This article is also linked to in your immediately preceding post. Why the duplication?
Because the article and the article linked to are two different takes. I did explicitly note they are related.
I notice with some amusement, both in America and English literature, the rise of a new kind of bigotry. Bigotry does not consist in a man being convinced he is right; that is not bigotry, but sanity. Bigotry consists in a man being convinced that another man must be wrong in everything, because he is wrong in a particular belief; that he must be wrong, even in thinking that he honestly believes he is right.
-G. K. Chesterton
The dissident temperament has been present in all times and places, though only ever among a small minority of citizens. Its characteristic, speaking broadly, is a cast of mind that, presented with a proposition about the world, has little interest in where that proposition originated, or how popular it is, or how many powerful and credentialed persons have assented to it, or what might be lost in the way of property, status, or even life, in denying it. To the dissident, the only thing worth pondering about the proposition is, is it true? If it is, then no king’s command can falsify it; and if it is not, then not even the assent of a hundred million will make it true.
--John Derbyshire
I see Moldbug continues to ignore TGGP's offer of a bet on his claim that Bitcoin will probably go to zero in 2013. I'd be happy to bet, say, $50 with either you or Konkvistador that it won't go to - zero seems unfair, so maybe 5 cents - in 2013.
I wish he accepted the bet, it would increase how seriously I take him (not very much except this article). I'm willing to predictionbook it and make a karma bet on it. Sorry I'm really poor and waaaay to risk averse. Its irrational I know :(
I put 30% chance on BitCoin on your 5 cents benchmark by January 1st 2014.
How Bitcoin Dies by Mencius Moldbug
I encourage readers to see the whole thing, but I wished to emphasise a few points (bolded them).
Obviously, I have no inside information at all and am just speculating - as a devout student of the fascinating organism that is USG. However, my guess is that this event will happen soon - ie, probably in 2013. Why? Because of the ECB report on Bitcoin, which quoth:
*All these issues raise serious concerns regarding the legal status and security of the system, as well as the finality and irrevocability of the transactions, in a system which is not subject to any kind of public oversight. In June 2011 two US senators, Charles Schumer and Joe Manchin, wrote to the Attorney General and to the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration expressing their worries about Bitcoin and its use for illegal purposes. Mr Andresen was also asked to give a presentation to the CIA about this virtual currency scheme. *
Further action from other authorities can reasonably be expected in the near future.
Neighbor, if you're at all involved with BTC, I'd advise you to heed this remarkably direct warning. You'll note that (a) the people who wrote this report do have inside information (since the ECB and our own dear "other authorities" operate, of course, in practice as a single global institution) and (b) these are people with actual power, and people with actual power tend to do what they say they're going to do - regardless of how Reddit might feel about the matter.
...
And when it comes to USG, and USD - creating a successful distributed digital currency is what I call "coup-complete." Ie, as a difficult problem, it is fundamentally equivalent to the well-known difficult problem of regime change. Are coups impossible? No, of course not. What's impossible, however, is pulling a coup when you don't know you're even trying to pull a coup.
Government control (excuse me, "public oversight") of all major monetary transactions is one of the basic attributes of sovereignty in the modern world. If you can get away with "money laundering," ie, circumventing this control, you can get away with anything. If you can systematically disable it, perhaps you yourself are the new regime. You're certainly on the way.
Indeed, if we all traded in our dollars and dollar assets, and fully restandardized the global monetary system on BTC (technically a far superior design), it's quite possible that Satoshi Nakamoto himself would simply emerge as our new global overlord. I suspect he'd be richer than the Rockefellers. How do you indict that?
My guess, solely from the broad public hint above, is that the collective bureaucratic decision to unleash the full right arm of USG on BTC was almost certainly made in 2012 or even 2011. An easy decision - since it makes a lot of work for all the deciding agencies. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin economy is buzzing merrily along, as if there was nothing wrong at all with Bitcoin. Technically and economically, there is nothing wrong. It's a remarkably beautiful architecture - in fact, I would say, a genuine work of art in the field of system software. Its problems are entirely political.
...
Interesting, I can't recall an article Moldbug wrote with which I would agree as strongly as with this one. Maybe his recent spur of activity is worth following after all, just ignore the comment section.
he is over-hyped compared to other Dark Enlightenment authors,
Who would you say is 'better'?
I like HBDish authors a lot so my list will be biased to those blog. Gregory Cochran & Henry Harpending, hbd* chick (~_^) and Derbyshire are cool. Foseti is a must for Reactionaries. Over in the interesting but scary corner we have Federico who seems to have managed among other things to steel man the straw Vulcan (see his now probably deleted Emotion is The Mindkiller post) and Nick Land is the best transhumanist academic continental philosopher I've read in years, which is really low praise but his Reactionary writing is very much knurd.
Enjoy your corruption to the Dark Side! (^_^)
Can we add ignoring Moldbug to our general "don't feed the trolls" policy? He's deliberately provocative.
I disagree with Moldbug on many things, but I disagree with this even more.
As I noted in my other comment, he redefined the terms underdog/overdog to be based on poteriors, not priors, effectively rendering them redundant (and useless as a heuristic).
I consider this an uncharitable reading, I've read the article twice and I still understood him much as Konkvistador and Athrelon have.
What do people see in Moldbug, anyway, beyond his provocative writing style?
For a certain subset of the population that's quite reactionary/conservative and yet quite intellectual, he provides validation they can't find easily elsewhere.
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If the difference between arranged and forced marriage is one of degree, than the difference between employment and slavery is also one of degree.
It isn't?