Because belief is all there is.  No matter how certain I may or may not be about my own perspectives, it is impossible for me to prove (even to myself) that I'm correct so long as I live.  Likewise, you cannot prove that you are not in the Matrix.  This is true for anyone.  Just because I state my beliefs, doesn't mean that I have any significant doubts about them.

I can't see images, BTW.

Outstanding work.

A gnostic is a gnostic because he believes that the details are important, and therefore seeks the knowledge of those details.  It does not imply that he already has said knowledge.

An agnostic will refer to himself as agnostic, not simply because he doesn't know the answer, but because he has come to believe that there is no answer.


An incorrect interpretation.

That's funny!  Poor bastard.

That's false.  And much like a Catholic trying to tell a Baptist what his preacher believes.

Stop and read what you just wrote, and the try to tell me what you think might be the differences between "I believe" and "I know" to a gnostic.

What can I say?  This is serious business.

Glass will though.  A proper mason jar can defeat a drug dog, so long as the seal is proper, the top tight (and made of metal, not plastic) and there are no hairline cracks in the glass.

Obviously you have never actually tried this, because the result is some crappy product.  It's the female flower bud the produces the majority of the THC, and production dies if a male plant is nearby and the females are pollinated.  And growing outdoors means that plants are subject to being eaten, and there are a surprising numbers of creatures that really like to eat mj, from bugs to rabbits to deer.  To have any success at all, females need to be isolated and protected, which means "cultivation" in any practical sense.

Unless you are actively generating, then an end user only needs occasional access to the internet.  Or to be precise, occasional access to another client with greater access to other clients.  An end user doesn't need live access to the Internet to spend his already confirmed coins.  At present, only the receiver needs live access to the Bitcoin network in any given trade, so long as the two parties' devices have some digital method of communicating otherwise, (i.e. Dash7, Near-field or ad-hoc wifi) and only if he has need for independent confirmation that a valid transaction has just occurred.  IRL, the vast majority of cash in person transactions do not need this level of certainty to happen as it is today.  There is no reason that, in a Bitcoin future, an established shop in Africa couldn't accept a transaction produced by a walk-in customer's smartphone based only upon checking it against his local copy of the blockchain to make certain that said customer owned said coins the last time he updated his blockchain.  The double spend attack is technically difficult on many levels, so unless it were to start to become a common form of fraud in the distant trading posts, a blockchain a day out of date is unlikely to be a problem for the purchase of a coke and a candy bar.  In a future where only 3% of the population uses Bitcoin once or more a week (which would be a dramatic success) a continuous digital broadcast of the blockchain, via sat downlink or shortwave data undercarrier methods (i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale) is downright likely in places where Internet access is rare or insufficient, and not out of the question even in North America.  Imagine if XM radio were to commit one channel to a continuous feed of the blockchain.

Even that level of Bitcoin infrastructure might not be necessary if Dash7 radios were to become as common as wifi radios on smartphones, because of the nature of Dash7, an aware Bitcoin client could (and therefore would) mesh with most of the other Dash7 devices within a max kilometer radius, trading blocks and transactions in an open and dynamic network.  A network dynamic enough that nodes move around a cityscape throughout the course of a day, constantly trading said packets whenever more recent data is discovered.  I don't know if you're a radio geek like myself, but to a radio geek, the opprotunistic mesh network that has an average node range of over half a klick, and the potential for wide and deep node penetration, is a surreal concept.  If only 2% of cell phone users in NYC had Dash7 phones, and kept them on all day, there would literally be no place within the city that was beyond the reach of a signal; excepting (maybe) the sewer system and a closed bank vault.  One would literally have to be standing in a faraday cage to not be able to see at least one other Dash7 node with an average radius of half a click, and there is great likelyhood that a well made Dash7 node would do far better than half a klick.  Network saturation is a different issue, of course; since Dash7 is limited to about 200kbps sustained transfer rate.

I'm not a 'type', not one that has a name that you are likely to know, anyway.

I'm an old Earth evolutionary creationist.  Which means that I think that the Earth is billions of years old, and that natural selection is one method by which God creates.  Perhaps one out of many, yet unknown, ongoing or former processes.

I believe that reincarnation is possible, and may be probable.  I think that the "born again" verses in the gospel refer directly to this.  I don't believe that this is intended as a punishment, so much as an educational tool.

I believe that hell exists, but it is reserved for for the unredeemable.

