Time is an illusion we have due to cyclic changes in our world. We only live in the present.
You can see beyond the horizon, psychedelics would help you see this. If life is nothing more than a mathematical pattern unfolding itself, you can see or feel the pattern and figure out answers of the future. Just like the Mayans, Hindus, Christians, Mormons etc. predicted the end (transition) of the world, they were quite accurate.
If that's the case, why not just see what the next winning lottery number is, and not only fix your financial situation, but pay for as many concerts as you want? |
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Same follow-up to you as to BitChick then: Why can't laws of physics simply have always existed and always will? The concept of time exists within the laws of physics; it's not a law of physics itself. In other words, time is different here on earth from places elsewhere, and was different far in the past (slower) than it is now, because time is a function of the laws of physics that could have just as easilly always existed and always will, too.
I see that you have your point of view which is a materialistic one so we could continue arguing like this for an eternity and you would still defend your point of view like I mine. If that is the case, then the only conclusion is that both of us could be right. Right up until one of us isn't. |
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1) I explained to you why you can't be right regarding your assumption of an absolute separation between objective and subjective reality. There's an entire logical principle dating back to the ancient Greeks (and likely before them) that states exactly this...it's the principle that states differences arise from sameness and similarities. Your methodology to forming conclusions about reality incorporates a false assumption about reality itself. Reality includes both subjectivity and objectivity, and so a comprehensive model of reality must explain how each defines the other.
I think my model is much simpler. Basically, we assume that reality is objective, and we, as an objective species existing in that reality, subjectively percieve that reality through our senses. If you start with the assumption that reality is objective, i.e. it exists and is as it is whether we percieve it or not, and place the fault of subjectivity only on our own limited subjective senses and reasoning ability, all the logic falls into place just fine. Everything shares a fundamental identity with everything else. In mathematics, this fundamental identity is a distributive property represented by the number '1'. Consider a statement, "ab = xy". This is really 1(a)1(b) = 1(x)1(y). The property of identity is a mathematical law that distributes to everything. Everything is united by this principle of identity...of cohesion.
That doesn't actually say anything. All you did was present a set of mathematical symbols, and claim that these symbols represent what you say they do. I don't even know if you mean a * b or something else, or if you mean 1 * a * 1 * b or 1-of-a * 1-of-b. Like, is 1 a number that is multiplied by other variables, or is 1 a function, like f in f(x)? If you're going to throw terms like these around, please take the time to explain them, since otherwise they don't have any meeting to anyone but yourself. 2a) You can reason about what's behind the horizon in a probabilistic way, but that's another way of saying "I don't know." Instead, I can say "I know that it's impossible to know what's beyond the horizon" and be correct. You never know where Dank is having his million man music festival. It's always just over the horizon, isn't it?
Actually, it's not "I don't know," but rather "It is not x" and possibly "It is Y with a probability of %." For instance, I know Dank, if he ever does, will NOT have his festival in the Marianas Trench, in the vacuum of space, on the moon or the sun, and likely not on top of Mt Everest, the top of the mpountain range in Chile, in the middle of the Sahara, inside of a car or a small shed, or in my house. Or at any number of other things that can not accomodate the requirements of having a concert (such as viable temperatures and sound carying atmosphere). I think that is considerably more precise than simply "I don't know," especially since it lets us to narrow the choices to an overall where we DO know. Like, if I didn't know whether Dank would have his concert in Venue A or in Venue B accross the street from Venue A, I can say with certainty that Dank will have his concert in a specific city that contains both venues. Likewise, I know that Dank will have his concert on Earth, if he actually does have a concert. And hey, that's how science works  2b) Non-sequitur. The reason is because "beyond the horizon" (not-visible) and "horizon" (visible) are localized distributions in spacetime. Your conclusion would only be valid if you're talking about polytheistic gods. A monotheistic god is omnipresent.
If he is supposedly omnipresent, but yet can not be percieved, then... |
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A government can't make resources out of thin air, Actually, some resources can be reorganised and redirected by governments. E.g.: hospitals can be built using taxpayer money. It's just that the insane bastards running the private health system in the US desperately don't want that to happen. This doesn't create resources, it just redirects resources from where the market found them to be most efficient, to where government thinks they will be most efficient. It's too bad that those bastards who desperately don't want that to happen have government to protect them. The only thing that can change elasticity is economic/technological progress. All government can do is force prices down by using everyone else's money, until either everyone runs out of money, or until the resource is depleted. No, they could do lots of things. Directly regulating a price is pretty naive and just because the Russians did it, it doesn't mean that the only other way is free-market extremism: -I already mentioned state competition, funded by taxpayer funds. Just redirecting funds from something more efficient to less efficient. If those state competition entities were efficient, they wouldn't need taxpayer funds to survive. -really poorly performing industries could even be nationalised, with the basic idea of restructuring the upper management. For obvious reasons the managers would be absolutely mortified, so anything can happen, right down to lobbying government to do various crazy things to help out.
