Luke's 7k Post: A baller's bitcoin biz plan

[guerilla]

and no definite indicator other than history and our current situation.

History is not a predictor. Empiricism can help you make predictions.

History doesn't repeat, if it did, nothing would change. Do you really think the world hasn't changed in the last 50, 100, 1,000 years?

People who are ignorant about empiricism, appeal to history as though history (they probably never experienced) is some perfect indicator of how the world works.

It is mentally retarded. And it's a logical fallacy.

Also, Turkey problem.

 

[greenleaves]

History is not a predictor. Empiricism can help you make predictions.

History doesn't repeat, if it did, nothing would change. Do you really think the world hasn't changed in the last 50, 100, 1,000 years?

People who are ignorant about empiricism, appeal to history as though history (they probably never experienced) is some perfect indicator of how the world works.

It is mentally retarded. And it's a logical fallacy.

Also, Turkey problem.

Does empiricism rely on evidence and experience? It is my understanding that empiricism is part of the scientific method, and uses experiments... is history not filled with experiments?

What is history if not the compiled, moderated recordings of collective human experience?

I'm not advocating historicism... but to postulate that empiricism is a perfect indicator of how the world works is a tad conceited (you didn't say it, but implied it by contrast) since it assumes humans are capable of objective analysis.

Also, while history does not repeat itself, it would seem to have at the least a cyclical aspect to it, if not a perfect cycle, at least a spiraling one. You have to admit the rise and fall of empires, the way human progress moves forward, then recedes and starts moving forward again, intellectual undercurrents and others seem to fall into patterns, that while are not necessarily indicative of future trends, it does create for situations where humans can understand the probability of what lies ahead just a little.

 

[cheshire]

Man I remember when this was a bitcoin thread.

 

[guerilla]

Does empiricism rely on evidence and experience? It is my understanding that empiricism is part of the scientific method, and uses experiments... is history not filled with experiments?

History is mostly hearsay, and it's not a science. You can't testify in court about something you don't have firsthand personal knowledge of.

But hey, if anyone here was alive for the invasion of Poland, feel free to chime in.

 

[greenleaves]

History is mostly hearsay, and it's not a science. You can't testify in court about something you don't have firsthand personal knowledge of.

But hey, if anyone here was alive for the invasion of Poland, feel free to chime in.

You are right. I acknowledged history isn't accurate in my post. But you don't seem to acknowledge that your perception of reality is also flawed. I agree it is less flawed than history's perspective of reality, but turning history down just because it has inaccuracies...

In the end, you use history to determine reality, if only current history (I was never in Irak, I don't know if there really was an invasion, I was never in New Orleans, I don't know for a fact that there was a hurricane, I've never studied physics, how can I know that atoms exist?, I've never seen a species stop existing, how can I know that happens? I've never seen evolution, how do I know it exists?)

To reduce life to only provable, repeatable experiments, you'd be left with very little information with which to base your understanding of reality. I'd be limited to understanding only the most basic elements of the tiny environment in which I live and only for the tiny space in time which I experience it. Even memory is not infallible.

 

[IceToEskimos]

The world is just a tad different now than it was back in 1937. Hell, we're probably a good 12,000kms away, and we're firing off communications in seconds to each other. In 1937, that used to take months.

The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in the 1860's.

Telegraph signals travel at approximately 2/3 the speed of light.

So, in 1937 a 12,000 mile communication would take seconds to transmit, not months.

Close, though.

 

[greenleaves]

History is mostly hearsay, and it's not a science. You can't testify in court about something you don't have firsthand personal knowledge of.

But hey, if anyone here was alive for the invasion of Poland, feel free to chime in.

Then:

I can imagine Tecumseh saying something similar 200 years ago.

No comment.

 

[eliquid]

But hey, if anyone here was alive for the invasion of Poland, feel free to chime in.

I have to say, this made me chuckle

 

[Kiopa_Matt]

The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in the 1860's.

Telegraph signals travel at approximately 2/3 the speed of light.

So, in 1937 a 12,000 mile communication would take seconds to transmit, not months.

Close, though.

I love WF. Nitpick the shit out of everything. So if it was currently 1937, we'd be able to community this freely?

 

[IceToEskimos]

I love WF. Nitpick the shit out of everything. So if it was currently 1937, we'd be able to community this freely?

I'm not nitpicking anything, I'm just pointing out that you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[guerilla]

You are right.

I want to troll you so fucking hard right now but I won't because you have been gentlemanly lately.

But you don't seem to acknowledge that your perception of reality is also flawed.

I haven't made (many?) claims about my perception, nor would I say that my perception trumps yours. There are facts, and then there are opinions. You can't say much factual about anything you didn't observe, didn't record, weren't alive for. Agreed?

