mircea_popescu: mjr_ they're not that great.
benkay: you're in the litecoin biz nao
benkay: well, sweeping now but general domesticity. what's the domain?
benkay: hackin migration scripts, watching the babe do dishes in heels
mjr_: i just got the coolest new domain
mircea_popescu: " Anyone intelligent enough to create Bitcoin will have aligned themselves with some sort of governmental body." << this is a weak assumption.
mircea_popescu: half the time when i select something a final char is omitted
mircea_popescu: the notion of fresh produce is indeed imponderable.
mircea_popescu: in a world where every "idea" is in fact chewed and spit and chewed so many times by so many generations by now all that's left is the spit itself, in which vaguely one can recognise the marks left by the spit of whoever long ago, in the manner new spits mix today because of the presence of that old saliva of yore,
francis_wolke: mircea_popescu: See my gist. However, I think that it's clear I need to read the Bitcoin sources and more history. The 'reasoning' in said gist may not correspond to reality.
asciilifeform: then you will know what it feels like to be a perfect 'conspiracy' of one man.
mircea_popescu: it's neither large scale nor important in that context.
pankkake: bitcoin, the first released version, was certainly written by one lone guy
benkay: venice et al pwn the us anyways
mircea_popescu: if every great painting in history is a manhattan project then venice and the low countries own the us in manhattanness, srsly.
mircea_popescu: a manhattan project is like escavating a tunnel under the nunnery.
benkay: francis_wolke: have you read the source?
asciilifeform: 'glorious secret undertakings like Manhattan p. carry on' is quite similar of a hypothesis to 'god exists'
mircea_popescu: "go fight in the arena for glory or rot in turda salt mine boi"
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform amusingly, the romans used the salt mines (in transylvania) to much the same effect.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform what's the lifespan of a redditard ?
asciilifeform: could just as well calculate the life of a somali pirate, or oil driller.
asciilifeform: immortality is a tricky beast - biology aside! the life expectancy of a daily wash. d.c. beltway driver is maybe 200 years.
mircea_popescu: and probably rue the day.
mircea_popescu: that aside, i do believe we'll probably be the first immortal generation,
francis_wolke: mircea_popescu: You wouldn't opt for another 400 years?
mircea_popescu: i mean marginally, like i'm interested in whatever new chick takes her top off, but otherwise...
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: phun phact. my first paying job was 'activate somatic telomerase.' project croaked from utter lack of the necessary depth of understanding.
francis_wolke: asciilifeform: To clarify, I'd imagine that anyone with enough money / power would be interested in the possiblity of radical life extension (Peter Theil, MP, Satoshi) if / when the tech is there. As such, if I were smart enough to create btc, I'd certainly team up with the most powerful country, so that if the tech does get 'there', I'll be ready.
asciilifeform: haha that'd be hilarious in the pgp case
asciilifeform: if i recall it was the perl version
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform and legal to import into the us in your luggage, but then again illegal to export
asciilifeform: phun phact: many of the still-officially-secret docs from manhattan proj. are available in dead-tree print - in russian, naturally.
asciilifeform: betcha if you plucked the quasi-mythical Pill Against RSA from its Indiana Jones subterranean vault, perhaps six people alive would understand what they are looking at were it shown to them.
mircea_popescu: well not THAT man in the street. not the mobile vulgus, the beasts of the field, strictly interesting for their flesh, the cockroaches in your fabled ny apartment.
asciilifeform: keeping a secret from the man on the street is trivial. often, you could run his nose in it and it will stay 'secret.'
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i thought we were strictly discussing secrets as "man in the street" affairs.
asciilifeform: but it does not follow that either was a 'perfect secret'
asciilifeform: it is very easy to draw mistaken conclusions from the fact that the 'man on the street' was entirely unaware of manhattan p. (or 'operation gladio', for a more recent example)
mircea_popescu: whereas the nsa is leaked yearly, in spite of supposedly being better.
mircea_popescu: which is why the fsb does not have documents leaked, in spite of it sucking,
mircea_popescu: when the options are a1, an you will not find out of a population of k, k <n, a single person capable of keeping secret X.
mircea_popescu: when the options are a1, a2, you will out of a population of 100mn find 50 people able to keep secret X
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: further reading. GRU report based on U.S. silver purchases in 1941-43.
mircea_popescu: the limits on the largeness of scale and importance are placed by said law of large numbers.
mircea_popescu: maybe we don't mean the same thing by manhattan projects. what's your definition ?
asciilifeform: for instance, you appear to consider seriously the possibility of 'radical life extension tech' being presently in covert use.
