I bought bitcoins at the Xmas party.

I will look into Atlas Shrugged.  Regarding everything else, it's Christmas and I'd prefer not to get bogged down with all that today.  It's been an absolutely fabulous day with friends and loved ones.

Merry Christmas! 

How can you regurgitate for an A if you don't listen and understand what is expected to be regurgitated?  If you got a C, apparently you didn't listen or understand what you were being taught.  Although, there is the possibility that you are far more intelligent than those who designed the curriculum and you get a C for giving answers that are actually correct but are deemed by others to be wrong.

In this world, A's help you get into good graduate and post-graduate institutions which helps to determine how much money you will make, how able you will be to support a family, and how much extra time you will have either for intrinsically beneficial activities or for activities that help the community.

In the end, very few people use even 5% of what they learned in school at their jobs (though this percentage typically increases the higher up the education ladder you go).  Inevitably, classroom tests and especially standardized tests end up testing things other than a person's aptitude.  If a person cheats their way through school because they want to spend more time on the things that are really important in life (and getting that fine looking 'A' to boot), then I'd call that smart.

In my opinion, the best way to learn is from your own experience  -- actually, your experience is the only thing you can learn from.  It's all you have.  Nothing of which you could ever be aware exists outside of your experience.   My senses alone make me intuitively aware of things (i.e. they give me direct knowledge of certain things) that people have been arguing over for thousands of years.  For example, I don't need anybody to tell me that I emit a spiritual aura -- I already know that I do, it's self-evident.  Going to school has really only served to impede my acquisition of knowledge, except that I'll at least have a pretty paycheck to show for my time.

School is a breeding house for parrots, and the peer-review process has arguably been one of the largest obstacles to our species' progress.

Merry Christmas, everyone! 



That quote about smart students that cheat was applied within a particular context.

Namely, studies show that students and children that lie pathologically or cheat in school tend to score higher in terms of 'g' than their peers.  In other words, a problem is defined by the child (i.e. "if I do 'x' then 'y' may result, where 'y' is undesirable and the problem), so naturally the child does whatever it takes to avoid the consequences and thus avoid or solve the problem.

If a child does poorly on a test (x) then he might get a bad grade (y).  So, he cheats to avoid 'y' and the problem.

This is based upon the idea that intelligence simply means "problem solving ability" where the problem is defined by the subject.  So, the child solves the problem he has defined (i.e. he does not receive a bad grade).  Thus, he is intelligent.

Dear dude,

Don't care.

Sincerely,
The 'me' in team and the 'I' in win.

Netrin, you've been cool.

That was the problem.  I couldn't honestly apologize to the community. 

There's a problem when you apologize and then you feel guilty for apologizing.  I felt more happy and comfortable with myself before the apology.  I have regret for doing it in the first place.  It is, as I said,  undeserved.

I think it's more adult to stand up for what you think and know is right than to preach social graces while being subtly -- or, as in the case of most responses, not-so-subtly --  graceless.

Suck it.  This is why I retracted my apology to the community.  It's completely undeserved.

Well, hopefully it is removed.  OldEngineer was kind enough to offer his own BTC in the game.  If not, I feel assured knowing the legal advice I sought laughed at the situation and told me any prosecuting attorney would get laughed out of court if he tried presenting it to a judge.  Interestingly, he knew what Bitcoin is.

No.

OldEngineer had threatened to sue me for libel since the title of the thread was indexed under Google search.  I wanted the thread removed in hopes that it would remove the original title, the one stating that "OldEngineer screwed me out of 5 BTC."  The only libelous comment I may have made regarded the thread's title, not the content inside it.  It was his request that I remove the title from Google index search.

Don't make the same mistake I did (see censor) or you could find yourself backtracking too.

Fair enough. 

You are welcome. 

If you do not wish to remove it, then don't.  You are the moderator.  

I wanted it removed for OldEngineer.

Hello,

By now I am sure many of you are familiar with my protest over the decision OldEngineer made in his game.  And, while, I do not regret my general approach to justifying my position, I realize that certain aspects of my approach have had, and may have, unintended consequences that I do not wish for.

