Economic Devastation

[iamnotback]

CoinCube, I am becoming very pessimistic about finding any fundamental, universal truth about choices we can make.

I wrote the following before reading your most recent post. We were both writing at the same time.

We are opportunity cost seeking actors. Inertial frames of reference will be vary for each actor.

I agree that the system is over time driving towards greater degrees-of-freedom, but I don't see that anything fundamental is driving it. I provided my explanation for the Second Law of Thermodynamics:

First of all, I want to explain why the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that energy must always disperse from a hot to a cold body, and not the reverse of a colder body giving up energy becoming colder and making the hot body hotter. This is because the equation for entropy of any system is maximized by having as many equiprobable possible states, i.e. the probability is very high that a hot body with its very highly probable collision of moving particles due to high kinetic energy will transfer some kinetic energy to the slower moving particles in the cold body because it maximizes the entropy of the combined system of hot and cold bodies together. But that is sort of a tautology. The point is that random events are unlikely to be able to keep a system highly ordered and concentrated, just as random twists on a Rubik's cube are unlikely to solve it. Since there can't exist any top-down omniscience in the universe, the probability of maintaining ordered systems trends towards zero on a large enough scale. This is why one can keep small things in order for a while, but large endeavors unravel more quickly. For the same reason, small things grow faster, such as a saplings grow to trees, but trees don't grow to the moon.

Order is more impossible to maintain over asymptotic time horizons because it requires synchrony (coordination) which eventually becomes gridlock.

Higher entropy (disorder) means greater randomness because every possible outcome is more equiprobable. This is related to information content in that if every possible outcome of the signal is equiprobable then there is no way to compress the signal. Whereas, if some patterns are more frequent than others, we can use for example RLE (run length encoding) to compress the more frequent instances replacing the pattern with a single symbol which is transmitted numerous times instead of transmitting the entire pattern numerous times.

Readers might be confused as to why randomness is akin to information. Because predictability is not adding anything. It is new patterns that are unexpected which add newness and thus life. Without a trend towards maximum randomness, the universe would become static and thus the future and past would collapse into the same thing and life would cease to exist.

In other words, the universe is an infinite journey of splitting matter into more possibilities. Life is the serendipity of matching our resonance to the inertial frames along that journey.

I don't see anything fundamental that metaphysics offers or would need to offer to explain our existence.

We simply can't exist without the trend to greater disorder, because the past and future would collapse into the same thing.

Our notions of good and evil are just artifacts of our current epochs and inertial frames.

Sorry I just don't think we are that special. There are other inertial frames out there we can't perceive. The universe is unbounded.

We must operate within out perceived inertial frames as that is what matters to our perception of our opportunity cost. Therefor in our frames of relevance, we must construct these notions we have. And thus they are real for us.

I wouldn't criticize your choices, because they are what you measured to be your optimum opportunity cost. But I don't think we really had a choice if we were acting rationally and presuming we could attain perfect omniscience about our opportunity costs. But in the sense that we can't attain such perfect prescience, I agree that we have some freedom of choice (but on the universe scale it is all random chaotic soup any way). And at that level of inspection, I think you can make arguments for certain choices and religion. But if I broaden my scope, I don't see any fundamental truth about choice at the universe scale.

Edit: how can we have freedom of choice if we can't know the outcome of our choices, i.e. choices would be just akin to rolling a dice. Perhaps you tie this into statistical outcomes from certain choices, such a religion.

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[iamnotback]

The inertia of opportunity costs are not insurmountable not even for "Leftist". When I started posting in the forum I was a liberal agnostic. I had not only voted for Obama in 2008 I actually donated a fair amount of money to his campaign. I viewed religious people as kind and well meaning but mostly as simpletons. I viewed collectivism as a definite good. Now I am a Trump voter who views collectivism as inherently dangerous and am spending my time writing posts on the merits of Ethical Monotheism.

If you had told me 4 years ago what my positions would be today I would have laughed it off as impossible. I was not "converted" or swept up in a movement and I am not a member of any religious group. The change was simply the result of discovering that when subject to the crucible of repeated debates (many with you) my prior conceptualisation had a faulty foundation.  

It is quite amazing actually. It is the only instance I am aware of.

You seem to be an ethical idealist who wants to be well ground in logic and empiricism. So your idealism was swayed from the leftism because you were not able to support some of the frauds that became apparent to you as you investigated the details. Also it seems as you became a father, you thought much more about the role society played on the thinking/future of your offspring. But most leftists do not have their perceived opportunity cost tied into careful scientific analysis of the foundations. Their opportunity cost is too high because they don't have your objectivity and they are emotionally invested in their religion as a fundamental meaning for their life.

Being an idealist, you inherently want to find some fundamental truths that can add meaning to your existence and legacy.

I think you may be able to develop strong arguments for truths within our human frame of reference as it stands now.

I am interested in this concept about we enslave ourselves when we enslave others. But I just don't see a consistent truth. For example, every women I have ever been in a relationship has tried to enslave me to some degree. So should my reaction want to be to enslave women, i.e. adopt some "fundamentalist" faith which views the woman as the rib of the man. But what is the alternative? An open relationship? Btw, I think my current relationship is one of the best so far, because she doesn't push me too much (her wants are reasonable, such as family and lots of love which I think is totally beautiful qualities of a female and I feel almost a duty to give her what she wants so she can fulfill her life and be happy and I think that is what love is when you realize you appreciate the other person and want them to fulfill their opportunity costs).