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: as for the absence of 'modern manhattan project', let's attack that one head-on
mircea_popescu: as things progress the complexity of ideology grows and so grows the number of boxes in which we put balls. soon enough you have no box with over X balls.
mircea_popescu: the reason of course being ideological convergence, which happens because of the law of large numbers :
asciilifeform: (book-length, high-quality treatise on the exact recipes whereby humans are corralled and milked)
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: you want a good read: "The Art of Not Being Governed." (James C. Scott)
mircea_popescu: in the third case, the guy was able to not cause anything outside of measurement error.
mircea_popescu: francis_wolke let's consider a simpler alternative. obama fdr and lincoln all broke the law, grossly. in all cases the courts duly signed off on this.
pankkake: francis-.github.io resolves, but firefox does not like the name
asciilifeform: the necessary human material is no longer readily available. just as the metals with which the SR-71 was built no longer are.
asciilifeform: i tend to agree with MP and others who conclude that we no longer live in a world where manhattan projects happen.
francis_wolke: Control, with respect to society, is an emergent phenomenon. That being said, the Manhattan Project happened.
asciilifeform: it's rather like, say you were permitted to squeeze off one shot from a small arm at your enemy. does this amount to 'kill switch'? what if you miss? what if he's got a tough hide.
mircea_popescu: i do that to women occasionally. they generally love it.
asciilifeform: whether this amounts to 'kill' is debatable.
asciilifeform: there is a 'fuck things up quite a bit' switch, possibly. (as described in my old piece)
francis_wolke: asciilifeform: Control, with respect to bitcoin, would be whoever has their hand on the 'kill switch'. Assuming that the guy with a nuke is stable.
asciilifeform: if the only things you can 'own' are those that fit in your coffin, then: stalin owned only an overcoat. and a few coin in his pocket.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform incidentally : http://trilema.com/2014/democracy-and-finance-dont-mix-the-math-involved/#comment-98112 we're having a little dispute there.
asciilifeform: this goes back to the 'what is control' question from earlier, as well as MP's recent discussion of 'owning a cow'
mircea_popescu: "sarac dar cinstit" = poor but honest, ion iliescu, the ex dictator-s golden boy.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform fun anecdote : romania's ruler for the 90s decade owner... a house.
mircea_popescu: and this is so for very good reasons long explored in the history of thought.
mircea_popescu: listen, while i agree with the reverse (ie, indeed reality iwll have some bearing, no matter how tenuous, on your imagination), the reverse is completely baseless.
asciilifeform: Duffer1: one can easily picture a set of aims that these things, which you aren't particularly fond of, help to advance.
francis_wolke: Or say that I didn't actually know any of these people.
francis_wolke: Though I have no experience with these matters, I can 'imagine' that they make certain sorts of donations etc.
Duffer1: my experience is obviously subject (as was my initial statement) but i don't see anyone trying to reverse these trends
francis_wolke: MP: I have met some people in so-called 1%. I know what they're like, and what their parents are like. Many of them don't think - but some do. Some actually care that civilization will be around for their decedents to enjoy.
asciilifeform: re: imagination: gedankenexperiment time. let's imagine that i imagine there's a cleaner way to solve sha(Y)=X than brute force. i pursue this line of inquiry, and the imagined turns into the actual.
Duffer1: well what does it matter visible or nonvisible if the net result is crap all around for everyone?
Duffer1: I'd say given the state of affairs worldwide the non-visible muppets aren't good at much either
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: the visible muppets aren't good at much of anything
francis_wolke: asciilifeform: A while back you mentioned that the rulers of today are only good at misleading the public. I agree that the *visible* rulers are good at this - but can't imagine someone like Ben Bernanke caring so little about his future that the stupid are allowed to rule.
mircea_popescu: they're loose already.
mircea_popescu: turning "them" lose is like turning the cockroaches in your kitchen "loose", admitting you live in ny.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform there's never any question of turning them loose because they just won't leave.
asciilifeform: and there is never any question of turning them loose (that'd be the end of organized civilization as a concept) but change of masters.
mircea_popescu: or moreover it's simply THE maintenance of the historic norm, independent of human agency, which is being mentally digested in ways consecvent with the current social text.
asciilifeform: 'kinder/gentler/paper' but otherwise effective.
asciilifeform: modern 'debt politics' is simply a maintenance of the historic norm (most humans being formally enslaved to someone or other) by other means.
mircea_popescu: not everybody needs a college degree, even if they're white, and even if their parents have "expectations".
mircea_popescu: francis_wolke you don't. ideally, you DONT MAKE THEM
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i suspect the problem is more like this : if i give you a debt package, there will be a cost to evaluate its value. if that cost likely exceeds its value, you may opt to just throw the whole thing away.
