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The Face Behind Bitcoin?

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Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#601

Post by waterlesscloud »

winstonsmith wrote: post #258
bane wrote: post #101

Topic other than discussing the irresponsibility of "outing" a guy using the clever tricks of using his name and public records look ups. > A libertarian, Nakamoto encouraged his daughter to be independent, start her own business and "not be under the government's thumb," she says. "He was very wary of the government, taxes and people in charge." > What you don't know about him is that he's worked on classified stuff…

These quotes are not just Orwellian, but straight out of Animal Farm : >He doesn't like the system we have today and wanted a different one that would be more equal. He did not like the notion of banks and bankers getting wealthy just because they hold the keys," says Andresen. "Four legs good, two legs bad." >Holding the keys has also made early comers to Bitcoin wealthy beyond measure. "I made a small investment in…

He didn't get rich by just holding the keys, he got rich by getting involved in new tech early. In fact, he helped build something he believes will change the world.

Entirely different scenarios.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#602

Post by mpyne »

masmullin wrote: post #543
georgemcbay wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about good old Occam's Razor? Seems pretty obvious to me that if the details in this article are true (and they likely are) this is indeed "the" Satoshi.

Occam's Razor tells us to go to the simplest of arguments. Given that the details of the article are circumstantial, it's pretty simple that the journalist is wrong and this Satoshi is acting vague for personal gain. However, I give you Hanlon's Razor on this. It's more likely that this Satoshi flubbed his words when speaking about bitcoin rather than intentionally mislead the journalist.

Satoshi's response wasn't vague though. It was detailed.

* I'm not working on this * Anymore (i.e., I was before) * It's been turned over to other people (i.e. there were other parties involved in this work) * They are in charge of it now (i.e. there was a project to be in charge of, and Satoshi had been the one in charge) * I no longer have any connection (i.e. he did used to have a connection).

That's not a vague set of facts about something which this libertarian, privacy-minded genius just happened to be mistaken with. It's a detailed accounting, one which is "the exception that proves the rule". By listing what is not true he is definitely implying what is true.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#603

Post by ThomPete »

mpyne wrote: post #600
ThomPete wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The press has a lot of knowledge of high interest to the public that they never publish for various reasons. Sometimes they can't prove a relation, other times they don't feel the public can deal with the information and finally sometimes they are simply asked not to post it. the primary kind of stories where this is normal is with politicians. In other words. You argument would have some more weight if it was used e…

> It's not in the public interest to figure out who the creator of bitcoin is. It serves no purpose. It ads no value to bitcoin. But it is in Newsweek's interest to find the creator of Bitcoin, if they can get the scoop. It's the free market plus the Bill of Rights (specifically the First Amendment) in action. A perfectly libertarian thing just happened here, IMHO.

You don't live in a libertarian society so that means very little.

The fact is that the press often hold back from releasing information often hold back from using Bill of rights. They should have been more careful here.

Now it's too late. Read below.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/6/5479050/press-chases-allege...

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#604

Post by argumentum »

mpyne wrote: post #602
masmullin wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occam's Razor tells us to go to the simplest of arguments. Given that the details of the article are circumstantial, it's pretty simple that the journalist is wrong and this Satoshi is acting vague for personal gain. However, I give you Hanlon's Razor on this. It's more likely that this Satoshi flubbed his words when speaking about bitcoin rather than intentionally mislead the journalist.

Satoshi's response wasn't vague though. It was detailed. * I'm not working on this * Anymore (i.e., I was before) * It's been turned over to other people (i.e. there were other parties involved in this work) * They are in charge of it now (i.e. there was a project to be in charge of, and Satoshi had been the one in charge) * I no longer have any connection (i.e. he did used to have a connection). That's not a vague s…

If it was "detailed", you wouldn't need to (put everything that you think in parentheses).

Let me re-paranthesize your quote:

* I'm not working on this * Anymore (he never worked on it) * It's been turned over to other people (this is a public project with dozens of people involved, publicly) * They are in charge of it now (yes, they (as in the publicly acknowledged open source project) are in charge of it now) * I no longer have any connection (i.e. he never had a connection).

> he is definitely implying what is true

What evidence do you have that any of his "implications" are worthy of truthfulness? (or that he's a "genius")?

What other "genius" level work has he produced? Or something even close to what would normally be considered "genius".

Even the obscure professor (Yitang Zhang) who came up with the first resolution of the twin prime conjecture was an "obscure" university professor.

I'm not saying that credentials are the only valid proof of capability. The Wright brothers had no degree. But they had decades of documentation of their efforts before they succeeded.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#605

Post by mpyne »

Myrmornis wrote: post #417

Well it's too late to get any points for this inference now, but I'm going to claim that there was a strong clue that the author of the PDF was old: the bitcoin paper cites "An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications" by William Feller. This is a classic, from the 1960s, but I don't think it's very well known among people under 40 (correct me if I'm wrong).

That's a good inference, but it was actually mentioned by the journalist who wrote this article.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#606

Post by bane »

hindsightbias wrote: post #538
bane wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm going to take you at your word that you're actually curious. I actually do find it curious, but frustrating. I have a great many friends, who I quite like in normal face-to-face interaction, who I've FB friended, and found I had to unfollow their feeds because in private they turn into rabid ideologues...from every part of the political spectrum. In this case I'm isolating conservative/libertarian folks, but I…

> planned parenthood Do you see that as rabid ideology? I ask because I'm always interested in what is becoming the norm (or how far the goalposts of reality move). For instance, while a lot of FB relatives might believe Obama is coming for their guns tomorrow, the last clinic serving the entire Rio Grande Valley in Texas is closing tomorrow.