I need to do more thinking and reflection on this.

It would be an amazing discovery if I were to become convinced that religion was a significant fundamental truth from my perspective. I have an affinity towards the ideals of Christianity. But I am not clear which aspects are fundamental and on what scope or scale (epochal or universal).

Btw I don't want to be the Satan that is trying to lead you astray by casting doubts or disrupting. I am speaking about my thought process. It isn't intended to corrupt anyone else's mind.

[CoinCube]

CoinCube, I am becoming very pessimistic about finding any fundamental, universal truth about choices we can make.
...

Lets examine the implications of our inability to determine universal truth.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem:
The #1 Mathematical Discovery of the 20th Century
https://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/

In 1931, the young mathematician Kurt Gödel made a landmark discovery, as powerful as anything Albert Einstein developed.

Gödel’s discovery not only applied to mathematics but literally all branches of science, logic and human knowledge. It has truly earth-shattering implications.

Oddly, few people know anything about it.

Allow me to tell you the story.

Mathematicians love proofs. They were hot and bothered for centuries, because they were unable to PROVE some of the things they knew were true.

So for example if you studied high school Geometry, you’ve done the exercises where you prove all kinds of things about triangles based on a list of theorems.

That high school geometry book is built on Euclid’s five postulates. Everyone knows the postulates are true, but in 2500 years nobody’s figured out a way to prove them.

Yes, it does seem perfectly reasonable that a line can be extended infinitely in both directions, but no one has been able to PROVE that. We can only demonstrate that they are a reasonable, and in fact necessary, set of 5 assumptions.

Towering mathematical geniuses were frustrated for 2000+ years because they couldn’t prove all their theorems. There were many things that were “obviously” true but nobody could figure out a way to prove them.

In the early 1900’s, however, a tremendous sense of optimism began to grow in mathematical circles. The most brilliant mathematicians in the world (like Bertrand Russell, David Hilbert and Ludwig Wittgenstein) were convinced that they were rapidly closing in on a final synthesis.

A unifying “Theory of Everything” that would finally nail down all the loose ends. Mathematics would be complete, bulletproof, airtight, triumphant.

In 1931 this young Austrian mathematician, Kurt Gödel, published a paper that once and for all PROVED that a single Theory Of Everything is actually impossible.

Gödel’s discovery was called “The Incompleteness Theorem.”

If you’ll give me just a few minutes, I’ll explain what it says, how Gödel discovered it, and what it means – in plain, simple English that anyone can understand.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says:

“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”

You can draw a circle around all of the concepts in your high school geometry book. But they’re all built on Euclid’s 5 postulates which are clearly true but cannot be proven. Those 5 postulates are outside the book, outside the circle.

You can draw a circle around a bicycle but the existence of that bicycle relies on a factory that is outside that circle. The bicycle cannot explain itself.

Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove. Any system of logic or numbers that mathematicians ever came up with will always rest on at least a few unprovable assumptions.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to everything that is subject to the laws of logic. Incompleteness is true in math; it’s equally true in science or language or philosophy.

And: If the universe is mathematical and logical, Incompleteness also applies to the universe.

Gödel created his proof by starting with “The Liar’s Paradox” — which is the statement

“I am lying.”

“I am lying” is self-contradictory, since if it’s true, I’m not a liar, and it’s false; and if it’s false, I am a liar, so it’s true.

So Gödel, in one of the most ingenious moves in the history of math, converted the Liar’s Paradox into a mathematical formula. He proved that any statement requires an external observer.

No statement alone can completely prove itself true.

His Incompleteness Theorem was a devastating blow to the “positivism” of the time. Gödel proved his theorem in black and white and nobody could argue with his logic.

Yet some of his fellow mathematicians went to their graves in denial, believing that somehow or another Gödel must surely be wrong.

He wasn’t wrong. It was really true. There are more things than are true than you can prove.

A “theory of everything” – whether in math, or physics, or philosophy – will never be found. Because it is impossible.

OK, so what does this really mean? Why is this super-important, and not just an interesting geek factoid?

Here’s what it means:

• Faith and Reason are not enemies. In fact, the exact opposite is true! One is absolutely necessary for the other to exist. All reasoning ultimately traces back to faith in something that you cannot prove.
• All closed systems depend on something outside the system.
• You can always draw a bigger circle but there will still be something outside the circle.

• Reasoning inward from a larger circle to a smaller circle is “deductive reasoning.”

Example of a deductive reasoning:
1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates is a man
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal

• Reasoning outward from a smaller circle to a larger circle is “inductive reasoning.”

Examples of inductive reasoning:
1. All the men I know are mortal
2. Therefore all men are mortal

1. When I let go of objects, they fall
2. Therefore there is a law of gravity that governs falling objects

Notice than when you move from the smaller circle to the larger circle, you have to make assumptions that you cannot 100% prove.

For example you cannot PROVE gravity will always be consistent at all times. You can only observe that it’s consistently true every time. You cannot prove that the universe is rational. You can only observe that mathematical formulas like E=MC^2 do seem to perfectly describe what the universe does.

Nearly all scientific laws are based on inductive reasoning. These laws rest on an assumption that the universe is logical and based on fixed discoverable laws.