asciilifeform: modern monkey-handlers have not entirely abandoned the idea of 'populistic' gifts to their charges via mass expropriation (whether via debt forgiveness, abruptly nationalized industry, or whichever other tricks)
mircea_popescu: yes. our discussion started with me asking if you realise the thing you quote has more to do with the mokeys involved than with anything of import today.
mircea_popescu: this happens all the time. there are 1000s of bankruptcy courts all over the world hearing millions of cases as we speak.
mircea_popescu: ie, the stupid ones.
mircea_popescu: francis_wolke it would be the breaking of SOME tablets
mircea_popescu: this requires an economy built by people who see more than a year into the future.
francis_wolke: mircea_popescu: If the USD went to 0 btc - it would be a 'breaking of the tablets', regardless.
mircea_popescu: they still wish and expect tvs running water and generally to be able to play around on the intenret.
mircea_popescu: the fact that the bulk of the live humans are about as stupid today as in 3000 bc has little bearing
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the basic point that stands, supposing there is one, is that caging monkeys has a certain cost
mircea_popescu: yes well. back in those days a one year interval was far outside the mental abilities of even "specialist" "bankers" to plan.
mircea_popescu: francis_wolke you realise the entire breaking tablets thing is strictly a function of man's early monkey-like state and has no practical importance today. do you ?
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: possibly the only organized undertaking modern rulers are any good at is: presenting elaborately misleading pictures of their capabilities.
francis_wolke: asciilifeform: I have not drawn my conclusions r.e. the janissaries based on propaganda. At least, I'm not aware of doing so.
asciilifeform: that is, do the fellows with the 'nuclear briefcases' - 'control bitcoin'? arguably they do...
asciilifeform: a more interesting question for 'political' aficionados could be 'who has the power to kill while making the death look like bad luck?' and 'who can silently bend the system towards some desired end'
asciilifeform: everyone seems intent on inventing the parachute after being thrown, rather than before.
asciilifeform: i.e. the six or so global telecoms with de-facto control over the net could switch it off like a lamp. (provisions against this scenario are quite feasible, but no one has cared to consider much less make them.)
Duffer1: there are innumerable external factors, but for purposes dissecting the statement: "Given that a handful of parties control Bitcoin..." is the answer not miners? (or the mining network)
Apocalyptic: the associated muscles
asciilifeform: all three of these are quite distinct things.
asciilifeform: and then there's the power to crunch the blockchain and squeeze out whatever truth is contained therein
asciilifeform: describing 'power' as a scalar is naive. there is power to destroy, for example, which is arguably held by whoever controls the satoshi mega-hoard
Duffer1: the article attributes control of bitcoin to those hoarding the most, i was pointing out the power is in the hash
MisterE: hmm yea if I had the most hashpower
asciilifeform: MisterE: if you were the hypothetical king of the miners, you have every incentive to engineer a ruse like this.
asciilifeform: Duffer1: the assumption that we know anything whatsoever regarding the distribution of the bulk of mining power is mistaken.
Duffer1: start with the first assertion "..a handful of parties control bitcoin.." miners control bitcoin, anyone can edit/audit the code, but it's miners that vote with their hashpower to run updated versions or not
jurov: that mp is the governemnt?
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: and so, when a government pumps out propaganda by the truckload re: how it maintains a stable of uniquely-capable cryptologic janissaries, what can you conclude?
Duffer1: i can't speak about the historical finance part, but pretty much everything written about bitcoin itself is flat out wrong
jurov: davout, did you forget the X.EUR again?
francis_wolke: Duffer1: I transcribed it from a piece of paper I found lying on the ground.
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: if you ruled over a 'center of cryptography and mathematics,' would you wish this to be known to your enemies?
jurov: and if they won't die for 100 years?
asciilifeform: we live in the great age of muppeteering.
francis_wolke: asciilifeform: Also, thanks for keeping up the blog. I would have not learned about the LispM otherwise.
francis_wolke: asciilifeform: I'm not aware of any others, but if you've got a reading list...
francis_wolke: jurov: pwn the gov? Explain please.
