Bitcoin Forum

Why? Because rationality mean we can accurately perceive the world as it is and make actions and plans that achieve the goal of increasing bitcoin dominance.

I think we can start this project by largely borrowing knowledge from the lesswrong community. Well I think lesswrong content are interesting to read and maybe we can start our learning from there.

(or more usefully just start discussing rationality and possible subjects to consider)

Is it rational to try to achieve Bitcoin dominance? How confidant are you in forecasting the consequences if you succeed?

I don't know. I thought it was simply the goal of the bitcoin community.

The question if it's rational depends on your goals obviously.


My confidence depends on what kind of consequences we're talking about. If it succeeds, which would mean becoming very popular and staying secure, I assign high probability that it will be used as a savings storage (from which, unlike bank account, gov cannot steal). I do not assign high probability it's gonna be used much for quick micro payments for stuff that is legal (at least not directly).

I think bitcoin is not a great place to store any large amount of legally obtained money.  That does not mean I think it will be used for illegal money....

But if you legal have the money (no fear of government taking it) why would you store it in a place where if it is lost in a number of ways it can not be reversed?
Sure, you can back things up and lock things up but there still are ways it can be stolen and not be recovered.  In a standard insured bank its pretty safe.  Even if a fraudster writes checks, you should get your money back. 

Bitcoins strength is in web payments especially micro payments, and in MOVING money.  And doing it on the LOCAL level (small business no small business).

Right now with not much trouble, we could set up our own western union like network of local small business storefronts to move money all over the WORLD.  We can by-pass feebay and paypal and make small item auctions economic again and keep the nearly 12% of fees ebay is charging back in the hands of consumers and small businesses. 

one word: inflation.
via inflation, government takes your money (reduces purchasing power of your money). regardless of whether your money is squeaky clean, or dirty as dirt, government will take some of it via inflation on a continuous basis.

+10

All your yammering have nothing to do with the topic of improving a bitcoiner's rationality.

If you and the merchant don't/can't make it a habit of holding onto the coins then you essentially have to pay double fees for transferring from your dollars into coins and to cover the cost of the merchant doing the opposite. There is a lot of friction unless people consider them good enough to hold.

I was an early participant on Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/) as well as its progenitor Overcoming Bias (http://www.overcomingbias.com/). One principle of rationality is not to choose goals blindly, but to think about what you ultimately want to accomplish, and decide what projects make the most sense. That's why I asked, why Bitcoin?

Much discussion on those sites is on cognitive bias, and IMO the most important bias is overconfidence. Study after study has shown that people vastly overestimate the accuracy of their predictions and estimates. The hard step is taking this to heart, and accepting that it applies to you, not just to people who disagree with you. Just to give you a taste of how far you are from rationality, there is actually a mathematical proof that two sufficiently rational people cannot disagree.

According to these communities, one of the best ways to get unbiased estimates of future events is the prediction market. They have strong track records and good theory behind them. A Bitcoin based prediction market would be a great asset and contribution to the world.

Its possibly because we couldnt understand wtf you were talking about in your original post.

Is there any reason bitcoin banks would not emerge?  A safe place to store larger amounts of bitcoin, with guarantees of web security standards, user confidentiality, and transparency of overall holdings.  Perhaps with only a small number of highly liquid bitcoins even possibly accessible to "hackers" with the rest stored off-line or backed up in some way. 

The price of the service could be payed just as with traditional banks, either by interest off of loans, or account fees, as well as fees for conversion services and wiretransfers, etc.  But relative to the risk of loosing all your money in a fire (just as with cash)....this small percentage is justified

If anyone tries to charge you for bitcoin wiretransfers they are ripping you off (transaction fees excluded). Other than that, point accepted.