824200+ entries in 0.456s
mircea_popescu: nah, it's not outside
threat, it's a certain worldview. one
that deliberately opresses stupidity.
benkay: to my naive eyes, it seems like large-scale organization requires an external
threat
to keep
the organizing machinery even remotely functional
mircea_popescu: scared
tyrants aren't particularly dangerous. it's
the
tyrants
that perceive
themselves safe, a la stalin or
the voting public in france/us/sweden/etc
that are dangerous.
mircea_popescu: jurov` well, it may or may not improve skills, but it does incentivize
the right way at least.
mircea_popescu: nubbins`
the politician is unimportant. compare
the sovereigns. elector vs
tyrant.
jurov`: would
that improve or impair his rational skills? i'm not sure
nubbins`: the politician believes his situation
to be just as serious, however naively
mircea_popescu: no, i really beleive it's not
the same
thing.
the despot is perpetually at danger for hius life.
mircea_popescu: the voter faces no such challenge (and in fact
the only funds diverted from filing canyons with crumpled cars go
to ensure elector never faces any inconvenience)
nubbins`: jurov,
this is common among all forms of leadership
jurov`: what's
to do with democracy?
jurov`: again, doesn't a despot have
to do
the same?
nubbins`: people will just drive
the car off
the cliff rather
than let someone else
take over
the wheel -- or even suggest which direction
to
turn!
nubbins`: combine
that with
the fact
that for some reason, admitting you were wrong is a death blow in politics
mircea_popescu: nubbins` i
think
that's
the most visible form of
the
thing, "so
this guy can drive, well, so can I. watch me"
nubbins`: it certainly incentivizes people
to pretend
they know what
they're doing, even when
they fully do not
mircea_popescu: why do you
think people watch
the crud "entertainment" produced
these days ?
benkay: oh, so
the guy on
the podium says
things
that are wrong
to get
the votes
mircea_popescu: well, would you rather lose
the elections or win
the elections ?
benkay: how? i understand
the majority of a group of humans being wrong about
things, but how do you get from
that
to democracy incentivizing people
to be wrong?
mircea_popescu: democracy fundamentally incentivizes people
to be wrong.
mircea_popescu: more generally : on any particular question you will always find more people who made a mistake
than people who got it right.
this is
the very nature of error. if voting decides what's error and what's not
then
there will be nothing but errors.
mircea_popescu: well, i'd state
that as "people are willing
to step on
their unwarranted self delusions of grandeur and recognise other's superiority only when hunger or fear compels
them
to"
jurov`: people promote competence only in
times of need
benkay: it conflates competence with acreditation,
too
mircea_popescu: it incentivizes people
to deny competence instead of recognising it, yes.
benkay: democracy is worst because it
tends
towards denying competence instead of recognizing it?
mircea_popescu: in
this sense, democracy is possibly
the worst system, inasmuch as look at all
the wrangling in
the forums re mpex.
mircea_popescu: the idea is
to not arrange economic incentives so
that anyone is better served by denying another's competence
than by recognising it.
mircea_popescu: he has a point
tho. it doesn't HAVE
to come with bloodshed.
benkay: and
that comes with bloodshed.
benkay: regular
turnover at
the
top is required, dammit!
benkay: slavery's
the default state, yo. just because democracy has been here for
the past several however long doesn't mean
that either a) it eradicated
things
that look like what americans would knee-jerk call 'slavery' instantly upon governmental instantiation OR b) it worked well and can be used as a demonstration of why all other forms of government are bad
ozbot: Revisiting
the
topic of “economic injustice”, with examples pe
Trilema - Un blog de Mircea Popes
benkay: to whom do i send .00001 btc for a good indexing of all of
the content
that us and related
thugs want me kept from?
benkay: where's
the dark search engine, eh?
mircea_popescu: this is
the internet, where
things are whatever anyone imagines
them
to be.
