|
GunnerJ posted:That's probably fair but it says more about jrod than John Green. Some of his world history videos are garbage. His World History videos were all charming and delightful to watch I will fight you IRL over this, or maybe we can have a beauty contest (I will surely win, plenty of ladies have told me that I am quite a handsome fellow *tips fedora*)
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 20:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 10:45 |
|
|
I'm not going to dispute the viewing experience.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 20:08
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:That was actually entertaining and informative. I also didn't expect a shoutout but I think it's important that I mention one very important thing for listeners. I honestly meant to mention you and some other people, but we were all kinda drunk.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 21:22
|
|
|
I want to do another one and for it to be about bitcoin and other libertarian related currency nonsense. How does evening of the 19th sound to people?
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 21:42
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:I want to do another one and for it to be about bitcoin and other libertarian related currency nonsense. How does evening of the 19th sound to people? I was on a plane and had to skip the last one and I will be on a plane and have to skip this one. I don't really have much to add to the discussion anyway but if you're doing a round-table about environmental concerns and how statelessness will gently caress the earth even more than it is currently being ruined hit me up I have a lot to talk about 
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 22:24
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:I want to do another one and for it to be about bitcoin and other libertarian related currency nonsense. How does evening of the 19th sound to people? Err, maybe? I missed the last one but since it turned out well I'm interested in the next, and I think I can spare some time next Saturday, depending on when specifically in the evening you were thinking.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:09
|
|
|
Probably around 7 or 8 EST, like last time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:25
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:I want to do another one and for it to be about bitcoin and other libertarian related currency nonsense. How does evening of the 19th sound to people? I'm down.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:26
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:Probably around 7 or 8 EST, like last time. Then provisionally pencil me in for it, so long as nothing comes up and I don't forget about it of course.
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:30
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:I want to do another one and for it to be about bitcoin and other libertarian related currency nonsense. How does evening of the 19th sound to people? Good, I think
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2015 23:35
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:I want to do another one and for it to be about bitcoin and other libertarian related currency nonsense. How does evening of the 19th sound to people? I do like making fun of bitcoin so you can provisionally include me. Just gotta run it past the wife.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 00:02
|
|
|
Is there a bitcoin thread in D&D or BFC that I should look up. Just want the skinny so if I can make it (it'd be the morning of the 20th for me) I won't be completely lost. My knowledge of it is limited and probably incorrect. I understand it's a "crypto-currency" that started out as some kind of game where computer programmers would try to solve a problem to get a code to claim a 'bitcoin' but got to the point of people building rigs to find and crack new coins faster than people could realize there was a new coin. I remember this from college, because I thought it'd be neat to try to practice my programming skills (or lack thereof), but hearing about the mills turned me off to it. And then now years later it's being used as some kind of barter/exchange fiat currency, but there's a lot of legal questions behind it and every time a government tries to interpret what it is and it's relation to the marketplace, Bitcoin users get all butt-hurt about how the government doesn't understand, man. You can't regulate this! Like, it's money but not money, so it shouldn't be regulated by monetary exchanges. It's a commodity, but not a commodity, so the FTC shouldn't poke their nose into it. It's like it is and isn't whatever Bitcoin users want it to be or not be to avoid governments trying to enact regulations to limit fraud or possibly tax Bitcoin transfers. Is that about the long and short of it? Otherwise, I think I answered my own question about why Libertarians love Bitcoins, despite Bitcoins being fabricated out of whole cloth moreso than any "fiat paper currency"; current lack of regulation and oversight.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 00:37
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:Probably around 7 or 8 EST, like last time. I could probably do that as long as nothing crazy happens at work that day. Which uh, could happen.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 00:39
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:Is there a bitcoin thread in D&D or BFC that I should look up. Just want the skinny so if I can make it (it'd be the morning of the 20th for me) I won't be completely lost. We have such sights to show you.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 00:48
|
|
|
That is not the only path to madness and enlightenment.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 00:50
|
|
|
January would work better for me, and February better than that, but I also don't know too much about Bitcoin so whatever.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 02:18
|
|
|
