Sounds a bit naive to me.

How low will it take for some big western states to outlaw private holdings of Bitcoin similar to how the US did with Executive Order 6102 in 1933 or the UK did in 1966 (Exchange Control Act 1947)?

Sure, they can't seize Bitcoin. But making holdings and trading illegal for citizens would probably scare off enough people to kill the vibe quite thoroughly.

The only possible remedy to this would be very widespread adoption throughout most/all states and institutions and populations.

Theoretically, as soon as it becomes obvious to states/institutions who are lagging behind that they need to buy in, there is only one thing that can stop them from doing so, since AFAIK there's no technical way for any third actor to stop them: their unwillingness for ideological "reasons".

Appears likely to me that this will be the main issue: ideological reasons and narratives will prove very stubborn, which will needlessly bring instability.

> .. I don't think that means that it is impossible for anything to have enough microstate knowledge to derive useful work from it.

I obviously cannot fathom how this could ever be possible.

On the other hand, sometimes my mind takes this non natural sciences angle on things for a second and I just think: considering how crazy/curious/strange/weird/beautiful the mere fact that "things exist at all" is, it sure wouldn't be that much more crazy if things like wormholes or telepathy existed as well.

And what will be the reaction to some countries or central banks successfully using this speculative attack and leaving others behind?

I guess the reaction of powerful states (that were too slow and thus come under pressure) will be: use other means of power (economical, political, military, ..) to try to coerce the successful first movers to yield.

Probability might not be defined objectively in the specific case of your coin toss experiment. But the coin toss is a very high level experiment.

In respect to our shared material world (which is governed by low level physics), all of us have the exact same amount of ignorance (noone can observe the microstate of matter in a sufficient manner for it to make any difference in comparison to other observers) and therefore must assume the exact same probabilities of micro states, which does make these probabilities objective indeed in practice, doesn't it?

There's no mention of "Bitcoin" in the linked text.

Where is the evidence for the claimed "Swiss model" of "debasing in secret, and obtaining bitcoin"?

> Entropy is a measure of disorder. But what is disorder? What is order? There is no such thing. It is a personal preference.

I guess you're familiar with the following example: One container with two different gaseous substances in it, both 99,99 % pure, separated by a barrier. You open/remove the barrier and the gases will mix by diffusion.

By your personal definition of the word "disorder", these two situations (before and after opening the barrier) cannot be distinguished by the measure of disorder?

If you take two containers, one with blue lego parts, one with red lego parts and you pour both into a third container and shake it for a minute. It would align with your understanding of "disorder" to say: "The mixture of both blue and red has the exact same measure of disorder as when both colors were separate."?

Cited text is from:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html

no paywall: https://archive.ph/gL6EC

Question comes to mind: who owns what share of all the Japanese assets (real estate, company shares, ..)?

If a big share of all valuable things is owned by international investors, that will become the real problem, as international capital will continue extracting rent from the coming generations.

If on the other hand the valuable tangible things in Japan are mostly privately owned by the older population itself, then their few children will inherit it and have a better chance of being parents instead of working hours and hours to pay the rent.

Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche .. deren Marktstrategie war doch bisher wie ich das verstanden habe, das Oberklasse-Segment zu bespielen. Hat doch gut funktioniert. Oder nicht?

Weil damit gut Geld zu verdienen ist.

Das schwierigere weil hart umkämpfte Mittelklassesegment mit niedrigeren Margen hatten sie nicht so sehr im Fokus.

Wenn ich solche Abgesänge der Presse auf die DE Autobauer lese/höre frage ich mich immer ob das nicht womöglich Autolobby-Geschreibsel ist, das in der deutschen Bevölkerung Bedauern für die Autokonzerne auslösen soll, damit man später leichter weitere Subventionen durch die Politik durchdrücken kann. Weil: "Denen geht's ja so schlecht .."