It doesn't matter what I believe. What matters is that for some of my FB friends, every 3rd post is a planned parenthood story because that's what they've decided to hyper-focus on. Since I know that everything they post will be a PP press release or new story, their feed is now entirely information free and I can unfollow it without missing anything. Got it, Planned Parenthood did or stood for something that's important to them.

I also have people who non-stop, 20-30 times a day, post patriotic pro-gun items or a few that pretty much only post pictures of Obama Photoshoped to look like the Devil or Stalin or whatever that I've had to unfollow as well.

My own mother is on the unfollow list because all she posts are heart warming pictures of lakes and natural settings with religious quotes and ghostly pictures of Jesus or whatever on them.

It's endless. I honestly don't know how they never just get bored or tired of it.

In an effort to find more signal in the noise of my feed I just simply turn those people off and if I need to I tell them to just message me if they need me to know something. (Of course now I get religious quotes emailed to me a few times a week...)

Let me look at one of my unfollowed: last 10 posts

1. Picture of soldiers firing guns with a patriotic slogan

2. Picture of a Navy Anchor

3. Some kind of rambling statement about God and country and service.

4. A picture of a congressional hearing with the following text "Facebook wants to delete all pro-gun rights pages: Share this if you think that's a bad idea"

5. Picture of his new indoor gun range

6. Picture of some war memorial statues

7. Picture of guys in Colonial costume reenacting the revolutionary war.

8. Picture of a handgun with the following text "GUNS My right to own one is what protects your right to tell me I can't: like and share"

9. Picture of a handgun, a combat knife and some money

10. Picture of an outdoor shooting range next to a Lincoln style lodge

And I'm not even back into Feb yet.

Here's another one...this goes back to Jan.

1. Picture of a black woman with an inspirational quote

2. image of text supporting gay rights

3. image of a guy holding out his hand, text reads "Just let the lesbian and gay people get married and calm the fuck down"

4. Image of the MLK diner sit ins with inspirational quote

5. Picture of a football player coming out as gay with inspirational quote

6. Statement being upset about some legal issue surrounding gay people.

7. Picture of the pope with link to Dailykos about Rush Limbaugh being a bad person

8. Link to thinkprogress about how Racism caused the shutdown

9. dailykos link about a right-wing truckers beltway blockade

10. link to thenewcivilrightsmovement.com concerning a gay rights issue

These aren't even the worst of the lot. I'm just picking at random. But it goes on.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#607

Post by georgemcbay »

nwh wrote: post #22

Being labeled Satoshi regardless of truth is pretty much going to get you robbed, kidnapped or killed. This dude lives in this town and has $400M of untraceable currency? The article gives his name, face, address and relatives. You can be sure as hell that somebody will do something stupid to try and get to it. I wouldn't wish this label upon anybody, it's exactly why the community tries to avoid speculating about it…

"Being labeled Satoshi regardless of truth is pretty much going to get you robbed, kidnapped or killed."

People say that a lot as it pertains to Satoshi, but I don't see any realistic basis for it except watching too many bad movies. Even if you had $400M in stolen bitcoin, how are you going to unload that quickly enough for the payoff to be worth murder/kidnap or whatever else? The Winklevii seem to have fulltime jobs getting PR on the fact that they hold $40M in bitcoin, what's the tipping point at which they will certainly be killed?

If a "feature" of bitcoin is that if you happen to get wealthy in it you're bound to be killed, well that's a pretty shitty feature of a currency. Luckily, the idea that this will happen is just hogwash.

The whole beauty of bitcoin is that because nobody is sure how to regulate it, you can steal/embezzle huge amounts of it and likely never get in trouble. Why fuck that up with the dirty business of murder and kidnapping, which are very clearly illegal?

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#608

Post by mpyne »

frogpelt wrote: post #256
fab13n wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue for him today isn't legality; it's being a prime target for extortion, from entities other than governments.

He's probably not completely safe from governments either.

Well if it was this easy to track him down then I somehow suspect that the U.S. gov't, at least, was not actually trying to do it.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#609

Post by bane »

prostoalex wrote: post #446
Jtsummers wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's doublethink or hypocrisy to complain about people getting fat off the government dole while getting fat off the government dole.

How does one gain a first-hand knowledge of a corrupt system unless one has experienced it himself? It's quite possible to be the user of the system due to the lack of other alternatives and oppose it in principle. People with mortgages or shares do not necessarily support corrupt Wall Street practices and financial institutions getting "too big to fail", yet benefit from low mortgage rates or bullish runs in the sto…

It turns out experiential knowledge is not the only way we can learn things.

Re: The Face Behind Bitcoin?

#610

Post by mpyne »

ThomPete wrote: post #603
mpyne wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not in the public interest to figure out who the creator of bitcoin is. It serves no purpose. It ads no value to bitcoin. But it is in Newsweek's interest to find the creator of Bitcoin, if they can get the scoop. It's the free market plus the Bill of Rights (specifically the First Amendment) in action. A perfectly libertarian thing just happened here, IMHO.

You don't live in a libertarian society so that means very little. The fact is that the press often hold back from releasing information often hold back from using Bill of rights. They should have been more careful here. Now it's too late. Read below. http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/6/5479050/press-chases-allege...

> You don't live in a libertarian society so that means very little.

Are you saying such a thing would not have happened in a libertarian society? Do you seriously believe that?

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