delete

[TheFascistMind]

Reposting because I significantly edited this...

In selfish mining, you don't know if you are on the majority chain or not, so you don't know which of the double-spends was possibly sent by the majority and mixed by them

It might be possible to isolate which of the double-spends was seen by the majority by using a PoW consensus (which is basically a simple majority vote).

Then you must assume that any follow on txs to the attacker's double-spend were all his. But the problem is that consensus can't be reached always in one block, because the majority doesn't have 100% of the hashrate.

The attacker can also accept transactions, and spenders create txs autonomously.

Some will, but most won't (but as I said, "some" might be enough for your technique to be incompatible).

True you could unwind some (usually extremely) smallish percent of valid transactions and be compatible with my fix.

Ahem. The more I think about this, in the interim time while the majority tries to build a consensus about the (now both entirely public) double-spends over some number of blocks depending on the attacker's hashrate, the attacker can introduce a huge quantity of derivative txs thus the opportunities for valid txs to mix any one of those derivative mixed txs increases significantly. It is the autonomy of the mixing that is the qualitative difference between opaque block chains and transparent block chains which also have mixes, because CoinJoin-like mixing can wait for N confirmations.

You can't mitigate this with tx fees paid to the miners, because the attacker is paying himself!

So the only mitigation I can see is to send tx fees to the ether, but the problem is your block rewards decline to 0 in Monero (I know you didn't agree with that, but you were overruled).

And in any case, high tx fees are the antithesis of a currency. Remember Gresham's law, bad (debased) money drives good (non-debased) money out-of-circulation.

[TheFascistMind]

I am not sure if I agree with you that rpietila destroyed Monero

It would be better for your own reputation if you did not misquote me, or quote out of context.

Who is confused?

You apparently, because I did not state anything about anyone destroying Monero.

Of course you did. I didn't intend to imply anything about your intended meaning, rather only the possible literal interpretations given the circumstances. Remember my father is an attorney. I suppose I learned it from him.

rpietila doesn't even have access to the repo, nor would he have any idea what to do with it if he did...

He's a user and self-appointed promoter.

If Mark Karpeles shows up here...

P.S. what I am trying to say is that I think rpietila contributed the political and organizational situation we have now, but I don't know if he solely responsible. And IMO the current situation is not so huge of a potential for the long-term (but I guess that could change depending what you guys have coming). Perhaps 'destroyed' is too severe. Better to say 'limited potential'. My personal opinion only subject to change depending on what is discovered and changes.

I think he also contributed politically to some design decisions, such as originally being against perpetual debasement.

[TheFascistMind]

Frankly I'm disappointed. I was expecting someone more like this:-

http://www.pcc.edu/about/events/black-history/2009/images/west.jpg

Ah you wanted the diabolical poses...

http://www.coolpage.com/IMAG0055s.jpghttp://www.coolpage.com/Jason_Dad_Shelby_Oct_1982s.jpg

[Cryptobro]

I am not sure if I agree with you that rpietila destroyed Monero

It would be better for your own reputation if you did not misquote me, or quote out of context.

Who is confused?

You apparently, because I did not state anything about anyone destroying Monero.

Of course you did. I didn't intend to imply anything about your intended meaning, rather only the possible literal interpretations given the circumstances. Remember my father is an attorney. I suppose I learned it from him.

rpietila doesn't even have access to the repo, nor would he have any idea what to do with it if he did...

He's a user and self-appointed promoter.

If Mark Karpeles shows up here...

P.S. what I am trying to say is that I think rpietila contributed the political and organizational situation we have now, but I don't know if he solely responsible. And IMO the current situation is not so huge of a potential for the long-term (but I guess that could change depending what you guys have coming). Perhaps 'destroyed' is too severe. Better to say 'limited potential'. My personal opinion only subject to change depending on what is discovered and changes.

I think he also contributed politically to some design decisions, such as originally being against perpetual debasement.

You are one strange individual.

[smooth]

I think he also contributed politically to some design decisions, such as originally being against perpetual debasement.

