There is empirical data. We can tell exactly when someone is dreaming now, by watching how active their brains are, and  minoring the parts of their brains used for memory and cognition. We are even getting close to being able to see people's dreams (right now at best we can get a blurry picture once in a while). I haven't done those experiments of myself, so I don't have first hand experience.

In case you are wondering about reading images from brains, in the experiment a person would be hooked up to a brain scan (or maybe MRI, I don't remember), and then shown many different pictures or animals and things, like birds, elephants, furniture, etc. As they were shown this, the brain scanner would record which parts of their brain would get activated as they recognized and interpreted the image, and store it as a sort of Brain-to-Image dictionary. Every person's brain was different, so they had to do this for every person from scratch. Then, as the person dreamed, or thought of something, or were shown an image and asked to concentrate on it, the brain scanning machine would pick up on which brain parts were activating, and used a computer to put together a composite from the pictures to figure out what was being thought of. The resulting images were not clear or sharp, since they were composites of many  brain activity signals the scanner recognized, but you could still make out birds, planes, etc.

He did get us out of Iraq. McCain wanted to stay in until we've "won"

My uneducated totally-from-rectum guess is that this bubble will get to around $600 to $800 before correcting to a lower level. I don't think this bubble will reach $1000. Despite the fast growth, we're just not growing fast enough, and we are starting from a level too low for it.

I may be wrng. I am much more confident in that this bubble will not result in a new $1,000 level. Even if it hits $1,000, it'll likely find itself much lower, and will spent next year slowly rising back to $1,000

People always dream. They just sometimes don'tremember their dreams. People typically have 3 to 6 different dreams a night, but you might only remember the last one. Also, it's even more than that. Even if you were right, and people could not dream when they sleep, it's still not the same, because even if you don't dream, your brain still processes, organizes, and files memories into long--term memory while you sleep. When you are in a coma, your brain just does nothing at all.

But it's not a theory. It's their hypothesis. Or postulation. Or opinion. They have to prove that they actually aquire some knowledge from reading tea leaves, and are not just making stuff up, for it to be a theory. Unless you mean colloquial "theory," which if that is the case, then we should switch to saying "the substantiated fact of collecting knowledge through science" vs "the theory of reading tea leaves." Personally I'd rather use scientific "theory" to be coonsistent.


It's weird, because learning through science is an action, not a phenomenon. One that has immediate results. Results that have been done and confirmed over and over millions of times. And most importantly, because "the scientific method is the theory of knowledge" to me sounds like saying "a painting a sheet of paper red is the theory of applying red paint to paper." It's not so much a theory as it's just what it actually is.

Not at all, actually. You don't dream when you are in a coma. You black out, then you come to, and a lot of time passed without you realizing it. It's like a blink, except when you open your eyes, you may be all groggy and disoriented. It's rather scary, actually.

My apologies, I did not realize that you were a crazy person. Cary on.

Why do you care what squall would have done with that money. It's not your money. Maybe squall had a relative die recently, and that money would have went to help save their life, but he is too nice to talk about it?

Dude, you're not a special snowflake. We have all seen the impossible, and we have all done the impossible in dreams. We are just sane enough to know that the impossible has a rational explanation if we look into it, and we know that dreams are just dreams. Nothing special about that. The only special thing is that your head is so damn broken. Though honestly, I don't believe you are mentally ill, just too coddled, too well taken care of, and allowed to live in your dilusion. The best thing anyone in the world can do to you is drop you on your ass out on the street and force you to fend for yourself.

Maybe because he doesn't know you have the money. It's YOU who owes him, and thus you who has to let him know what you can pay. He isn't holding your bedbt as a favor to you, so it's not up to him to go asking you if you can pay.

People don't surveil and police for free. Remove their source of income, and making surveilance more difficult and expensive, can help with the problem. We have tools for both.

This quote is wrong, in that coonservative ecoonomic thinkers do not emphasize the importance of production, they emphasize the importance of trade. It just seems like production. When you pass regulations, restricting a conservative producer, and the producer objects, a left-leaning person may view this as the producer emphasizing the importance of production, and objecting to being restricted from producing. In fact, what the producer is objecting is the fact that this regulation effectively makes some consumers impose trade restrictions on other consumers. It's basically some people telling others, "no, you can't trade for that, even if you want to." It's a subtle, but important difference, in which the thing that is important that is being emphasized, and interfered with, is actually the consumer's ability to trade, not the producer's ability to produce.

