Let's address some of the more common pseudo-arguments raised by the very stupid people that like the Gavin scamcoin proposal
I. "I agree a big discussion is necessary before changes are made, but we shouldn't act like a hard fork is somehow inherently an issue."
Part and parcel of the present dispute is to clearly make the point that Gavin Andresen does not have the authority to enact or create a hardfork of the Bitcoin network, nor any sort of significant clout, cachet, power to influence the matter etc.
This will be useful for the Bitcoin network first and foremost, because Gavin is, by and large, a mentally retarded doofus displaying a shocking amount of Dunning-Kruger syndrome in his assorted dabblings in economics and other hard fields.
This will secondarily but perhaps still notably be useful for Gavin himself. Finally liberated from all that influence he is incorrectly perceived to carry he will be free to live the rest of his life in the relative peace his brain was constructed to handle. To understand his situation, imagine a mentally retarded child living happily in the sands of New Mexico. A rich old man dies in New York, and on the strength of original research, it is considered that the mentally retarded child is the sole inheritor. News makes its way to the happy desert residence that same evening, by telegraph, but the poor monkey knows nothing of it outside of dim rumors. He is not collected enough to understand what "inheritance" rightly means or anything. He does have some sort of an idea as to "being rich" = "lots of icecream", but that's as far as it goes. All sorts of people, much better placed to understand what it all means, all try their hand at, you know, "being friendly". And "neighbourly". And only meaning the best and having the kid's interest at heart. His life, as you might well imagine, turns into the sort of nightmare only homo homini lupus can bring on its brother, and the child lives hell (parce-que l'enfer, c'est l'autres). Once the news makes it through that really, it was all a mistake, no such inheritance exists (as in fact it does not), the simpleton is free to return to his simple prior life, and be happy again.
Help Gavin be a happy idiot, stop trying to make him fulfill shoes too large for his little peabrain.
II. "If the community can't hardfork today we could stop using bitcoin now and look for the better suited alt coin. If bitcoin can't fork-update it has no value."
Obviously Bitcoin "has no value" to you. That is probably because you were expecting to defraud the faith others put in Bitcoin by inflating it. While it's true that welfare states finance themselves that way currently, and in the process create the unwelcome and unwarranted impression in the heads of the nobodies in the street that their voice matters to any degree or is important in any manner, Bitcoin does not work that way. Bitcoin does not work that way intentionally, specifically and by design. So... yeah, pack it and get lost.
"The community" of people that need things can not fork Bitcoin to provide for their needs at the expense of the actual community of people that create things and own things. Related to this, let us reiterate those ancient points about Bitcoin :
TALKING ABOUT BITCOIN, EVEN IF IN A GROUP, DOES NOT MAKE YOU PART OF BITCOIN.
III. I don't understand why anybody would be against a larger block.
The popular name to this is "arguing to ignorance". You might also not understand why anyone would propose you wash, stop collecting broken car engines on plastic foil in front of your dilapidated motorhome or fucking your cousins. What you understand or don't understand is not a proper subject of discussion, and you aren't welcome to try and foist it on intelligent people who aren't your parents.
IV. Satoshi himself envisioned much larger blocks.
The discussion of what "Satoshi himself" did or didn't do, meant or didn't mean, so on and so forth is about as interesting and discussing the Mormon "bible".
This is called "arguing to authority", and it tries to give pecuniary value to that only truly worthless article of all times and places : the esteem of the mob. This may work well in electing United States presidents, ensuring that "while the voting public knows best what it wants, it deserves to get it long and hard". Bitcoin specifically and deliberately does not work in this way.
Bitcoin is not a reflection of your hopes and aspirations, but a check on them. Bitcoin isn't here to make it easier for you to do what you want to do ; Bitcoin is here to make it trivial for others to prevent you from doing what you want to do every time that's stupid. The sooner you comprehend this fundamental difference between Bitcoin and "technology" especially in the "revolutionary & innovative" subsense of that nonsense, the better, for you.
V. The fork is needed because otherwise some people won't be able to use Bitcoin.
Bitcoin isn't for everybody. Creating something useful that everyone can use is an exercise in trying to create something that's useful but worthless. Such a thing may exist, in the sense perpetuum mobile may exist. As far as the science of physics goes, they do not.
Should blocks ever become full, older coinbases will be prioritized over newer coinbases, and larger mining fees and transactions prioritized over smaller mining fees and smaller transactions. This means that someone who wishes to pay for very little with Bitcoin will be forced to use something else, so to speak is forced to "give his seat" to someone richer. This is exactly the point and the intent of Bitcoin : to force the poor to yield to the rich, unversally, as a matter of course.