No that is clearly wrong. He had no involvement whatsoever in any of those early decisions, and probably didn't even know the project existed at that time. His "altcoin observer" post announcing his interest was more than a month after the launch, and I remember being surprised about the whole thing.

Really, you should ask questions and not make statements about these sorts of things, since you obviously lack a lot of relevant facts, sometimes getting them completely backwards.

[black_jesus]

So with out further a do here is your leaders grand Monero wisdom..

If you are referring to reptilia he has no leadership role with Monero. He runs the MEW group he started and is essentially a user group, but other than that he is just a user like anyone else (though certainly a vocal and opinionated one, for better or worse).

Seriously, ROFL

rpietila IS heavily invested in Monero and as a result is influential.


~BCX~

Sometimes you have to edit what this clown writes, I gave it a shot.  Either he has problems thinking things through first, or he's deliberately vague to appear more intelligent (as in he tricked you).  Either can explain why he always seems to need to point out an alternate way to interpret something he wrote before.  

[TheFascistMind]

I am not sure if I agree with you that rpietila destroyed Monero

It would be better for your own reputation if you did not misquote me, or quote out of context.

Who is confused?

You apparently, because I did not state anything about anyone destroying Monero.

Of course you did. I didn't intend to imply anything about your intended meaning, rather only the possible literal interpretations given the circumstances. Remember my father is an attorney. I suppose I learned it from him.

rpietila doesn't even have access to the repo, nor would he have any idea what to do with it if he did...

He's a user and self-appointed promoter.

If Mark Karpeles shows up here...

P.S. what I am trying to say is that I think rpietila contributed the political and organizational situation we have now, but I don't know if he solely responsible. And IMO the current situation is not so huge of a potential for the long-term (but I guess that could change depending what you guys have coming). Perhaps 'destroyed' is too severe. Better to say 'limited potential'. My personal opinion only subject to change depending on what is discovered and changes.

I think he also contributed politically to some design decisions, such as originally being against perpetual debasement.

You are one strange individual.

What is psychosis is the continued denial that rpietila was not part of anything that has transpired with Monero.

I mean I am not trying to put XMR down, but it is obnoxious to read that the moon is made of cheese.

If you will pull the Bill Clinton wordsmithing, then I will put the mirror in your face.

If am ever in similar delusion, I hope someone throws cold water on my face.

What has bothered me since the start was the marriage of open source with the investment herding. I am refuting that the two are orthogonal. It feels like a massive conflict-of-interest, because as I pointed out, it impacts critically important design decisions.

I have been bothered by the attempts to declare ring-signatures as the Holy Grail solution to anonymity. It seemed there was a push to suppress any further consideration and that all non-technical investors should move immediately to that technical conclusion.

I'd rather to give time to work through it technically so we can see what comes out the other side. I have tried to help investigate tradeoffs and attack mitigations for ring-signatures for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Philosophical_theories

His book The Bed of Procrustes summarizes the central problem: "we humans, facing limits of knowledge, and things we do not observe, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas". Taleb disagrees with Platonic (i.e., theoretical) approaches to reality to the extent that they lead people to have the wrong map of reality rather than no map at all.[17] He opposes most economic and grand social science theorizing, which in his view suffer acutely from the problem of overuse of Plato's Theory of Forms.

Relatedly, he also believes that universities are better at public relations and claiming credit than generating knowledge. He argues that knowledge and technology are usually generated by what he calls "stochastic tinkering" rather than by top-down directed research.

Taleb's writings discuss the error of comparing real-world randomness with the "structured randomness" in quantum physics where probabilities are remarkably computable and games of chance like casinos where probabilities are artificially built.[66] Taleb calls this the "Ludic fallacy". His argument centers on the idea that predictive models are based on Plato's Theory of Forms, gravitating towards mathematical purity and failing to take some key ideas into account, such as: the impossibility of possessing all relevant information, that small unknown variations in the data can have a huge impact, and flawed theories/models that are based on empirical data and that fail to consider events that have not taken place but could have taken place. Discussing the Ludic fallacy in The Black Swan, he writes, "The dark side of the moon is harder to see; beaming light on it costs energy. In the same way, beaming light on the unseen is costly in both computational and mental effort."