This also means that the rest of the quite may not be applicable, since consumers wish to trade and consume, and the thinking that goes against that of the producers (like regulations and left-leaning policies) actually interferes with the consumer's ability to trade, obtain the things they want, and consume. So, in an increasingly automated society, placing restrictions on trade and consumptions will not actually solve any problems, since producers are still free to make their production more efficient by increasing automation.

I think my concluding point was that if we create an altcoin that does allow for anonymity, it will just end up being used as a mixer for bitcoin.

BitTorrent is forcing people to rethink about the ethics and freedoms associated with copyright and digitalproperty ownership. I think Bitcoin will force people to rethink about the ethics and freedoms associated with democracy for the same reasons. From my sig, in case it's too small to read


This is refering specifically to the danger of a 51% majority in bitcoin, which is now taught as a "bad thing" to everyone using bitcoin.

It doesn't matter what YOU think he thinks, only what he actually thinks. Ask him whether he would want 80 cents from you as a start.

At this point, by your own "you get everything you put in back" claim you owe squall about $17,000. Time is ticking, and it's not going in your favor.


By the way, regarding you giving away money on another thread, I have a really crazy idea that I don't think anyone has ever tried yet. Let me know if this sounds sane to you or not. Basically, what you do is, you take that 0.0002+ btc, and you hold on to it. Then you find another 0.0002btc, and hold on to that too. And basically you keep doing that, until it adds up to 0.420, or whatever, and then you use that bigger amount to give back to squall. That way, you don't even have to do anything, other than just hold on to your coins until it's enough for a debt payment. I think I'll call this idea "saving." What do you think?

The issue I have with PoS is that a bank that has the most amount of money will have the biggest stake, and we already have that system, and examples of the results.

Why is anonymity being brought up as an argument against bitcoin? Anonymity is a feature, which can simply be built on top of the underlying bitcoin protocol. We already have a few propozals, like zericoin and coinjoin. And if a "cryptocurrency" is built that implements anonymity, but the only use it has it to be used in conjunction with bitcoin to add anonymity, then I wouldn't even call it a separate currency, but simply a Bitcoin plug-in.

Someone also mentioned that there are many coins that are more secure than bitcoin. That is patently false, since to be more secure than bitcoin you have to have a bigger network that secures your system, and more higher-skilled developers that work in your code. There aren't any currencies that have either of those be better than what bitcoin has.

"commitment" is good, "no commitment" is bad. So any commitment, even 0.002BTC, is still commitment, and still better than the option you want, which is "no commitment."

You prove your worth and trustworthiness by showing that you are willing to do anything, no matter how small, to earn it. Not by doing jack shit, and making promises about doing something "when you have time / money." So get off your ass and do something. Or stop depending on handouts and go join your consciousness.

If they are aware, then they aren't in a coma, and were misdiagnosed, which obviously can happen somewhat frequently if we don't bother spending money to test people properly (ir if we didn't have all the knowledge about it until recently). Similarly to how we used to misdiagnose death, when it was just coma, and accidentally bury people alive (then added bells they can ring from their underground casket, which is where "saved by the bell" comes from). A coma is by definition lack of consciousness and brain awareness. So, a small minority of people who were assumed (without proper testing) to be in a coma, showing that they are in fact aware, doesn't discount the majority of people who go into a coma (including many induuced comas surgeons perform), who wake up with no concept, memory, or experience of the time that passed.

So, what is the definition of consciousness, compared to being conscious?



Source? I've never heard of this before. Assuming true, where are the 400 billion bits coming from? And how do we know that we don't use them, instead of use them automatically without thinking about them, same as we breathe and make out heart beat?

That is probably the weirdest statement I have read in a while. I didn't think aquiring knowledge could be subjected to the distinction of "theory" "hypothesis" or "fact." It also risks running into the issue of how you define "knowledge" and acquizition thereof. E.g. someone coul be claiming to be acquiring knowledge from reading tea leaves, while someone else might point out that they are only acquiring bs.