Bitcoin Forum

My talk: "How technology moves society - not politics". Bitcoin segment from 5:29, but I'd love your feedback on the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv5gBFqzQfY

Great job!! I'll give more feedback shortly  :P

I agree with the title at least.

Nice talk, among the best I ever watched (I love TED talks).

Nice talk.
Our technology is evolving faster than our political systems... Guess what is the other "cultural echo", that is slowing innovation, by being highly non-adaptive.

Good presentation, and I hope that one day we embrace the idea that technology is more important than the institutions of false authority that cause so many problems for the human species. In a resource based economy, we would align our values to that of reality, the laws of nature, and technological innovation, and not those of governments, religion and false monetary systems.

We're discussing these ideas in another thread actually. Come check it out!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5373.0

Good talk.  Very good presentation.  I especially liked the ending.


I don't know whether you can edit the description, but "weren't" is plural.

So is "laws". ;)

good job

But "it" is an ambiguous pronoun (in this case) that is introducing a new clause. It is a very unusual construction for english, and the proper word would be "there". You wouldn't say "they weren't new laws" in the sentence, yet the pluralization is correct. "It wasn't new laws" would be idiomatic at best, but most likely just as wrong, imo.

[/grammar nazi]

Awesome speech.

Nicely done, Lasse. I very much liked your energetic and clear delivery, your choice of the three specific technologies, and the "innovation instead of agitation" catchline.

Since you requested it, some constructive criticism follows:


A pet peeve of mine is conflating countries and nation-states; it makes for muddled thinking. The rephrasing "all land is claimed by existing states" would be closer to reality.


People living months on end on oil rigs might have been a more-to-the-point example.

In general, the seasteading segment felt the least persuasive of the three, because it conveyed more of a "goody, more real estate" message and glossed over seasteading's political implications, such as importantly the much lowered barrier to exit from undesirable political arrangements by physically reconfiguring seasteads.

Also, an explicit mention of Blueseed as a pending bug fix for badly broken U.S. immigration policies would have been the most concrete example of how seasteading is going to change the world in the next five years.

Of course, I realize you were under time constraints and the choice of what to include and exclude can't have been straightforward. Overall a great job putting Bitcoin and the other ideas in front of a big audience.

If I may ask, what is the process and arrangements for speaking at a TEDx as you did? Were you invited to speak, or did you seek it out yourself?

I'm slightly disappointed of the speech.

The gun-print-example is not intriguing for this audience. Printing nutrition is maybe the last thing people will want and 3d-printers will be used to do. The ship cities hosting country-size populations are a far fetched utopia.

I don't want to argue about this all being available some day in the future and it all to be very cool stuff but bitcoin is now and very real already but this story at least for me you spoiled by claiming all you have to do in order to sell flutes around the world is accept bitcoins with no costs involved. What's the price of such a flute? Assume people would pay 20x that price in other countries. Would that cover for the shipping overhead? I doubt that.

fantastic. have you talked afterwards to someone from the audience?

Great talk. Excellent observation that innovation does more than political agitation. Of the three technologies you mention, I think bitcoin will be the only one significantly improved/progressed/wider spread 5 years from now. But the combination of the three, fully developed, would be society changing.

You should do many more Ted talks. Thanks for the, "Innovation not agitation." slogan.

Maybe you should listen to native English speakers because the way you've written makes you sound like a moron. Maybe you learned English from a text book because it's nothing to do with idioms that we don't say "it weren't" instead of "it wasn't". I'm completely sure every native speaker is scratching their head at reading that.

I'm sorry I didn't write out the proper sentence for the idiot native speakers out there such as yourself, but it should be "there weren't new laws". Again, if you'll notice, "they" (the plural form of "it") sounds just as strange and obviously incorrect.

"but it wasn't new laws that stopped its acceleration" - subject and verb disagree! :( 3rd graders know this.
"but it wasn't a new law that stopped its acceleration" - subject and verb agree! what's it?
"but they weren't new laws that stopped its acceleration" - subject and verb agree! what's they?
"but there weren't new laws that stopped its acceleration" - subject and verb agree! no ambiguity! congratulations on learning proper English!

While the second case does sound somewhat right, it is only because "it" is used idiomatically for many things (what time is it?), whereas "they" is always just a pronoun. The correct word is "there" as you are introducing a new clause, not an awkwardly used pronoun prior to the noun. So stfd and stfu. Thanks.

Please stop before you embarrass yourself further. You're either not a native English speaker or you're delusional. It is no crime to be ignorant of standard English, but to tell people to "STFU" because they correct your errors is unacceptable.

First of all "there weren't new laws that stopped its acceleration" means something completely different from "it wasn't new laws that stopped its acceleration."

Now to show exactly why there is no problem with the phrasing of the original correction (and why the Youtube video got it wrong), consider this quote by Muhammad Ali:

"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."

You would have this quote rendered, "There aren't mountains ahead to climb that wear you out..." This again changes the meaning entirely.

Look here for the root problem:

“The enemy isn't men, or women, it's bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.”
-Terry Pratchett

Note that "enemy" is singular but "men" is plural, yet this distinguished British author uses "is." Why? Because when we equate a singular noun with a plural noun in English, we use the singular if the singular form comes first and the plural if the plural form comes first. Hence, "Men aren't the enemy," and, "The enemy isn't men" are both standard English sentences, as is, "The enemy wasn't men," and "It wasn't new laws that stopped its acceleration."

This allows constructions like "The problem isn't guns; it's people." It is not standard to say, "The problems aren't guns; they're people." Someone else may still object, "It isn't people in general that cause violence, it's fools." Etc. This is completely standard and common usage.

Really, what is the difference, in your humble opinion?


Unfortunately, the "it" pronoun is unambiguous and the leading clause. PS - semi-colon splice.


No, I wouldn't, because I understand how pronouns work and when and where to use them.


And yet, "they weren't new laws" still makes no sense in the sentence, does it? Do you disagree that "they" is the the plural of the pronoun "it"? Then why does "Scientists argued for 150 years that politicians needed to stop population growth, but they weren't new laws that stopped its acceleration" sound so silly? Oh yeah, because you're wrong.

Why is Mr. Olesen getting castigated for his lack of English skills?


Please lay off Mr. Olesen, he deserves congratulations for his ideas and his innovative thinking.


In short:


Just like:

+1.  Seriously?  Profound ideas and some issues with English...and people want to talk about the English?  tards...