michael2l's comments

Anybody else suddenly have the urge to play Civilization?

Is it just me or does the article seem to end rather abruptly as if much more was intended and perhaps accidentally left off or just published before completion?

Funny how we want to take an incredibly complex system and boil it down to 1+1=2. We think we're really advanced when we throw in 3rd or 4th step into the math equation. But not surprisingly this sort of reductionism leads to people being equally certain of exactly opposite conclusions. To the point they'll belittle the other person's simplistic understanding while completely missing the simplicity of their own model.

I think when it comes to evaluating true novelty we underestimate how much our language does our thinking for us. Which is another reason why novel ideas hide from us so well. To put them into articulated forms that can be carried through time effectively (even to communicate them to later versions of ourselves) we have to bend the meanings of the words we're using in novel ways. Not easy to do but essential to an idea's survival.

Quite apart from the math and science of deterministic physics and probabilistic quantum physics, there's a broader evolutionary question.

Why would we evolve this hallucination that we have free will, if in fact we fundamentally don't? It seems like a lot of effort and metabolic energy on a moment-by-moment basis to maintain the illusion. I guess you could make an argument we're in some sort of simulation the maker of which required this illusion to be present for reasons of their own.

But the conscious awareness of our moment-by-moment availability of choice is one of the most difficult things to deny even if you're incredibly skeptical about everything else you can observe through the senses (a la descartes).

It's amazing to me how everyone is drinking the koolaid here on him being a fraud. I really don't think Gavin got duped. And I'm pretty sure they had enough private email discussions over the years that there were things they discussed/shared privately over those years that could be used as a reference point for Gavin to be sure he was talking to the same person. People are more willing to believe that Gavin was hacked or suddenly forgot how bitcoin worked.

I understand the technical proofs put forth have been spurious. I wouldn't be surprised if Craig had an under-qualified underlying who didn't really understand what they were doing who was responsible for some of that. People are forgetting the human part of this equation though. His interviews with the BBC don't strike me at all as someone looking to cash in. I think he is a bit of narcissist and wants to claim some credit for inventing bitcoin, but I also see a very deep fear of being in the public eye that comes through as well. Perhaps because he has done quite a few things he's not proud of and doesn't want to have people publicizing those. But the idea that he's a scammer looking to cash in here just play doesn't out at all. What's the end game? Where's the pile of money he's after? People aren't thinking through the motivations here thoroughly enough. He's risking quite a lot by doing this with the absolute certainty that he would be found out if he was a fraud. You could say maybe he's an idiot and doesn't understand that. No one could watch that interview though and believe the man isn't intelligent though. Why talk about the negotiations with Australian tax authorities when those authorities could very easily come and say that he was lying. None of this makes any sense from the scam angle. There has to be something else going on here.

I dislike this expertise as well, but lets get at what you are saying, that a recruiter should have some sort of programming background to know how concepts actually are used versus the sorts of mixed metaphors one comes up with in the absence of that understanding, which are often quite comical.

This just isn't realistic. Most recruiters are doing this job in some sort of entry-level commission-only type role, and if they had any sort of basic IT skills/understanding are likely to have better offers to do something in that arena. Some recruiters do learn a good bit and are more successful over time and make a good living, but most people try it for a bit and don't do well enough to keep at it. Combining the sales ability with technical ability is a bit rare, but for people who have both you can do pretty well both in recruiting and in other lines of work as well.

Agreed, at first I thought they were trying to make a point, then it seems to lapse into some sort of cartoonish straw man just-for-entertainment depiction, but then it veers back to a serious conclusion along the lines "and this is why these companies shouldn't exist. The End". It's a bit confusing.

A default is a horrible outcome, but "that which can't be paid back won't".

It's been pretty clear for a while now that the debt load for the Greek economy is too great and some sort of bankruptcy(default) is required. The ECB and others have conspired to hide this with the collusion of previous Greek leaders, by heaping on more onerous debt and calling it a bailout.

It will have to end at some point. What's occurred up until now is fraud with the intent that someone further down the road will have to deal with ensuing mess. But it's likely the game of kick the can will continue.

I could see myself doing something equally as silly as this if I had the money to burn.

It's all our fault.

I think most people use the concept of being for or against "Freedom" to refer to the opposite sides of the bottom-up versus top-down modes of economic development and governance.

Certainly, it's an over-generalization, and the word freedom is used specifically to evoke an emotional response, but I don't think it's devoid of meaning.

An unfortunate side-effect of having a democracy with 300 million plus people in it, is that to a certain extent these sort of over-generalizations are a necessary part of coalition building.

"I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating." - Boss Tweed quoted recently by Lawrence Lessig

While I believe the above statement is fundamentally true I"m still going to vote. For me personally, I think I'm doing that as a some sort of ritual to hold onto my belief in democracy even though I recognize that our current system is badly broken.