In the end, you use history to determine reality

I really try not to.

To reduce life to only provable, repeatable experiments, you'd be left with very little information with which to base your understanding of reality.

This isn't true. I don't have time to write an essay on it, but suffice it to say that one can accept most of reality is uncertainty, and still navigate through it without a lot of preconceptions. It's called rationalism.

Rationalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you go back over my posts for the last 3 years, maybe longer, I have almost always taken the rationalist approach. I am interested in logic, deductive reasoning, and heuristics. Anyone I have ever helped in IM, implicitly got a lesson about how to use heuristics to confront uncertainty (how does the Google algo work) and to compensate for lack of domain specific knowledge.

Most people don't think this way. That's fine. I don't hold "most people" in high regard as thinkers.

Appeals to history are logical fallacies, and as I pointed out to Matt, too many lazy minds engage in post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The best check on my own bad memory, or fuzziness around sensory data, is to rigorously engage in deductive reasoning. If I am making a mistake, more often than not, I will bust myself making it.

Let's not even begin to talk about how many times I have pointed out the Turkey problem, that which most people remain blissfully unaware.

 

[Kiopa_Matt]

I'm not nitpicking anything, I'm just pointing out that you don't know what you're talking about.

We just bounced back multiple messages between ourselves in a matter of minutes, and we're ~12,000kms away. Was this a possibility in 1937? Yes or no?

And I mean for us, not governments.

 

[greenleaves]

Can we agree that Germany invading Poland is a bad thing?

Can we also agree that there's no chance of Germany invading Poland anytime in the future? If so, why? Right, globalization and the formation of the EU.

No, I don't agree that the invasion of Poland was a bad thing. For the Polish people it was, for the most part, bad in the moment. But saying something is bad as an absolute requires you to be saying you know what is best for humanity.

Over 100 million died in WW2. At historical fertility rates, this would mean we'd have 100's of millions of more people in an already over-crowded world. Who knows how many more issues we'd have today without it.


And the fact that there is no wars between European nation-states has a lot more to do with:
The world being a lot richer (more resources means less fight over resources)
Weapons having much more destructive capacity (anybody ready for a direct war between nuclear power players)
The fact that major power players now use proxy wars to determine their strength so as to avoid the negative repercussions of direct combat
More integrated commerce
Cycles of violence that appear and disappear without our full understanding of the origin of such phenomena (I'd say it has to do with a biological trigger related to the saturation point of a species in it's ecosystem, but that is highly debatable and my position on that topic isn't very strong, it is merely pondering)

And there can still be war in Europe any moment. Saying that we haven't had war in Europe in the last 70 years is not only false, but even if true it would be a bit like saying a roulette wheel hit black 5 times, therefore it is going to hit red. It is a logical fallacy as well as suffering from the '40 is a very large number' syndrome.

 

[greenleaves]

I want to troll you so fucking hard right now but I won't because you have been gentlemanly lately.

Thank you, I try to keep my asshole side down to a minimum unless something really calls for it.

I haven't made (many?) claims about my perception, nor would I say that my perception trumps yours. There are facts, and then there are opinions. You can't say much factual about anything you didn't observe, didn't record, weren't alive for. Agreed?

You are right. I can't say factually. But then again, how would you know that matter is made up of molecules if you don't have factual experience backing it up.

And even your observations, they aren't impartial. Ask any 10 witnesses about the 'facts' of an event, and you will have 15 sets of 'facts', all gathered first hand.[/quote]

I really try not to.

I know you try. I do too. But to quote ccarter; lettuce be cereal, you can't help it. I can't either. You rely on common sense; pre-conceived notions of reality, to live. We can't survive without it. We can fight against it taking over our rationality, but we can't ever fully win that fight, not until 46+2

Appeals to history are logical fallacies, and as I pointed out to Matt, too many lazy minds engage in post hoc, ergo propter hoc. The best check on my own bad memory, or fuzziness around sensory data, is to rigorously engage in deductive reasoning. If I am making a mistake, more often than not, I will bust myself making it.

Funny that in a post mentioning the correlation does not equal causation fallacy, you actually engage in it on the same sentence.

Just because when you make a mistake you bust, does not mean you bust because you made a mistake.

In the end, looking for causation among correlated events is something we depend on. We can't take it as a fact, but we must use it. Just like you did in your ironic example.


