
    Also, people using Spiderjelly's indicators are the reason for the dotcom bubble. Trying to predict a bubble is gambling.

    Resaearching a company, stock, resource etc. and then making an informed investment decision is something completely different.



    M_P
    Yes, yes, we got it, you've read something on wikipedia about investing and know better than some guy on the Internet. Well done, have a cookie, chill out.


    Lucy Heartfilia
    You don't even need wikipedia for self evident, trivial stuff like this and we still have you three idiots posting in this thread.

    Space Crabs posted:
    The only way to make money at bitcoin is to buy in a crash and sell during a bubble, problem is everyone knows that now and the market is as dependent on reality as unicorn futures.

    To explain why this is not a really viable method to make money: It's not easy to say if butts are goind down overall or going up. If you buy at some point after bitcoins have gone down for a while, they could still go down even further. And if they go up they could just as well crash again before you decide to sell. Add in greed, unfounded optimisim and pessimism and you hopefully can see how it's nothing but pure luck.



    M_P

    Lucy Heartfilia posted:
    You don't even need wikipedia for self evident, trivial stuff like this and we still have you three idiots posting in this thread

    Very kind of you, but I'm affraid you've missed the point.

    The US itself was subject to speculation in recent history, wholesale. Apparently around 1800 it was quite unclear for the world (which at the time = Europe) whether this new and untested venture is worth anything. This figured prominently in a few crises but otherwise was the leading force all through American history of the time : European speculation.

    Not a strictly American phenomenon either, railroads started out by being speculative investments. The first joint stock companies (in England) are still notorious for having included among their ranks one "carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but no one to know what it is".

    To sum it up for you : it's a very weak argument against any new thing to show that "it is speculative". What's next, you're going to argue against children because "they can't even hold their shit in" ?


    Lucy Heartfilia
    It's not even speculative. It's pure gambling. Are you even reading this loving thread?

    Why bitcoin won't go up over the long run:
    1) Butts don't scale up at all.
    2) Because of 1, decreasing mining rewards, greed and mining being ruled by an oligopoly transaction fees will skyrocket.
    3) Butts are inconvenient.
    4) Butts are insecure.
    5) Butts are deflationary.

    Why bitcoins will ultimately go down:
    1) The biggest usage for butts are gambling (idiots call it 'speculation') and illegal things like drugs, money laundering and child pornography. This will cause government intervention sooner or later.
    2) Exchanges are run by idiots. This is where the government already intervened.
    3) Everyone who uses butts is either an idiot (largest proportion), scammer or otherwise criminal and oftentimes both at the same time. This is the case because non-dumbs and people with legal transactions can easily use other services.
    4) This is a long shot, but I believe in the future all transactions will have names attached to them and cash will be phased out. It's just a matter of adoption and convenience now.

    In short: Don't loving buy btc you idiots!



    M_P
    Apparently you're unaware who exactly you're talking to, which is chuckle worthy. Here's a thought : at the last count I was worth something north of 3/4 million Butts. Now what ?

    (Yes, your numbered list consists of nonsense, most of it self-defeating, some of it self contradictory etc. But that's neither here nor there, what's a list these days, anyone's got one.)


    zylche
    Tell me more about bitcoin and its glory

    Cardiovorax
    The problem is that Bitcoin runs like a pyramid scheme: all the extra money has to come in from the outside, from people who are suckered into buying Bitcoins at ever-increasing prices. That sort of thing is fundamentally unsustainable, so eventually there will be a collapse. At that point someone will be left holding the hot potato, while everyone who managed to turn a profit made so by exploiting the stupidity of others. The only way to make money off of Bitcoin is by being predatory and hoping that there will be a bigger fool than you.

    So I guess it isn't terribly unlike horse racing after all.


    ...!
    You've got quite some delusions of grandeur there, Mircea. Nobody gives a poo poo who you are or how many bitcoins you own. Thanks for posting your stupid rants here directly instead of making us go look for them; it saves us a lot of time.