You cannot PROVE this. (You can’t prove that the sun will come up tomorrow morning either.) You literally have to take it on faith. In fact most people don’t know that outside the science circle is a philosophy circle. Science is based on philosophical assumptions that you cannot scientifically prove. Actually, the scientific method cannot prove, it can only infer.

(Science originally came from the idea that God made an orderly universe which obeys fixed, discoverable laws.)

Now please consider what happens when we draw the biggest circle possibly can – around the whole universe. (If there are multiple universes, we’re drawing a circle around all of them too):

• There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove
• The universe as we know it is finite – finite matter, finite energy, finite space and 13.7 billion years time
• The universe is mathematical. Any physical system subjected to measurement performs arithmetic. (You don’t need to know math to do addition – you can use an abacus instead and it will give you the right answer every time.)
• The universe (all matter, energy, space and time) cannot explain itself
• Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. By definition it is not possible to draw a circle around it.
• If we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and apply Gödel’s theorem, then we know what is outside that circle is not matter, is not energy, is not space and is not time. It’s immaterial.
• Whatever is outside the biggest circle is not a system – i.e. is not an assemblage of parts. Otherwise we could draw a circle around them. The thing outside the biggest circle is indivisible.
• Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause, because you can always draw a circle around an effect.

We can apply the same inductive reasoning to the Origin of Information:

• In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial.
• The information appears to have come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time
• All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.
• Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.

My book Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design explores the Origin of Information question in depth.

When we add information to the equation, we conclude that not only is the thing outside the biggest circle infinite and immaterial, it is also conscious.

Isn’t it interesting how all these things sound suspiciously similar to how theologians have described God for thousands of years?

So it’s hardly surprising that 80-90% of the people in the world believe in some concept of God. Yes, it’s intuitive to most folks. But Gödel’s theorem indicates it’s also supremely logical. In fact it’s the only position one can take and stay in the realm of reason and logic.

The person who proudly proclaims, “You’re a man of faith, but I’m a man of science” doesn’t understand the roots of science or the nature of knowledge!

Interesting aside…

If you visit the world’s largest atheist website, Infidels, on the home page you will find the following statement:

“Naturalism is the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.”

If you know Gödel’s theorem, you know that all logical systems must rely on something outside the system. So according to Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, the Infidels cannot be correct. If the universe is logical, it has an outside cause.

Thus atheism violates the laws of reason and logic.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem definitively proves that science can never fill its own gaps. We have no choice but to look outside of science for answers.

The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.

Euclid’s 5 postulates aren’t formally provable and God is not formally provable either. But… just as you cannot build a coherent system of geometry without Euclid’s 5 postulates, neither can you build a coherent description of the universe without a First Cause and a Source of order.

Thus faith and science are not enemies, but allies. It’s been true for hundreds of years, but in 1931 this skinny young Austrian mathematician named Kurt Gödel proved it.

No time in the history of mankind has faith in God been more reasonable, more logical, or more thoroughly supported by science and mathematics.

“Without mathematics we cannot penetrate deeply into philosophy.
Without philosophy we cannot penetrate deeply into mathematics.
Without both we cannot penetrate deeply into anything.”

-Leibniz

“Math is the language God wrote the universe in.”

As you said we can develop strong arguments for truths within our human frame of reference as it stands now. For truths outside of our frame of reference we must rely on faith. This is true not just of religion but of all knowledge.

[OROBTC]

...

Very nice, CoinCube!

Perry Marshall might not be thinking big enough though:

1)  Re the atheists he wrote:

If you visit the world’s largest atheist website, Infidels, on the home page you will find the following statement:

“Naturalism is the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.”

If you know Gödel’s theorem, you know that all logical systems must rely on something outside the system. So according to Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, the Infidels cannot be correct. If the universe is logical, it has an outside cause.

I did note that he wrote "If the universe is logical..."  That might not be a good assumption.  It would also be hard to prove...


2)  I remember in college some of our friends would on occasion discuss "cosmic things".  One of my friends was a very smart electrical engineering student.  He had his own little theory (not fleshed out, but you'll get the idea):

That the universe when (if it) contracts and re-emerges changes various physical constants (Planck's Constant, the speed of light, gravitational force, etc.) might change too.  This would have all kinds of interesting knock-on affects (like life!).  My friend's notion, of course, cannot be proved.

But, can we really prove that the above three examples never change?  Better yet: Can we prove it?

[CoinCube]

God Or Moral Nihilism
https://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4871

Who needs God? Morality is a social construction

If morality is a social construction, then morality does not exist. Just because we call some things ‘good’ and others ‘evil’ doesn’t mean that good and evil refer to anything.
...
If morality doesn’t exist for real, then neither can morality be a useful fiction. Something can only be useful (have extrinsic value) if the thing that it is useful for is actually valuable i.e., intrinsically valuable. If we say that the false belief in morality makes us happy and is therefore good, we are introducing a moral category again; the notion that anything that makes human beings happy is good and anything that makes us unhappy is bad. We arrive at the morally good and bad once again.

All people who think that morality is a social construction and is good/useful, have reintroduced moral realism; the notion that good and evil actually exist. This is a contradiction and therefore cannot be true. You cannot believe that morality is merely a social construction and in moral realism.