In the second edition of The Black Swan, he posited that the foundations of quantitative economics are faulty and highly self-referential. He states that statistics is fundamentally incomplete as a field as it cannot predict the risk of rare events, a problem that is acute in proportion to the rarity of these events.

One of its applications is in his definition of the most effective (that is, least fragile) risk management approach: what he calls the 'barbell' strategy which is based on avoiding the middle in favor of linear combination of extremes, across all domains from politics to economics to one's personal life. These are deemed by Taleb to be more robust to estimation errors. For instance, he suggests that investing money in 'medium risk' investments is pointless because risk is difficult if not impossible to compute. His preferred strategy is to be both hyper-conservative and hyper-aggressive at the same time. For example, an investor might put 80 to 90% of their money in extremely safe instruments, such as treasury bills, with the remainder going into highly risky and diversified speculative bets. An alternative suggestion is to engage in highly speculative bets with a limited downside. He asserts that by adopting these strategies a portfolio can be "robust", that is, gain a positive exposure to black swan events while limiting losses suffered by such random events.[68] Taleb also applies a similar barbell-style approach to health and exercise. Instead of doing steady and moderate exercise daily, he suggests that it is better to do a low-effort exercise such as walking slowly most of the time, while occasionally expending extreme effort. He avers that the human body evolved to live in a random environment, with various unexpected but intense efforts and much rest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taleb_distribution

In economics and finance, a Taleb distribution is a term coined by U.K. economists/journalists Martin Wolf and John Kay to describe a returns profile that appears at times deceptively low-risk with steady returns, but experiences periodically catastrophic drawdowns. It does not describe a statistical probability distribution, and does not have an associated mathematical formula. The term is meant to refer to an investment returns profile in which there is a high probability of a small gain, and a small probability of a very large loss, which more than outweighs the gains. In these situations the expected value is (very much) less than zero, but this fact is camouflaged by the appearance of low risk and steady returns. It is a combination of kurtosis risk and skewness risk: overall returns are dominated by extreme events (kurtosis), which are to the downside (skew).

[Cryptobro]

I am not sure if I agree with you that rpietila destroyed Monero

It would be better for your own reputation if you did not misquote me, or quote out of context.

Who is confused?

You apparently, because I did not state anything about anyone destroying Monero.

Of course you did. I didn't intend to imply anything about your intended meaning, rather only the possible literal interpretations given the circumstances. Remember my father is an attorney. I suppose I learned it from him.

rpietila doesn't even have access to the repo, nor would he have any idea what to do with it if he did...

He's a user and self-appointed promoter.

If Mark Karpeles shows up here...

P.S. what I am trying to say is that I think rpietila contributed the political and organizational situation we have now, but I don't know if he solely responsible. And IMO the current situation is not so huge of a potential for the long-term (but I guess that could change depending what you guys have coming). Perhaps 'destroyed' is too severe. Better to say 'limited potential'. My personal opinion only subject to change depending on what is discovered and changes.

I think he also contributed politically to some design decisions, such as originally being against perpetual debasement.

You are one strange individual.

What is psychosis is the continued denial that rpietila was not part of anything that has transpired with Monero.

I mean I am not trying to put XMR down, but it is obnoxious to read that the moon is made of cheese.

If you will pull the Bill Clinton wordsmithing, then I will put the mirror in your face.

Nobody is going to argue that rpietila hasn't had some influence on the Monero market.
I can't say the same about any design decisions, however I do believe smooth when he says he hasn't.

Actually I believe you have had just as much (or close to it) influence on the market by divulging what so far appear to be undemonstrated vulnerabilities in the code.

I also believe you are hoping any attack on Monero is successful.

[smooth]

What has bothered me since the start was the marriage of open source with the investment herding. It feels like a massive conflict-of-interest, because as I pointed out, it impacts critically important design decisions.

Except you were and are wrong. Investors have never had any influence on any design decisions, most certainly not reptilia and debasement, as I explained that was not only wrong, but chronologically impossible -- by the way, are are aware that the stated design explicitly includes the possibility of perpetual debasement, and we are unanimously in favor of it?

