The ability to win arguments carries, as a side effect (or "spandrel") the ability to reason *usefully* about the non-social aspects of nature. The former repurposes quite easily into the latter. (More than a single discovery came about because someone just wanted to embarass his rival by proving him wrong.)
The interplay between the two is demonstrated nicely in a Harry Potter fanfic I read recently (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality). There's a scene involving the fanfic Draco -- who's very socially adept and Machiavellian -- and the fanfic Harry, who's good at science.
Harry is trying to get Draco to use his great intellect (currently only good on the social dimension) to be a good scientist as well. Since Draco repeatedly fails to grasp the tenets of scientific reasoning, eventually Harry resorts to having him imagine himself in a bizarre social scenario where he has to maintain a different "appearance" to several factions simultaneously. Harry carefully sets it up so that Draco would *have to* propose a good scientific hypothesis in order manipulate others the right way, which finally gives him the motivation to turn his brain toward thinking like a scientist.
(No links, sorry, don't want to look like I'm shilling for the author, look it up if you want.)
Now, obviously, you shouldn't take that as empirical evidence, but you can see the mechanism: when persuading the right people in a war against your hated rival requires a good scientific insight, our ape brains can make real progress. But we'll always be burdened by the corresponding problem of thinking we can connect any facts to any conclusion (because that was adaptive too!).
It's long known to bought-and-paid-for court intellectuals and their wannabes that economic growth is severely stunted without some measure of looting the productive. Adopting bitcoins for the global economy would mean that our overlords lose the power they're addicted to over the money supply, and while they're are advantages in this, those court intellectuals have invested a shitload of ink in rooking us into believing that the disadvantages far outweight them. Additionally, adopting a global currency standard will deny our overlords ability to impose stealth taxes, denying them yet another way to loot the productive and prudent.
Is there any plan to mold bitcoin into yet another arm of our overlords?
After consideration, I think people are overestimating this botnet risk. The total computing power of bitcoin miners is ~6 THash/sec, more than (by a crude comparison) the combined top 100+ supercomputers in the world... which aren't even optimized for parallel hash computation! In contrast, the best botnets have the (again, non-optimized) computer power of only a few of the top supercomputers.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can follow your full argument as to why shitty businesses should be able to get government largess on terms unavailable to the rest of us. Perhaps you could articulate your thesis a bit more clearly if you removed your mouth from Timothy Geithner's erection?
It's a good thing our foresightful federal government nobly resisted the public in '08-'09 and wisely chose to bail out and backstop this vital financial instution, on whom we are so ever reliant for their irreplaceable expertise!
Nope. Most currencies are backed by a government and not just some guy on the internet. Go on, just try printing your own Fun Bucks and try spending them.
Yeahhhhhh, man! Go ahead and print your gift certificates, or discount coupons, or dry-cleaning claim tickets! They'll be COMPLETELY worthless, no one will hold them, no one will try to spend them, people will just all laugh at you because they're not issued by a government!
That's a much higher standard than any other currency or good is held to, and thus it's unfair to expect it of bitcoin. Does the US government guarantee that your dollars will convert at a fixed rate into real goods? They used to, certainly (gold standard era), but when it became inconvenient, and their ivory tower experts told them it was "hurting the economy" to honor promises, they threw it out like a used condom.
I'm just glad the coat check desks at the restaurants I go to never leave the "coat standard" for my claim ticket!
I was going to nod at the wise words, but then again, we all use banks and not many of us have any idea about how it works (fractional banking, monetary base, etc.).
Okay, I should probably be more specific. People don't understand (or feel the need to understand) those aspects of fiat currencies. However, they do understand, and would probably be able to explain:
- why you can't "double-spend" your dollars (you have to transfer a piece of paper, or the bank keeps a record of how many dollars you've transferred)
- what stops people from counterfeiting dollars (they have security features that are used to determine which dollars are real, and the equipment needed to make them is heavily regulated and monitored)
- what keeps attackers from messing up bank-held account information (banks keep backups and reconcile their records with each other [plus use encrypted transfers but most people don't know about this])
People don't know the same answers for Bitcoin, and these are things they would actually be interested in knowing before using them.
Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA).
Awesome! Innovative! I'm glad someone is finally incorporating probability into risk analysis! I hated the old way actuaries did it where they had to know which clients they would have to pay out on in advance, and yet still take their business anyway!
Can you reallly not follow the logic here? I don't want to assume you're stupider than you really are, but...
Invoking tu quoque is only invalid if it's criticizing the other person for "being bad too". I wasn't doing that. I was saying, "If X is enough for you to deem something a pyramid scheme, then you must deem US government bonds a pyramid scheme as well. Since that's ridiculous, you are in error to regard X as a reason to deem something a pyramid scheme."
