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thaaanos
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February 06, 2014, 09:43:48 PM |
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I contend that it's not logically possible to fully comprehend what life is. It seems pretty obvious to me (though others might disagree) that any insight into the nature of life is introspective, and introspection alters that which is being studied. I wonder what Gödel would say? He could say something if life was a turing machine equivalent, but I think intelligence is a higher model than life, so intelligence can describe life. that life is essentially a purely mechanical event. This seems suspect. How can we observe events if we are made of them? To observe changes, it seems there must be some inertial reference, something that doesn't change. So how can our 'life essence' be both changing and unchanging? I understand that as a computation event, If Intelligence is a higher model, it can observe life, much similar that the *state* of a program can change, having structure unchanging. Consciousness he argues is therefore the mind/individual/operating system that runs the individual and controls the 'motion of the atoms'. This could get incredibly complex. Intuitively, it seems to work both ways: we exert effort over our bodies, yet we also receive various inputs that tell us about an outside world. We could go with a Monist interpretation and say that our brain-minds are fundamentally made of the same substance as all the other atoms. But I'm not altogether happy with such an interpretation. Monist materialism seems too dry and devoid of spirit or other human concepts like will (as in "willpower"). It seems convenient that there should be a separate layer, perhaps an underlying substrate on which the material world is built, or a "complementary half" if calling it a substrate seems unfair. Information, that's under everything... information and computation
One thing that I'm wondering about is the apparent 'oneness' of my mind, and the unawareness of having billions of neurons solving some problem. Why would consciousness feel like it's concentrated at a point if it's supposedly distributed across a huge amount of organic matter? Perhaps it's non-physical and therefore dimensionless? A dualist interpretation seems like a much better fit for this simple observation. The existence of "other" conscious entities (i.e.: the minds of people that are not you) could then be easily explained as poor communication.
I think conciousness and free will are reserved only for the top level of an organization, all the lower layers simply compute.
Further, I still haven't heard a satisfying explanation to the apparent dichotomy of entropic force and free will. If I really rack my brains and dig through some old discussions, I could probably prove (informally) that free will exists. Yet that would imply that entropy does not always increase, and that it's not the be-all-and-end-all of life.
My take is free will is just degrees of freedom which let you produce more entropy (more dimensions to radiate heat to-on a physical analogy), therefore it can sustain itself (the structure) from this access to new dimensions by controlling flow there, so entropy can still increase, even with the structure there. I think this process is behind gravity,life and intelligence |
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AnonyMint
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February 11, 2014, 05:12:39 PM
Last edit: February 11, 2014, 05:26:49 PM by AnonyMint |
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linusinthesapphire
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February 12, 2014, 08:37:58 AM |
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"the security of the network can not be incredibly tiny compared to the market cap*
* yet another reason we need a CPU-only coin, so the currency users (i.e. spenders) are the miners.
[/quote]
Yes!!! I THOUGHT OF THAT TOO! In the future all of us will be mining solo or pools and or acting as nodes to keep this whole thing together. Additionally, I believe that mining of bitcoin is unsustainable and the 'next altcoin' will have a feature in which the mining SERVES A PURPOSE similar to PrimeCoin or the proposed CureCoin. SETIcoin. Whatever. There will be dozens maybe hundreds of altcoins that serve a purpose due to the mining and that is where the VALUE is created and makes all of this something bigger than a zero sum investment ponzi.
first post. i've been lurking here for too long
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CoinCube (OP)
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February 12, 2014, 01:40:54 PM
Last edit: February 12, 2014, 04:24:20 PM by CoinCube |
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On a comic note people advertising bitcoin gambling in their signatures have been spamming the economics forum posting fantastic insights such as. "This is so wow" and "That is pretty cool" I am insulted. They spammed the threads above and below this one but didn't post here. Personally I don't see what the problem is. I think economic devastation and gambling are a natural fit  first post. i've been lurking here for too long
Welcome to our friendly talk on economic devastation (and related topics). Your first post was far better then mine. I think I posted something meaningless in the newbie jail if I recall. |
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thaaanos
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February 12, 2014, 02:08:14 PM
Last edit: February 12, 2014, 02:20:58 PM by thaaanos |
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"the security of the network can not be incredibly tiny compared to the market cap*
* yet another reason we need a CPU-only coin, so the currency users (i.e. spenders) are the miners.