You may not like this, but that is entirely an emotional problem of yours, which you're welcome to resolve any way you can : stop being poor, take a lot of pills, whatever. You may try to solve it by attempting to make it impossible for the rich to construct tools that they will then use to force you to yield to them, but this will necessarily not work : being rich means by definition they have more resources than you, and whatever you devise they can make a counter.
If you are more practically inclined, and having understood, accepted and come to terms with your fundamental human inferiority as it flows from your poverty, some solutions to your predicament of "I wish to buy myself a basket" have already been discussed :
For the reasons noted and for many other reasons I am pretty much satisfied that Bitcoin is not nor will it ever be a direct means of payment for retail anything. You may end up paying for a month's worth of coffee vouchers at your favourite coffee shop via Bitcoin (so shop scrip built on top of Bitcoin), you may end up settling your accounts monthly at the restaurant in Bitcoin (so store credit built on top of Bitcoin), you will probably cash into whatever local currency from Bitcoin (be it Unified Standard Dubaloos or Universally Simplified Dosidoes or whatever else) but all that is entirely different a story.
Run along now, back to playing in the mud with the other naked kids in your village. Bitcoin's just not for your kind.
VI. This is a clerical issue, because block propagation and other considerations incentivize miners to keep blocks small anyway. The 1MB is just a hard limit getting in the way of things, the marketplace of miners should be allowed to fix block size as it seems appropriate.
While this argument has been disingenuously brought by Gavin himself, the fact is that the proposed inverted bloom filters upgrade would allow all blocks to propagate in constant time, regardless of their size. Just the sort of deceitful poison flowing out of USG through its few remaining (but apparently well entrenched) Bitcoin moles.
VII. The minersi decide.
No, they do not. The miners make some minor decisions in Bitcoin, but major decisions such as block forks are not at their disposition alone, and this for excellent reasons you'll readily understand if you stop and think about it.
There are two specific methods to control miners on this matter, which will make the scamcoin Gavin is trying to replace everyone's Bitcoin with only replace some people's Bitcoin. The first and most obvious is that irrespective of what miners mine, each single full node will reject illegal blocks. This is a fact. If all the miners out there suddenly quit Bitcon and go mine Keiser's Aurora scamcoin instead, from the perspective of the Bitcoin network hash rate simply dropped and that's all. There's absolutely no difference between Keiser's scamcoin and Gavin's scam coin as far as the network is concerned : while one's a scammer that I humiliatingly defeated in the past whereas the other a scammer that I humiliatingly defeat in the future, this makes no difference for Bitcoin. As far as anyone will be able to perceive, miners simply left.
The second and perhaps not as obvious has nevertheless been discussed at length on multiple occasions on #bitcoin-assets. Consider this terse explanation from March. 2013.
mircea_popescu: whoever has enough money to matter is likely to pick one chain for whatever reason
mircea_popescu: since fork means btc can be spent independently on either chain
mircea_popescu: he will sell his btc on one and perhaps buy on the other.
mircea_popescu: as a result prices will rapidly diverge, panicking the mass of users, and the fork is economically resolved.
The situation here is aggravated by the fact that the fork proposed is not simply nondeterministic behaviourii, and so the holdings on the two chains aren't notionally equivalent. Instead, all the holdings on the Bitcoin chain are accepted as valid on both Bitcoin and Gavincoin, but holdings on Gavincoin are rejected by Bitcoin. Consequently, everyone involved with the fork is writing options to everyone in Bitcoin, free of charge. That they have no ready way to finance these should be obvious, and consequently the grim prospects of the Gavin side of the fork should be just as obvious. At least, to people who understand economy to any degree.
———- By which really what's usually contemplated is, "pool masters will hijack the miners pointing at their pools, because they really wish to end up like BTCGuild/ 50 BTC ; that <5% of an entity once around 48% is such a tempting market share." [↩]
- As Peter Todd aptly points out, the alleged hard fork in Bitcoin's past wasn't a hard fork, but simply nondeterministic behaviour, resulting in two chains which both and roughly to the same degree validated. [↩]
Thursday, 17 September 2015
Seriously, don't you have better things to do than write drivel like this?
Thursday, 17 September 2015
A. "better".
B. "Drivel like this" sunk a very stupid idea ; beheaded a fucktard, adding to my already ample colection of fucktarded heads on sticks (just an example, in case you wonder when Amir Taaki's life ended). But most importantly - it made the wanna-be "nothing is beyond our reach" USG twerps VERY fucking sore in the butt.
There are better uses of one's time. For me. Not for you. Not for anyone else you know, or will ever meet. So... check my privilege.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Wow, nasty fat ass chick in the top photo. You probably think she is hot too huh? What shitty writing.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Can you be helped ?
