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Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

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Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#111

Post by somebodythere »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #54
jnbiche wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a feature, not a bug....Healthy communities are comprised of people who are trusting and permissive by default. It's entirely possible to find a happy medium. You can be trusting without being totally naive about individuals with bad intentions.

It really isn't, per what 'pdpi wrote. What we should do is being maximally trusting (to reap the efficiency benefits), and punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others. The goal really is to let everyone be safe in trusting others to the point of naivete, because trust is that huge o…

> punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others.

I strongly disagree. This would make sense if humans were all rational actors who only took an action after performing the risk calculus of expected reward vs. potential punishment. But that's not how humans work, and thinking this way only results in a justice system that is unnecessarily cruel, ignores rehabilitation, and doesn't actually work that well at preventing crime.

Relevant sources:

Sentence Severity and Crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis "Most reviews conclude that there is little or no consistent evidence that harsher sanctions reduce crime rates in Western populations[1]."

Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? "Inmates housed in higher security levels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed in minimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime.[2]"

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/652230

[2] http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/Chen_Shapiro_2007.pdf

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#112

Post by AJ007 »

tim333 wrote: post #88

The case seems a bit nuts in that Wright isn't Satoshi so his business partners estate won't achieve much by suing him for coins he can't have stolen from the business partner because he doesn't have them.

But, they could get a judgement on whatever other assets he actually does have.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#113

Post by _7fvc »

Bitcoin is evil in some aspects. Its enigmatic origin triggers religiosity. Bitcoin consumes those who learn about it. It's like a spell. When price goes down, you'd come into its defense. When price goes up, it occupies your brain. Bitcoin can be a source of good. But it comes with a lot of evil. Craig Wright fell for its evil.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#114

Post by xorcist »

samcday wrote: post #2

The whole story seems so bizarre. As far as I understand it, some kind of fraudster got caught up in a bunch of his own lies, of which being the inventor of Bitcoin happened to be one. We're only reading about it because "Bitcoin" happens to be a frothy buzzword that gets the clicks. Otherwise this would just be some local news case about a wacky person saying the darndest things. It's funny how we decide what's news…

The Craig Wright story is interesting because Gavin Andresen, who probably interacted more with Satoshi than anybody else, was dead set on Wright being Satoshi. He referred to evidence shown in private that he was unable to share the details of.

Later after Wright couldn't (or didn't want to) prove the Satoshi connection in public Andresen later expressed regrets going public with these statements, but never really took them back. It's hard to know, really. Andresen was release manager of the reference implementation for several years and widely regarded as trustworthy.

Other people made business investments based on these statements. Well known investor Roger Ver now seems to regard Wright a fraud, but not before headlining conferences with him and releasing a cryptocurrency together. So Wright has been quite influential, at least with some select people, and is absolutely newsworthy.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#115

Post by geekone »

carlosdp wrote: post #75

> And a font copyrighted in 2015 appeared on an another email supposedly dispatched in 2011. This keeps happening in court, mostly with Microsoft Word Calibri. It's kinda funny how effective such a simple oversight is at proving document forgery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibri

It looks like it was released to the public in 2007

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#116

Post by Lucadg »

garmaine wrote: post #30
Lucadg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it has to do with the fact that when organizing a conference many optimize for speakers attracting crowds rather than content.

On the other hand, most bitcoin devs I know would specifically avoid a conference that made that mistake.

True. And that's about attendees quality which is another metric I don't think they optimize for in general. They need to fill the halls first of all.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#117

Post by CamperBob2 »

lgeorget wrote: post #96

I'm starting to wonder if Wright could actually be pathologically delusional and convinced to be Satoshi, despite the accumulated evidence against it. I'm no psychologist but it reminds me of how paranoid schizophrenia is typically presented. At the beginning, it looked like an elaborate fraud but now, he barely makes any sense at all in his declarations.

If I were a fraudster and I knew I'd gotten in over my head, I could easily see myself mounting a mental-incapacity defense. It's almost unassailable.

That aside, I was pretty sure Donald Trump was going to develop a sudden case of Alzheimer's at some point, but so far I've been wrong about that. If the fraudster believes strongly enough in his own fraud, all bets are (literally) off.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#118

Post by plondon514 »

eof wrote: post #62

Can someone explain the public address thing? The courts seem to demand he list the public addresses where all Thai early mines bitcoin lies. He says he cannot produce it because of this splintered trust. But, the addresses are available for all to see on the blockchain itself, it is the private keys which are hidden away. How is this basic fact just ignored in all these proceedings?

I think he cannot produce proof that he is owner of these address. The list is well known. He could spend, or even sign a message, with any of the private keys from an early address. That would prove he is satoshi. He has not done this. Therefore he is not satoshi.

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

somebodythere wrote: post #111
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't, per what 'pdpi wrote. What we should do is being maximally trusting (to reap the efficiency benefits), and punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others. The goal really is to let everyone be safe in trusting others to the point of naivete, because trust is that huge o…

> punish hard anyone trying to take advantage of it, way out of proportion compared to the magnitude of the violation, in order to discourage people from abusing the trust of others. I strongly disagree. This would make sense if humans were all rational actors who only took an action after performing the risk calculus of expected reward vs. potential punishment. But that's not how humans work, and thinking this way o…

I spent past 30 minutes skimming the first paper (available here[0]). Fine, so severity itself doesn't really work as a deterrent - with the caveat made by study, that it applies to "variation within the limits that are plausible in Western countries". I.e. changing the punishment of some crime from 2 years to 3 years does not create meaningful extra deterrence; changing it from 2 years to 25 years or capital punishment just might. I'd argue that changing the punishment from "a fine" to "prison sentence" may just do the trick too.

> This would make sense if humans were all rational actors who only took an action after performing the risk calculus of expected reward vs. potential punishment. But that's not how humans work

This is indeed how humans work sometimes. Not in the heat of the moment, but when coldly calculating how to make more money with less effort. Fraud is not a crime of passion, it's premeditated, evaluated in advance. More certainty of consequences, and perhaps the severity of them, may be what's needed to further reduce it.

--

[0] - http://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1086/652230

Re: Craig Wright faces tough questions over forged documents in court

#120

Post by TeMPOraL »

jlokier wrote: post #86
TeMPOraL wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rare, severe, apparently random punishment tends not to be associated with justice. In the dream/goal I presented I was hoping for swift, indiscriminate and - yes - severe justice. The lack of all three wrt. crimes against public or even individual trust is a problem for contemporary societies.

In your presentation, the severe justice was to discourage breaches of trust. But that doesn't work if the justice is "apparently random". If that is how it's perceived, then trust violators will have no incentive to avoid violation. They, and everyone else, will believe that it doesn't matter whether they violate trust or not, since justice is a lottery ticket given to everyone, where the prize is punishment, and it…

I appreciate the distinction between being random, and seeming random. But this is a solvable problem, one particularly benefiting from rules being applied to rule enforcers - applying justice "at random" (in particular, in a corrupt way) is a violation of public trust too.
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