Not sure I'm 100% up on things yet, but that video about bitsquatting was quite interesting. Otherwise, it seems the problem isn't Bitcoin itself, but what people have made Bitcoin into. Like, I have an engineering degree, and whenever you build a proof-of-concept, it's never meant for public consumption, just proof that a crazy theory will work, and hopefully advance the industry in a big leap rather than small, iterative steps. It still takes work to refine that PoC into a workable product that can be sold. As a proof of concept, the idea of Bitcoin seems very interesting, and I can see where this would have practical applications for legitimate transactions. Where it is now is very terrible, from what I have briefly perused; the smallest problem being its inability to scale to a mass market (and apparently already straining) and its worst issues being its use to purchase illicit goods.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 06:09
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:Not sure I'm 100% up on things yet, but that video about bitsquatting was quite interesting. BitCoin is inherently stupid. It is fundamentally flawed and was from the very get go. The entire point of it was to put a gold standard back in place by replacing gold with something else. The gold standard is inherently stupid but internet lolbertarians latched onto it because they believe that the gold standard was awesome. Then it turned out that this proof of concept didn't do much other than prove that deregulation doesn't work. Pretty much every single possible bit of financial fuckery that regulations were put in place to prevent ended up happening. Currency manipulation, price fixing, money laundering, black market trading...it all happened.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:BitCoin is inherently stupid. It is fundamentally flawed and was from the very get go. The entire point of it was to put a gold standard back in place by replacing gold with something else. The gold standard is inherently stupid but internet lolbertarians latched onto it because they believe that the gold standard was awesome. I'm probably missing a lot of information about Bitcoin's history, but it seems like it was just some dude's pet project run amok by people who have co-opted it for the reasons you mention. Unless all this lolbertarian crap was the original plan all along.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 06:43
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:I'm probably missing a lot of information about Bitcoin's history, but it seems like it was just some dude's pet project run amok by people who have co-opted it for the reasons you mention. Unless all this lolbertarian crap was the original plan all along. Everyone is missing a lot of information about Bitcoin's history. The inventor is a secretive dude who has yet to make a public appearance, is most likely using a pseudonym and may or may not actually be a group of people. So when the internet persona that unleashed Bitcoin upon the world says "I made this digital currency program just to see if I could" that's really all we have to go on
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 07:08
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:I'm probably missing a lot of information about Bitcoin's history, but it seems like it was just some dude's pet project run amok by people who have co-opted it for the reasons you mention. Unless all this lolbertarian crap was the original plan all along. The very idea of a cyrptocurrency is to simulate the mining and use of precious metals in a digital setting. You "mine" by throwing numbers at the algorithm and seeing if it gives you coins. There is a finite number of coins that can actually exist which is meant to simulate the fact that there is only so much gold in this rock that we live on. It's a gold standard without the gold. Even if it never got adopted it would still be dumb as hell. Yeah it was a neat thought experiment and could have also been used as a commentary on how stupid the gold standard is but...ugh. Now we have a bajillion other cryptocurrencies cropping up which completely defeats the idea of a scarce product backing currency. A cryptocurrency is nothing by data. Data is effectively infinite for practical purposes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 07:30
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:Is there a bitcoin thread in D&D or BFC that I should look up. Just want the skinny so if I can make it (it'd be the morning of the 20th for me) I won't be completely lost. Between the two threads the YOSPOS thread is usually a lot funnier and more informative simultaneously. I think you have the general gist, but bitcoin wasn't co-opted by weirdo libertarians; it was a weirdo libertarian project from the start. The creator of bitcoin was full-on "end the fed, rights only by contract" idiot libertarian, except he was also into cryptography so he created a little toy project and released it into the wild. Since scammers also tend to be libertarian, and since you can never retrieve bitcoins that you've sent to someone else (fraudulently or otherwise), bitcoin quickly became a powerful scamming engine. YF19pilot posted:I'm probably missing a lot of information about Bitcoin's history, but it seems like it was just some dude's pet project run amok by people who have co-opted it for the reasons you mention. Unless all this lolbertarian crap was the original plan all along. It was always libertarians steering the ship. If you follow the bitcoin threads then you basically get a regular stream of sovcit and ancap hilarity as scammers try to scam scamming scammers. In the last year or two bitcoin has also picked up a weird cult vibe Now "blockchain" has somehow become a financial buzzword, but every time that there's an article about some bank investigating using a blockchain there's a response a few weeks later of "lol nope" or "yeah we totally use 'blockchain technology'... distributed databases have been around for a long time, guy" QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Dec 13, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 08:22
|
|
|
We should care because we took an oath to support and defend the constitution, and that constitution includes the explicit right to property. Are you an oath breaker?
