Many of you here have likely heard of Bitcoin, and maybe know something about it.
Earlier today, a story broke that a reporter had apparently tracked down the real Satoshi Nakamoto, infamous creator of the Bitcoin protocol.
This seems like an excellent opportunity to practice our Bayesian updating!
So, how likely do you think it is that this man is the founder of Bitcoin? What do you believe and why?
My response to that is never before has a Satoshi proposal led to a scrum of reporters on a target's front lawn, and also none of them have been sick or old (except Finney). If Satoshi was ever going to deny it, of the targets so far, Dorian is the best. And there's an additional factor here: Satoshi may feel directly responsible for Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto's problems, given that he could have chosen a globally unique pseudonym (it's not that hard) but failed to do so and so put people like Dorian at risk. This is untrue of any suggestions about Wei Dai, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, etc.
(This has, incidentally, been a good reminder of why I don't post my Satoshi research publicly, and generally limit my comments to debunking proposals.)
In case you haven't seen it, here's a great piece about Hal Finney, which includes the strongest arguments I've seen so far about why he's not Satoshi (despite the author's initial suspicions):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/25/satoshi-nakamotos-neighbor-the-bitcoin-ghostwriter-who-wasnt/