If you claim to believe that morality is a social construction, then you are a moral nihilist. All us adults know that Father Christmas doesn’t really exist and you’re effectively claiming that morality doesn’t either.

The Argument from Religion - A Transcendental Argument

Morality can’t be found from a scientific examination of nature. So if morality is not in nature it must be beyond nature – the supernatural.

Where does value come from? It’s not found in the world reduced to scientific facts. Nonetheless, it’s found in the world as we actually experience it. We find value in all sorts of things. We value our friendships, and hopefully at least some of our family members. We value certain books, films, projects, beautiful days, ‘nature,’ and music. So value exists. We experience it. A transcendental argument asks – what must the world be like for this experience to be possible? There must be more to the world than scientific facts. The value of the world that we discover must have its basis in something else.
...
Morality is invisible to science because science cannot see value. Anything invisible to science must either not exist at all, or it must be nonphysical. Our name for the nonphysical aspects of reality is the spiritual, i.e., the divine, transcendent, God.
...
There is remarkable agreement among those at the higher reaches of many world religions. High level Buddhists, Catholic monks, Kabbalists, Sufis, all describe ultimate reality in similar terms and much of what they say can be summed up in the cliché, ‘all is one.’

If all is one, then my treating you badly is really treating myself badly.
...
God or Moral Nihilism

Your choices are God or moral nihilism. Social constructionism and Darwinian evolutionary theory can only allow you to say that we think and act like morality exists, not that morality does exist. Social construction and Darwinism certainly have nothing to say about the truth of morality. In fact, they suppose the opposite. In the first case, we just made it up, like Father Christmas. That’s called moral nihilism. The second case, Darwinians might try to say that morality is useful in promoting survival, but since they cannot establish that surviving has any intrinsic value, they cannot logically point to the extrinsic value of morality. Nothing has extrinsic value if nothing has intrinsic value and since the existence of intrinsic value is precisely what needs explaining in morality, Darwin and his followers have nothing interesting to say on the topic.

If you choose moral nihilism, just remember what you are choosing...If moral nihilism is true, then your life has no value and neither does anybody else’s.

The torturer will be right to start removing your fingers. Why? Because it’s fun and you can have nothing to say on the subject...The fact that you don’t want to die is only relevant if morality exists and morality requires another person to respect your wishes and desires. If you claim that your wishes and desires are nonetheless important, then you will be unable to say why my wishes and desires are not important too...we can go back to gassing the Jews, human sacrifice, and seeing how loud we can get torture victims to scream and any other psychotic things you can think of. If you must respect my wishes and desires, then you are behaving morally. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

[CoinCube]

This is why only technology is responsible for sustainable gains in the lives of the people. Note CoinCube and I have postulated that in the theory of contentionism (a new term we invented) the top-down order (with socialism being one form) plays a role in the organization necessary to spawn new entropy, e.g. decentralizing technology.

Contentionism posits that some top down control is needed to restrain anarchy. It also posits that all such top down control has a tendency to grow without restraint.
When top-down control becomes problematic (limits free discourse or prosperity) a counterforce is needed to circumvent the top down control.

It is the existence of the counterforce that is important.

Hard to believe those discussions on top-down control were almost three years ago.

Lets look at the distinction between the chaos of aggression and the chaos of productivity.  The former is often pure destructive chaos while the latter is the controlled harvesting of entropy to achieve a higher order state.

This is the fundamental bedrock of life itself which has mastered the deadly dance of harvesting entropy.  Absorb too much entropy and the species succumbs so mutation tumors and death. Absorb too little and the species stagnates eventually succumbing to competition from other more entropic/evolved species. Life walks the edge of a razor maximizing the harvesting of entropy.

You haven't defined "harvesting" mathematically. And it appears to have no meaning.

Anonymity allows uncontrolled destructive chaos.

And who are you to judge that individual freedom and responsibility produces destructive outcomes?
I am an anarchist. I believe in the math of optimal fitness.

So my task is thus to show that the math of optimal fitness requires anarchy to be contained and limited.
I accept your challenge.

When I referred to the harvesting of entropy what I meant was that life requires entropy to exist, but critically such entropy must be limited and contained. Entropy/mutation must not be allowed to exceed the error threshold. Error threshold was developed from Quasispecies Theory by Eigen and Schuster to describe the dynamics of replicating nucleic acid under the influence of mutation and selection.

If replication was without entropy no mutants would arise and evolution would cease. On the other hand, evolution would also be impossible if the entropy/error rate of replication were too high (only a few mutation produce an improvement, but most will lead to deterioration). Error threshold allows us to quantify the resulting minimal replication accuracy (ie maximal mutation/entropy rate) that still maintains adaptation.

This can be shown analytically at its clearest in an extreme form of a fitness landscape which contains a single peak of fitness x > 1 with all other variations having a fitness of 1. With an infinite population there is a phase transition at a particular error rate p (the mutation rate at each loci in a genetic sequence). In Eigen and Schuster (1979), this critical error rate is determined analytically to be p = ln(x)/L (where L is the chromosome length). When this mutation/entropy rate is exceeded the proportion of the infinite population on the fitness peak drops to chance levels.

The can be thought of intuitively as a balance between exploitation and exploration in genetic search. In the limit of zero entropy/mutation successive generations of selection remove all variety from the population and the population converges to a single point. If the entropy/mutation rates are too excessive the evolutionary process degenerates into random search with no exploitation of the information acquired in preceding generations.

