And to emphasize my point, what is the computation that actually is being performed? It's not "solving the double spending problem" or the other related problems. It's a computation which allows BitCoin issues to be addressed by attaching important BitCoin features, particularly bitcoin creation and transactions to the proof of work of the computations. As a result, we can substitute any other computation which has similar enough features to generate a proof of work and requires significant computation to perform.
The Sun is a stable G2 dwarf, and over the short term (millenia/eons) its power output is stable to parts per ten thousand.
Sure, I really would like that to be true too. But that "fact" doesn't explain the Maunder minimum which appears to be a fluctuation in solar power output considerably greater than the threshold your assertion. I notice that some researchers are actually claiming that a 0.2 W per square meter change in solar output somehow causes climate changes on par with a supposed 2 W per square meter heating today from greenhouse gases (other than water vapor).
I think this is typical of the current silliness in climate research that one can assert without supporting evidence that solar output doesn't change significant on the scale of millennia while ignoring the only known solar fluctuation which correlates with significant climate variations of the time.
The obvious rebuttal is that scientists are cheap.
and I would have taken an 85% pay cut for the privilege
Exactly. There's a lot of people willing to make huge compromises in order to become scientists. Just like you.
One of the things I find interesting about this debate is the huge level of cognitive dissonance in scientists (practicing and would-be) concerning their foundation myths. But in practice, outside interests are a huge bias that needs to be corrected for.
I'd say that getting beaten to death with a clog is worse. Getting shot to death, especially with a high velocity clog is usually a pretty quick death. But who's to say at which point of the dozens of whacks with the clog finally knocks you out?
Bitcoin miners are performing work, specifically, they are validating transactions. If they were doing something else instead the blockchain wouldn't be guaranteed to be valid and bitcoin could be counterfeited.
You aren't arguing what you think you're arguing. There's no reason that performing work means that the work can't be useful in its own right.
The way I see Free Market Capitalism is this: When have you ever had a difficult problem that got better by leaving it the fsck alone?
I think this is the core question. The answer is that these problems happen all the time. For example, there's a large category of perceived problems which aren't actual problems. For example, your claim that power companies don't "add value" when in the next sentence you state exactly the value they provide - power that _everyone_ wants. Since they are actually adding considerable value, the difficult problem of the valueless power companies is easily adverted by not having existed in the first place.
Second, there are the very difficult problems that aren't your problems. I find letting people work their difficult problems out on their own is the best solution here. Among other things, it's an educational experience that allows people to solve other difficult problems they face over the course of their lives.
`Then there's the difficult problem that one makes works by messing with it. For example:
Socialists basically say: Hey, the world is _fsckin'_ complex and it takes real hard work to make things run smoothly, and then a Socialist will start blathering on about all the things you need to do to make a system work.
In other words, the Socialist takes their one tool in the box and whacks on the problem happily. Then when the problem results in more problems (such as your DMV example where the supposed "anti-gov't types" fail to behave according to script), there's more targets to whack on. The top-down strategy common to socialism results in all sorts of problems due to both the ignorance and venality of the policy makers as well as the crude nature of the tools.
There is a standard destructive spiral that socialism gets in. First, they create a public good. Then when the rest of the world behaves in a way as to overconsume the public good, the standard tragedy of the commons phenomenon, then a bureaucracy is set up to regulate the consumption of the public good and starts doing its own thing. Then the cycle repeats, this time with a sliver of the society trapped in this bit of waste. This is exactly a place where relatively free markets excel.
Finally, there is the continued contradiction of growing an ever more complex, opaque, powerful, and unaccountable government while saying "Sure, you have to keep an eye on things". No, you aren't keeping an eye on things. You are growing one of the largest problems of societies, known since we first had civilizations. You don't have to "keep an eye" on markets like you do on bureaucracies, whether government-based or otherwise, who have little stake in doing their job.
He calls himself a socialist, but most self-avowed socialist wouldn't consider him one because he doesn't favor compulsory worker ownership, production for use, or any of the usual socialist agenda.
Don't confuse private opinion with public stance. Most of those self-avowed socialists don't hold an elected position in a moderately conservative electorate.
