asciilifeform: and spoken to by mircea_popescu for first time.

asciilifeform: i meant, sitting when she is being taught for 1st time

asciilifeform: no side channels.

asciilifeform: as in, sitting right there.

asciilifeform: all that the inuit gurl was told.

asciilifeform: or does mircea_popescu propose that i could not possibly perform the match trick even if told all.

asciilifeform: a stage magic trick is a technology, yes

asciilifeform: aha.

asciilifeform: and i won't find out what molybdenum is for another 2000 yrs.

asciilifeform: and yeah, i go home and it dun work 'cause my farts haven't enough molybdenum in'em.

asciilifeform: there is a less comical example of this, historically - damascus steel.

asciilifeform licks lips

asciilifeform: aha!

asciilifeform: on the basis that englishmen of 1880 could have built it if it were explained to them.

asciilifeform: aha, is technology.

asciilifeform: nevertheless, meiji jp 'dutch studies' scholar builds steamship. etc

asciilifeform: so no, it does not follow that redditus can build reactor

asciilifeform universalizes to alert readerz, not to woodland fauna

asciilifeform: but entirely true, sure

asciilifeform: this formulation is simply a change of coordinate system

asciilifeform: technology is something you can pick up informationally.

asciilifeform: (think of how jp adopted it in 1900s)

asciilifeform: the making of prussian-style soldiers, folks with very narrow role in life and bonsaikittened brain, is also a technology.

asciilifeform: naturally, it is not his role in life. but their hardware is so flimsy that if cut off from the mothership for a month, they will die.

asciilifeform: when he ~makes own rifle~ - he has the tech.

asciilifeform: all he has is a thing he found on a dead englishman.

asciilifeform: he does not 'have the tech'

asciilifeform: recall the thread about the indian firing a rifle ?

asciilifeform: point here is that technology is an informational thing. two folks, with same materials, will come to different fates, because one knows that magnetic field induces electric current in moving conductor, and the other - does not

asciilifeform: does not follow, from this, that it is useless to give different names to species.

asciilifeform: there is prolly a madman to whom every animal with 4 legs is dog.

asciilifeform: it is called windfall.

asciilifeform: having golden meteor fall in your back yard is not a technology.

asciilifeform: fish in the scania was also technology ?

asciilifeform: ^ mega-technology ^

asciilifeform: 4) Pr00000f1t!1111

asciilifeform: 3) ?????

asciilifeform: 2) collapse!11111

asciilifeform: 1) live in sovok

asciilifeform: so it seems like we have:

asciilifeform: nobody cancelled quackery.

asciilifeform: or for that matter 'electrical cures' of 1890.

asciilifeform: now this, for sure.

asciilifeform: 15.

asciilifeform: ~american~ school

asciilifeform: american, no less

asciilifeform: laugh all you like, i had it in sch00l

asciilifeform: well sure, somewhere in that space live, e.g., galois theory, other fine arts

asciilifeform: then we have 'my hoodoo got stronger, stfu' ?

asciilifeform: that is what distinguishes reactor from hoodoo

asciilifeform: bulldozer is not universally accessible, as it is costly, but its DESCRIPTION is.

asciilifeform: i can readily believe that mircea_popescu's magic got stronger, sure. but did he singlehandedly surplus all of the obsolete meatbags ? or did somebody else's magic also get stronger, and if so how..?

asciilifeform: does it reduce to mircea_popescu asserting 'my magic got stronger in ineffable wayz and stfu' ?

asciilifeform: or so i thought.

asciilifeform: this was a testable hypothesis re: observables.

asciilifeform: iirc the thread was about 'leverage increased, ergo we are awash in surplus people'

asciilifeform: well is it, to use mircea_popescutronic analysis, a matter 'for the forum' or 'for the gynaecaeum' ?

asciilifeform: yeah but it is also possible that mircea_popescu benefits from scratching his toes just-so when he wakes up. this is not a technical advance as generally understood, because the recipe is useless to anybody else.

asciilifeform: here in the land of 50% tax.

asciilifeform: it is not yet clear to me that 'let's 3% tax' has made it to this stage

asciilifeform: and repeated volitionally

asciilifeform: but these transitioned TO technical advances once cemented in place

asciilifeform: etc

asciilifeform: teflon.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: lsd, famously

asciilifeform: '90s post-sov govs did not have the actual option of mega-tax.

asciilifeform: ergo not a technical advance, any more than eruption of mt vesuvius was.

asciilifeform: but the reason i dun see the 'let's 3% tax' as a technical advance, is that it was not a deliberate act, but a concession to collapse of inca empire. it was done ~to~ the folks who did it, like an earthquake.

asciilifeform: not being timeless god on mt olympus, i generally don't do 'absolute firsts'

asciilifeform: and i can't fathom it being the first.

asciilifeform: dunno, lenin's NEP had it.

asciilifeform: are we playing civ1?

asciilifeform: low tax is now a technical advance?!!

asciilifeform: bitcoin is really an electrically-enabled return to 200 bc

asciilifeform: all i see is complexity cancer, on which the usual scamvultures feast.

asciilifeform: less frequent marketpanics ? (quite certainly not)

asciilifeform: bigger yield of uranium ? purer aluminum ? longer cocks ? what.

asciilifeform: what did n-way leveraged whateverthefucks improve ?

asciilifeform: bigger yachts for pinksheet sc4mz0rz?

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-05-19#1468573 << i'ma bite this bait. tell me, what constructive thing have improvements in finance in past 30y enabled ? ☝︎☟︎

asciilifeform: tragic figure.

asciilifeform: and quite like ~all the other usg academics i spent most of my working life working with.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in life he was ~same as all the other greyhairs in the room

asciilifeform: nope.

asciilifeform: (i was sent to sit on a committee of sorts, with him in it)

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-05-19#1468579 << lulzily, shortly after i wrote this i actually met the man. ☝︎

asciilifeform brb, phood

asciilifeform: finance as 'improved since 1980' is precisely chumpatronics.

asciilifeform: (it is the one science that will never stop!11111)

asciilifeform: but what else ?

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: chumpatronics quite clearly moved forward! yes

asciilifeform: and so i am not interested in a crypto lib that calls out to google crapolade.

asciilifeform: realize that 'golang' is not simply a language, but a set of libraries that is used by pretty much 100% of the extant soft implemented therein

asciilifeform: sure does.

asciilifeform: turns out it is 100% a waste of time to study certain things.

asciilifeform: but this was a mistake.

asciilifeform: until very recently i used to think quite like mircea_popescu above, 'sure, i'll read even if implemented in js'

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: on the contrary, there isn't a reference implementation.

asciilifeform: metallurgy ?

asciilifeform: <mircea_popescu> you wish to think in terms of your chosen art, which is meaningless. it's not always the same art that provides the additional leverage. <<< pretty much everything other than the infernal machines has been going to hell, visibly to naked eye. so which art would it be that mircea_popescu was thinking of ?