    M_P

    zylche posted:
    Tell me more about bitcoin and its glory

    What's to say, it's inflationary (but less so than any alternative), the most inconvenient thing invented so far (with the exception of all the alternatives), it's ruled by pretty much pure greed (and quite likely to make any sort of social entitlement/progressive measure impossible, much like in the old days of gold coins) and currently exists in the shape of a C hairball which nobody understands or even has bothered to read fully but nevertheless a bunch of mostly retarded neckbeards keep adding to, with hilarious if impredictable effects. Or did you have any specific questions ?

    Cardiovorax posted:
    The problem is that Bitcoin runs like a pyramid scheme

    This is how any currency works, whether imaginary internet stuff or good old greenbacks. WoW gold is valuable, such as it is valuable, because you figure somebody will take it next week when you want to buy that new mount dildo or whatever they do in wow.

    ...! posted:
    You've got quite some delusions of grandeur there, Mircea.

    Yer welcome. Wisper in my ear says you're my biggest fan out here, so. No need to be shy about it, I've had fans before. No homo &c.

    jalopybrown posted:
    Assuming your the real MP what are your thoughts on the wacky Finnish 'supernode' guy?

    Pretty good job.


    zylche
    What do you think about the developers frequently receiving threats by bitcoiners? Or the guild and certain developers trying to push for a centralised validation services? You have to realise that even ignoring the hilarity of the economic section of bitcoin that the technology is not made for this kind of deployment. But I'm sure you know better, how long have you even been involved in bitcoin?

    Cardiovorax
    The difference being that there is nothing you can do with Bitcoin except own them, or sell them off for more real money with which to buy things you actually want. They matter to you because you treat them like a hard asset, not because you want to spend them on anything. That's the difference between a currency and a speculative commodity for you.

    But what am I telling you that for, you know all that, and you haven't cared until now either.

    ...!

    M_P posted:
    Yer welcome. Wisper in my ear says you're my biggest fan out here, so. No need to be shy about it, I've had fans before. No homo &c.

    Apparently you're unaware who exactly you're talking to. Heh, plebe.



    M_P

    zylche posted:
    What do you think about the developers frequently receiving threats by bitcoiners? Or the guild and certain developers trying to push for a centralised validation services?

    Bitcointalk is a collection of mostly poor, mostly uneducated, mostly bizarre folk you wouldn't have on your lawn/daughter/whatever. The various shit they do is representative of Bitcoin in the sense Jeremiah Wright is representative of xtians or Cornel West is representative of academia. Specifically about threaths... I get threatened all the time on teh Interwebs. I've never managed to care (yes I'm aware "the FBI takes internet threats very seriously", but I've never managed to care about that, either).

    People will always try to push for centralised something or the other as long as they figure they'll have more market share of the centralised thing than they do now. As various failures are pushed aside to rot into irrelevance they're certain to try and find some sympathetic ear to enforce protectionist measures for them too (que Winklewhoever doods ranting about "regulation"). That topic is best served here.

    In short I don't think either are suprising or important.

    quote:
    You have to realise that even ignoring the hilarity of the economic section of bitcoin that the technology is not made for this kind of deployment. But I'm sure you know better, how long have you even been involved in bitcoin?

    Bitcoin was conceived as a prototype. This is what it was, like a model airplane you make with your son over the weekend to test out this weird theory whereby "you can fly with objects heavier than air". It's not the author's fault that at the end of the test run the prototype - instead of being discarded, as intended - was picked up as the actual working thing for which it was to be a mere prototype. In the model airplane business the dad would be well advised to knock the kid one over the head if that's what it takes preventing his trying to fly over Niagara Falls. In this particular circumstance all the guy could do is get the fuck out of Dodge.

    That aside, it may just as well work. It's just risky as all fuck, that's all.


    jalopybrown
    Do people involved in the pump & dump alt-coins ever offer you btc-e style 'bounties' to try and have their *coin usable on MPEX?

