asciilifeform: that tells you just how fucked you are

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: can work without being any more than 'dismal science'

asciilifeform: visit a university library; 'bell curve' is a little brick, the 'refutations' - a book case and climbing

asciilifeform: almost impenetrable by the idly curious

asciilifeform: that's why the solid wall of bullshit built around the subject by usg

asciilifeform: it wasn't rubbish.

asciilifeform: iirc

asciilifeform: ~13,000

asciilifeform: aha

asciilifeform: instead they had to declare murry a public enemy and 'hitler'

asciilifeform: because it was bulletproof

asciilifeform: the conclusions of which, interestingly, none of the establishment types bothered to attack directly

asciilifeform: based, iirc, on longitudinal (that is, lifetime progress) study of children, esp. adopted cross-ethnically at birth

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu has it

asciilifeform: (green for the colour of the prophet's banner, naturally!)

asciilifeform: adjunct to blue & red already in the pharmacy we know

asciilifeform: i, (in my mental card catalogue, naturally) call this 'the green pill'

asciilifeform: mr mold once confessed that he might like an 'islamization pill'

asciilifeform: and openly profess to wish for a pill that would 'turn them catholic' or whatnot

asciilifeform: one of the mega-lulz re: 'paleoconservatives' is that most of these folks (that i've had the fortune of reading) struggle with a mental bug - they yearn to roll back to some known-good state where various old-school religions were still strong, but don't personally subscribe to them

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: preferably with closed filtration cycle

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: you need a full body containment suit just to survive as a thinking man here.

asciilifeform: murray put his hands firmly on the 'third rail' in usa

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: try to see the pattern here

asciilifeform: it would

asciilifeform: aha him

asciilifeform: nah the other one

asciilifeform: they're mainstream 'guiding lights', albeit - in the degenerate anglo world, with a 'minus' sign

asciilifeform: or watson, or putin

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: you don't need to open a sewer hatchway to get to herr murray

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: lol nope.

asciilifeform won't give a damn if thiel appears with watson and putin also

asciilifeform: ^ it

asciilifeform: ;;calc sqrt(11)

asciilifeform: that is, to exhaust the resources of folks tasked with arranging mircea_popescu losing it

asciilifeform confesses that he wondered if the purpose of that bet was not necessarily to win, but to soften a target

asciilifeform: ah

asciilifeform: unless i catastrophically misunderstand, ^ the bears inevitably get the coin unless a fully bitcoinized supply chain materializes for mircea_popescu and others to use

asciilifeform: ^ which is entirely true, imho

asciilifeform: this is more along the lines of the mircea_popescu article where 'buffett is not actually rich because his dollars can't be sent to isis'

asciilifeform: or use a ten cent bullet

asciilifeform: would the folks who can zero his bank balance by pressing a button, let btc climb to 100k usd ?

asciilifeform: how far would he get before 'having problems'

asciilifeform: what do you suppose would happen if herr thiel decided to pump every penny he had into buying btc ?

asciilifeform: let's make it concrete

asciilifeform: lol!

asciilifeform: that precludes certain things, and requires others

asciilifeform: which is that herr thiel is operating on an understanding with the folks who allow him to exist

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i'll add a third

asciilifeform: so as to work your hindbrain.

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: he's selective re: which trendisms to employ

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: i was speaking of work in the economic sense rather than physical

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: thiel's spewing trendisms to work your hindbrain

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: i'm not even fully certain if i hate only programming specifically or work in general

asciilifeform was actually trying to picture casino game

asciilifeform: and smells funny

asciilifeform: that leads to hell knows where

asciilifeform: for the structural reason of preferring their familiar private kitchens to a sewer hatchway

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel, mircea_popescu: simply pointing out that most fiat 'barons' are more like herr buffett than mircea_popescu

asciilifeform: nope. and you can take that to the bank

asciilifeform: for all the platinum-iridium toilet in the world ?

asciilifeform: would thiel read, e.g., my site ?

asciilifeform: brown, grizzled, with monstrous teeth, no ?

asciilifeform: it was by hanging with sewer rats

asciilifeform: or with anyone to whom they might give the time of day?

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: was it by speaking with 'legit' physicists ?

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: think of how you, yourself, came upon al schwartz's thing

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: he's stuck relying on 'legitimate' communities of 'domain experts' and is doomed to never see anything of genuine interest, which is 100% on crank islands

asciilifeform: i'm not certain that it is possible to give him a heuristic good enough that he can ditch 'r-strategy' and go with 'k-strategy', to use the zoologist's terms

asciilifeform: 'why should -this- piece of shit get 100k to enjoy life, while i sit on this stake...'

asciilifeform: i'd guess that many folks can't even think about this subject without their brain melting from rage

asciilifeform: and then talk to thiel

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: find someone whose heuristic isn't 'give it to -me-'

asciilifeform: and he hasn't a prayer, and knows it

asciilifeform: but then he'd actually need a proper heuristic for choosing his 'soldiers'

asciilifeform: and two garages in alaska

asciilifeform: 100k buys half a garage where i live

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: i confess that thiel's experiment would be considerably more interesting if it were 100m not 100k

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i did try to convince the fella.

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: what would we lose if it never happened

asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: and to what does that thing amount ?

asciilifeform: decimation: no because serfdom

asciilifeform: 50k for the might-work calorimetric variant

asciilifeform: no idea who that was

asciilifeform: (can you name, off the top of your head, a single person who was given the prize - which is intended to set promising young thinkers free from workslavery) who amounted to anything ?

asciilifeform: and he is, in that sense, continuing the tradition of the equally boring 'mcarthur prize'

asciilifeform: except for a vague 'flavour' of 'up&coming young'

asciilifeform: thus far i know of no particular reason why thiel picked the folks he did

asciilifeform: in that sense, the ubiquitous state lottery is also 'organized effort'

asciilifeform: 'you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had', thiel could reply, quoting mr bush

asciilifeform: he also funded mr mold's crap.

asciilifeform: and on which the rest of the tower - stands.

asciilifeform: in the same sense as the base of a tower is the point maximally far from its tip.

asciilifeform: e.g., boolean algebra in the lifetime of g. boole.

asciilifeform: basic in the sense of maximally distant from applications.

asciilifeform: (or not so happily, as the case may be)

asciilifeform: happily chugging along on his lonesome blockchain

asciilifeform: 'crank' in this context is really anyone who 'forks science' and ends up an army-of-one

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=05-03-2014#548254 << obligatory thread re: cranks ☝︎

asciilifeform: which was known for a rather long time prior to becoming an industrial product ☟︎