An obvious one is small scale experiments on oceanic plants, possibly engineered, that could sequester carbon dioxide. For example, the ideal plant would be a carbon-fixing plant that has relatively small iron and phosphorus needs and sinks once it dies. You could drop a lot of carbon into the bottom of the ocean fast with a plant like that. And if it's a huge monoculture, then eventually something will figure out how to eat it.
Just because the answers are complicated and messy does not mean the rights of the people should be abdicated. That's the seductive logic of authoritarianism.
Or nonexistent. Of course, I don't see a problem that needs fixing either.
The latest IPCC report widened the range on the long term temperature forcing of a doubling of carbon dioxide. It also backpedaled on the previous reports assertions about current and future effect of AGW on extreme weather.
Facts trump propaganda. Those links don't explain why there is a factor of three uncertainty in the long term temperature forcing of a doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere or why actual climate change is coming in at the bottom of their predictions.
The problem here is that there are obvious problems with monkeying around with the world's energy infrastructure. So this is a standard engineering approach to see if we can preserve that energy infrastructure without incurring huge risks. Right now, it does appear that doing nothing is a better choice than 80% reduction in CO2 emissions.
Urban environments were never the way things were. We can reduce their albedo to be lower than the natural terrain that preceded the cities. Similarly, there have always been some degree of natural coal fires. We can have less coal fires than were originally present.
At least with carbon reduction we're attempting to reverse climate changes through a mechanism believed to trigger those changes. However, with new intervention mechanisms that aren't fully understood, I don't trust anybody's model of what they think will happen.
I'll buy that. But I think it's worth noting here that all of our choices are geoengineering choices, including emission reduction and doing nothing. I find it a dubious argument to heavily favor one approach and then rule out a whole category of other strategies on the basis that we don't know enough to implement them. That should be a warning that we don't know enough to implement any of them.
Also there's some low-lying geoengineering fruit such as albedo changes in urban environments in hot locations which is a considerable part of the world, reforestation, and putting out large coal bed fires.
Obviously, I don't see it that way. My ultimate point here is that we can do a lot to change what we perceive as innate value. Gold, for example, has long been a store of value, namely, that it has a perceived innate value and some physical properties that make it a nice thing for this purpose. Originally, it was because it looked pretty and was easy for bronze age people to make and handle. Now, it has a bunch of other industrial uses propping up its "innate" value.
And currencies can have value beyond their utility in everyday trade. For example, the US government and its subordinate governments accept only US dollars for tax payments and many other transactions.
While Bitcoin might not have a utility past its use as a currency, there is no reason we couldn't make a currency, using the Bitcoin model, which does. The key reason is that Bitcoin depends on computation to validate currency creation and transactions. Those computations are inherently useless outside of their derived value from Bitcoin transactions.
That needs not be the case. We could make a system where every unit of currency created and every transaction done happens to be done via a measurable unit of useful computation (say it tests a number of possible protein configurations or some other computationally intensive, readily parallelizable problem). Then in addition to the currency's value as medium of exchange, there would be add on value from those computations as well.
I have to agree with tmosley, there isn't much distinction to be made between "policies" and "tools of politics". What you're observing is that certain policies, which centralize power are popular with all members of the political oligarchy.
No, I think a better argument here is that these two parties have plenty of incentive to keep the status quo as is and to create and harden divisions of all sorts. For example, a single issue voter who always will vote for the pro-choice or the pro-life candidate is a safe voter. You can get away with quite a bit and you will always have that voter in your pocket because they will never vote for the other side (the well known "lesser of two evils" effect). The worst that will happen is that the voter won't vote at all.
But it's not quite a single party because of the voters who aren't so compromised. Voters who go for the person with the better deal create a bit of competition.
Yes it provides utility as a currency, but outside of its use as a currency it has no value because it cannot be used for anything else. Things that have innate value have other uses than just for currency.
There's no such thing as innate value. Food doesn't have value, if there's no one to eat it. People don't have value, if they're just another mouth to feed, breeding more mouths to feed.
Slashdot Mirror
And to emphasize my point, what is the computation that actually is being performed? It's not "solving the double spending problem" or the other related problems. It's a computation which allows BitCoin issues to be addressed by attaching important BitCoin features, particularly bitcoin creation and transactions to the proof of work of the computations. As a result, we can substitute any other computation which has similar enough features to generate a proof of work and requires significant computation to perform.
No, you don't understand what work they are performing now and how it breaks things if they are not doing it
I do understand what they are doing now. It doesn't significantly change the system, if the computation work has outside utility.