Yes!!! I THOUGHT OF THAT TOO! In the future all of us will be mining solo or pools and or acting as nodes to keep this whole thing together. Additionally, I believe that mining of bitcoin is unsustainable and the 'next altcoin' will have a feature in which the mining SERVES A PURPOSE similar to PrimeCoin or the proposed CureCoin. SETIcoin. Whatever. There will be dozens maybe hundreds of altcoins that serve a purpose due to the mining and that is where the VALUE is created and makes all of this something bigger than a zero sum investment ponzi. first post. i've been lurking here for too long Securing the transaction history is a purpose enough, but I like primecoin for the reason that searching for prime numbers feels more secure as a proof of work than any NSA-designed hash function  Still I would also like to see all this cpu power to be used in a massive solver for a planned economy, maybe if we also add in the transactions the respective good or services bought and sold will do the trick, making the blockchain the ultimate global market log EDIT: seems we have already this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Trade_Item_NumberAny related encoding/accounting number for services? |
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CoinChex
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February 12, 2014, 04:27:46 PM |
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I am reading alot of black and white perspective on economic divisions, the movement of labor and technical progression of our society. The way capitalist markets work, may very well fail in the future. There is alot of support here and in history that could identify capitalism, and current socio-economic conditions, as failing to redistribute wealth appropriately.
Alternatively, I do believe that all progress is built in fits of starts and stops. Layers build on top of layers until we reach the present day. To argue that an entire system or way of life is going to completely disappear completely defies the laws of existence.
Consider labor and the workforce. It is quite possible that technology will replace the majority of skilled labor, and a large portion of blue collar labor. What is hard to quantify is the degree at which technology removes jobs as well as creates jobs.
Take an industry such as forestry for example. Rewind time 150 years to pre 1900's. At that time, men would chop down trees with axes and two man saws. There was no heavy equipment, no chain saws, no forestry equipment, no trucks. When that machinery was developed, it was a crushing blow to many of the men that would be required to cut down forests by hand! What a shock it must have been, and oh how technology was killing jobs!
Now fast forward to current day. We have heavy machinery, sure, but that machinery requires manpower to run it. It creates additional jobs in the form of Engineers that have to create the heavy machinery. This creates demand for heavy metals and rubber and plastics, as well as fuel for the equipment. There is safety equipment that men wear as well, a whole new industry of protective glasses and hard helmets that did not exist before. Consider that scientists spend time researching deforestation and climate change, and as such have also created jobs in industries that are symbiotic with forestry. Additionally, forestry companies employee teams of planters to replant forests and create renewable sources of lumber. Also consider that land is being bought and sold by realtors to the forestry companies for the purposes of harvesting.
To argue that the future of technology will ultimately completely destroy entire systems, would be a fallacy. Systems are created naturally over time and tend to be built on top of each other, with some portions regressing dramatically until new progress is built on the old layers. Given time we are going to see tremendous change in our economies and our labor markets. What exactly will come of all this is impossible to quantify.
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Rassah
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February 12, 2014, 05:43:54 PM |
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Additionally, I believe that mining of bitcoin is unsustainable and the 'next altcoin' will have a feature in which the mining SERVES A PURPOSE similar to PrimeCoin or the proposed CureCoin. SETIcoin. Whatever.