Thus the optimum entropy rate should maximize the search done through mutation subject to the constraint of not losing information already gained.
Any optimal entropy rate must lie between the two extremes, but its precise position will depend on several factors especially the structure of the fitness landscape.

It is also worth noting that at least with genetic algorithms natural selection tends to reduce the mutation/entropy rates on rugged landscapes (but not on smooth ones) so as to avoid the production of harmful mutations, even though this short-term benefit limits adaptation over the long term.

So what is the informational value of the collective (aka socialism) which appears to me to be chains on our individual ankles? What do we lose by discarding it so that individuals can optimize more freely?

I posit that your analysis undervalues the utility of socialism.

I agree that socialism currently has negative utility. As you stated the power vacuum is pushing us towards every greater socialism and setting us up for collapse. It is a system out of balance. However, some degree of socialism is needed to find optimal fitness.

Socialism and anarchism are in constant opposition. Anarchism is needed to combat the evils/suboptimal outcomes of unrestrained socialism as you have convincingly demonstrated. However, socialism is likewise needed to combat the evils/suboptimal outcomes of unrestrained anarchism.

The informational value of socialism is that it smooth’s the fitness curve. Anarchy if left unchecked results in an ever steeper curve. This has been shown to reduce the rate of evolution/change as it forces convergence onto the nearest local valley or local optima.

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000187

Thus unrestrained anarchism increases short term fitness at the cost of long term optimization/adaptation. To borrow from your corporation analogy the proper role of socialism is to help ensure trailblazers survive long enough to eliminate the economic friction. In a landscape with an extremely steep fitness curve those individuals may not survive or succeed (crossing those barriers involves significant cost). We can get stuck in a higher valley (of the N dimensional solution space).    

In its most extreme form anarchism can drive the entropy of society past the Error Threshold at which point information is destroyed rather than created.  A madmax outcome is indeed possible. It would arise from the death throes of excessive socialism. Like a spring pushed too far in one direction a system trying to find equilibrium is likely to overshoot in the opposite direction when the unstable order dissolves. In the industrial era the backlash lead to communism. The collapse of socialism may lead us to pure anarchy = madmax.

So we are really looking for is congruence or harmony (aka resonance and I have written about this w.r.t. to potential energy and even explored Tesla's work) but if we can't eliminate all necessary barriers then increased degrees-of-freedom in one sub-area might be suboptimal, ineffective, or perhaps counter-productive.

This is the key point. Unrestrained anarchism does not eliminate all necessary barriers. Instead it forces conformity to the nearest local optima effectively raising barriers to distant more global optima. I am an anarchist currently because the solutions of anarchy including anonymous cryptocurrency are what is needed to restore balance in our era. Had I been around at the dawn of the industrial revolution I would have been a socialist.

Now we have moved on to a discussion of the nature of the counterforce.

[Bacotan Bae]

Hopefully with a bitcoin can save the world economy from devastation. We all know, too much currency makes many problems in global trade, many countries that do not want to use another country's currency so that they use the strongest currencies.

[bitllionaire]

Hopefully with a bitcoin can save the world economy from devastation. We all know, too much currency makes many problems in global trade, many countries that do not want to use another country's currency so that they use the strongest currencies.

yes that is very right, bitcoin is decentralize currency and is  not belong to a single country or a state and having same value everywhere. therefore there is no need to convert bitcoin to any local currency and you can use it any where having the same value.

[iamnotback]

If you know Gödel’s theorem, you know that all logical systems must rely on something outside the system. So according to Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, the Infidels cannot be correct. If the universe is logical, it has an outside cause.

I did note that he wrote "If the universe is logical..."  That might not be a good assumption.  It would also be hard to prove...

That is not a correct understanding of the incompleteness theorems. The theorem concludes that any complete system of logic (axioms) is inconsistent.

That is entirely consistent with the fact that we can't have a total ordering of the universe and exist, which is what I've been explaining:

Order is more impossible to maintain over asymptotic time horizons because it requires synchrony (coordination) which eventually becomes gridlock.

It does not imply that there must be something extra outside of the unbounded natural universe. Sorry. You are mistaken.

Now if you want to assert that unbounded implies something extra, you might be able to make a point but then metaphysics is just physics.

[iamnotback]

I think all this theoretical divagation is taking our eyes off the ball.

The leftists are going to fuck up this world with another megadeath...

@iamnotback

i really wonder how can you pretend to create disruptive tech if you miss to understand the basics of human nature and lack the proper amount of empathy to get over traditional beliefs.

people like you, despite the (supposed) bright mind, fail miserably because they are missing something they will never get (or at least they don't try to).

you sound more closely to a monkey rather than a man of the future that is going to be effective in the future.

This young South Korean leftist said to me yesterday that woman's pay (in Asia I presume) is statistically 70% of that of men (guess he never considered the reality that women produce less than men on average bcz they have other priorities such as child bearing), and he said employers must be forced to follow the law which dictates equal pay for the genders (presumably in South Korean because I don't know if that is a law in the Philippines).

