rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;)

[Chef Ramsay]

On the positive side, we had a nice gathering of quite prominent people (my ticket to the party, the Bitcoin castle, was among the most expensive ones though), the place and the weather there was nicer than what I left in Finland when leaving (coming back, it was a surprising +6°C here, considering midwinter), my talk (about the 3 approaches to investing, and why the gambling/VC one is actually both the least risky and the most profitable) was well received with almost half of the ones listening giving personal positive feedback afterwards, I got a much needed update on what is happening in Bitcoinworld (after all, this was my first BTC conference ever, apart from the ones I organized), and an even more exclusive event in the castle is already planned for the next summer

Glad things went well for ya and the weather as well but I'm definitely interested in hearing what these updates are. I assume since you have an event planned at your castle in the summer you heard some pretty positive things and thus have a happy outlook going forward.

[rpietila]

My observations:

- Getting to shake hands with people IRL is a real thing for me who live far away and am generally an introvert thinker/early entrepreneur. Even more important, though - as I can't easily rid me of my personality traits - is to connect with the connectors. Which I did.

- The place was packed with guys who actually do stuff, and not everybody in the Bitcoinworld was there. We are many.

- A participant, about 3 years after first learning about Bitcoin, and 1.5 years after buying it for the first time, explained to me: "now I get it". He was using Bitcoin first time for value transfer and realized that it does work, and does work better than the alternatives, which in many cases are not even available if speed, reliability, etc. are a requirement.

We have to let the time work in our advantage. I also needed about 3 years from first hearing, to getting it. Not that I am stupid, just a human. I also first used Internet/WWW in 1995, but did not find it useful. In 1999 I started with earnest. If Internet were a token, this is equivalent to buying 1 bitcoin in 2015 for $200, then selling it at a wash after seeing no compelling usecase, and coming back 4 years later when "everybody" (a few % of world's population) uses it, and not caring that 1,000 bits cost more than an entire bitcoin did when it was still nearly useless.

- Bitcoin's future looks bright indeed. My original notion (from 2011) that in 75% it's going to fail and 25% pay off handsomely (the latter happened as I bought a castle for what was originally a <10k investment for me) is now updated to 25%/75%. The thought experiment of "in what probability BTC is trading at less than the current price in 2020?" I ran there among many people, resulted in an average 25%. I am doing the numbers for you as a scenario/EV calculation:

25%: fail (<200, average: 50)
25%: stall (200-1000, average: 500)
25%: some growth (1000-10000, average: 3000)
25%: success (>10000, average: 50000)

These are quite conservative estimates and numbers. EV = $13,400 per coin, percentage increase 6,000% (60x), annualized: 127%. Until the situation changes, I'll be happily holding onto my bitcoins, which after the recent carnage do not even constitute an oversized chunk of my portfolio of assets

After always beating the previous ATH's so far with 3 major bubbles, I am giving only a 50% chance for that happening again, still the EV is mindboggling, or at least very nice. Everybody in the world needs to erase Bitcoin from their mind, for the success NOT to materialize. Hardly likely, as research points to the adoption/usage/VC/whatever growth of 100-300% even in 2014, pricewise an abysmal year.

- I'd like to thank the organizers, Bruce & Carolann Fenton and Amy Loughran-Dolan, plus all the participants for the inspirational event, the talks, table-talks, lobby talks, beach talks and walk talks.

- I'll try to open up and follow up. Don't hesitate to contact me using any channel, please bear with me since I am sometimes concentrated with urgent and/or important matters for up to weeks, and unresponsive. Without that, I could not think so much, and would be a pretty useless guy.

- There is a smallish event/s planned at the Bitcoin castle next summer, as well as there were 3 of such last summer. That's why the castle is there. If you want to come, contact the organizers.

[billyjoeallen]

I thought you said you were going to sell the castle and buy more bitcoin.

[rpietila]

I thought you said you were going to sell the castle and buy more bitcoin.

Tenders in excess of [$0.5M + BTC4,000] are appreciated. Or any kind of deal which provides for more resources to the activities there, with or without a formal change in ownership. The castle is a property of a company, making deals very easy to implement if there is any value in the collaboration. I already have such stuff in negotiation. It seems that I am still needed in the Bitcoinsphere 

[jehst]

I thought you said you were going to sell the castle and buy more bitcoin.