Friday, 8 January 2016
@Tapster I happen to like that fat ass as well. Sincerely, a dedicated Trilema reader.
Monday, 30 October 2017
I've now spent far more time than I probably should have reading this blog. And I can't figure out if I should be disturbed, intrigued, both, or neither. So instead, I would just like to ask you a simple question if you would take the effort to answer it; What exactly is it that you want, and how much do you think that matters? All due respect given to the perspective that you owe me no such answer at all.
Monday, 30 October 2017
I don't want anything.
In the rare cases where I do actually want something, I simply take it, which should explain why I spend the majority of my time not wanting.
Monday, 30 October 2017
That sounds suspiciously similar to the actions of usg and similar fiat agencies which you rightly criticise at length in various articles and in the rbtc declaration of independence. Why would anyone inclined to agree with you in those observations view your position on the prior question as superior to theirs?
Monday, 30 October 2017
I'm a person, not a collection of dickless bureaucrats trying to emulate personhood through the law of large numbers.
Why would a woman submit to me and live as my slave in preference of I dunno, submitting to Jesus and living as a nun, or submitting to whatever demon and living her life as a "not made tenure grad student" ?
Cuz when I fuck them I fuck them with an actual physical flesh-and-blood cock as opposed to some abstraction, and when I beat them it's my hand holding the whip not some Elliots incapable of looking them in the eye, and so following.
Immediate carnality has over all ersatzes a certain advantage, which is why fresh tuna steak commands a premium and fast food a discount.
Monday, 30 October 2017
That might be relevant for the kind of evaluation the parties involved in the scenario in question make. But outside the bounds thereof, once again it sure sounds a whole lot like that old "Do as I say, or I'll murder you" trick that tyrants have been fond of for so many millennia.
The declaration you made sounded so much higher minded than that. I can't figure out the contradiction.
Monday, 30 October 2017
Probably because you implicitly assume I'm required to be relevant in your own world, somehow. I'm not. Go find your own king or whatever it is, it's not like I'm making you some kind of personal invitation or anysuch.
Just make sure you don't end up with an idiotic one, or fail that make sure you're safely distant enough so I don't end up having to burn your shit down later on.
Monday, 30 October 2017
No such assumption. Merely curiosity as to your intent. You came to my attention first with the DAO debacle, and I was amused at your diagnosis and agreed with it, but it was the first I'd heard of you at the time and I was simply confused as to what your game was and if this was all just very detailed larping or some such.
Was too busy to really look into it back then but you re-emerged in a different context s second time relating to this whole forking drama presently unfolding. I always pay more attention the second time something so strange jumps into view based on seeming coincidence, and your perspective of bitcoin as this immutable measure of value is exactly in line with my own. I will admit that you're a hell of a lot more confident than I was in my suspicion that the world is filled with fake value and the fix to it is to impose the true, and regardless of anything else I have to thank you for firming up my conviction that is indeed the case.
It just somewhat seems like I asked the universe to show me the truth and only the truth no matter how terrible it might be, and the end assumptions of mutual respect and liberty and all that which I assumed would come with a proper valuing of things may well be optimistic idiocy in light of your not altogether unfair and once again quite similar to my own view of the state of the majority of humankind.
At any rate, I sense you're not particularly interested in the discussion, so I'll go back to comfortable anonymity.
Monday, 30 October 2017
> Merely curiosity as to your intent.
There's no intent. See Causes and purposes, it's a foundational piece.
> You came to my attention first with the
> At any rate, I sense you're not particularly interested in the discussion,
The problem is rather that your deeply self-centered approach precludes much meaningful discussion of anything.
> regardless of anything else I have to thank you for firming up my conviction that is indeed the case.
Let's call it lucky happenstance.
Certainly there will be no such thing as liberty for all. The Republic is of the few not of the all.
On the consolation front, the concern with "all" is just so much socialist implantation -- nobody cares about the all, the very all themselves included ; nor should they -- and so will readily disappear the moment the false priors of socialism dissolve.
Monday, 30 October 2017
> There's no intent. See Causes and purposes, it's a foundational piece
That article was brilliant. It calls to memory permanently anxiety stricken people firmly affixed with the importance of always "being proactive" but driven by seemingly no cause except said anxiety.
This reminds me of something I noticed you saying in the logs; that you don't believe nuclear weapons are of much strategic significance, but from a strictly cause based analysis don't they basically obsolete conventional warfare between nuclear armed parties by virtue of mutually assured destruction when employed? If so how is that not strategically significant? If not I'm curious as to your analysis of the causes involved there, as that's something of a cornerstone of my assumptions about the world, and the value of violence within it, that being if any large scale violence necessarily causes the apocalypse, does it not negate the economic value of conquest, at least amongst parties with such weapons?