Where does that make an argument-breaking fallacy? Right, nowhere.
Now, go back to your community college philosophy class.
Are you for real? My response shows that if you dismiss bitcoins as a pyramid scheme (for that reason), you must also dismiss US Government bonds as a pyramid scheme, which most people regard as ridiculous.
Sorry if this requires more steps of logic than you're used to -- you're doing a decent job covering it up with your use of uncommon Latin terms, though, great work.
"My question: why would any merchant IN THEIR RIGHT MIND want to deal with gold? With the insane Weimar Deutschmark-to-gold exchange-rate gyrations happening lately, why would any serious retailer even bother, when the value of gold vs. Weimar Deutschmark could change by 50% or more in just a few hours?"
It is a perfectly valid defense, in response to the argument that "X is bad because it meets characteristic set Y", to reply that "uncontroversially good thing Z also meets set Y".
Calling it a "to quoque non defence" does not change this.
US Government bonds seem to have a lot of the properties of a pyramid scheme, mainly:
- First adopters have an inherent advantage since they could buy lots of Treasury bonds in the early days of the Republic when they still traded at a discount. - US Government bonds have no inherent value. The only value they have is that which is attributed to them by those whose trade in them. - The more people that can be convinced to trade in US Government bonds, the higher the pool of real money available to exchange for US Government bonds. - Creation of US Government bonds has now reached a level where they undergo unsustainable exponential growth.
Frankly, I'm skeptical of these cranks that are out there promoting US Government bonds, and their acolytes in the media who feel like they have to bombard us daily with information about their market fluctuations.
Slashdot Mirror
The ability to win arguments carries, as a side effect (or "spandrel") the ability to reason *usefully* about the non-social aspects of nature. The former repurposes quite easily into the latter. (More than a single discovery came about because someone just wanted to embarass his rival by proving him wrong.)
The interplay between the two is demonstrated nicely in a Harry Potter fanfic I read recently (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality). There's a scene involving the fanfic Draco -- who's very socially adept and Machiavellian -- and the fanfic Harry, who's good at science.
Harry is trying to get Draco to use his great intellect (currently only good on the social dimension) to be a good scientist as well. Since Draco repeatedly fails to grasp the tenets of scientific reasoning, eventually Harry resorts to having him imagine himself in a bizarre social scenario where he has to maintain a different "appearance" to several factions simultaneously. Harry carefully sets it up so that Draco would *have to* propose a good scientific hypothesis in order manipulate others the right way, which finally gives him the motivation to turn his brain toward thinking like a scientist.
(No links, sorry, don't want to look like I'm shilling for the author, look it up if you want.)
Now, obviously, you shouldn't take that as empirical evidence, but you can see the mechanism: when persuading the right people in a war against your hated rival requires a good scientific insight, our ape brains can make real progress. But we'll always be burdened by the corresponding problem of thinking we can connect any facts to any conclusion (because that was adaptive too!).
What about the lack of looting savers?
It's long known to bought-and-paid-for court intellectuals and their wannabes that economic growth is severely stunted without some measure of looting the productive. Adopting bitcoins for the global economy would mean that our overlords lose the power they're addicted to over the money supply, and while they're are advantages in this, those court intellectuals have invested a shitload of ink in rooking us into believing that the disadvantages far outweight them. Additionally, adopting a global currency standard will deny our overlords ability to impose stealth taxes, denying them yet another way to loot the productive and prudent.
Is there any plan to mold bitcoin into yet another arm of our overlords?
F-T-F-muthaFUCKin-Y
After consideration, I think people are overestimating this botnet risk. The total computing power of bitcoin miners is ~6 THash/sec, more than (by a crude comparison) the combined top 100+ supercomputers in the world ... which aren't even optimized for parallel hash computation! In contrast, the best botnets have the (again, non-optimized) computer power of only a few of the top supercomputers.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can follow your full argument as to why shitty businesses should be able to get government largess on terms unavailable to the rest of us. Perhaps you could articulate your thesis a bit more clearly if you removed your mouth from Timothy Geithner's erection?
Yes. Do you really think we'd be better off if we let every large bank hold us hostage whenever they feel like it?
Ah yes, that old trick: if nothing else works, just stretch the meanings of the terms you were using so that they can cover everything. Great move!
It's a good thing our foresightful federal government nobly resisted the public in '08-'09 and wisely chose to bail out and backstop this vital financial instution, on whom we are so ever reliant for their irreplaceable expertise!
*jerk off gesture*
Is there anything you buy other than elimination of your tax obligations? Like, fruit, or bread, or condoms?
Counterquestion: what the hell did you find so majestically insightful about those posts?
He advised against buying at $1. At its worst point recently it receded to $10.
If his name weren't Tyler Cowen, would you give a shit about his pretense at analysis?