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 08:24
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:We should care because we took an oath to support and defend the constitution, and that constitution includes the explicit right to property. When did you take that oath? Also the Constitution doesn't say jack poo poo about property rights other than that the state can't straight up take your property without some form of compensation.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 08:27
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:When did you take that oath? Once a year, every year.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 08:28
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:We should care because we took an oath to support and defend the constitution, and that constitution includes the explicit right to property. Jesus christ go the gently caress back to US pol and get yourself probated/banned again so I don't have to read your stupid poo poo. I mean you even hosed up your trolling here because Jrod has been gone a month which makes your idea merely stupid. quote:Also the Constitution doesn't say jack poo poo about property rights other than that the state can't straight up take your property without some form of compensation. Area Man Passionate Defender of What He Imagines Constitution to Be.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 08:37
|
|
|
Hey guys the constitution guarantees the right to property so let me tell you about how it was wrong to free the slaves because that was taking somebody'd property. Also taxation is theft because I'm not being compensated for the property the government is taking. QED, libtard. One thing that I just remembered was said by an old friend of mine who is also an ex-libertarian. He said that libertarians didn't want to abolish the state they wanted to be the state in their own little fiefdom, stemming from the fact that they believe you have an unalienable right to do whatever you loving please with any land that you own.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 08:42
|
|
|
My Imaginary GF posted:Once a year, every year. At least your red text is accurate.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 15:15
|
|
|
Okay, I'm starting to get the gist of things. I'll keep reading more about it. I guess what piqued my interest was the idea of a completely digital-based currency. After all, with the extensive use of credit and debit cards and online purchases, I would gander that for the average American, most purchases are done digitally. However, there is still physical paper money to back this digital money that we use. I can, if I so wished, see and touch my "digital" US dollars. I suppose it's that allure of "we're living in the future, now where's my credstick?" Unfortunately, this falls quite short of the mark. ToxicSlurpee posted:The very idea of a cyrptocurrency is to simulate the mining and use of precious metals in a digital setting. You "mine" by throwing numbers at the algorithm and seeing if it gives you coins. There is a finite number of coins that can actually exist which is meant to simulate the fact that there is only so much gold in this rock that we live on. It's a gold standard without the gold. Even if it never got adopted it would still be dumb as hell. Yeah it was a neat thought experiment and could have also been used as a commentary on how stupid the gold standard is but...ugh. QuarkJets posted:Between the two threads the YOSPOS thread is usually a lot funnier and more informative simultaneously. I think these two posts clear up my biggest misunderstanding about Bitcoin - basically I thought it started as some "fun" project/game and ballooned from there. To think that it is what it was conceived to be is quite... not sure what to word is, but not good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 15:46
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:I'm probably missing a lot of information about Bitcoin's history, but it seems like it was just some dude's pet project run amok by people who have co-opted it for the reasons you mention. Unless all this lolbertarian crap was the original plan all along. Here's a way to expose bitcoin's flaws. Let's assume that the bolded portion is true. How would you fix or prevent that from happening in a way that lines up with libertarian principles? Because from where I sit, pet project or not, it was a new currency that was unregulated and released into the wild. It is exactly the kind of environment that libertarians want to have in the real world, and look what happened. It promptly turned into a situation which, as I think someone summed up once on these forums, is just a bunch of people engaged in a prisoner's dilemma where the only people not mashing the betray button as hard as they can are the ones making better betray buttons.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 16:07
|
|
|
Caros posted:Jesus christ go the gently caress back to US pol and get yourself probated/banned again so I don't have to read your stupid poo poo. I mean you even hosed up your trolling here because Jrod has been gone a month which makes your idea merely stupid. He's recently shown up and done his best to ruin the WWII thread as well. I really wish someone would just ban his tiresome rear end. DarklyDreaming posted:The inventor is a secretive dude who has yet to make a public appearance, is most likely using a pseudonym and may or may not actually be a group of people. That's presuming the jowly Japanese train sperg or Australian scammer with worse-than-usual hygiene isn't actually Nakamoto (which is probably the case with both, though it's funny to pretend he is the former). YF19pilot posted:I think these two posts clear up my biggest misunderstanding about Bitcoin - basically I thought it started as some "fun" project/game and ballooned from there. To think that it is what it was conceived to be is quite... not sure what to word is, but not good. There's a joke that both bitcoin threads have tossed around at times, though it's a bit tired now: take any really stupid, like transparently-doomed-to-fail-why-would-anyone-even-want-this concept, and appended it with "...but with bitcoins!" and you get an idea of what buttcoiners get enthusiastic about (other than finding new ways to rip each other off, of course).