Serving a purpose other than money is not a good thing in currency. WHat if the purpose that was mined for was fully served, and there is no more need for it? Will miners just stop mining, letting the coin die? Will coin prices drop dramatically, because the part of their value that was service a purpose disapeared? Mining should have one and only purpose: to provide security for transactions. That's it. |
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WayneManBat
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February 13, 2014, 04:04:09 AM |
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a more anonymous coin to much to pick apart there moving on
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CoinCube (OP)
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February 14, 2014, 06:48:45 PM
Last edit: February 15, 2014, 11:29:44 AM by CoinCube |
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This is interesting to me as I used to be a global warming believer. I never had a chance to look into the data myself and global warming seemed to be the consensus view of the experts in the area. I looked up Sallie Baliunas (the astrophysicist who argued that global warming was due to cyclical variations in the sun rather then human activity). What really stood out to me was what happened after she published her 2003 article on the subject. An editorial revolt followed, with half of the journal's 10 editors eventually resigning, and the publisher subsequently stated that critics said that the conclusions of the paper "cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided.... the article had gone to four reviewers none of whom had recommended rejection. The reaction is perhaps as important as the paper itself. Events like this and the outright censorship of climate skeptics I have seen elsewhere are major red flags that objective discourse has broken down. So I changed my opinion to undecided. Could humanity be causing some global warming? Temperatures are warmer now then they have been in the recent past so it is possible. However, to become a global warming alarmist I would need convincing proof of the following. 1) That humans are responsible for the current warming and it is not due to sun activity or random variation. (This answer to this should become more clear with time) 2) The economic costs of warming exceed the benefits. (Lots of cold areas that will benefit from a little warming) 3) We should tackle this now instead of in the future. (Technology will be much better in the future and the costs to reduce human impact less burdensome) I am a conservationist. I believe it is important to protect and preserve natural resources for their continued sustainable use by humans. Much of modern environmentalism (the bloated descendant of conservationism) seems to have forgotten the human component. This is part of the reason why everyone hates environmentalist but you will be hard pressed to find people who hate conservationist. |
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AnonyMint
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February 14, 2014, 10:23:46 PM |
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Bitcoin might not be the right cryptocurrenciy, but it will probably stay in use for a couple of years till this community has settled upon what to do next.
Thank you all for doing what you're doing!
Thank you for the appreciation. It appears to me that Bitcoin will be around and growing for a long time, assuming that all the exchanges and miners can be brought into control of the government, which appears to be what is occurring now. After these controls are in place, then it can be allowed to go out to the masses. I believe this pause in the price rise coincides with the time needed to make this transformation. For as long as Bitcoin is really just a dollar (e.g. most merchants use something like Bitpay instead of receiving Bitcoins they receive fiat), then control over the exchanges (including localbitcoins which I noticed is ramping up KYC compliance) is sufficient control to tax everyone. How else would you cash out anonymously? All the anonymity I could add to a coin wouldn't stop the government from knowing if you still cashed out via an exchange which is required to report to the government your identity. There would still be other uses of the anonymity, such as government and others wouldn't necessarily know all the details of your coin spends that were to entities that don't know your identity. Thus we need to aim for a coin that becomes the unit-of-account for its sub-economy, i.e. I am suggesting the Knowledge Age may produce a bifurcated economy-- the physical and the virtual commerce. If we keep our coins and used them to spend in the virtual economy instead of exchanging them for dollars, then we would create this bifurcated economy with a unit-of-account which is not the dollar. The coming confiscations in the physical economy will motivate the virtual economy to break away, since it is a much more productive sector and doesn't want to be retarded by the dying industrial age (e.g. massive manufacturing overcapacity in China). I don't think Bitcoin is best suited to match the needs of this virtual economy. Bitcoin lacks ZERO transaction fees. Why should we pay for transactions in this new virtual economy when we don't need to and it is actually detrimental as I explained upthread. Bitcoin lacks always-on-by-default strong anonymity. Bitcoin doesn't keep pools small to keep transaction processing highly decentralized. Etc........... |
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AnonyMint
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February 14, 2014, 10:58:27 PM
Last edit: February 14, 2014, 11:26:01 PM by AnonyMint |
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CoinCube (OP)
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February 15, 2014, 03:22:04 AM
Last edit: February 15, 2014, 04:13:19 AM by CoinCube |
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CoinCube. AGW is a fraud. Environmentalism/Conservationism is a fraud. Rockefeller created and funded these.
Your leader Ted Turner...
My leader  Perhaps we should define our terms I am referring to the type of conservationism advocated by Sylva in 1664 who predates Rockefeller. Calling anthropogenic global warming a fraud is a very strong statement. It implies that the evidence conclusively shows that humans are not in any way contributing to increasing temperatures. You are voluntarily shifting the burden of proof. Unless the fraud you are referring to is the political push to tax industry regardless of the cause of the current warming. In this case your statement is overly terse. |
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LostDutchman
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February 15, 2014, 05:49:12 AM |
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CoinCube. AGW is a fraud. Environmentalism/Conservationism is a fraud. Rockefeller created and funded these.