I think we agree, but are arguing semantics. You communication comes off in a way that seems you are Moises handing down commandments, instead of explaining you positions as fallible but preferable to other positions. This hubris grates against me and causes me to challenge you. I guess I'm guilty of the same, or it wouldn't grate me so much (we tend to dislike others who display traits of our own shadow)

 

[IceToEskimos]

We just bounced back multiple messages between ourselves in a matter of minutes, and we're ~12,000kms away. Was this a possibility in 1937? Yes or no?

And I mean for us, not governments.

No, we weren't able to bounce any messages back and forth in 1937 because we weren't alive.

The people who were alive were able to do it though.

The fact that communications technology has both improved and come down in price doesn't change the fact that you are trying to make arguments about history (Germany invading Poland) without the most basic understanding of the context in which those events occurred.

You're talking about the 20th century like it was 400 years ago, and it's a real problem. The bias that all living people feel towards their own time is unavoidable, but goddamn, make an effort to overcome it for a minute.

 

[Kiopa_Matt]

No, we weren't able to bounce any messages back and forth in 1937 because we weren't alive.

The people who were alive were able to do it though.

The fact that communications technology has both improved and come down in price doesn't change the fact that you are trying to make arguments about history (Germany invading Poland) without the most basic understanding of the context in which those events occurred.

You're talking about the 20th century like it was 400 years ago, and it's a real problem. The bias that all living people feel towards their own time is unavoidable, but goddamn, make an effort to overcome it for a minute.

Oh, for fuck sakes. WF is one of a kind. Has the world become closer, more ingrained, and tightly knitted over the last 70 years due to things such as communication and transportation technology?

Has that caused the chance of mass, widespread war to decrease?

This isn't rocket science. The US isn't going to start dropping nukes on Japan again anytime soon.

 

[jacky8]

"suck dick for 1btc"

If you said it a month ago, it might have been ok but because now 1 btc = $750, there's no chance someone will pay you 1 btc for getting dick sucked.

 

[guerilla]

You are right. I can't say factually. But then again, how would you know that matter is made up of molecules if you don't have factual experience backing it up.

But here is the thing. I don't care if matter is made up of molecules or jelly beans. I don't care about EVERYTHING.

And even your observations, they aren't impartial. Ask any 10 witnesses about the 'facts' of an event, and you will have 15 sets of 'facts', all gathered first hand.

That's fine. I already made a distinction between fact and opinion. Those are opinions, not facts.

I know you try. I do too. But to quote ccarter; lettuce be cereal

I think you're quoting Grindstone.

you can't help it. I can't either. You rely on common sense; pre-conceived notions of reality, to live. We can't survive without it. We can fight against it taking over our rationality, but we can't ever fully win that fight

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Funny that in a post mentioning the correlation does not equal causation fallacy, you actually engage in it on the same sentence.

Just because when you make a mistake you bust, does not mean you bust because you made a mistake.

I never claimed that. Plus, I don't think you understand what I wrote.

I think we agree, but are arguing semantics.

You want to insist that knowledge isn't perfect, and I never claimed differently. For whatever reason, you're trying very hard to prove a point that I am not contending.

On the contrary, I am fairly certain you haven't understood what I have written thus far.

You communication comes off in a way that seems you are Moises handing down commandments, instead of explaining you positions as fallible but preferable to other positions.

You interpret it that way.

This hubris grates against me and causes me to challenge you. I guess I'm guilty of the same, or it wouldn't grate me so much (we tend to dislike others who display traits of our own shadow)

You perceive me to have a lot of hubris, but if you knew me as more than text on a screen, that probably wouldn't be your perception.

As far as being mad about it, dude, life is short. Don't get mad.

 

[IceToEskimos]

Has that caused the chance of mass, widespread war to decrease?

Yes.

The list of armed conflicts currently taking place is short.

 

[greenleaves]

But here is the thing. I don't care if matter is made up of molecules or jelly beans. I don't care about EVERYTHING.

You have to concede that you do use information that you did not acquire first hand. Information which based on your own category would be described as hearsay, or non-first hand empirical.

You want to insist that knowledge isn't perfect, and I never claimed differently. For whatever reason, you're trying very hard to prove a point that I am not contending.

You discarded history as a place for seeking knowledge and quoted empiricism. You seemed to propose empiricism is an 'intellectually pure' method of acquiring knowledge while history was a debased form of understanding reality.

I was challenging that view. Maybe not all of it, since history is very much written by the winners, but to totally discard it is a throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

You interpret it that way.

You perceive me to have a lot of hubris, but if you knew me as more than text on a screen, that probably wouldn't be your perception.

As far as being mad about it, dude, life is short. Don't get mad.

I never said you have a lot of hubris, that is a straw-man argument. I said 'this hubris' referring to the way you communicate on this forum. I don't know you IRL, it would be stupid of me to think our online persona match our face to face persona 1:1.