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 17:23
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:I guess what piqued my interest was the idea of a completely digital-based currency. After all, with the extensive use of credit and debit cards and online purchases, I would gander that for the average American, most purchases are done digitally. However, there is still physical paper money to back this digital money that we use. I can, if I so wished, see and touch my "digital" US dollars. I suppose it's that allure of "we're living in the future, now where's my credstick?" Unfortunately, this falls quite short of the mark. We're not far off. The vast majority of money in a modern economy is created by commercial banks when they issue loans, and exists only as "numbers in a computer". Government created currency accounts for only 3% of the money supply in the UK economy, I think it's marginally more in the US.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 17:43
|
|
|
YF19pilot posted:Okay, I'm starting to get the gist of things. I'll keep reading more about it. That's not really accurate, as most US dollars are already digital. In many places you don't even need to carry physical currency anymore. Your "futuristic" credstick is just a Credit Card or Debit Card. Or, in most countries, you can instantly send someone digital cash (as in real currencies, not bitcoin) with your phone, for free. That said, there's an incredible appeal in being able to convert your digital cash into something physical that you can touch. This appeal is so great that a number of bitcoiners have tried to create and popularize various physical manifestations of bitcoin, including actual physical paper dollars with Ron Paul's face on the front. quote:I think these two posts clear up my biggest misunderstanding about Bitcoin - basically I thought it started as some "fun" project/game and ballooned from there. To think that it is what it was conceived to be is quite... not sure what to word is, but not good. Even if you never read any of the notes written by the people who created Bitcoin, there are some hints in the design that suggest lovely libertarian ideals: 1) Deflationary (as though this is a good thing) 2) No chargebacks (bad for most people, good for scammy libertarian types) 3) "Proof of work" needlessly wastes tons of power in the process of mining bitcoins (because gently caress the earth) 4) "Backed by math" appeals to idiot goldbugs who think that their currency needs to be backed by something in order for it to have value 5) An anonymous public ledger is ideal for weirdo "living off the grid in my compound" libertarian-hermit types who need a digital currency for one reason or another but refuse to create joinder with a bank or paypal 6) Libertarians are some of the most naive people in the world, and a number of bitcoin's core design concepts come from an incredibly naive point of view, like the assumption that the userbase will never try to mine with something more powerful than a COTS CPU QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Dec 13, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 19:38
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:4) An anonymous public ledger is ideal for weirdo "living off the grid in my compound" libertarian-hermit types who need a digital currency for one reason or another but refuse to create joinder with a bank or paypal To add to this, the idea of untraceable crypto-currency (which bitcoin isn't, but that's not the point) has found any number of enthusiastic supporters among libertarians ex-pats living in Thailand who also have these just remarkable thoughts on why age of consent laws are unpardonable aggression against human liberty. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 19:43
|
|
|
paragon1 posted:Probably around 7 or 8 EST, like last time. I'll do it, I just might need a reminder closer on.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 19:48
|
|
|
Captain_Maclaine posted:To add to this, the idea of untraceable crypto-currency (which bitcoin isn't, but that's not the point) has found any number of enthusiastic supporters among libertarians ex-pats living in Thailand who also have these just remarkable thoughts on why age of consent laws are unpardonable aggression against human liberty. I love how quickly libertarians will tip their hands and stay complaining about statist age of consent or dui laws.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2015 22:13