benkay: ain't a cold wallet if someone had access in
the past.
jurov`: meh,
they will do an IPO
gribble: MtGox BTCXAU
ticker | Best bid: 0.972824, Best ask: 0.975199936, Bid-ask spread: 0.00238, Last
trade: 0.97176, 24 hour volume: 49622.81261394, 24 hour low: 0.84, 24 hour high: 0.9936, 24 hour vwap: 0.928699928
gribble: Bitstamp BTCUSD
ticker | Best bid: 1128.51, Best ask: 1129.0, Bid-ask spread: 0.49000, Last
trade: 1129.0, 24 hour volume: 21860.41608710, 24 hour low: 988.22, 24 hour high: 1129.0, 24 hour vwap: 1048.35502421
mircea_popescu: basically
this is a "bfl will fail
to deliver by march" wioth some irrelevant crap
tacked on
mircea_popescu: pankkake well
the entire "we put lamp in
there"
thing i could see maybe
pankkake: php-cgi is fastcgi
too. but on a router it might make sense
to have cgi; less memory usage when
the web interface is not used
BingoBoingo: Were
they
the same
time? I need
to go back and check on
that.
mircea_popescu: you mean
the
time pirate guy
tried
to depress
the exhcnage rate and failed miserably within an afternoon ?
BingoBoingo: "Looking like
the 'August 2012' bubble" <- Does
the poster mean
that
time Pirateat40 dumped a bunch of coins for fiat and depressed
the exchange rate for months?
nubbins`: it's had a "shared send"
thing for a while now, iirc
dexX7: but saw just
that blockchain.info has a mixer included now
dexX7: and
then i was curious about
the coin mixing
dexX7: i know about
the blockchain.info note.. i was just wondering about how he phrased
the sentence
mircea_popescu: nubbins` no
there isn't, people have put child porn in
there.
nubbins`: there's a limit of i
think 256 chars
mircea_popescu: (blockchain uses a hash mechanism
to mostly avoid
this problem)
mircea_popescu: otherwise you can introduce arbitrary data in your
tx, which peopel don't like because it bloats
the chain
mircea_popescu: dexX7 you mean
tag
txs ? blockchain wallet apparently does it
nubbins`: i guess he just means put it in
the note field
dexX7: "Every question is a
transaction with BTC and a 'signed message(=question)'
to
the pot-adress." ... signed msg
to
the pot-address? how does
that work?
mircea_popescu: this on
the surface seems
to be exactly wrong :
the sorts of people liable
to send btc over
to "profit" in such a scheme would be
the exact ones not inclined
to sit down and
try and figure out anything.
mircea_popescu: much in
the way plato's own nonsense ended up with socrate dead.
mircea_popescu: jurov` he did so mean centralisation. plato's idea of
the republic informs both mussolini's "all in
the party and nothing outside
the party" as well as mao's cultural revolution.
thestringpuller: interesting. I wonder where
the first argument for
the behemoth of centralized government came from
mircea_popescu: 's leviathanesque ideas struck as edgy rather
than stupid
mircea_popescu: but in general
the greeks were quite decentralised,
to
the degree plato
mircea_popescu: ok, i
think I found
the oldest written argument against
the state and for decentralisation.
mircea_popescu: i had seen it once before, 10ish years ago. it sucked
then, it still sucks
drmandude: does
the name brak mean anything
to any of you? I got .10 in btc with no information other
than "brak"
thought i might have won a bet.
ThickAsThieves: '
The film
tells
the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of a young man with a dream. 17-year-old busboy Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) believes
that "everyone is blessed with one special gift." In Eddie's case,
the gift is a 13" penis and boundless sexual energy. '
pankkake: past performance does not predict
the future!
mircea_popescu: count yourself lucky if
they deliver a box of fans by
the 4th of july
pankkake: I would
think
they would fail less hard
this
time
pankkake: BFL would be more
than 2 months late. well, why not