I would like to apologize, first, to OldEngineer, for originally giving my protest thread the title of "OldEngineer Screwed Me out of 5 BTC."  I am not exactly sure how long the title was kept like this before I changed it to "I think OldEngineer screwed me out of 5 BTC" and finally to "I think Someone screwed me out of 5 BTC."  While I made the initial change quickly after I realized placing "I think" before it would be more accurate, I did not consider that it would be searchable through Google.  It is still searchable through Google, and if anyone has any idea how to remove that thread title from the Google search index, please let me know.  In any case, I am sorry, OldEngineer, if my thread caused you any unintended harm.

I would also like to apologize to the community if anyone was personally offended by the entire ordeal.  Again, it was not my intent as I felt and continue to feel as though I am justified in my defense.  But, still, I am sorry for any unintended hurt and for any intentional snappy comebacks cast towards those that I had believed to be antagonizing me.    Apology to the community retracted.



I have sent a message to Theymos requesting that he remove my protest thread in its entirety.

To Bad Bear and Netrin,

Thank you, I will put further thought into it.

Or both.  I don't get paid to be an intern and I'm in debt many tens of thousands of dollars because of student loans.  But I do have a 4.0, I may get intern of the year, and I have a litany of other accolades including dean's scholarship awards for outstanding scholastic achievement and otherwise.  I'm poor (in wealth) now, but my future looks incredibly prosperous.  

Harvey is a bright guy, and the community condemned him for his unique style of thinking, too.  Just because I, like many of you, disagreed with a lot of what he said, I don't consider the way in which he said it offputting.  It's simply his style.

I bet if you talked with him in person he might sound a lot different.  Now, this is the only online forum I've ever been a part of, but I have the suspicion that many of you have spend a significant amount of time communicating with others digitally and have forgotten that you can't pick up on things like facial expression, body language, tone of voice, etc.

I do extremely well socially.  I have absolutely no problem building rapport with people face-to-face, but I do often find this is more difficult for me to do digitally.  And, I find this is because people continually think I'm saying things that I absolutely never said and in ways that I absolutely didn't intend to say them.

You know, I'm reminded of a thread long ago in which some guy stated he was thinking of killing himself and posted some pictures of medications he had available to take in order to kill himself.  He was asking for donations to feel better.

Almost every person in the community that responded on the thread was negative, either encouraging him to do it, or calling him a loser, or calling him selfish etc.  

I sent him some BTC and told him his life was valuable and that I hoped he would stay.

I also have many posts condemning scams (this was not a scam as I have mentioned several times), condemning Bruce Wagner, condemning SolidCoin which was a horribly unfair currency in the way it was implemented, etc.

I have been generally consistent in my thinking, have made multiple successful marketplace exchanges offering both goods and services to very pleased customers who made comments like "overall awesome," have purchased Bitcoin goods or services,  recently completed a Bitcoin Essay to be published and for which I was hired, etc.

I have thrown out topics that are completely unique and original, even dating back to when I was a newbie.

I've contributed to this community and this marketplace and have always been a proponent of fairness.

It's become blatantly obvious that very few, if any, have truly understood my arguments, and even more obvious that people continue to infer emotional or rational content that was completely absent from what I actually said.

I have no problem sending him the 2 BTC because I only earned 5 BTC...I didn't earn 7 BTC.  I wanted to repay the other 2 people who sent me 1 BTC apiece so I told OldEngineer to give it to them.

The only thing I will apologize for is initially putting "Old Engineer Screwed me out of 5 BTC" as the thread title before quickly changing it to "I Think Old Engineer Screwed me out of 5 BTC."  I'm careful with language and the "I think" not only makes a big difference, but it is the most accurate statement, because I think I am correct.

Additionally, I've stated multiple times that I'm happy the BTC were sent to orphans and that I have no problem with Old Engineer outside of this context, even though he threatened to sue me.

Nothing wrong with that.  Offer is still on the table.