> Certainly there will be no such thing as liberty for all. The Republic is of the few not of the all.
With market mechanisms in a system where value is actually objective, and again simply looking at what is; doesn't the market provide the mechanism to establish whom ought to have liberty and to what extent? If one freely trades sans fraud with another person one's goods or services, is one not at liberty to enjoy said fruits, as opposed to the contrary where one may instead be merely a robber, socialist or other associated synonym and thus have marked themselves as unfit for liberty?
Monday, 30 October 2017
> don't they basically obsolete conventional warfare between nuclear armed parties by virtue of mutually assured destruction when employed?
Probably not ; see the more in depth discussion over at http://trilema.com/2015/i-think-you-drastically-overestimate-the-military-importance-of-nuclear-weapons/
Did the introduction of artillery (1492, Suleyman) obsolete warfare in any sense ? Or had the successful deployment of "greek fire" by the other side in their previous conflict a few centuries prior obsoleted "attempts to capture Byzantium" ?
Meanwhile, did the inept Marian reforms (allowing the poor to join Roman legions) obsolete Rome in short order, let alone her legions, her government and her influence outright ?
There is no possiblity of obsoleting warfare ; but there is a possibility of inept ideology empowering the worst elements in a society with the net result of the complete collapse of that society. That's exactly what happened in the US : the pretext of nuclear weapons empowered the worthless "hell no, we won't go" schmucks ; America (as Buffett dreams her and Trump aims to reinstate her) disappeared overnight.
> that being if any large scale violence necessarily causes the apocalypse,
Large scale violence always causes "the apocalypse", as understood by the losing side of the confrontation. This is not novel, was always the case : Magda Goebbels perceived it is preferable to poison her litter (can you quote any other case of female suicide ? how about that had children ? how about ~that killed them first~ ?) rather than have them grow up in the post-apocalyptic world ; an anonymous lord besieged by the superiorily armed Franks once muttered something in the vein of "the iron, my god the iron" before similarily being apocalypted out of the picture. The various worthless aboriginal inhabitants of the Spanish sphere cca 1500s thought they're living the final days, as per their own sacred books. Guess what ? They were.
> does it not negate the economic value of conquest, at least amongst parties with such weapons?
Has it ? Ukraine seems to have been conquested just fine, the South China Sea idem. It'd appear to experience that conquest is doing fine.
> With market mechanisms in a system where value is actually objective,
You would greatly benefit from perusing the various fragmentary critiques of rationality as found scattered on Trilema (say eg http://trilema.com/2016/please-stop-using-dns-already-and-other-considerations/#footnote_6_65060 and the various items that link there), in the logs (say eg http://btcbase.org/log-search?q=%22just+the+facts%22 http://btcbase.org/log-search?q=%22rational%22+from%3Amircea ), among Taleb's writing etcetera.
The discussion diverges at this point ; you can't expect the market to provide its own limits (also amply discussed in the logs, perhaps the correct entry point being the oft quoted http://btcbase.org/log/2017-05-15#1656354 ) nor can you expect some kind of "rational process" to Munchausen itself all the way to the Moon by pulling its own breeches.
Monday, 30 October 2017
These two things appear to be actually somewhat linked depending on the result of an analysis of cause. If it turns out that conflict dictates the terms upon which market activity takes place, then it follows that mastery if the strategy thereof is of higher value than mastery of markets.
I did read the nuclear article, but I'm less convinced it's the whole story. Not because I think your math on nuclear fission weapons is off, or even the economics of the existent paper tigers so equipped, but merely from a purely game theoretical strategic perspective, and this kind of flows from your statements regarding the ancient world, so let's start there.
Definitely no, the arrival of Greek fire and cannons was not the kind of weaponry necessary to completely negate any potential economic gains from conquest, but it may well be a sensible time from which to start plotting a graph over time as to how much devastation naked apes can unleash with very little actual work in terms of standing armies and whatnot.
So if we plot from there and go forward to the nightmare scenario of the present day, let's say cobalt salted nuclear fusion warheads or something equally nasty, you don't have to extrapolate far along that trend to make a few observations; 1) if we're not already at the stage where the fat violent armed guy in your original cause vs purpose discussion is capable of at least wiping out everything he has economically speaking and taking a significant chunk out of any invading force fixed on economic conquest, we're certainly going to get there eventually. (relativistic kill vehicles, antimatter weaponry, grey goo, viral engineering ad et al) 2) from a game theoretical perspective for those that simply want to live in peace and be left alone by potential conquerors, all they have to do is meet that threshold for their own economic footprint 3) the two factors seemingly converge at the inevitable conclusion that the strategy will become the default eventually, regardless of whether it is now or not simply because it will continue to get cheaper to acquire coupled with more desirable to do so as any potential conquerors look hungry.