Besides the obvious problem of lobbying for crazy things, there's also the problem of nationalizing and continuing industries that have no business continuing. I'm glad the horse and buggy business wasn't nationalized and supported when cars came out, otherwise cars wouldn't have been able to compete, and we'd still drive in horse in buggies. So instead of taking over, the government does something idiotic like putting artificial limits on the available university places for that industry. Notice how that stops the threat of state competition?
Yep, government can do some pretty bad stuff with the economy. Wait, what were we talking about? |
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I fervently hope you're right. The CoinJoin idea won't be helpful in the true nightmare scenario (which is pretty much described in the article): only greenlisted addresses can be used to buy goods and services in the USA (and in this scenario, also the EU, Russia, China and everywhere there's a decent sized economy).
This won't fly in EU, due to their already established and fervently (publicly) defended privacy laws. If all addresses must be greenlisted, and thus known, everyone paying everyone else will know where everyone else spent their received coins on. It would be a privacy nightmare that would mandate the use of coin mixers. |
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Will look for it on C-SPAN I'll blow you kisses if I see the camera pan around  |
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It's going to be very interesting to see how the market reacts during this period. One could argue they already are, it wouldn't surprise me if we see a sudden big movement in the price of Bitcoin up or down just before the hearings, and then shortly after.
I'll make sure to tweet something inoccuous while sitting in on the meeting, and make tons of profit on the resulting misdirected market move. (I'm kidding. I don't tweet) |
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Before I address the recent posts, I want to state that I've redacted the original Bitcoin wallet address since we can expect a dedicated wallet hashed by that atheist  Rassah shortly. Zero bitcoins were donated to it while it was available. Damn. And here I thought I could have the evening off  (I will have to install and compile the vanity generating program on my linux miner when I get home) Regarding the religious stuff, this isn't about me being more or less charitable. I may donate, I may not. In this case, what matters is whether I can be trusted. Right now my reputation is the most valuable thing I own (yes, more than $1mil in BTC). As for whether my technology is up to par to keep this safe? Uh....... maybe? I'll have to hash the address while offline, keep all transactions in offline Armory, and keep backups not in my house, since people know where I live. With that amount of money, and since people know where I live, I would also be concerned for the health of my fingers and genitals  (Though this may be the incentive I need to go get a safety deposit box) |
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Same question. If god always existed, why couldn't physical laws always exist, too?
No one, God always existed and always will. The concept of time only exists on earth. Same follow-up to you as to BitChick then: Why can't laws of physics simply have always existed and always will? The concept of time exists within the laws of physics; it's not a law of physics itself. In other words, time is different here on earth from places elsewhere, and was different far in the past (slower) than it is now, because time is a function of the laws of physics that could have just as easilly always existed and always will, too. Fun fact: Time is even different in the GPS satelites that orbit the earth, than it is here on earth, due to those satelites traveling much faster, and this different must be compensated for with your GPS device. |
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1). You're just plain wrong in your assumption that an objective world exists independent of subjectivity.
I can say the same about you, and we would still be exactly where we started, with both of us thinking we are right. So... 2). Things change completely because whereas once it was impossible to perceive beyond the horizon (and thus impossible to reason about what's beyond it) you moved beyond the horizon to check it out. If you're not beyond the horizon, then it is absolutely impossible to reason about what is beyond it. The phrase "it's impossible" holds when you can't perceive past the horizon, but it does not hold if you are perceiving beyond the horizon.
This can actually go both ways: A. You *can* reason what is beyond the horizon based on what you know is in front of it, and what you know about the world/system it exists in (if we are on sea, the only answers to that question are "water" or "beach" and not "mountain" or "waterfall" or "a land of meat"). I do this all the time in my profession, where I don't know what our financial situation will be at the end of the fiscal year, but I can reason what it will most likely be based on data I have right now. This is also how we reason what is in other solar systems, or what other planets are composed of. We don't actually percieve what they are made of, we just make reasoned conclusions based on what we see here in our solar system. B. You can't percieve what is beyond the horizoon and it's impossible to reason what is beyond it, and thus since you can't percieve god, it is impossible to reason about god's existence. |
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So if god created physical laws, then who created god?