I do not believe in the 'doctrine of divine preservation', and judge each bible text (canonical or otherwise) independently upon it's own merits.

I do believe in free will, and believe that God has rules that functionally prohibit there to be proof for or against the existence of a spiritual component to the universe.  For if proof exists, then there is no real freedom to deny the result.

I believe that some form of higher order spiritual beings do exist, let's call them angels for reference, that know and abide by the rules of God, or violate them at their own peril.  But I also believe that they have free will as well, but largely function as God's agents.  I will not speculate as to their origin or nature.

I believe that it's part of human nature to desire personal freedom in every aspect of it that we can pursue, and the ambition towards greater power over other men is a perversion of this aspect of human nature.

I also believe that the pursuit of knowledge is part of human nature, and it's the relentless pursuit of knowledge of creation (gnosis, literally in greek) that draws humanity closer to it's own creator; destined to become a higher spiritual being.

I believe in the duality of mankind and of creation itself, the "as above, so below" reflecting pool symbolism so common in gnostic documents.  The ying-yang symbolism of eastern cultures illustrate this nature well.

I believe that certain books in the canonical bible are written in coded language, and as such cannot be interpreted literally or symbolically.  One such book is Revelations.

I believe in the Trinity, i.e. the three (at least, why would there be a limit?) primary 'natures' of God.  This was once a uniquely gnostic doctrine, that defined an entire class of early Christian Gnostics.  These days it's the majority perspective; but for about 300 years, just expressing this point of view could get you declared a heretic and potentially killed.

I believe that one of these 'natures' literally imbued it's nature into a human form, by the most 'energy cost effective' method possible.  A natural birth and human growth process.  Literally 'popping' into a human form was not out of the question, it was just that it wasn't the most subtle or efficient possibility available.  And if there is no other thing that gnostics can agree upon, we can all agree that God was an engineer, and a very efficient one at that.

I believe that the pursuit of 'gnosis' (i.e. spiritual knowledge) is a primary mission of mankind, both collectively and individually.  (It's this doctrine that pretty much defines a gnostic, whether of the christian version or otherwise)  History has shown us that we are not very good at maintaining such momentum collectively, and that often devolves into something that is often called "organized religion" in the modern lexicon.  This kind of spiritual stagnation is not simply a delay in the process, but is actually counterproductive, and has resulted in many of the worst periods of injustice across human history.  As such, the individual method is preferable.  Which is why gnostics are rare and do not proselytize, as a general rule.  In part, because the search depends upon the limits of our own reason, and thus we can never be certain for ourselves, much less lead others.

I believe that my salvation is my own problem, and your salvation is not my problem.  This is another reason that gnostics don't proselytize.  Because it's a waste of our life to attempt to convince others of their errors, assuming that we are even certain of the errors.  To gain knowledge (gnosis), it's a fundamental principle that one must desire it enough to seek it; and if you seek, so shall ye find.

So you're a European moderate Democrat, then.  By "farthest from it" you mean complimentary?


It was never a bet with you.

Back to the point, do you consider yourself a moderate Democrat?

I beg to differ.  Natural selection is well evidenced.  The theory of evolution presumes that natural selection has been the dominant process of genetic change across history based on the evidence that it is the dominant process of genetic change today.

There is so many things wrong with this scale, I'm not even going to address it.  However, based on the premise that everyone views politics with themselves as the "center", I'd bet dollars to donuts that you consider yourself a moderate Democrat.

And I can relate.  I was a Green as a younger man, then I studied the science and learned that the Greens were full of crap.  So then I thought that I must be a Democrat.  Even became a state delegate, where I learned that the name was a misnomer, and democracy was nowhere to be found within the Democratic Party.  But I knew that I wasn't a Republican, who (ironicly) believe that democracy works. 

I assure you, a Nolan chart is far better at representing ideologies compared to one another than the left-right spectrum.

Cognitive dissonance.

I don't understand the goal.  What advantages would Bitcoin bring to a MUD?

Blade Runner, anyone?

It usually is, in my experience.


For starters, because the US $ is the international reserve currency by both treaty and defacto results of the second world war.  And because Satoshi has personally made allusions to this intent, not the smallest of which is encoded permanently into the genesis block.

Take a look for yourself.  Just because Americans always assume that everything is about them doesn't logicly lead to the conclusion that they are generally wrong.

That goes without saying, unless the two of you share an apartment, and you used his toothbrush.