It's OK man, you don't have to sacrifice yourself for the good of your religion. Maybe there's another way? You could apply for a course and become smarter! Don't do it! Don't do it!

Thanks! Put another way: my illogical conviction that I have consciousness, trumps logic. Does yours?


Various things can exhibit intelligence in a mechanical sense. Algorithmic cleverness, speed, efficiency, maybe even the subjective appearance of creativity when trying to solve a problem. But how do you know consciousness exists in other beings? A sufficiently clever organic computer might trick you by spontaneously opening its eyes after sleeping like a human for 8 hours, whereas in fact it's a 'zombie'.

Sounds like a pessimistic judgement call to me.
Because I don't want a replacement! It's those pot-smoking hippies with adulterated imaginations and scant real-world experience with computers who think that machines can be magically programmed to be wise or to talk in a sexy soothing Nigella Lawson voice.


These computers, which some people are in awe of, are merely an extension of human intelligence. The algorithms may sometimes give surprising results, but that's irrelevant. Oh well, programmers are generally pretty smart people. Maybe they should be in charge?

+1 I couldn't have put it better myself.

As far as I can tell, I'm the only consciousness in existence, and "everything else" is just a product of my imagination in my little universe. At least with people, there is empirical evidence suggesting that they are capable of mirroring my feelings, sense of mercy or justice and many other human concepts.


Well, for the purposes of a central authority to run 'our' lives, why toy around with machines that are far simpler than humans? Why not use the best there is, i.e.: actual humans? Some might argue that it's a complex, rewarding job.

Gotta agree with you there. For one thing, these ZM hippies don't seem to understand that there is no such thing as AI! It's a made-up fantasy by sci-fi writers and Hollywood film producers. No computer, robot, or other 'machine' in existence (or that ever existed) possesses any intelligence whatsoever. Computers are only capable of obeying exact instructions that they are told to do.
All artificial.
Zero intelligence.

Due to this fact of life, if computers were to be used as some kind of central planning tool, people would have to do the programming themselves. Due to the extreme potential for incompetence and corruption at this step (as with other styles of central planning), this is a fatal flaw in the Zeitgeist pipe dream.

As for 'the singularity', I call bullshit on that one too. It can't be done. Someone show me a compelling argument that it's theoretically possible for machines to have consciousness, and I will eat my words.

Isn't Bitcoin already a 'movement' in its own right? It sounds like you're advocating more marketing, cold-calling, and pseudo-leadership/management mumbo-jumbo wrapped up in a non-profit organisation, but want to see how many suckers will pledge donations before doing anything.

(Edit: sorry, my reply was only meant to be taken lightly, but my sarcasm levels seem to be a bit off today.)

Sorry for offending you and for underestimating your intelligence

Phew! At least he's not ALL bad.
News flash:
The developed world thinks US are retarded about their precious gun rights.
Same sex marriage is no big deal. Many hetero marriages are a sham anyway, only done for financial reasons, and it has been that way for centuries.
Global warming is a scam. If you can't fight it, you might as well put it to good use.


You seem confused. Many other threads have discussed the pros and cons of private vs social health care. Keep drinking the Aspartame Kool-Aid. Yes, your US healthcare is cheaper and more effective than all those horrible Communist systems in Europe and other parts of Africa.

Yeah yeah, to me it sounds like Congress is a convenient scapegoat to avoid getting stuff done. For all the 'cool' things that he really wants, there are executive orders.

Edit: oops, scratch that -- just read that it already was an executive order. My Bad.

Who knows, perhaps 60% of your country voted for Gary Johnson, but you will never know because the controlled media has everyone convinced that it's only a tiny minority? Keep people divided and morale low.

Please explain or use [sarc] tags where applicable.

As a non-American who took a passing interest in the elections because of the hype, I had a look at 2 of the debates, and thought Romney to be generally more articulate, better prepared, more knowledgeable than Obama. As for Obama, I expected Gitmo to be closed by now, all troops removed from AfghanisNam, no threatening rhetoric or sanctions against Iran, no stealth war against Pakistan, and Bradley Manning to get away with a warning or a small fine.

But still... better the devil you know?

Friday's "humour" article was pretty good, short and sly, and the comments made me hopeful the publicity might be well-received.

Today's follow-up... a bit hit-and-miss. They said that "others have written far more informed articles on [Bitcoin]", ironically quoting that famously bad FUD from Wired. Trouble is, judging by the variable quality of the comments, at least a few of their readers use Wired as their go-to source of knowledge on everything.

Meanwhile, the "Gloom of Central Banking" PDF, supposedly the inspiration for this follow-up, seems so long and boring (not to mention: liberally uses words like 'psychological'), I swear ZH only used it as an excuse for a new Bitcoin article to stir the pot.