What makes you think he hasn't borrowed money against the value of his real estate to invest in bitcoin?

[rpietila]

I thought you said you were going to sell the castle and buy more bitcoin.

What makes you think he hasn't borrowed money against the value of his real estate to invest in bitcoin?

I don't usually try to borrow money, but when I do, no bank is ever willing to give it. So we have a mutual understanding.

It's fine. The portfolio is doing really well without, and the risk level is low as it is. Introducing borrowing, would significantly increase my risk, without a corresponding increase in return.

And what's more - the marginal utility of money goes down dramatically after a few million$ anyway. Even if you had projects to do with the excess, such as I do. The availability of financing things that are worth doing has not been a problem for me for 7 years at least, and it's little correlated to my net worth.

Of course getting to such a position is a long and rocky road. At least it was for me.

[wpalczynski]

Thanks for the update Risto.

[billyjoeallen]

I thought you said you were going to sell the castle and buy more bitcoin.

What makes you think he hasn't borrowed money against the value of his real estate to invest in bitcoin?

I don't usually try to borrow money, but when I do, no bank is ever willing to give it. So we have a mutual understanding.

It's fine. The portfolio is doing really well without, and the risk level is low as it is. Introducing borrowing, would significantly increase my risk, without a corresponding increase in return.

And what's more - the marginal utility of money goes down dramatically after a few million$ anyway. Even if you had projects to do with the excess, such as I do. The availability of financing things that are worth doing has not been a problem for me for 7 years at least, and it's little correlated to my net worth.

Of course getting to such a position is a long and rocky road. At least it was for me.

I completely agree with you re: the marginal utility of money, But I thought you were willing to take a slight loss and sell quickly to capitalize on what you consider to be a bargain price for Bitcoin. You are basically valuing the castle at ~ $1.5 million, roughly the same as your purchase price although in Bitcoin terms you would be almost tripling your ROI.

[Chef Ramsay]

I thought you said you were going to sell the castle and buy more bitcoin.

What makes you think he hasn't borrowed money against the value of his real estate to invest in bitcoin?

I don't usually try to borrow money, but when I do, no bank is ever willing to give it. So we have a mutual understanding.

It's fine. The portfolio is doing really well without, and the risk level is low as it is. Introducing borrowing, would significantly increase my risk, without a corresponding increase in return.

And what's more - the marginal utility of money goes down dramatically after a few million$ anyway. Even if you had projects to do with the excess, such as I do. The availability of financing things that are worth doing has not been a problem for me for 7 years at least, and it's little correlated to my net worth.

Of course getting to such a position is a long and rocky road. At least it was for me.

I completely agree with you re: the marginal utility of money, But I thought you were willing to take a slight loss and sell quickly to capitalize on what you consider to be a bargain price for Bitcoin. You are basically valuing the castle at ~ $1.5 million, roughly the same as your purchase price although in Bitcoin terms you would be almost tripling your ROI.

If there are buyers for such a place at roughly the same price then wonderful, it does seem like a pleasant situation to be in to be able to sell and purchase 3Xs-ish the amount of BTCs at this stage of the game. Yeah.. or rethink your lot in life and pretend you currently have less than 10 BTCs and what that would mean in the event of the next bubble or two and what that would get you compared to what is already on your plate (former). Enjoy your fruits! So many like minded don't have that nor anywhere near it.

[rpietila]

I am about to start a new information resource (blog, website) for my thinking. Getting started with enough quality and structure is the hard part.

I will be burdening this thread with quite random thoughts now, until they settle and I get to organize them and decide about which angle to take and how to position my resource among the plurality of offering out there.

Feel free to comment! Just wanted to tell that the sudden randomness of topic is preplanned.

[jehst]

I am about to start a new information resource (blog, website) for my thinking. Getting started with enough quality and structure is the hard part.

I will be burdening this thread with quite random thoughts now, until they settle and I get to organize them and decide about which angle to take and how to position my resource among the plurality of offering out there.

Feel free to comment! Just wanted to tell that the sudden randomness of topic is preplanned.

I feel that you've already shared everything there is to know about cryptocurrency investing. I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.