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:4) "Backed by math" appeals to idiot goldbugs who think that their currency needs to be backed by something in order for it to have value It's also a problem because gold bugs fail to understand that fiat money actually is backed by things. The difference between fiat money and gold money is that fiat currency is basically an everything standard. Under a gold standard only gold has actual value so if you want more wealth you must acquire more gold. With fiat currency if you want more money you need to create, acquire, or have anything at all that has value. This can be nothing other than your time. If I agree to do 8 hours of work for $100 then I'm selling my time in exchange for cash I can spend to buy somebody else's time. Which is also another point of fiat money; in a way money is just exchanging time. However if you have a gold standard whoever has all the gold owns all the time. What gold bugs won't admit is that they want that situation, deep down inside, to be true. A hell of a lot of lolbertarians are fat white middle managers who think themselves ubermensch and natural elites who are being kept down by the system. The "gold has inherent value" line is absolute bullshit. Piles of other things have inherent value as well. That argument could be used to justify a wood standard. Hell farmers will pay for certain kinds of animal poo poo to fertilize fields. Let's put ourselves on a poo poo standard. That has inherent value. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Dec 14, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2015 00:34
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:Which is also another point of fiat money; in a way money is just exchanging time. However if you have a gold standard whoever has all the gold owns all the time. What gold bugs won't admit is that they want that situation, deep down inside, to be true. A hell of a lot of lolbertarians are fat white middle managers who think themselves ubermensch and natural elites who are being kept down by the system. Yeah the main appeal of bitcoin is that there's a hard limit on the amount that can be mined, ever, and people justify mining at a loss by jacking themselves off to "well when bitcoin becomes the US's sole currency, replacing $70 trillion in wealth, each bitcoin will be worth a billion and I'll live like a king because I was smarter than the untermensch and got in early". It's the fantasy of getting unfathomably rich with zero effort because you're special. This is funny, but what's funnier is the people buying into copycat cryptocurrencies (even though their theoretical viability ruins the whole "limited supply that can't be changed by fiat" thing) which, because Libertarians, usually turned out to be scams with the creators secretly awarding the lion's share of the coins to themselves and then dumping them on the market to make a quick buck before the fraud is discovered and the coins become worthless.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2015 01:17
|
|
|
VitalSigns posted:Yeah the main appeal of bitcoin is that there's a hard limit on the amount that can be mined, ever, and people justify mining at a loss by jacking themselves off to "well when bitcoin becomes the US's sole currency, replacing $70 trillion in wealth, each bitcoin will be worth a billion and I'll live like a king because I was smarter than the untermensch and got in early". It's the fantasy of getting unfathomably rich with zero effort because you're special. Not only that but Buttcoins were currency manipulated to Hell and back. Literally every cryptocurrency ever invented had so much fraud and crime wrapped up in it that if it happened with real money a large number of people would be going away for a very, very long time. A lot of people got bilked out of rather significant chunks of money but I can't even feel bad about it. BitCoin was blatantly obvious a god awful idea right from the get go. A few early adopters cashed out at the right time and came away with a million or so but really. BitCoins were in the end backed by US$ and were just a wrapper that allowed for criminal activity and the kinds of fraud that regulations prevent. Eventually it turned out that you had to go on waiting lists that were years long to sell BitCoins. Nobody was buying except what turned out to be a bot that slapped fake transactions onto Mt. Gox, who eventually just vanished into the ether and made a lot of money just kind of vanish. Normally I'm not one to laugh at misfortune but seriously ButtCoiners are a special kind of deliberate stupid. Every bit of misery they brought on themselves.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2015 01:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 10:45 |
|
|
VitalSigns posted:This is funny, but what's funnier is the people buying into copycat cryptocurrencies (even though their theoretical viability ruins the whole "limited supply that can't be changed by fiat" thing) which, because Libertarians, usually turned out to be scams with the creators secretly awarding the lion's share of the coins to themselves and then dumping them on the market to make a quick buck before the fraud is discovered and the coins become worthless. I will not hear any slander about the soundness and value of dogecoin.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2015 01:56
|
|