In fact when investors occasionally try to exert some influence, it often produces the opposite result due to pushback.

Here's my reply when someone once tried to suggest that we do something on the basis of whether he would invest or some sort of alleged responsibility we have to investors. The rest of the team feels similarly if not more strongly.

3. I don't give a fuck about pandering to investors. They are free to speculate or short terms swings or to invest in the long term possibility that we are able to develop this project to something much greater than it is today. You are also perfectly free to do neither.

I'm sorry, but you are simply talking out of your ass, or perhaps projecting based on your belief about how things could work or might work, or possibly you are misled by reptilia's portrayal of his own influence or importance. Your belief is incorrect.

[BitcoinEXpress]

delete

[TheFascistMind]

Nobody is going to argue that rpietila hasn't had some influence on the Monero market.
I can't say the same about any design decisions, however I do believe smooth when he says he hasn't.

This argument of orthogonality is I am calling BS. There is some orthogonality but there is also leakage of course. How can a project ignore the investors?

There are design decisions that investors want (e.g. limited money supply) which are the antithesis of making a widely adopted currency.

Actually I believe you have had just as much (or close to it) influence on the market by divulging what so far appear to be undemonstrated vulnerabilities in the code.

I wish it were so, because I think investors will be protected from a Taleb distribution, but I doubt I have had any impact. If some XMR people are so paranoid is indicative of investment but very little adoption. If you had widespread adoption, you would be ignoring me entirely.

I also believe you are hoping any attack on Monero is successful.

I am hoping we all find out what the vulnerabilities are in any crypto-currency asap and move forward to building a widespread crypto-currency.

Facebook is preparing to offer friend-to-friend payments with ATM debit cards.

We have almost lost our chance...

[TheFascistMind]

What has bothered me since the start was the marriage of open source with the investment herding. It feels like a massive conflict-of-interest, because as I pointed out, it impacts critically important design decisions.

Except you were and are wrong. Investors have never had any influence on any design decisions, most certainly not reptilia and debasement, as I explained that was not only wrong, but chronologically impossible -- by the way, are are aware that the stated design explicitly includes the possibility of perpetual debasement, and we are unanimously in favor of it?

I was following rpietila's altcoin observer when this was discussed months ago, and I saw rpietila weigh in quite emphatically (as he has always done when I mention perpetual debasement) that he was against it. He later become slightly flexible to something like 0.1 to 1% debasement (which is entirely inadequate based on historical norms of debt issuance, etc... you won't change human nature with a crypto-currency!).

So I call BS on him and his ilk not having any influence. He only agreed to buy your coin because he saw that you agreed with his fundamental premises.

[smooth]

How can a project ignore the investors?

It's actually quite easy. Seriously. You adopt the mentality of being an open source software project and not a get rich quick scheme and it pretty much follows from there. Attempts to influence from investors that lack technical merit (which is generally all of them) are treated with derision or laughed at.

I really can't believe that we are the only project to ever approach things in this manner, but given how hard it seems to be for people to get the concept, perhaps we are.

[TheFascistMind]

How can a project ignore the investors?

It's actually quite easy. Seriously. You adopt the mentality of being an open source software project and not a get rich quick scheme and it pretty much follows from there. Attempts to influence from investors that lack technical merit (which is generally all of them) are treated with derision or laughed at.

I really can't believe that we are the only project to ever approach things in this manner, but given how hard it seems to be for people to get the concept, perhaps we are.

I claim you are deluding yourself. That happens. Step outside it objectively.

The orthogonality can't exist.

The only way it is exists is for the whale to not like your premises from the start and stay away with his herding.

I am so happy rpietila is "attacking"joining monero. Keeps him (and animorex) far away from anything I do.

[smooth]

I was following rpietila's altcoin observer when this was discussed months ago, and I saw rpietila weigh in quite emphatically (as he has always done when I mention perpetual debasement) that he was against it. He later become slightly flexible to something like 0.1 to 1% debasement (which is entirely inadequate based on historical norms of debt issuance, etc... you won't change human nature with a crypto-currency!).

