Bitcoin Forum

Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: henryreardon on November 23, 2013, 11:10:07 PM



Title: black swan
Post by: henryreardon on November 23, 2013, 11:10:07 PM
Is there a 16 year old out there, wired on 5-hour energy, on day 3 of his own personal hackathon...

...who could tweak the BTC machine, get it to churn out 1 million/minute, and effectively wipe out everybody?


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: manoamano on November 23, 2013, 11:11:10 PM
What do you mean exactly? It is possible?
Yes.

And then?


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: MAbtc on November 23, 2013, 11:43:21 PM
Tweak the BTC machine? What are you saying exactly?


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: ni| on November 23, 2013, 11:44:09 PM
i thought this thread is supposed to be about the black swan


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: henryreardon on November 24, 2013, 01:15:55 AM
Tweak the BTC machine? What are you saying exactly?

How certain are we that Satoshi's original BTC creation algorithm is impregnable? 

If Kasparov can beat Deep Blue 4-2, why can't some boy genius out there crank the BTC code into high gear just for the heck of it?


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: dave5698225 on November 24, 2013, 01:17:38 AM
God I loved that movie... for educational purposes of course!   ;)


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: henryreardon on November 24, 2013, 01:26:18 AM
Black swan theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight.

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

1. The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology
2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)
3. The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs

Unlike the earlier philosophical "black swan problem," the "black swan theory" refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: deepceleron on November 24, 2013, 03:38:19 AM
If there was a flaw, it would be fixed and rolled back. Early on there was a wraparound bug that allowed creation of a billion bitcoins by a transaction. It was fixed. It would take not just a clever bug finder, but also the consent of everyone in the Bitcoin community.


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: henryreardon on November 24, 2013, 08:14:26 PM
If there was a flaw, it would be fixed and rolled back. Early on there was a wraparound bug that allowed creation of a billion bitcoins by a transaction. It was fixed. It would take not just a clever bug finder, but also the consent of everyone in the Bitcoin community.

Sounds like you know your stuff.  What you are saying makes sense to me, but I'm not a tech expert, not by a long shot.  Could you elaborate and simplify a bit please?


Title: Re: black swan
Post by: BitcoinNews.io on November 24, 2013, 08:26:30 PM
nothing made by man is infallible, but the chances of anything going awry is small. so could there be a black swan event? yes. but probably not!