If that's correct, isn't it simply down to either the market *must* bootstrap its own constraints rather than being subject to regular total war, or we're all completely doomed, because contrary to the historical apocalypse which you cite, these future / present apocalypses don't just wipe out the loser, but also the victor if they can't simply make with the trade like civilised people and stop trying to murder each other?
Of course, the universe doesn't have to cater to life that way and this may all just be much analysis that explains the causes of Fermi's paradox. Intelligent life always ends up destroying itself on a long enough timeline as technology and the calculus of war conspire to lower the barrier to entry in the genuine existence spanning apocalypse market, it just being a matter of time until the two lines meet and annihilate one another along with everything else.
Monday, 30 October 2017
The "evolution" you're talking about doesn't make any sense. There isn't any such phenomenon in history, it exists entirely as a figment of your overactive (or rather deliberately misguided) imagination, what MP calls "Newton sat down to".
In actual reality, numerous advances were game-enders, such as the castle, removing the posibility of warfare from the hands of they without castles to exclusively favour they with. Such as artillery, removing the posibility of warfare back from the hands of they with castles into the hands of they with relatively large, relatively disciplined armies and so on.
Nuclear weapons remove the possibility of warfare from the hands of that imaginary all-corporation known as the state, and place it exclusively in the hand of they with high performance actors united by good communication methods.
Monday, 30 October 2017
> place it exclusively in the hand of they with high performance actors united by good communication methods.
Aha, your cause gets a little clearer.
Thank you for your time. I need to think on this.
Monday, 30 October 2017
@Aseity One important point you should perhaps consider is that nuclear weapons are very pointedly not a monopoly. Specifically in the Republic's case the limiting factor is lack of interest, not lack of capacity.
> from a game theoretical perspective for those that simply want to live in peace and be left alone by potential conquerors,
These are called krill. As in http://trilema.com/2012/un-cintec-care-mi-place-usor-adaptat/#selection-107.16-107.30 ; see perhaps also the discussion of jwz as a concept, and of "I just want[ed] to" as an attitude, it should be informative.
In short, you might not be interested in the world, but the world is still interested in you.
> we're all completely doomed
No, you're all completely doomed.
Note that to my eye replacing the North American shoreline with a Plutonium-glassed desert in lieu of the present assortment of fucktards with their eyes firmly fixed on an imagined future / "honey the house made more money than i did" and their respective malls/walmarts/etc excreta would be a very marked improvement ; and that I'm not the only one.
There's just not that much to like, or even to remeber, about this brave shit world of "human rights" and pantsuited democracy you've built over there, what can I tell you.
> if they can't simply make with the trade like civilised people
"Just making with the trade" has nothing to do with civilisation ; violence is necessary for the education of the future subjects of trade. The reason the late industrialization was such a trade peak in world history has everything to do with the previous centuries being used to plainly and in terms comprehensible by themselves explain to various subhumans, from the guarani to the coolies, that no, they don't have anything to say on the topic.
As that basic requirement is fading, the need for rape and pillage intensifies. The general barometer is your own daughter : if she correctly intuits her only possible move is to open herself up to the market, you've a chance to spend your old age in peace ; if she imagines "anyone could do that" and "she has better things to do", you will die like Priam. Vergil has the gory details, Polites first. Get it, Polites first ?
> Intelligent life always ends up destroying itself on a long enough timeline
This is just more of the same nonsense. You, the defeated, however intelligent you might thought yourself, are NOT of the same piss and mettle as your vanquisher. They are properly speaking intelligent life ; you're bare life, at best. But otherwise, the only grave available to the defeated's an unmarked one.
@Anon Quite.
Monday, 30 October 2017
All my questions are answered as to your nature now.
Wednesday, 1 November 2017
Yes, well, maybe someday you manage to get over yourself.
Thursday, 2 November 2017
Ahaha this was great. Conversation summary:
"Hurr durr"
"Whatever."
"I sense you're not exactly entranced with my precious cuntlet!"
"Well, your head is way too far up your ass for anyone to be even present in your world."
"Oh, I see. Here, let me pretend like my head's not up my ass."
"Okay."
"O hurr durr, I was only just pretending!!11"
The people demselves, always good for a laugh.
Thursday, 2 November 2017
Just stuff someone wrote on the internets, dun read too much into it.