This decision was made long before his involvement, as I said. You may disagree with the stated amount of perpetual debasement, which is fine as these debates go, but it has nothing to do with rpietila. I don't remember the exact exchange but my guess would be that if he "become slightly flexible" it may have been because he recognized it was going to happen regardless of his opinion.

So I call BS on him and his ilk not having any influence. He only agreed to buy your coin because he saw that you agreed with his premises.

He didn't "agree" to buy anything. He decided on his own. It was as much as surprise to us as anyone else, perhaps more so.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

How can a project ignore the investors?

It's actually quite easy. Seriously. You adopt the mentality of being an open source software project and not a get rich quick scheme and it pretty much follows from there. Attempts to influence from investors that lack technical merit (which is generally all of them) are treated with derision or laughed at.

I really can't believe that we are the only project to ever approach things in this manner, but given how hard it seems to be for people to get the concept, perhaps we are.

Or perhaps not..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg9111378#msg9111378

[smooth]

How can a project ignore the investors?

It's actually quite easy. Seriously. You adopt the mentality of being an open source software project and not a get rich quick scheme and it pretty much follows from there. Attempts to influence from investors that lack technical merit (which is generally all of them) are treated with derision or laughed at.

I really can't believe that we are the only project to ever approach things in this manner, but given how hard it seems to be for people to get the concept, perhaps we are.

I claim you are deluding yourself. That happens. Step outside it objectively.

Believe what you like. The actual experience has been that any effort by investors to influence has resulted in nothing but hostility or ridicule. It is simply incompatible with the culture and DNA of the project. That is a fact. I'm sure some investors we both know would prefer otherwise. Too bad on them.

[smooth]

How can a project ignore the investors?

It's actually quite easy. Seriously. You adopt the mentality of being an open source software project and not a get rich quick scheme and it pretty much follows from there. Attempts to influence from investors that lack technical merit (which is generally all of them) are treated with derision or laughed at.

I really can't believe that we are the only project to ever approach things in this manner, but given how hard it seems to be for people to get the concept, perhaps we are.

Or perhaps not..

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg9111378#msg9111378

Good for him!

[TheFascistMind]

I was following rpietila's altcoin observer when this was discussed months ago, and I saw rpietila weigh in quite emphatically (as he has always done when I mention perpetual debasement) that he was against it. He later become slightly flexible to something like 0.1 to 1% debasement (which is entirely inadequate based on historical norms of debt issuance, etc... you won't change human nature with a crypto-currency!).

This decision was made long before his involved, as I said. You may disagree with the stated amount of perpetual debasement, which is fine as these debates go, but it has nothing to do with rpietila. I don't remember the exact exchange but my guess would be that if he "become slightly flexible" it may have been because he recognized it was going to happen regardless of his opinion.

So I call BS on him and his ilk not having any influence. He only agreed to buy your coin because he saw that you agreed with his premises.

He didn't "agree" to buy anything. He decided on his own. It was as much as surprise to us as anyone else, perhaps more so.

Do you realize how tiring this is? And you don't understand why there is so much angst?

You deny reality.

I saw with my own eyes that there was some probing about possibly changing that design decision while it was still early enough to do so, and I saw rpietila (and animorex) weigh on it, also saw them weigh in on Zoid, etc..

Sorry I don't believe this.

[smooth]

You deny reality.

You don't get to define reality, just your own opinion. Stop being an ass.

I saw with my own eyes that there was some probing about possibly changing that design decision while it was still early enough to do so, and I saw rpietila (and animorex) weigh on it, also saw them weigh in on Zoid, etc..

How did this happen when neither rpietila nor aminorex were even aware of the project when these issues were being discussed? I don't know the timeline with aminorex exactly, but I'm telling you factually and specifically that rpietila's involvement dates to roughly a month after the only time these issues have ever been seriously considered.

If it worked the way you describe, then at least some changes would have been made by now as a result of pressure or demands from investors. Identify one.

As for "weighing in on Zoid," I fail to see what that has to do with anything. They are free to comment on anything or anyone they like, as are you or me.

Sorry I don't believe this.

Comments about denying reality could be made here.