Shamir's derpage

To quote a recent vlog,

Shamir: I've been looking at the Bitcoin system and fundamentally the problem with this community is that they haven't made up their mind whether they want to be anarchist rebels or they want to be the establishment and to replace all the fiat currencies in the world. And they are torn between those two possibilities. A strong group within the bitcoin community resists any kind of a supervision or regulation and this result -- crime is very rife, prevalent -- there are lots of events you read about every day in the newspapers. I think it's not ready for primetime due to this dual personality. I think once they decide they seriously want to replace some of the world's currencies, they should change their behavior, they should agree to some kind of regulation, and then they'll buy future.

Diffie: Well that dichotomy of viewpoint of course is exemplified by the United States which hasn't been able to decide in a little bit over 200 years whether it was a revolutionary country bringing democracy to the world or a great imperial power like the powers of Europe. So, maybe they can resist.

I won't engage the idiocy directly, I don't have the patience. I will instead provide some contrasting material culled from today's log :

mircea_popescu By the way, lemme recount the fourth crusade for the benefit of the awareness-raising crowd-sourced crowd. So, I. a bunch of militarily powerful, intellectually naive Westerners made an army to go beat up the Muslims and take Jerusalem. II.a. Random Byzantine (militarily worthless, intellectually overpowering) entity convinces them to help him "recover" his "stolen" throne, as if the Byzantines ever did anything else or anyone had a valid claim, or the possibility of a valid claim even existed in their world. II.b. And further promised them the "pearls in heavens", a very classical device in Greek gay drama (since at least the days of Darius, this empty promises as a path to military glory. The Greeks invented "fake it till you make it".) III. They take Adrianople, and their presence alters "reality" as the Greeks perceive it. So their guy is named co-emperor. IV. the "crowdsource" revolts. This alters "reality" once more, their guy is promptly poisoned. V. They decide to conquer the fucking city. Because by now they've got an inkling of the pure filth the Greeks are. So they do, and burn it, and cauterize the place. Moral : Democracy is for the mentally ill ; The rewards of democracy are rape and arson, often enough delivered with the same stick. If Dandolo had any sense they'd have plowed and salted Constantinople, and sold all the women to the Turks.
ascii_field Promised them the "pearls in heavens" << aka 'jam tomorrow'.

mircea_popescu There was this mildly famous gay boy of Athens whose name escapes me at the moment, literally got a whole trireme detachment on unbacked promises of great pay (from Persia iirc ?) and well... there they sat.
ascii_field Eco had a pretty good piece set in 4th crusade.

mircea_popescu Antonio Doria, before being cut down by the French at Crecy, was a rather successful Genoese pirate. The pirate captain's regime collapsed over his (and others') failure to pay. (Well, he tried to pay in debased coinage, anyway. Caused a revolt). If I were younger and more bored (really, less involved with actual things) I might consider rewriting the history of the world from the only sane perspective - as the endless "interplay" between two types of people : the sane, and the imperceptibly mentally ill. The former try to make things, the latter try to pass of their pretenses. This is pretty much all history to date.
ascii_field Imperceptibly ?! l0l

mircea_popescu Yeah. Nobody thinks of, say, obama as mentally ill. He "seems fine". Well... you know, the junkie is also imperceptibly addicted.
ascii_field Only because 'running the asylum'. To a sane future folk, he would seem as frothingly-mad as Chingis Khan seems to today's liberasts.

mircea_popescu Except the Khan seems coldly sane.
ascii_field To the sane.

mircea_popescu Hence the problem. In short : those who do are dull. "I do not wish to think about these things, I have better stuff to do!!1". Those who don't are insane, but who's to notice ? They themselves can't, the others can't be bothered. So... imperceptibly insane.
ascii_field "consider rewriting the history of the world from the only sane perspective" << Nietzsche, or, far better, Limonov.

mircea_popescu Neither of them actually played the Gibbon.
ascii_field Right. Would need serious mad hermit, to pull this one off.

mircea_popescu Actually, hopefully we end up in prison, like the early Soviet leadership. I'm gonna write a dictionary and a history of the world. By the time I'm done, it's time to start butchering the powers that used to be. Check it out, my life all planned out.
ascii_field l0l
* ascii_field doesn't expect to be taken prisoner alive, but wishes mircea_popescu a jolly good meinkampfing.

mircea_popescu Surely.
williamdunne Mein Bit.

mircea_popescu Tell you what, there's not going to be any "Anastasias" out of the current imperial family. I fully intend to ejaculate down the cut throat of every single female involved.

ascii_field Ashtrays, lampshades, aha.
williamdunne Lovely image.
mircea_popescu Do things right for once.

ascii_field The alt.tasteless term of art, iirc, was 'to squick'.
mircea_popescu Honestly, my greatest regret in this life so far is that ~100k Romanian ex-various state things survived the year 1990.

ascii_field Of what consequence are the muppets ?
mircea_popescu You have no aesthetic appreciation.

ascii_field It's rather like cutting up enemy cannon after a war, no ? The cannon do not will anything.
mircea_popescu Yup. I did that, too. I also break keyboards. Salt the fucking Byzantium. After the war.

ascii_field Now this, on the whole - yes.
mircea_popescu Women off to Tadjikistan, milk goats in chains for the rest of their lives.

ascii_field !s hear the lamentations
assbot 1 results for 'hear the lamentations' : s.b-a.link/?q=hear+the+lamentations
mircea_popescu And now, for contrast, I give you Shamir.

* ascii_field wonders if he missed something re: shamir
ascii_field Last I recall, he was turned out of USA.
mircea_popescu log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=27-04-2015#1113266

assbot Logged on 27-04-2015 20:04:21; danielpbarron: youtube.com/watch?v=W9HimLksMkA
ascii_field Is there a transcript ?
mircea_popescu I should prolly have one made, come to think about it. Gimme a minute. Anyway, watching the derp go about how "we need regulation" suddenly made me comprehend why exactly von Meck actually belonged beheaded. Brilliant guy, inescapably stupid. What are you gonna do ? Can't empower stupid. Off to the Gulag with him.

ascii_field von Meck ?
mircea_popescu You know, the "wrecker" who was "trying to make the train tracks run down faster".

ascii_field Aha that one.
mircea_popescu Framing the discussion in terms of intellectual ability is completely missing the salient points. Nobody ever gets offed for being either academically smart or stupid, it's orthogonal. The insane can either live in the camps nor not live at all, that's the problem there. Sanity, not intelligence.

"Accepting regulation", "being rebels", "crime" and similar nonsense is so far from where the actual discussion as to the future of the world finds itself it convincingly imitates psychosis. These considerations are much more on point.