Ich glaube nicht, dass der weltweite Absatz im Oberklasse-Segment so bald massiv einbrechen wird, dass das Geschäftsmodell flöten geht. Wieviele Regierungs-Limousinen sind E-Autos oder von BYD?

If you specify more precisely what you mean by "trust verification" I have a better chance of explaining my view.

Vague words ("it") won't get us very far.

Was my assumption right? Was it not?

Not meaning to be offensive, but you're being a bit taciturn here.

I did explain how (in my opinion) trust verification works. If you disagree with my explanation I'm open to discussion/correction.

Isn't this kind of like interest being earned for already owned capital in the financial realm, some kind of positive feedback?

Wouldn't it lead to trust/distrust becoming more sticky in the time domain?

Not sure that'd be useful.

I'm unsure what you mean exactly.

I'll assume you mean the trust from people who are not directly involved with protocol changes (endusers, ..) in those people who propose changes to the protocol/system.

"Trust verification" has always been a messy process, I'd clame, and it will always be. Every individual will form their opinion whether they can trust the system as a whole or a certain element of the system or another individual person (developer, ..) on the basis of a diverse mix of information sources, past experience and intuition. It's just how society works.

The best path IMO would be:

- implement a few (maybe a handful) more simple (!) changes

- then completely stop modifying the system because the greater the complexity grows, the likelier it is that unforeseen instabilities/breakages can result

Complexity is a killer. For a system that's interlinked with human society to remain dynamically stable, it has to be kept below some threshold complexity, because otherwise the share of people who're able to understand it's system dynamics will become too small. If only a small fraction of people understand a system they cannot behave rationally in its context which leads to instability.

Reads a bit as if you're jumping to conclusions there.

A significant share of all people who're interested in Bitcoin almost per default distrust the big companies when they're offering something to the public, pretending it's not for their profit motive and instead for the good of society.

That's just one reason.

Another: a newly created currency won't have the network effect on its side, at least at first. It'll somehow have to overcome it to compete.

Conclusion for me: the Bitcoin devs and miners and full node runners and end users should be very alert about any changes to the protocol, because there are of course always great malevolent forces, solely serving corporate interests, trying to change the system for their benefit. And I think many see the issue and thus are alert.

225 C is quite harsh.

Compare that to my usual procedure when making use of oils such as native lin seed oil or native canola oil:

- storing the oil with the glass bottle tightly sealed, in the fridge

- using the oil not for cooking but instead adding the oil to the finished meal just before eating

This way, the oil will be heated to maybe 60-70 °C at most and only for a few minutes while it's subjected to oxygen/air.

Thanks for the links. I'll check them out.

Sounds like you're assuming that one minute in the frying pan at 100 C or one hour in the body at 37 C already leads to a degree of oxidation that flips the balance from "contains PUFA and is overall beneficial to the body" to "contains some PUFA but also oxidized FA and is overall detrimental to the body".

Are you familiar with any facts to base this assumption on?

I'm not a biologist .. but some rule of thumb states that the chemical reaction speed roughly doubles with 10 K temperature increase. So at 40 C the oxidation might run at ~ 1/64 speed compared to at 100 C.

Also, preventing oxidation of fatty acids in the body appears to be one function of vitamin E: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_E#Functions

Awesome. Finally someone who listens to podcasts in the same bitrate range as myself ^^ I use gPodder to download podcasts and use a modified audio converter addon that reencodes all audio to 20 kbps opus. Absolutely enough for me quality wise and it reduces the footprint of my audio library to ~ 1/6 compared to original download size.

What's these reasons against canola oil? (Guess your concerns are more general than just literally drinking it.)

I did read some scary headlines about it somewhere that mostly sounded like FUD. I guess your stance is more nuanced?

My current opinion is that native canola is pretty healthy, likely healthier than olive oil, if you have fresh produce that isn't rancid and you store it well (cool), use it up quick and don't heat it much.

Same with native linseed oil that's said to be even more valuable because of ALA which is said to be partially catalyzed to EPA and DHA in the body.