Bitcoin would no longer solve the double spending problem which would defeat the point.
That is incorrect.
The Sun is a stable G2 dwarf, and over the short term (millenia/eons) its power output is stable to parts per ten thousand.
Sure, I really would like that to be true too. But that "fact" doesn't explain the Maunder minimum which appears to be a fluctuation in solar power output considerably greater than the threshold your assertion. I notice that some researchers are actually claiming that a 0.2 W per square meter change in solar output somehow causes climate changes on par with a supposed 2 W per square meter heating today from greenhouse gases (other than water vapor).
I think this is typical of the current silliness in climate research that one can assert without supporting evidence that solar output doesn't change significant on the scale of millennia while ignoring the only known solar fluctuation which correlates with significant climate variations of the time.
Of course. But Fox News isn't the only outside interest in existence.
jesus fucking christ, do they not teach reading comprehension any more?
He quoted from the relevant sections, which demonstrates reading comprehension
and I would have taken an 85% pay cut for the privilege
Exactly. There's a lot of people willing to make huge compromises in order to become scientists. Just like you.
One of the things I find interesting about this debate is the huge level of cognitive dissonance in scientists (practicing and would-be) concerning their foundation myths. But in practice, outside interests are a huge bias that needs to be corrected for.
If your economy is in recession, cutting jobs will make the recession worse.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm just not on board with the idea of protecting workers when that causes a lot of long term harm to societies.
I'd say that getting beaten to death with a clog is worse. Getting shot to death, especially with a high velocity clog is usually a pretty quick death. But who's to say at which point of the dozens of whacks with the clog finally knocks you out?
Was the water wet?
Bitcoin miners are performing work, specifically, they are validating transactions. If they were doing something else instead the blockchain wouldn't be guaranteed to be valid and bitcoin could be counterfeited.
You aren't arguing what you think you're arguing. There's no reason that performing work means that the work can't be useful in its own right.
The way I see Free Market Capitalism is this: When have you ever had a difficult problem that got better by leaving it the fsck alone?
I think this is the core question. The answer is that these problems happen all the time. For example, there's a large category of perceived problems which aren't actual problems. For example, your claim that power companies don't "add value" when in the next sentence you state exactly the value they provide - power that _everyone_ wants. Since they are actually adding considerable value, the difficult problem of the valueless power companies is easily adverted by not having existed in the first place.
Second, there are the very difficult problems that aren't your problems. I find letting people work their difficult problems out on their own is the best solution here. Among other things, it's an educational experience that allows people to solve other difficult problems they face over the course of their lives.
`Then there's the difficult problem that one makes works by messing with it. For example:
Socialists basically say: Hey, the world is _fsckin'_ complex and it takes real hard work to make things run smoothly, and then a Socialist will start blathering on about all the things you need to do to make a system work.
In other words, the Socialist takes their one tool in the box and whacks on the problem happily. Then when the problem results in more problems (such as your DMV example where the supposed "anti-gov't types" fail to behave according to script), there's more targets to whack on. The top-down strategy common to socialism results in all sorts of problems due to both the ignorance and venality of the policy makers as well as the crude nature of the tools.
There is a standard destructive spiral that socialism gets in. First, they create a public good. Then when the rest of the world behaves in a way as to overconsume the public good, the standard tragedy of the commons phenomenon, then a bureaucracy is set up to regulate the consumption of the public good and starts doing its own thing. Then the cycle repeats, this time with a sliver of the society trapped in this bit of waste. This is exactly a place where relatively free markets excel.
Finally, there is the continued contradiction of growing an ever more complex, opaque, powerful, and unaccountable government while saying "Sure, you have to keep an eye on things". No, you aren't keeping an eye on things. You are growing one of the largest problems of societies, known since we first had civilizations. You don't have to "keep an eye" on markets like you do on bureaucracies, whether government-based or otherwise, who have little stake in doing their job.
He calls himself a socialist, but most self-avowed socialist wouldn't consider him one because he doesn't favor compulsory worker ownership, production for use, or any of the usual socialist agenda.
Don't confuse private opinion with public stance. Most of those self-avowed socialists don't hold an elected position in a moderately conservative electorate.