I replied to him that just because he can measure an inequality doesn't mean he can define a criteria of equality of pay for enforcement. I said how do you decide whose pay is not equal when each person's skills are so varied and unique? For example, there is no other person in the world who could write my whitepaper, so who decides whether my pay is too high or if some other person should be paid as much as me? Only the buyer of the services or labor can decide how much it is work, i.e. only the free market can decide. It is impossible for the law to decide. Also even the measurement is statistical nonsense, because the measurement criteria has the same flaw (but I didn't dare try to confuse his limited "intellect" with such insight).

He replied that I didn't not address his point, and repeated the statistic and said, "it is the law".

Sorry I don't know how to explain to your dumb asses, that you are retarded. I might as well be speaking with a brick wall.

Yeah you keep wondering how I can create disruptive tech you retarded leftist dufus. I don't need to apologize to you for your insanity. I know how leftism results in megadeath every damn time throughout human history.

Hopefully you have a few more brain cells than that idiot Korean dude.

You leftists claim that you are for humanity, but in reality you are for megadeath. But you never quite figure that out, like a dog chasing his tail.

Btw, at the same time that Korean was making me depressed about the future of Millennials (I told him you youth can fuck up the world any way you want, I am old and I'll be passing on), a 18 year old hottie (white skin btw) was flirting with me in the immigration office. She provided her SMS number and I texted her that I was an old, sick fart, blind in one eye, etc and to move on. This made her more interested. Lol. Go figure. I think you have a lot to learn about the reality of human nature and this world.

After that, I got a haircut at the mall, and some gorgeous brown skin 22 year old was washing my hair, smiling, and joking with me and inviting me to her 22nd bday party on Sunday. I looked in the mirror and don't know how any young lady could tolerate my old face with eye bags and wrinkles (but I guess I do still look a bit like Tom Cruise with the very short hair cut, if you overlook the eyes or consider the side view). She was telling me she loved my ash brown/blonde hair (I guess she ignored the white hair on the sides, lol). I told her I loved her blonde dye with highlights (and true it looked really great, with her red lipstick looked like one of the Korean dolls on MTV but with a brown complexion).

Oh and there was also the probably mid to late 20 year old Chinese+Spanish ancestry (long nose, long face, while skin, tall, caucasian body type) looking lady with a 4 year old daughter that was flirting with me at the receptionist's desk. I think she overheard me talking and joking with my hairdresser that if I married a younger lady, I would have to give her a child and that I loved to have another child but I might be too old but if I could maintain my sports, then maybe I could do it. There was this Western young lady getting a haircut next to me, and so I was talking about how I read that in the USA young ladies are getting birth control injections which make them infertile for 6 years. And I contrasted that against the ladies in the Philippines who want your baby even if you have no money to support the baby. My hairdresser suggested I should impregnate all the women in the salon. I was purposely trying to make that Western girl (she was quite attractive btw) feel not proud about her Western culture. She was absolutely silent even though I made a joke, "why didn't you tell my sister was getting a haircut today". I don't think she appreciated it, lol. She was on my blind eye (right) side, so I couldn't really see what she was up to without turning my head (another of the "gifts" that keeps on giving from someone in my past life).

If I wasn't sick, I wouldn't have any time to post on this forum. Lol. Seriously I am fucking sick. And it is really depressing because I could accomplish so much but my health seems to be royally fucked up. And I am losing hope and patience. Lacking sleep again, abdominal pain, chronic fatigure, headache, can't function normally. Four years of this fucking shit (and 6 years of not always pleasant decline before that)   :middlefinger: (to it all)

I am fucking tired. And posting on this forum is just a coping mechanism for not facing that reality that my life is destroyed.

Well MAYBE, but just a tiny little maybe, that we see changes happening so fast we don't even truly understand how it's even possible.
So MAYBE that your "all will be well" argument is bullshit.

And maybe because of that illogical fear man will create a socialism that causes a megadeath. Ahem. Actually not maybe, guaranteed.

I would take the 0.0000000000000000001% chance that that man could destroy his environment totally to the 100% chance of socialism causing another megadeath as it always does throughout human history.

And guaranteed because retards (like you) are more populous. So you enjoy culling yourselves. Go forth and reap what you sow.

[iamnotback]

If moral nihilism is true, then your life has no value and neither does anybody else’s.

That is the truth (he means everlasting value or absolute value). But we emotionally desire to have some greater meaning, so we invent the concept that morality has an absolute truth outside of the relativism of the ephemeral free market.

I find this Cook to be an intelligent idiot or sophist. He ramblings on and on and doesn't clearly state what he is trying to say. I understand what he means, but most readers will be completely lost by the divigation of his choice of elucidation/analogy and terminology.

Cook's strawman is that if moralism is relative to what society (the free market) perceives to valuable, then moralism isn't absolute (or in his terminology then it doesn't exist). Well yeah duh, that is a hard thing to accept because man wants to believe he has some absolute meaning. But there is absolutely no evidence or way to prove any absolute.

So again I maintain my pessimism on finding any absolute, universal truth.

I have explained that we can't exist (the past and future will collapse) if there could exist an absolute truth. We can't have it both ways. In order to exist, we must accept that we aren't eternal. If we want eternal, then we can't exist. Choose.

Please review my archives for the recent posts explaining the science of what I have just written above. Perhaps CoinCube could quote for you all if he is interested, to prove he even understood what I had been writing lately (not sure if he does).

(Note this discussion is rather close to me at this point, because I feel I may not live much longer, so I having to face this question now about what happens after death. I am hoping for a nice dreamland, which is roughly equivalent to I go into a nice dream and don't realize I stopped dreaming because my body died. At this point, I just want relief. I am tired of this struggle.)

