asciilifeform: virtually every book ever printed, in plain text.
asciilifeform: TheNewDeal: even if you don't care for languages at all - learn it, and it's as if copyrasty never existed
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: yes. just explaining the mechanics.
asciilifeform would ask for the ads, if he had any reason to think that some weirdo would bid enough right away to recompense for 'my site ever had ads'
asciilifeform: TheNewDeal: engrish version << library?
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: purist << just that 'my site has adz now' is worth more to me than pocket change
asciilifeform: (visitor to faraway planet takes forbidden 'sobriogenic' pill, notices that no robots, only idiots who think they're robots; takes a yet more forbidden pill, notices other things are absent as well... etc)
asciilifeform: ;;google lem futurological congress drug
asciilifeform hallucinations are default in us << was not supplied with the correct drugs by warden, reduced to sobriety
asciilifeform: TheNewDeal: to usg, the only 'problem in bitcoin' is that it exists.
asciilifeform is quite sure that he didn't hallucinate it, though
asciilifeform: decimation: not that we're necessarily stuck with rsa for all time, but the burden of proof on anyone suggesting an alternative is bowl-loosening, if you apprehend it.
asciilifeform: but we were contemplating specifically mental computation.
asciilifeform: which is not to say that one could not, hypothetically, compute a numerical solution to something-or-other by tossing balls.
asciilifeform: decimation: catch a ball << bad example. when high-speed photography appeared, people learned that man (and dog, and circus lion) do not catch balls by computing integrals, but through 'bang-bang correction'
asciilifeform: and/or, the several known mental arithmetic systems, like the kind invented by trachtenberg (while starving in auschwitz!)
asciilifeform: consider the methods 'mnemonists' (a kind of stage magician) use to memorize multiple kBytes of, e.g, the digits of 'pi'
asciilifeform: if you could somehow harness the considerable mass of neural tissue devoted to various 'everyday' tasks for this purpose - it is certain.
asciilifeform: for ferreting out just what it is that people really want.
asciilifeform: 'mental rsa' is mostly useful as a gedankenexperiment.
asciilifeform: this is not a shortcoming of cryptography.
asciilifeform: but if captured by the enemy, you still confess the plaintext when hanging upside down over a nice hot fire
asciilifeform: decimation: i and perhaps a few other people did suggest, half-seriously, that people could learn to carry out, e.g., rsa, using mental arithmetic shortcuts of some variety
asciilifeform: decimation: and the keys << nope. go encipher an rsa message to me and then break it without my priv key
asciilifeform: decimation: in the sense that you possess the plaintext at some point ?
asciilifeform: decimation: the 'crack' of - if the enemy learns your key, yer phucked?
asciilifeform: bats_cd03: the subject has very little to do with cryptography in the usual sense. it touches on what can only be described as a philosophical confusion (a deliberately-propagated one, at that.)
asciilifeform: (where the only thing that matters is the difficulty, for the enemy, of obtaining prior knowledge of the bits, and not any measurable mathematical attribute per se)
asciilifeform: bats_cd03: 'random' means one thing if you're running 'monte carlo' sims (digits of 'pi' work beautifully, as does 'A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates' (rand corp, 1955. book.))☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: bats_cd03: that is - the implicit endorsement of the pseudoscientific concept of 'random'
asciilifeform: bats_cd03: the most interesting part of such articles is, as often the case - what isn't said.
asciilifeform: a national 'shadow treasury' for the loot to end up in - is not a necessary hypothesis.
asciilifeform: decimation: no need for fuhrer's orders. plenty of usg viceroys, on various levels, are in a position to plunder coin. some will wake up and understand that this gives them a shot at living slightly longer - and do it.
asciilifeform: which brings us back to >> I suspect that the number of USG employees who understand money is too small to coordinate a mass bitcoin theft << does one need to understand the structure of Au atom to plunder gold coins ?
asciilifeform: decimation: only when they're done preying on the living
asciilifeform: and rounding off with the 'greatest good for greatest number' crapolade.
asciilifeform wonders what gear these folks will change into when it dawns on them that -all- of their gods are being pissed on, vs. an arbitrary selection thereof
asciilifeform: just as 'are you paranoid if the gasenwagen is actually on its way,' -- 'are you still in a cult if the alien comet ship is actually parked in orbit, and waiting to pick you up?'
asciilifeform: it also helps gravity to keep working
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: if city hall were to bring in a truck full of wooden coins, would this cause the requisite trainload of produce to materialize ?
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: point was a question. how does it follow that a 'flexible' currency supply is a useful thing?
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: see also 'hawala' in moslem world, 1000+ yrs.
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: no one, afaik, finds this particularly offensive. but how does it follow that the farmers will require a growing supply of the wooden coins?
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: this is not an uncommon thing, and exists even here in usa (my local vegetable merchants at the market often trade with each other in primitive wooden coins they've agreed on)
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: your story concerned a town which printed its own internal currency, yes ?
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: nothing stops a btc user from lending to another
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: loans are available - here. though not to everyone who asks.
asciilifeform can't help but picture a coprophagiac walking into a fine restaurant, proceeding to argue - with physical demonstration - his concept of 'fine dining'
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: all that remains is to ask you - if you believe 'hard money' to be a heresy, why are you here? and not in '#dollar-assets'
asciilifeform: the '500 wars' suggest that they weren't entirely unsuccessful.
asciilifeform did (along with probably everyone else) predict this turn. i.e. - usg separating as many coins as can be turned up from their owners, by whatever means can be brought to bear
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: where do you suppose the fuel to stoke the 'btc at 500 within 1%' engine comes from?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it's been SOP for ages.
asciilifeform: decimation: yes. that's actual 'party doctrine', believe it or not