Thanks for sharing your common sense in this thread, and articulating it so well. I wish I could have modded all of your comments up.
Or at least have a special clue-stick I could use to beat these pro-inflation shills.
The question was about government bonds, not cash. For government bonds, you do get a guaranteed number of dollars
Right, which are themselves not real wealth. Hence the recursion, and the equivalence to bitcoin. Game over.
Nope. Most currencies are backed by a government and not just some guy on the internet. Go on, just try printing your own Fun Bucks and try spending them.
Yeahhhhhh, man! Go ahead and print your gift certificates, or discount coupons, or dry-cleaning claim tickets! They'll be COMPLETELY worthless, no one will hold them, no one will try to spend them, people will just all laugh at you because they're not issued by a government!
Thanks. The sig needs cultural context to understand. For a while, there was a fad where people wore shirts that said something like:
"{Football, fishing, volleyball} is life. The rest is just details."
That's a much higher standard than any other currency or good is held to, and thus it's unfair to expect it of bitcoin. Does the US government guarantee that your dollars will convert at a fixed rate into real goods? They used to, certainly (gold standard era), but when it became inconvenient, and their ivory tower experts told them it was "hurting the economy" to honor promises, they threw it out like a used condom.
I'm just glad the coat check desks at the restaurants I go to never leave the "coat standard" for my claim ticket!
I was going to nod at the wise words, but then again, we all use banks and not many of us have any idea about how it works (fractional banking, monetary base, etc.).
Okay, I should probably be more specific. People don't understand (or feel the need to understand) those aspects of fiat currencies. However, they do understand, and would probably be able to explain:
- why you can't "double-spend" your dollars (you have to transfer a piece of paper, or the bank keeps a record of how many dollars you've transferred)
- what stops people from counterfeiting dollars (they have security features that are used to determine which dollars are real, and the equipment needed to make them is heavily regulated and monitored)
- what keeps attackers from messing up bank-held account information (banks keep backups and reconcile their records with each other [plus use encrypted transfers but most people don't know about this])
People don't know the same answers for Bitcoin, and these are things they would actually be interested in knowing before using them.
Risks from reactor accidents are estimated by the rapidly developing science of "probabilistic risk analysis" (PRA).
Awesome! Innovative! I'm glad someone is finally incorporating probability into risk analysis! I hated the old way actuaries did it where they had to know which clients they would have to pay out on in advance, and yet still take their business anyway!
And bitcoins can be used to buy condoms from me.
Any other differences you can find?
Can you reallly not follow the logic here? I don't want to assume you're stupider than you really are, but ...
Invoking tu quoque is only invalid if it's criticizing the other person for "being bad too". I wasn't doing that. I was saying, "If X is enough for you to deem something a pyramid scheme, then you must deem US government bonds a pyramid scheme as well. Since that's ridiculous, you are in error to regard X as a reason to deem something a pyramid scheme."
Where does that make an argument-breaking fallacy? Right, nowhere.
Now, go back to your community college philosophy class.
Really? So the original argument didn't articulate sufficient reasons for deeming Bitcoin a pyramid scheme? I agree!
America.
Are you for real? My response shows that if you dismiss bitcoins as a pyramid scheme (for that reason), you must also dismiss US Government bonds as a pyramid scheme, which most people regard as ridiculous.
Sorry if this requires more steps of logic than you're used to -- you're doing a decent job covering it up with your use of uncommon Latin terms, though, great work.
Overheard in 1924...
"My question: why would any merchant IN THEIR RIGHT MIND want to deal with gold? With the insane Weimar Deutschmark-to-gold exchange-rate gyrations happening lately, why would any serious retailer even bother, when the value of gold vs. Weimar Deutschmark could change by 50% or more in just a few hours?"
It is a perfectly valid defense, in response to the argument that "X is bad because it meets characteristic set Y", to reply that "uncontroversially good thing Z also meets set Y".
Calling it a "to quoque non defence" does not change this.
US Government bonds seem to have a lot of the properties of a pyramid scheme, mainly:
- First adopters have an inherent advantage since they could buy lots of Treasury bonds in the early days of the Republic when they still traded at a discount.
- US Government bonds have no inherent value. The only value they have is that which is attributed to them by those whose trade in them.
- The more people that can be convinced to trade in US Government bonds, the higher the pool of real money available to exchange for US Government bonds.
- Creation of US Government bonds has now reached a level where they undergo unsustainable exponential growth.
Frankly, I'm skeptical of these cranks that are out there promoting US Government bonds, and their acolytes in the media who feel like they have to bombard us daily with information about their market fluctuations.
Ja, ja! Die Oesterreicher haben echt Probleme mit der Idee von Bitcoin! Was fuer ein Geld ist das? Man kann es nicht mit den Haenden beruehren!