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: (author of first link in your piece speaking) you're half right. the flaw is that you are only including 'documented' ('flag, anthem, navy') powers.
francis_wolke: jurov: RLE is still a while off, and millitary power dosn't cease to exist b/c Bitcoin. I'm sure that neither Peter Theil, or MP have any particular love for their respective governments. But they're not stupid and recognize that if some elite is going to extend their lifespans, they may need protection.
jurov: vhich is not very far from beelion $ . but that's besiedes the poi
jurov: what was the market valuation of s.mpoe, is any mpex expert around?
jurov: they called him one, cuz $20k for openbsd
jurov: no the billionaires who will undergo life extension
francis_wolke: jurov: Who? The creators of btc?
jurov: and you think they are dying (pun intended) to get registered with govt in any way?
francis_wolke: jurov: Government is the formalization of power. Anyone doing anything interesting with radical life extension will have spooks on their doorstep momentarily. There are a number of powerful / rich people who don't want to die.
jurov: spooks are going to show up on their doorstep... sry if i came late and don't understand but why?
francis_wolke: [Note: I appear to be unable to use this irc client. I held down backspace for 30 sec, couldn't navigate to any other text and revised my message. I post, and viola - my previous message is also posted! Apologies to anyone reading this diarrhea.]
francis_wolke: benkay: As for why RLE requires state support, if anyone gets *anywhere* with RLE, spooks are going to show up on their doorstep. They may not be required for the actual innovation. The only question is - where do you want them to hail from?
francis_wolke: benkay: As for why RLE requires state support, if anyone gets *anywhere* with RLE, spooks are going to show up on their doorstep. The only question is - where do you want them to hail from?
pankkake: "the USG would kill it with fire" it can't
francis_wolke: benkay: Also, I fail to see how bitcoin will 'shatter' any state. Millitary power is meaningful, no matter how clever the Bitcoin protocol.
pankkake: "It may be within the realm of possibility that Israel controls Bitcoin" heavy sentence with no substance, "control" bitcoin what does it mean…
benkay: "if the nsa cannot" oh my lols
benkay: and RLE is a symptom of the too much money problem
benkay: in that frame, why would anyone smart enough to read the implications of a non-state ultimately fungible currency align themselves with a state that's doomed?
benkay: buuuuut it's just vastly more likely that bitcoin will shatter all fiat states than support their continued reign.
benkay: also you're missing the part where the state isn't really its own agent but more accurately a tool of the ultra-capitalized who will be the main beneficiaries of RLE in any event.
ThickAsThieves: the dude is nuts
Apocalyptic: i wonder what advantage do you seen in the creator aligning with a government
Apocalyptic: "Anyone intelligent enough to create Bitcoin will have aligned themselves with some sort of governmental body" lol
francis_wolke: Is this a reasonable theory? If not - why? https://gist.github.com/francis-/34ac1e35e1de283da258
francis_wolke: benkay: Fiat - you'll have more to lend out shortly thereafter?
benkay: why buy debt when someone's going to come along and break your tablets shortly thereafter?
francis_wolke: Interesting quote. Apologies for the extra \n - I don't know how they got there between copying from emacs and pasting into the irc client.
francis_wolke: -- Debt: the First 5,000 Years, page 216
francis_wolke: o swell the ranks of nomadic pastoralists, and ultimately, if the breakdown continued, returning to overrun the cities and destroy the existing economic order entirely.
francis_wolke: c renewal, a recreation of the social universe -- in Babylonia, during the same ceremony in which the king reenacts his godMurduk's creation of the physical universe. The history of debt and sin was wiped out, and it was time to begin again. But it's also clear what they saw as the alternative: the world plunged into chaos, with farmers defecting t
francis_wolke: Over the next several thousand years, this same list -- canceling the debts, destroying the records, reallocating the land -- was to become the standard list of demands of peasant revolutionaries everywhere. In Mesopotamia, rulers appear to have headed off the possibility of unrest by instituting such reforms themselves, as a grand gesture of cosmi
francis_wolke: these proclamations by raising a torch, probably symbolizing the sun-god of justice Shamash, whose principles where supposed to guide wise and fair rulers. Persons held as debt pledges were released to rejoin their families. Other debtors were restored cultivation rights to their customary lands, free of whatever mortgage liens had accumulated.
francis_wolke: The designated occasion for clearing Babylonia's financial slate was the New Year festival, celebrated in the spring. Babylonian rulers oversaw the ritual "breaking of the tablets," that is, the debt records, restoring economic balance as part of the cyclical renewal of society along with the rest of nature. Hammurabi and his fellow rulers signaled
Mats_cd03: goxbtc continues to sail into the ground
kakobrekla: i dunno who did what or who did who or what did who but i have the banhammer and i dont like your style.
punkman: ThickAsThieves, not really worth the attention
ThickAsThieves: "hey bro, glad to see our coins have the same name 'ALTCOIN', can we work together? what's your plan on thealtcoin ATC?"