    Ashenai

    Molotov Cock Tale posted:
    I remember you, you're the guy from the last thread who photoshopped SA posts on his blog to make it look like he made snappy comebacks.

    This sounds pretty funny, anyone got links or screenshots?



    M_P
    I think pretty much every scam to date propositioned or at least tried to proposition me so far. Not keeping very accurate records of this.

    zylche posted:
    The only way you're going to have a chance of liquidating those assets is if you convince a bunch of people with money to invest in the ponzi before it collapses.

    I'm not particularly interested in liquidating, it's a computer game after all.

    Ashenai posted:
    This sounds pretty funny, anyone got links or screenshots?

    http://trilema.com/2013/the-trolling-something-awful-competition/


    Molotov Cock Tale

    Ashenai posted:
    This sounds pretty funny, anyone got links or screenshots?

    Apparently he's since deleted it, discussion was here

    Long and short of it: He got into an argument here, got banned, posted a screenshot on his blog of him winning the argument on SA - But the post date was after his ban, and he hadn't photoshopped in the alternating gray post colors.

    Still, he's back now, which is nice. With Bitcoin exchanges getting shut down for money-laundering, and volume drying up, it's good to have a fresh injection of comedy.



    M_P
    Don't be a twat, the link is two posts above.

    NSFW NOTICE NSFW

    This post contains [some links to] depictions of human bodyparts other than what's probably approved by your workplace. Please make a concerted effort to get the fuck out of that hellhole already and find some other, less retarded workplace.

    NSFW NOTICE NSFW

    Cardiovorax posted:
    The difference being that there is nothing you can do with Bitcoin except own them, or sell them off for more real money with which to buy things you actually want. They matter to you because you treat them like a hard asset, not because you want to spend them on anything. That's the difference between a currency and a speculative commodity for you.

    But what am I telling you that for, you know all that, and you haven't cared until now either.

    So far Bitcoin has been pretty workable buying me Internet things I actually want. Example 1 (butt), Example 2 (tits). These are obviously NSFW, because the Internets are for pr0n.

    jalopybrown posted:
    I think he runs a porn site too.

    It's a chan. NSFW.

    (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Chapter III (somewhere deep in a painful, prolapsed, suffering colon)

Good news: Bragging about buying pornography with Bitcoins in order to unconvincingly win an Internet argument about the legitimacy of Bitcoins is now bannable.

Also, you seriously just boasted about being able to use imaginary money in order to get some ugly butts markered with your user name in order to prove how much better you were than other people with Bitcoins.

Christ.

As you can see, lolz were had. The funny part is that the sum total of lolz claimed to be had exceeds (by what looks to be a significant margin) the total lolz actually physically present, which I suppose means this entire thing is a lolzubble.

A well, I got out early.

———
  1. Just like normal human trafficking but without an f. []
  2. Why do all adventures have to happen in the swamp ? Why can't it ever be a meadow or something. []
Category: Meta psihoza
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19 Responses

  1. Sean Smith`s avatar
    1
    Sean Smith 
    Thursday, 18 March 2021

    Seven years later SA is as dead as I am, and gooning now means being a simp to the point of losing or not even having a mind anymore. Just like a bimbo, but with a cage instead of a cunt.

    Did MP ever lose an argument?

  2. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    2
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 18 March 2021

    Heh.

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  9. [...] random Internet twerp would behave. [↩]Apparently, SA is still very, very butthurt over that fiat lulz incident. Seriously doods, it's not my fault you're easily triggered and then end up saying stupid [...]

  10. [...] in all its majestic glory. Fine examples of such stone-age tribes call themselves "lesswrong", or "Something Awful", or "PUA community" or what have you. The Republic provides sufficient ideological basis to [...]

  11. [...] with that, we can proceed to this here second installment of "Valiant prince MP explores the mother of all echo chambers. A saga of our times." Apparently this is a series. Who [...]

  12. [...] we need to revisit those ancient lolzi or has everyone pretty much got the messageii ? ———2013! Barely three years [...]

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