No one created God. He was, and is and is to come. He is eternal. Living in finite bodies in a world that has a beginning and an end we see things in the physical but cannot grasp the idea of eternity fully. Everything around us is going through a process of life and then death so this is really beyond us at this point. And laws of physics can't be "was, and is and is to come ... eternal ... [and] living in finite bodies in a world that has a beginning and an end" because...? |
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1) A metric is an abstract measurement. Metrics are used to describe reality. There can be no metric (and thus no measurement or description of reality) without a mind to evoke the metric itself.
A metric is just a way for us to subjectively quantify an objective world. Some people might say a distance is one inch, some people might say that it is 3 centimeters, but egardless of their subjective measurements, that length still exists. So I see measurements as simply a way for us to describe reality, not for us to define or create reality from our minds. We say what we see, we don't create what we say. 2) A person who says "it's impossible to know that which is over the horizon and cannot be perceived" is more correct than the person who says "I don't know what's over the horizon." But if you decide to check it out, that changes things completely and the question becomes relevant to a current description of reality.
If it changes things completely, then the person who said "it's impossible to know" is abviously more wrong that the person who says "I don't know yet." The phrase "it's impossible" also implies that we shouldn't even try, which is a MAJOR issue with conservative religion, where they claim "God did it" or "Only god knows," and don't bother investigating it themselves. So, obviously, I am extremely hostile to that idea. |
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Hey everyone. Quick question- I told Vanessa to set up a coinbase account for the donation. Did I tell her correctly? Just a suggestion, as some of the orgs tiptoe into the space might be useful if BTC 100 had a small welcome packet the Director could use as a guide.
Couldn't be more thankful for your support of LFA, they do the most amazing work and they really count and stretch every penny.
Cheers!
David
That should be fine. I don't know what Coinbase's policy on fees is. We typically say "BitPay" because they don't charge any fees if you are a non-profit. |
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At least they did not call in Inaba(Josh) from BFL lol.
They should have. It would have stalled any discussions, decisions, and legislation for at least "two weeks" TM (i.e. a year) |
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Nope.
But 1TyphoonHaiyan looks better than 1xyzabc.
And don't diss Windows, hehehe. (offline anyway, right?)
1TyphoonHaiyan would look awesome! In about 3 million years... |
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What the hell? Did they move it from Monday the 18th to Tuesday the 19th? Or is this a follow-up meeting? (I'm going to have to change my schedule at work now) I see, this is a complete different hearing in front of a different Senate hearing than the original one in this post. This hearing is the "The Present and Future Impact of Virtual Currency" before the COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND FINANCE and SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC POLICY. So there are hearing on Monday and Tuesday. My first thought, too, but there are no hearings scheduled for Monday in there. |
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From the Forbes article ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/sanitizing-bitcoin-coin-validation/): In the short term, they talk about a limited database that keeps track only of registered identities and their activities with participating companies, but it’s obvious that their ambitions are grander and that a longer term prospect is to take advantage of the transparency of the Bitcoin system to keep track of which Bitcoin is tainted by associations with black markets. Waters says that the development of that aspect will depend on “community feedback".
This is the kind of disaster we're trying to warn you about. How long will it be before pressure is brought to bear on core developers to make coin tainting part of the core software? In a global network, who gets to decide which coins are tainted? Please do not cooperate with this, it will be the end of Bitcoin. Possessing money and transferring money should never have been made a crime. That act was the beginning of limitless government power over free speech and free enterprise. Good thing we have CoinJoin, DarkWallet, and some future wallet integration to look forward to. Oh, and other bitcoin-using countries that don't give a crap about this. Yes, this is annoyinng and scary, but hopefully not bitcoin-threatening. |
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So, do you think in your RBE fantasy people won't have any need to trade anything? If so, then sure, money will be useless. But I have very, very hard time imagining a society where I would not have to trade things (unless we're talking about going back to stone age, hunter-gatherer level). If you can, then you probably have way too much imagination. Or you're just completely delusional.
In RBE (Resource Based Economy), robots will build and maintain other robots, resources will be unlimited (no idea how), and everyone will have everything done for them by robots. So the only thing people will have left to do is personal hobbies, and all progress will come from people just feeling like doing something, instead of being motivated by scarcity and competition. Think the cruise ship on Wall-E, and the (un)impressive centuries of progress that happened on it. |
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