Diablo-D3: but if this happened in congress, I'd want both the guy being hit and the guy hitting to be both expelled
Diablo-D3: kakobrekla: I never said the USA was a democracy
ThickAsThieves: of the bloody nosed guy
ThickAsThieves: there's a pic too
Diablo-D3: yeah, turkey needs to figure out their shit
ThickAsThieves: "At one point during the debate a brawl broke out in which one MP from the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) had his nose broken."
BingoBoingo: kakobrekla: You can make them.
BingoBoingo: kakobrekla: Of course. It is the best sounds to go to sleep to.
BingoBoingo: K, everybody. Altcoin is ready for the Moon. Imma get some sleep.
davout: "how the fuck has this been trading at 0.002" <- I WTF'd
mircea_popescu: you know that is beautiful, 1.30 for 30 days, 1.09 for the week
mircea_popescu: FabianB good to see the mkt is actually healthjy, i had a moment of panic.
mircea_popescu: i guess they killed mtgoxusd but not eur
BingoBoingo: Well, operation dominate the ATC market may have begun?
pankkake: ThickAsThieves: I realize coinmarketcap actually wants number of coins, not number of blocks. I fixed it, replace "blocks" by "coins" in the URL I gave you
mircea_popescu: the eur is like 300 neh ?
mircea_popescu: how the fuck has this been trading at 0.002
BingoBoingo: I'll make sure the photoshop shames Box of Fans Labs itself.
BingoBoingo: I just regret that one of the hot active threads when I started was the Usagi == Scammer thread back before Deprived did a runner.
mircea_popescu: after pirate collapsed people speculated there was some relation.
BingoBoingo: Vexual: The only meanigful test is actual empiricism
BingoBoingo: Vexual: Maybe lock your cat in the closet and if I keep responding on IRC, you can by empiricism demonstrate I am not your cat.
BingoBoingo: pankkake: I wouldn't be surprised if kakobrekla is waiting for the drop to fire up the Buttfuries
pankkake: I wonder how many have stopped mining atc waiting for the diff to come down
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: I'm ready to see what I can do by the Ides of March
BingoBoingo: Vexual: It worked out, because there were Sherpas in the group I traveled to Chicago with. Nobody handles sick ghostfaces better than Sherpas.
BingoBoingo: Several of my favorite memories from Undergrad involve throwing up or shitting into the Chicago river.
Vexual: yeah i now that, if hes buying millies he should know about the whole country
Vexual: wheres the real estate guy?
BingoBoingo: Which is why I made a stab in the dark thinking someone who offered the question might have had the name in mind.
mircea_popescu: sooo... anyone want to guess as to the guy's bitcointalk name ?
mircea_popescu: In January 2012, the SEC charged an Illinois-based investment adviser with offering to sell fictitious securities on LinkedIn and issued two alerts in an agency-wide effort to highlight the risks investors and advisory firms face when using social media. Anthony Fields offered more than $500 billion in fictitious securities through various social media websites. For example, he used LinkedIn discussions to promote fict
BingoBoingo: Well, Ever since the Etruscans, Italy has been kind of fucked
mircea_popescu: italy. you know... the scum of yurp
mircea_popescu: Much of Eastern and Central Europe rates better than the United States, and from Western Europe, only Italy rates worse.
BingoBoingo: See Mircea, your blog has been safer than mine the whole time.
mircea_popescu: "Compared to other nations, the United States ranks just below Romania, and just above Haiti"
BingoBoingo: Fuck Yeah, Slovenia whooped the shit out of Slovakia.
moiety: bound to have been a Robin too then.... ok, I'm satisfied
BingoBoingo: moiety: Nah. THis was grad school so we lived in the same building.
moiety: BingoBoingo: batman? please tell me there was also a Robin on your street
moiety: sorry delayed response: Vexual: it's a national vote, i don't think they let you email it in
BingoBoingo: Vexual: Yeah. But he is good at deception. That is how he uses all of these high tech weapons while hiding he is almost as rich as Mircea.
Vexual: time for another video
Vexual: how the fuck am i goona play bb with 100k?
moiety: oh election time for you then
moiety: do they even have a role now?
moiety: he wanted more leaway to do all the charity and good things he does
Vexual: he does, the people don't
moiety: random snippet for the day
moiety: they all think (including himself) he is a little soft for it, better for william to go straight in
moiety: he doesn't have the balls apparently
moiety: Do you know why they are waiting for William?
moiety: i wouldn't be so sure. i'm convinced they have her on a trolley
BingoBoingo: moiety: Well I mean the queen spent the last 8 years at least able to walk, and not simply on display in the produce department
moiety: fair point, the queen doesn't breath oxygen