Maybe they tried to predict how things might play out, and decided that tentatively acknowledging and embracing Bitcoin would result in the least evil? Then again, I am assuming that they're smart.

Who knows? Maybe it's just like in a lot of companies: young people are hired for the cheap labour, creativity, and a fresh view on things. While bosses tend to be older and more experienced, although sometimes prone to being a bit stuffy and conservative. Maybe the big bosses were too busy fighting fires that they didn't notice they had a mutiny on their hands?

What I meant with the copyright example: several years ago, a window of opportunity came along for Western society to re-evaluate what "intellectual property" meant for them, and how various laws could be reformed to take into account the Internet age. People's values were changing, strange new concepts like "sharing partial downloads" were emerging. However, instead of conducting an honest debate with Joe Public on the matter, what did governments do? Nothing. At first they tried to heavy-handedly enforce old laws, and when that didn't work, they tried to force new legislation based on century-old values (SOPA, ACTA...). It doesn't seem very democratic, does it?

It seems that without some kind of helpful guidance, Western governments may blunder the same way with Bitcoin: they will keep ignoring it for as long as possible, then panic and attempt to dictate new legislation when their income starts disappearing. It would be a disaster for society if it ever came to that. For a government to function, it needs revenue. That usually comes in some combination of tax and inflation (in case everyone starts avoiding tax-traps by using cash). Bitcoin poses a unique threat to this old system, and governments may need to be reminded that they must behave democratically and co-operate with Joe Public to avoid a crisis.


It's curious. I really do get the feeling that the report is a message from "a higher class of government", and it's implied that the various national governments (in the EU at least) are indeed "middle management" bureaucrats.

Wow! There's some interesting debate going on regarding the minutiae of the ECB's self-published opinions on Bitcoin. However, I wonder if someone could enlighten me by answering a few questions.

1) What was the purpose of the "Virtual Currency Schemes" publication? Why did they publish it? Surely, they could have just sent out some private memos to the interested parties instead?

2) What do they hope to achieve by involving the public? Considering that the Internet is a major communications medium, on par with television, presumably 'we' the naive Netizens have some kind of role to play. What is that role?

3) Bearing in mind the presumed intentions of the ECB, we can then speculate about what they really think. So, what's really going on? What is the ECB actually worried about?


By answering these questions myself, I can speculate that the ECB is actually trying to leverage the public into pressuring governments so they hurry up and adapt to the 21 century. Western governments and society-at-large still seem to be grappling with simpler issues like intellectual property laws (e.g.: copyright protections, patent laws, etc.), which are already difficult in their own right. The ECB poignantly mentioned "press coverage" in their concluding remarks, which I interpreted as a kind of threat or warning to the established order. However, I welcome other opinions on this.

Doesn't matter. To me it seems like a chess move. See how old the paper is? At least a few months. Why release it now, just days before the US elections? Something is going on.

Skipping over most of the 'working', some of the concluding remarks are the most poignant for me:

A warning to the bloated banking sector? The banking lobby getting told where they can stick it?

So, if Bitcoin appears to be working better than the rest of the financial system, it might "accidentally" go viral? What kind of incident?

A pretty clear claim that Bitcoin falls within the ECB's realm of responsibilities.

I don't think they would publish such a paper if they didn't already see Bitcoin as having the potential to become a viable alternative to the current money system. To me it sounds like they're basically announcing: "we know about Bitcoin. If the US keeps debasing the dollar and forcing our hand (forcing the ECB to also print), we will FYU."

They are already claiming Bitcoin as falling within their domain of responsibilities:


And the lobbiests have been given a clear message too:

Presumably, Visa and Co. wouldn't want to appear to be lobbying too hard in this case.
Excessive whining about Bitcoin might be like saying "here are our balls. Please squeeze!"

Holy shit. Check out the conclusions on p48-ish... Epic veiled threats bonanza!

Forget the lobbiests. Looks like these financial war games are about to get fun. Your move, Bernanke.

Hmm, I'm starting to see now...

Most people don't understand/care how a software developer can arbitrarily print toy money, and potentially have it ramped up to millions of dollars in exchange value. They could even have their own special characters with unlimited funds, and no-one would ever know.
But if you play with Bitcoin, it allows players with a wealth advantage to undeservedly blow away the competition.

So how would you solve this dilemma with Bitcoin?

Perhaps limit the amount of funds that can be brought in per character?
Arbitrarily limit the maximum amount of "game gold" that a character can carry? This reminds of all those FPS games where players can run and jump with ridiculous amounts of weaponry.
Make the in-game economy deflationary?