[rpietila]

I am about to start a new information resource (blog, website) for my thinking. Getting started with enough quality and structure is the hard part.

I will be burdening this thread with quite random thoughts now, until they settle and I get to organize them and decide about which angle to take and how to position my resource among the plurality of offering out there.

Feel free to comment! Just wanted to tell that the sudden randomness of topic is preplanned.

I feel that you've already shared everything there is to know about cryptocurrency investing. I'd be delighted to be proven wrong.

Well with cryptocurrency investing, the marginal benefit of more information is rather low. Why? Because of the maxim:

The return of investment is correlated with the number of coins bought, not with knowledge. Both a person knowledgeable about the topic, and the one who has not a clue, receive the same return.


Of course knowledge helps in timing, allocation, secure storage etc.

[sporket]

Wise words.

[rpietila]

Fallacy: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence


This often surfaces when you venture on debating about some actual matter of the state of the world, in this case: vaccination.

The extreme opinions on the issue (both are commonly held, though some hold an intermediate opinion as well) are:

1. Vaccinations are developed to help humanity, are effective with their stated purpose in preventing/curing diseases, and either 100% safe, or at least the pros greatly outweigh the cons.

2. Vaccinations are a systematic and deliberate scam, they hardly if ever have a net positive effect on anything, rather spread the diseases they are suppose to prevent and weaken the human natural immune defence in the same way as AIDS does, so that the delibitating effects are hard to detect. The real reason to push mandatory vaccination is not the desire that people would stay alive and have long, healthy, happy, lives, but that they would develop hard-to-tackle diseases, develop sterility and die, and during their miserable life make as much money to the drug-food-death-industry complex as possible.


Now the ones holding the latter opinion (2.) are typically required to present insurmountable evidence that their viewpoint is true (which of course they typically have plenty of, otherwise they would not have converted to such opinion, yet all is brushed away as "unreliable" and "unscientific" meaning that it does not agree with the dominant view).

Yet, the people in the first group (1.) seldom if ever, hold, or can present any evidence on their claim, and if asked, try to label you the troublemaker. Since they are the majority, and Government agrees with their opinion, no proof is needed.


The rule in the subject line is fallacy for the reason that it is utterly unscientific and hostile to progress, while placating group onania concerning whatever opinions the system is propagating, because they are proclaimed as "normal" opinions, and everything contradictory as "extraordinary" opinion.

What if we made it totally the opposite? The dominant view, which has earned domination because it is true, would have to be more rigorously proven than the challenging view? In the vaccination case, for example, every report and study that finds that the control group of unvaccinated children is more healthy than the vaccinated ones, should be thoroughly analysed and not brushed off as having a lacking methodology. The universities have experts in methodology, let them conduct research on the vaccines! (Currently the system is such that because they are safe, they are safe, and because they are effective, they are effective, and no studies are made, and people see with their own eyes that they are neither safe nor effective but because ...)

Current system seems to be able to bear an unlimited amount of contradictory evidence, because people have been conditioned to accept that if it's been in force for 150 years, it is so ingrained to modern society that even if the Angel of God told otherwise, he would not be accepted.

Whereas it should be exactly the opposite. After doing something for 150 years, you should be so totally familiar with its usefulness and truth that any evidence to the contrary would be most serious. Serious not because you are threatened that you might change your thinking, but serious in a way that you are on the cusp of wonderful new discoveries after seeing that one flaw in your thinking.

It's like a sudoku, you can keep on adding numbers on a wrong assumption, but once the wrong assumption is exposed, no matter how many years you had been filling that sudoku, you better erase as many numbers as necessary to get you back on the truthful basis. If you continue to fill the numbers on a faulty basis, you are never going to solve it. Why do people then continue in the real world topics, if they don't try to fool themselves with sudokus? Because:

Concerning this vaccination, which I just took as one example, albeit serious, of the state of the world - most of humankind is totally drugged (partly by vaccines themselves, irony as it is) to ever grasp the situation. For us who possess the necessary faculty of logic, and are willing to reject Big Brother (unfortunately, it's hard to continue embracing the system which propagates such lies, making the simple action in your thinking a great and practical divorce from the hand that feeds you and empties your pockets).