[iamnotback]

Hard to believe those discussions on top-down control were almost three years ago.

Hard to believe I have accomplished so little in 3 years. And that I have been sick every damn day for those 3 years. What a waste.

[iamnotback]

That high school geometry book is built on Euclid’s five postulates. Everyone knows the postulates are true, but in 2500 years nobody’s figured out a way to prove them.

Yes, it does seem perfectly reasonable that a line can be extended infinitely in both directions, but no one has been able to PROVE that. We can only demonstrate that they are a reasonable, and in fact necessary, set of 5 assumptions.

Actually Euclid is incorrect.

A line can't remain perfectly "straight" over unbounded extent of spacetime.

His model only worked in an imaginary or bounded world with a total ordering.

Thus all the math that follows from it is somewhat useful but not absolute. It fails in the real and theoretical world at certain extremes or scales.

...I'll write more later... need to try to sleep...

[CoinCube]

I think all this theoretical divagation is taking our eyes off the ball.

The leftists are going to fuck up this world with another megadeath...

You should try to be less pessimistic. If we accept that top-down order (with socialism being one form) plays a role in the organization necessary to spawn new entropy, e.g. decentralizing technology. We must consider the possibility that the current global order is actually lacking in top-down control.

This idea is anathema to the anarchist and hard for us to accept as we live in a the west with our tradition of individualism and moral self-control. However, we must remember that overall freedom is a global metric. The majority of humanity still lives under governments like oligarchic China and tyrannical Saudi Arabia. Thus in the near term the system may simply be trending towards towards increased global freedom which for now requires the reigning in of the nation state.

The great push back towards individual freedoms may simply be the task of the next generations who will inherit a world where the power of the nation state has faded.

Order is more impossible to maintain over asymptotic time horizons because it requires synchrony (coordination) which eventually becomes gridlock.

As we expand across the domains of time, knowledge, and power our spiritual struggle grows ever heavier.

[CoinCube]

I remember in college some of our friends would on occasion discuss "cosmic things".  One of my friends was a very smart electrical engineering student.  He had his own little theory (not fleshed out, but you'll get the idea):

That the universe when (if it) contracts and re-emerges changes various physical constants (Planck's Constant, the speed of light, gravitational force, etc.) might change too.  This would have all kinds of interesting knock-on affects (like life!).  My friend's notion, of course, cannot be proved.

But, can we really prove that the above three examples never change?

OROBTC I am among those who thinks your friend may be correct.

I have explained that we can't exist (the past and future will collapse) if there could exist an absolute truth...

Please review my archives for the recent posts explaining the science of what I have just written above. Perhaps CoinCube could quote for you all if he is interested, to prove he even understood what I had been writing lately (not sure if he does).

iamnotback you have not made the case that an absolute truth cannot exist though perhaps you made this argument somewhere I am not aware of. In your essay The Universe you instead made this claim.

"If the speed-of-light were infinite, the time domain (and thus reality) would collapse to a single point, because all future changes in configuration would occur instantly."

There are a minority of scientists who believe that this is the exact the condition of the universe at the start of the big bang.

Scientists Think the Speed of Light Has Slowed, and They're Trying to Prove It
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/light-speed-slowed

But in the late 1990s, a handful of physicists challenged one of the fundamental assumptions underlying Einstein’s theory of special relativity: Instead of the speed of light being constant, they proposed that light was faster in the early universe than it is now.

This theory of the variable speed of light was—and still is—controversial. But according to a new paper published in November in the physics journal Physical Review D, it could be experimentally tested in the near future. If the experiments validate the theory, it means that the laws of nature weren’t always the same as what we experience today and would require a serious revision of Einstein’s theory of gravity.

"The whole of physics is predicated on the constancy of the speed of light."

...
So just how much faster was light speed just after the Big Bang? According to Magueijo and his colleague Niayesh Afshordi, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo, the answer is “infinitely” faster.

The duo cite light speed as being at least 32 orders of magnitude faster than its currently accepted speed of 300 million meters per second—this is merely the lower bounds of the faster light speed, however. As you get closer to the Big Bang, the speed of light approaches infinity.

On this view, the speed of light was faster because the universe was incredibly hot at the beginning. According to Afshordi, their theory requires that the early universe was at least a toasty 10²⁸ degrees Celsius (to put this in perspective, the highest temperature we are capable of realizing on Earth is about 10¹⁶ degrees Celsius, a full 12 orders of magnitude cooler).

As the universe expanded and cooled below this temperature, light underwent a phase shift—much like liquid water changes into ice once the temperature reaches a certain threshold—and arrived at the speed we know today: 300 million meters per second. Just like ice won’t get more "icy" the colder the temperature gets, the speed of light has not been slowing down since it reached 300 million meters per second.

If Magueijo and Afshordi’s theory of variable light speed is correct, then the speed of light decreased in a predictable way—which means with sensitive enough instruments, this light speed decay can be measured.

"Varying speed of light is going back to the foundations of physics and saying perhaps there are things beyond relativity."

...
Now that they’ve used the variable light speed theory to put a hard number on the spectral index, all that remains to be seen is whether increasingly sensitive experiments probing the CMB and distribution of galaxies will verify or overturn their theory. Both Magueijo and Afshordi expect these results to be available at some point in the decade. But Marsh and other physicists aren't so sure.