Your leader Ted Turner...
My leader Perhaps we should define our terms I am referring to the type of conservationism advocated by Sylva in 1664 who predates Rockefeller. Calling anthropogenic global warming a fraud is a very strong statement. It implies that the evidence conclusively shows that humans are not in any way contributing to increasing temperatures. You are voluntarily shifting the burden of proof. Unless the fraud you are referring to is the political push to tax industry regardless of the cause of the current warming. In this case your statement is overly terse. Be careful now. You are sounding like Barry Goldwater, who was a TRUE conservative! My $.02.  |
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CoinCube (OP)
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February 15, 2014, 11:12:45 AM
Last edit: February 17, 2014, 06:17:20 AM by CoinCube |
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I associate with the economic theory discussed in this thread which calls for anarchism in balance with and constrained by socialism. I believe it is this combination in optimal/neutral equilibrium that is needed to achieve maximal progress and prosperity. Anarchism limits socialism <--> Socialism constrains anarchism It is my opinion that this economic theory is not anarchism. This is something better... this is something new.
Lacking a better term I am calling it neutralism for now. I suppose that would make me a neutralist. |
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AnonyMint
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February 15, 2014, 06:56:47 PM
Last edit: February 15, 2014, 07:52:29 PM by AnonyMint |
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Occam's Razor applies. AGW is proven fraud. We even hacked their emails and caught them admitting they were modifying temperature data, cherry picking models to fit their desired projections, and moving thermometers from shady grassland to concreted areas in direct sunlight. Please don't expect us to reprove every time they relaunch their junk science again. Energy is always conserved. Erecting Coasian barriers just causes a bottleneck and then the rush back to catch up with the external entropy means abrupt adjustment (e.g. megadeath, culling the population, taxing above the Laffer limit, etc). No one can top-down manage the trend to maximum entropy. I wish these self-important, do-gooders would understand the harm they do. George Carlin was spot on. His modern man rap is cool. |
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Impaler
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CryptoTalk.Org - Get Paid for every Post!
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February 15, 2014, 09:20:04 PM |
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Mint your really sounding like a crank now, the supposed incriminating e-mail's show no such thing and it takes intentional intellectual dishonesty to perceive them that way.
Cube's argument that anthropogenic global-warming may be turning into a dogma among climate scientists has a point, and it would be unhealthy for it to be so as any dogma in science would be. But this is not sufficient reason for a lay person to become 'undecided' as if this were a coin-flip issue, a theory becomes scientific dogma because it has won in the scientific debate at some point in the past, a debate that was won without the benefit of being the existing dogma. We should doubt the Dogma when it starts failing to make accurate predictions, or if the evidence that was the original deciding factor comes into doubt, but neither of these things has occurred.
What CC references is an alternative explanation involving the Sun, the Sun has not been recently discovered and scientists rejected it as an explanation decades ago before any dogma was established and before the whole issue became so politicized. The burden of proof is on opponents of APGW to both disprove APGW AND provide a better theory that predicts things that APGW fails to predict accurately. But until their are serious incorrect predictions in current theory no Lay Person would be justified in having more then the barest of skepticism.
A good example of a scientific dogma that people SHOULD be in doubt of is the Big-Bang, the theory has failed numerous times to predict our next set of telescopic observations, each failure has resulted in another 'patch' addition to the theory such as inflation, dark-matter, and most recently dark-energy. Yet the dogma is strongly enforced because of career inertia, the control of the paper-review process and even the allocation of the limited telescope observation time such that one really can't have a job as an astronomer without upholding the dogma. But even with these failures the proper mood should be Doubt on the part of Lay Persons, not disbelief or rejection, a core set of observations DO still match the theory and no better alternative theory has been proposed.
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CoinCube (OP)
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February 15, 2014, 10:00:22 PM
Last edit: February 15, 2014, 10:38:20 PM by CoinCube |
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Energy is always conserved. Erecting Coasian barriers just causes a bottleneck and then the rush back to catch up with the external entropy means abrupt adjustment (e.g. megadeath, culling the population, taxing above the Laffer limit, etc).