Embracing the truth is a one way street and you do not have that much liberty concerning what to believe. Truth is truth. What is labelled "free thinking" is typically self-puffed pseudo-intellectuals attacking the vestiges of truth that are still even parts of the public discourse, while being sheepishly ignorant of their thinking being safely confined inside the fold of propaganda. I am not a free thinker. My thinking is very much constrained by what is true, and it is leading me to narrower and narrower paths.

Oh, and the "extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence" part? Which actually is a more extraordinary claim:

- You should keep your immune system in a good condition by healthy food, exercise, hygiene and moderate habits
- People of all ages need to be injected up to 200 times with germs, heavy metals, formaldehyde, alum, proteins, bovine calf serum, phenol, acetone and aborted babies, to protect them from diseases and uphold their immune system.

Even though I think that naturally the latter one is a joke and something that - if told - we would not believe people believed in the Middle Ages, I am willing to give both the equal terms in proving their claims.

It should not be so that everything the government is supporting is regarded true by virtue, this is illogical (the government has lied in the past, so it cannot be universally true anyway). Research groups that are not supported by any party who has a skin in the game financially (the drug companies) or in population control (government) should evaluate the claims and policy should be made base on the scientific and tested facts.

Needless to say, there is no impartial, scientific study ever (150 years) conducted that has pronounced vaccines safe.

Finding articles that seem to find them unsafe, are not hard to find.

[sporket]

Vaccines?  Go ahead, believe their lies...
  "Innumerable sicknesses have their origin in one bacillus: the Jew!"--Adolphe L. Pasteur, table talk, 22 February 1942

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Fallacy: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

[...]

The rule in the subject line is fallacy for the reason that it is utterly unscientific and hostile to progress, while placating group onania concerning whatever opinions the system is propagating, because they are proclaimed as "normal" opinions, and everything contradictory as "extraordinary" opinion.

What if we made it totally the opposite? The dominant view, which has earned domination because it is true, would have to be more rigorously proven than the challenging view?

I've held to the same idea. What is "extraordinary" is a matter of perspective. Back when phlogiston and phrenology were all the rage, it would have been an extraordinary claim to say they were bunk. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is only applicable in a few cases, not in general. Used as a general tool in argument, as with references to the Dunning-Kruger effect, it just becomes yet another way of saying, "You're wrong." It's just a bludgeon used to invoke the authority of the mainstream or popular opinion, and it only has currency with those still mired in authority.

Regarding vaccines, here's a quite balanced and well-sourced article arguing that while the utility and safety of vaccines are grossly exaggerated, it's nevertheless incorrect to say they don't work at all (note: this still doesn't imply that vaccines are a net benefit to society). Although he doesn't emphasize it in the article, the author is in complete agreement that exercise, healthy diet, etc. are the real way to prevent disease.

This is relevant to Bitcoin, too, because many of the fallacies in mainstream medicine arise from the same sources as the mainstream's dismissal of Bitcoin: failure to understand natural order, anti-fragility, and of course the proper way to analyse non-mainstream ideas without bias.

[coinits]

Dr. Tent reveals the truth about the scam known as vaccines. This is the science of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aHRMjVHggI

[freebit13]

[MERCK - CANCER - SV40 and AIDS in VACCINES - ADMISSION BY Dr Maurice Hilleman]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uGWut6IRfA

Thanks for your post Ritso, this forum is so full of fallacies, I wish more people would learn to think properly.

I found this to be a great resource: http://www.tragedyandhope.com/trivium/

[billyjoeallen]

Extraordinary claims do not need extraordinary evidence to be logically valid, but they do need extraordinary evidence to be persuasive because of the human confirmation bias.

Perhaps ironically, the most persuasive arguments are NOT those that are based on logic and evidence but those that appeal to the existing biases of the listener, which are just as likely to be untrue as the premise.
Therefor in politics, for example, the best way to convince someone to change his mind is to make an argument based on fallacy.

Example: The U.S. should stop supporting Israel not because entangling alliances are against the national interest, but because Jews are Christ-killers who only care about money and other Jews.

[coinits]

How's everybody doing?  I see the batshit crazies best and the brightest have gathered here to breed and lay eggs?

WOW! such a contribution to the discussion. You are a masterful conversationalist.