If their theory is correct, it will overturn one of the main axiom’s underlying Einstein’s theory of special relativity and force physicists to reconsider the nature of gravity. According to Afshordi, however, it is more or less accepted in the physics community that Einstein’s theory of gravity cannot be the whole story

Is Light Slowing Down?
http://opfocus.org/index.php?topic=story&v=8&s=4

it was observed by Hubble at the beginning of the XX century that galaxies appear to be moving away from the Earth at a velocity that is proportional to their distance from us. The standard explanation is that galaxies are being thrown apart from the expansion of space-time. Imagine drawing some red spots on a balloon and inflating it, the spots (galaxies) would recede from each other at a speed proportional to their distance due to the dilatation of the plastic (space-time). The drawback of this hypothesis is that it needs to postulate the existence of the famous dark matter, which has never been observed and would still constitute 70% of the Universe’s mass. However, if c were decreasing over time, the Hubble effect would turn out to be a simple optical effect, eliminating the need to postulate the existence of the dark matter, as proposed by P. I. Wold back in 1935.

The evidence reported by Sanejouand points towards a possible slowing down of c of about 0.02-0.03 m/s per year. This is extremely small compared with the actual value of c: it would be like having 1 billion dollars in a bank account and losing a few cents per year. However, "the constancy of the speed of light is one of the fundamental pillars of contemporary physics," explains Sanejouand, "so the possibility that it may instead vary (even at a slow rate) has far reaching consequences (although mostly on the theoretical side)." Even though the hypothesis of the slowing down of the speed of light is still a very speculative one, "people like Barrow, Magueijo, as well as John Moffat," Sanejouand concludes, "have opened the way by showing that physically consistent theories in which the speed of light is varying in time can indeveloped in a safe and rigorous way."

Speed of Light Not so Constant After All
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/speed-light-not-so-constant-after-all

Researchers led by optical physicist Miles Padgett at the University of Glasgow demonstrated the effect by racing photons that were identical except for their structure. The structured light consistently arrived a tad late. Though the effect is not recognizable in everyday life and in most technological applications, the new research highlights a fundamental and previously unappreciated subtlety in the behavior of light.

The speed of light in a vacuum, usually denoted c, is a fundamental constant central to much of physics, particularly Einstein’s theory of relativity...The researchers produced pairs of photons and sent them on different paths toward a detector...Measurements revealed that the structured light consistently arrived several micrometers late per meter of distance traveled.

[coinits]

That high school geometry book is built on Euclid’s five postulates. Everyone knows the postulates are true, but in 2500 years nobody’s figured out a way to prove them.

Yes, it does seem perfectly reasonable that a line can be extended infinitely in both directions, but no one has been able to PROVE that. We can only demonstrate that they are a reasonable, and in fact necessary, set of 5 assumptions.

Actually Euclid is incorrect.

A line can't remain perfectly "straight" over unbounded extent of spacetime.

His model only worked in an imaginary or bounded world with a total ordering.

Thus all the math that follows from it is somewhat useful but not absolute. It fails in the real and theoretical world at certain extremes or scales.

...I'll write more later... need to try to sleep...

You predicted BTC to crash to less than $100 by now. You predicted XMR was a nothing coin. Care to offer your thoughts now?

[CoinCube]

You predicted BTC to crash to less than $100 by now. You predicted XMR was a nothing coin. Care to offer your thoughts now?

I have not really been following all iamnotbacks BTC predictions but I am aware of the following predictions.

On October 14th 2014 when the price was around $374 he predicted a sustained BTC decline to $150.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624223.msg9195517#msg9195517
It did not get there but it did decline and spiked down close to that on January 14th 2015.

He also more or less predicted a rally on Nov 7th when the price was $704. That has been accurate.  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1669830.msg16769509#msg16769509

His predictions have not been perfect but overall he has been more accurate then most.

[STT]

It does also depend which currency you consider bitcoin in.   Surely there is some rising country with a national currency comparing well or least far better then dollar vs bitcoin.

Dollar is not a solid rock to measure distance by, it moves all by itself.  Just about the price of anything vs dollar should rise over time if we consider its decline since 1913

[coinits]

You predicted BTC to crash to less than $100 by now. You predicted XMR was a nothing coin. Care to offer your thoughts now?

I have not really been following all iamnotbacks BTC predictions but I am aware of the following predictions.

On October 14th 2014 when the price was around $374 he predicted a sustained BTC decline to $150.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624223.msg9195517#msg9195517
It did not get there but it did decline and spiked down close to that on January 14th 2015.

He also more or less predicted a rally on Nov 7th when the price was $704. That has been accurate.  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1669830.msg16769509#msg16769509

His predictions have not been perfect but overall he has been more accurate then most.

He categorically predicted the complete collapse of BTC and XMR.

[CoinCube]

He categorically predicted the complete collapse of BTC and XMR.

I have not seen him predict the complete collapse of BTC and I have read a good portion (but definitely not all) of his stuff. Do you have a link to back that up?

I remember him arguing that BTC will eventually centralize and fall under government control way back in 2014 but even in that scenario BTC would not necessarily collapse. It would probably become some kind of official government quasi-fiat money and would probably be quite valuable.