An obvious one is small scale experiments on oceanic plants, possibly engineered, that could sequester carbon dioxide. For example, the ideal plant would be a carbon-fixing plant that has relatively small iron and phosphorus needs and sinks once it dies. You could drop a lot of carbon into the bottom of the ocean fast with a plant like that. And if it's a huge monoculture, then eventually something will figure out how to eat it.
Just because the answers are complicated and messy does not mean the rights of the people should be abdicated. That's the seductive logic of authoritarianism.
Or nonexistent. Of course, I don't see a problem that needs fixing either.
The latest IPCC report widened the range on the long term temperature forcing of a doubling of carbon dioxide. It also backpedaled on the previous reports assertions about current and future effect of AGW on extreme weather.
But that's got to be the dumbest justification I've ever read. Human metabolism is complex, but the pancreas doesn't bluff.
It means they're solving a harder problem.
The facts are that, contrary to the initial claim, the IPCC models have been very good at predicting the changes we've seen.
Your links show predictions with large error bars. So no, they aren't very good at predicting.
Facts trump propaganda. Those links don't explain why there is a factor of three uncertainty in the long term temperature forcing of a doubling of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere or why actual climate change is coming in at the bottom of their predictions.
The problem here is that there are obvious problems with monkeying around with the world's energy infrastructure. So this is a standard engineering approach to see if we can preserve that energy infrastructure without incurring huge risks. Right now, it does appear that doing nothing is a better choice than 80% reduction in CO2 emissions.
Urban environments were never the way things were. We can reduce their albedo to be lower than the natural terrain that preceded the cities. Similarly, there have always been some degree of natural coal fires. We can have less coal fires than were originally present.
At least with carbon reduction we're attempting to reverse climate changes through a mechanism believed to trigger those changes. However, with new intervention mechanisms that aren't fully understood, I don't trust anybody's model of what they think will happen.
I'll buy that. But I think it's worth noting here that all of our choices are geoengineering choices, including emission reduction and doing nothing. I find it a dubious argument to heavily favor one approach and then rule out a whole category of other strategies on the basis that we don't know enough to implement them. That should be a warning that we don't know enough to implement any of them.
Also there's some low-lying geoengineering fruit such as albedo changes in urban environments in hot locations which is a considerable part of the world, reforestation, and putting out large coal bed fires.
Technically true even if deliberately obtuse.
Obviously, I don't see it that way. My ultimate point here is that we can do a lot to change what we perceive as innate value. Gold, for example, has long been a store of value, namely, that it has a perceived innate value and some physical properties that make it a nice thing for this purpose. Originally, it was because it looked pretty and was easy for bronze age people to make and handle. Now, it has a bunch of other industrial uses propping up its "innate" value.
And currencies can have value beyond their utility in everyday trade. For example, the US government and its subordinate governments accept only US dollars for tax payments and many other transactions.
While Bitcoin might not have a utility past its use as a currency, there is no reason we couldn't make a currency, using the Bitcoin model, which does. The key reason is that Bitcoin depends on computation to validate currency creation and transactions. Those computations are inherently useless outside of their derived value from Bitcoin transactions.
That needs not be the case. We could make a system where every unit of currency created and every transaction done happens to be done via a measurable unit of useful computation (say it tests a number of possible protein configurations or some other computationally intensive, readily parallelizable problem). Then in addition to the currency's value as medium of exchange, there would be add on value from those computations as well.
I have to agree with tmosley, there isn't much distinction to be made between "policies" and "tools of politics". What you're observing is that certain policies, which centralize power are popular with all members of the political oligarchy.
No, I think a better argument here is that these two parties have plenty of incentive to keep the status quo as is and to create and harden divisions of all sorts. For example, a single issue voter who always will vote for the pro-choice or the pro-life candidate is a safe voter. You can get away with quite a bit and you will always have that voter in your pocket because they will never vote for the other side (the well known "lesser of two evils" effect). The worst that will happen is that the voter won't vote at all.
But it's not quite a single party because of the voters who aren't so compromised. Voters who go for the person with the better deal create a bit of competition.
Yes it provides utility as a currency, but outside of its use as a currency it has no value because it cannot be used for anything else. Things that have innate value have other uses than just for currency.
There's no such thing as innate value. Food doesn't have value, if there's no one to eat it. People don't have value, if they're just another mouth to feed, breeding more mouths to feed.