asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: had industrial utility (one of largest customers - 'american express') - but - smbx spent $maxint on r&d, relied on usg to pay for this.
asciilifeform: moriarty: no. went to uni, ordinary 'cs', but vomited from 'ai' courses.
asciilifeform: moriarty: don't misunderstand, i was never a professional academic.
asciilifeform: (^ above is a terrible oversimplification. lm was not simply about language, but the entire interface.)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the final doom of smbx corp. was sealed by 'ai winter.' in turn, the demise of the lm ensured that there would be no 'spring' - because carrying on the work in a non-homoiconic language is much like attempting algebra with roman digits.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: recall your quip about heart and liver ?
asciilifeform: decimation: you won't. because 'ai winter.' (and you also won't hear many people discuss how such 'winters' are the flip sides of 'summers', bacchanalia of grantsmanship and graft)
asciilifeform: in order to understand lw, must admit that mr y had talent. i, for instance, used to enjoy his expository writing. until realized that it is 100% recycled philosophy spiced up for 'reddit' crowd.
asciilifeform: now mr. y is surrounded by flunkies, and, by some accounts, is fellated (literally) round the clock by harem
asciilifeform: who put him on a throne, had an 'organization' built
asciilifeform: xmj: the other thing that happened - around the same time - was: he found a sponsor.
asciilifeform: the equivalent of an anti-nuclear activist - but pre-Fermi.
asciilifeform: then he had some sort of nervous break and a bit flipped in his head
asciilifeform: he used to be rather into artificial intelligence - but more from the standpoint of advocacy ('we' (TM) must build working super-intelligent machine, so it can save 'us' (TM)) - but that was pre-2001 or so
asciilifeform: there was (and is) a fellow by the name of eliezer yudkowsky. (american, oddly enough.) ingenious demented storyteller.
asciilifeform: (this gedankenexperiment, if not obvious, concerns usd kept around as physical coinage, rather than spreadshit figures.)
asciilifeform: (in the lack of immediate alternative.)
asciilifeform: in such scenario, usd minted - no; circulated - yes.
asciilifeform: to continue the heart/liver analogy, the currency is like the many (most) organs which can operate on fermentation, and outlive what one normally thinks of as 'death' by hours or even days.
asciilifeform: currency can survive about five minutes with a dead usg << more complicated. reichsmark outlived reich by a few years (until occupying armies got their shit together)
asciilifeform: decimation: folks can talk on the gallows.
asciilifeform: so some fellow mixed up two parcels. happens.
asciilifeform: next year, after binge of dope in cia operative station: 'trial of cocaine baron takes bizarre turn after evidence - bag from his toilet tank - turns out to contain treatise on suicide methods. kilo of cocaine found in pocket of shitcoin ceo who jumped from tower.'
asciilifeform: mats_cd03: usg is the only party you would like to keep from fully knowing how much you hold and what ?
asciilifeform: mats_cd03: if you use an american-style exchange (afaik, all public exchanges track participants' meatspace identities in some way) you haven't really escaped from anything.
asciilifeform: buy while its cheap << go try and buy.
asciilifeform: but an 'official' price will exist, if only for the consumption of the faux btc press
asciilifeform: decimation: right. why place 'fritz chip' as a distinct physical bugger, where it is both apparent and easily manipulated.
asciilifeform: and, being where it is, would neither be apparent nor easily reached by an enemy.
asciilifeform: in such a way that the turd would interfere with proper operation unless fed the correct magic
asciilifeform: so then final lock was placed as a turd in the fissile core (in fusion nukes, fissile initiator, almost same)
asciilifeform: this was a threadbare solution, for obvious reasons - easy to spot where 'the goods' sit; know where to 'hotwire.'
asciilifeform: when (americans - afaik, no one else) felt a desire for locks, the first such took the form of little 'safes', modules similar to car ignition boxes of the time.
asciilifeform: fritz chip carries on as a diversion only, not an honest effort. the folks in usg with remaining working neurons realized after 'clipper' that a plainly labelled bull's eye - is dumb.
asciilifeform: since 'tutankhamon' solution was presumably not used - then stowed away elsewhere.
asciilifeform: who really believes they were let free into the world.
asciilifeform: every fucking thing is dead << i started out in perhaps 4 different ones, stayed here because alive.
asciilifeform: or the traditional 'they poked the architect's eyes out'