We have shown that some top down imposed order can never be completely eliminated. Some constraint is needed on any dynamic system (in this case human society). https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365141.msg4897280#msg4897280We also agree the socialism is likely to overshoot before stabilizing in it's proper diminishing role. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=365141.msg4941493#msg4941493I think you are picking the wrong fight in going to battle against conservationism. The areas conservationist focus on managing public use goods such as fisheries, wildlife management (sustainable hunting), water, soil conservation and sustainable forestry (on public lands) are the areas most likely to need some top down management for the immediate future. The free market has not yet developed robust ways to deal with these problems. The risks above (e.g. megadeath, culling the population, taxing above the Laffer limit, etc) result from across the board growth of collectivism to unsustainable levels leading to potential systemic collapse (a transition into an unbounded dynamic system). The solution is not to attack every instance of socialism (as some are needed), but to find a way to limit socialism so that it cannot grow to the point where that growth threatens the entire system. Small localized Coasian barriers are not problematic as these can be gradually unwound once a free market solution is developed. It is systemic instability that is the true danger. Environmentalism especially on its fringes has some wacky ideas. These folks are much more deserving of scorn. However, even here there is the potential for common ground. Many environmentalist advocate sustainability above all else. I suspect if they understood the economic ideas discussed up-thread some would be supportive. But this is not sufficient reason for a lay person to become 'undecided' as if this were a coin-flip issue, a theory becomes scientific dogma because it has won in the scientific debate at some point in the past, a debate that was won without the benefit of being the existing dogma. We should doubt the Dogma when it starts failing to make accurate predictions, or if the evidence that was the original deciding factor comes into doubt, but neither of these things has occurred.
I will be honest that in this area I am a complete lay person. I have not read any of the leaked e-mails in question nor have I read any of the primary literature. Has the climate literature made a convincing case that A) The economic costs of warming exceed the benefits. (Lots of cold areas that will benefit from a little warming) B) We should tackle this now instead of in the future. (Technology will be much better in the future and the costs to reduce human impact less burdensome) If the answer is yes I will have to educate myself further and consider revising my undecided stance. If not the point is somewhat moot so I probably won't bother. |
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AnonyMint
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February 15, 2014, 11:59:26 PM
Last edit: February 16, 2014, 02:47:30 AM by AnonyMint |
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The litmus test is if a theory or philosophy requires that we top-down control the human race, then we know: - It is facetious because the top-down "fix" can't be accomplished.
- Thus it must be a wolf in sheepskin.
- It is insane.
Facts on the AGW fraud: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:esr.ibiblio.org+AGW
Mint your really sounding like a crank now, the supposed incriminating e-mail's show no such thing and it takes intentional intellectual dishonesty to perceive them that way.
See my link above for refutation. a theory becomes scientific dogma because it has won in the scientific debate at some point in the past, a debate that was won without the benefit of being the existing dogma. We should doubt the Dogma when it starts failing to make accurate predictions, or if the evidence that was the original deciding factor comes into doubt, but neither of these things has occurred.
Bullshit. There were 33,000 scientists and 9,000+ PhDs that signed a petition disagreeing. The media and the academic community is in the backpocket of the socialism at this point. It doesn't make accurate predictions. They cherry pick models (and data) to fit what ever they want the data to say. If you know anything about modeling, math, and statistics, you wouldn't make such a stupid assertion. What CC references is an alternative explanation involving the Sun, the Sun has not been recently discovered and scientists rejected it as an explanation decades ago before any dogma was established and before the whole issue became so politicized.
Bullshit again. You can believe what ever you want to believe I guess. The burden of proof is on opponents of APGW to both disprove APGW AND provide a better theory that predicts things that APGW fails to predict accurately. No we just ignore their insane junk science. That "burden of proof" argument was refuted in the thread where the following comment originates. Essentially AGW can't be falsified-- a fundamental requirement of the scientific method. There's a certain fraction of the human race that has evolved as authoritarian controllers, and that's what they compulsively do. So it's not quite correct to brush them off as do-gooders. They want not to tell but to force their ideas on you me and everybody. In quite a few cases, they are both stupider and more ignorant than us.
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