From the very beginning of bitcoin, people worried that it could not scale to the required size. It does not scale because it is a massively replicated public ledger. Thus any real solution means making the ledger not public. Which means either centralization, a central bank digital currency, which is the path Ethereum is walking, or privacy. You cure both blockchain bloat and blockchain analysis by not putting the data …
Enormous move in bitcoin coming up
The good news is that in the not very distant future, everyone who matters is going to be using Bitcoin. The bad news is that if they will be using something resembling currently available software, they will still be net peons, not netizens. Probably no dramatic price changes next week. Or next month. Maybe not next year. But we are on a big move up that will likely continue going …
Russia’s draft Agreement on Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and NATO
Russian war aims are vastly broader than the Ukraine: In December of 2021, Russia proposed an agreement on “Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization†The American reaction was shock, indignation, and genuine surprise. Surprise that Russia had the outrageous effrontery to ask for security. The proposed agreement is on its face a completely reasonable deal, just the normal …
A retraction
I predicted that Trump would be arrested and Epsteined. With defeat looming in the Ukraine, the future course becomes even more unpredictable. Looking at those in power as the Greatest Ukrainian Counter Offensive fails underneath them, I have no idea what the future holds, and I doubt that they do either. But we are no longer on the course that we were on a week ago. Putin cured Covid. When …
Possible outcomes of war in the Ukraine
Both sides have been fighting in the Ukraine using World War I tactics, and developments in the war have so far recapitulated World War I. Towards the end of World War I, the Germans, finally realizing they were going to lose the war of attrition, because of the immense industrial capability of America, attempted to regain war of movement, with underwhelming success, and eventually could no longer attempt to do …
The Great Ukrainian Counter Offensive
Normally I do not report on or respond to the day’s news. This blog is about what the news of decade or a century ago turned out to mean. And no end of people are reporting on the day’s news, most of whom have researched it far more thoroughly than I am willing to do. But, prematurely, I am going to report on what this offensive seems to have turned …
War and game theory
Jesus as game theory: In a world of imperfect information, one tit for two tats. Old Testament marriage and family law as game theory: If you are stuck with with each other, the deal is going to generate value even if the value very unequally distributed, but if not stuck, prisoner’s dilemma. Negative sum actions are likely to be individually beneficial. It might seem obvious that if everyone could correctly …
The Logos
Around 350 years before Christ, paganism had died among the intellectuals. Not long after, it died among the common people, for we read writers in the late Roman Republic ridiculing attempts to motivate the common soldiers by appeal to faith. They believed the ordinary soldier was even more cynical than themselves. So the philosophers set to work manufacturing a replacement. For Aristotle, “logos†(“wordâ€) was rational and responsive debate, and …
Game
On Gab, I noticed a whole lot of wholly blue pilled people, not all of them shills. So, despite my frequent declaration that this is not a game blog and not going to turn into game blog, here comes another game post. It is kind of redundant, because everything that needs saying has been said in Setting the Record Straight, page 57, and Chateau Heartiste’s sixteen commandments of Poon. Ok. …
American logistic capability
American GDP is fake and gay. American GDP is for the most part not riggers in red states lifting steel, workers on the assembly line, cattle ranchers raising cattle, nor even truckers, warehouses, and shops moving goods from where they are made to where they are used, it is people in blue states doing business in permissions that allow riggers to lift steel and ranchers to raise cattle. American GDP …