Bitcoiner here, so bear that in mind

A 51% attack is hard. It's come close to happening once with a mining pool called GHash.io. The community quickly responded, and as of right now, the largest pool has about 17% of the network hashing power, and GHash.io has about 4%. The current state of network power distribution can be viewed at https://blockchain.info/pools , as well as other blockchain watching services. It is in any particular miners interest to be in the largest pool possible, but counter to any miners purpose to be in any pool with the possibility of making a 51% attack, since a successful 51% attack would be the end of bitcoin's market value, which makes their investment in mining equipment worthless. This has, so far, been successful.

Each wallet does not need to contain the entire blockchain. It is generally recommended that, if you are not running a full node contributing to the network, you use a thin wallet that queries the blockchain, or a trusted blockchain monitoring service, in order to asses balances and get data needed to make new transactions in a much less data-intesive manner.

Governments are not keen to give up their monopoly on the money supply, but there are limits to how much they can do to maintain it. There have been several instances historically where government control of the money supply is undermined by the economic reality of people just using other things to conduct business, regardless of the legal status of such business.

Mining is not "wasted" computing power, but rather power being put to the specific purpose of verifying and securing the integrity of the bitcoin blockchain database. It is no more a waste of resources, than the concrete, steel, and construction time of a bank vault. It's just not doing anything else, like creating an emergency shelter, or storing non-bitcoin valuables.

If you have a non-currency based idea to get people to properly secure a publicly editable, decentralized, ledger such that malicious actors cannot alter it to suit their needs, I'm more than willing to hear it. Until I see such a proposal, I don't see the addition of currency to a blockchain as a complication, but rather as a necessary function. There has to be something which incentivises people to engage in the process of securing the ledger, and that is the receipt of valuable entries on the ledger, those entries being useable as currency.

Bitcoiner here, so bear that in mind

A 51% attack is hard. It's come close to happening once with a mining pool called GHash.io. The community quickly responded, and as of right now, the largest pool has about 17% of the network hashing power, and GHash.io has about 4%. The current state of network power distribution can be viewed at https://blockchain.info/pools , as well as other blockchain watching services. It is in any particular miners interest to be in the largest pool possible, but counter to any miners purpose to be in any pool with the possibility of making a 51% attack, since a successful 51% attack would be the end of bitcoin's market value, which makes their investment in mining equipment worthless. This has, so far, been successful.

Each wallet does not need to contain the entire blockchain. It is generally recommended that, if you are not running a full node contributing to the network, you use a thin wallet that queries the blockchain, or a trusted blockchain monitoring service, in order to asses balances and get data needed to make new transactions in a much less data-intesive manner.

Governments are not keen to give up their monopoly on the money supply, but there are limits to how much they can do to maintain it. There have been several instances historically where government control of the money supply is undermined by the economic reality of people just using other things to conduct business, regardless of the legal status of such business.

Mining is not "wasted" computing power, but rather power being put to the specific purpose of verifying and securing the integrity of the bitcoin blockchain database. It is no more a waste of resources, than the concrete, steel, and construction time of a bank vault. It's just not doing anything else, like creating an emergency shelter, or storing non-bitcoin valuables.

If you have a non-currency based idea to get people to properly secure a publicly editable, decentralized, ledger such that malicious actors cannot alter it to suit their needs, I'm more than willing to hear it. Until I see such a proposal, I don't see the addition of currency to a blockchain as a complication, but rather as a necessary function. There has to be something which incentivises people to engage in the process of securing the ledger, and that is the receipt of valuable entries on the ledger, those entries being useable as currency.

Why does anyone think BitCoin is going to work when its users aren't mostly BitCoin enthusiasts?

I'm specifically referring to incentives of 51% attacks. The returns on mining seem to increase as computing power eclipses 50%, creating an economy of scale in mining and incentivicing attacks.

I am a scientist, albeit the most junior kind of scientist, and I reckon "science" can legitimately refer to a set of answers or a methodology or an institution.

I doubt anyone in this thread would object if I called a textbook compiling scientific discoveries a "science textbook". I'm not sure even Taleb would blink at that (if it were in a low-stakes context, not in the midst of a heated argument).

Is there overwhelming evidence on the safety (not efficacy) of vaccines somewhere, and I've just missed it?

I used to just trust the word of the experts, because I am not an expert and had no incentive to become one. I didn't have a lot of faith in such a politicized science, but reasoned it was probably better than anything I could come up with. I trusted the IPCC reports, but after reading about Climategate thought they were exaggerated a bit as a means to gain political power.

Recently I've started to consider investing in alternative energy. Given that most alternative energy (especially with the fracking and shale oil revolutions) is based on AGW being a serious problem, I thought it deserved a real look.

I was appalled to see a non-experimental science call something as complex as the Earth's climate to be "settled", and how even the scientists seemed to degenerate into name-calling ("deniers" and "alarmists"). The issue was even more politicized than I first thought. I was unable to find real public debate between skeptics and supporters, but did come to understand that the disagreement is over feedbacks, specifically the change in water vapor, which respond to an increase in temperature from CO2 emissions.

I was most appalled at the lack of reporting of the global warming pause. I did not find a single supporting scientist seriously reconsider his views in light of the pause. One would think admissions such as "our models were clearly wrong, but AGW may still be a problem because the heat is probably going into the oceans/arctic/whatever" would be commonplace.

To me the "science" of climatology seems very similar to economics: experiments are impossible and it is very politicized. I enjoy and respect economics greatly, but recognized that progress in it has been very slow relative to the harder, experimental sciences.

As a result my faith in climatologists is at an all-time low. If I had to guess, I'd take a shot in the dark and say the feedbacks are being exaggerated by the IPCC, and warming will continue at about 0.10 degrees C per decade. Actually I'd say this whole experience has lowered my faith in politics and made me more libertarian as a result. I am used to people doing and believing disgusting things for power, but something about perverting science especially offends.

So I came here to read some (hopefully) more rational reports on AGW.

I would really like to see a study of the Earth's energy budget - can't we measure radiation lost to space with satellites? Everything else seems rather immaterial (unless the nuclear energy output of the Earth's core varies significantly).

I just read the OP's articles. There is a supporting argument in them which makes me think my sensitivity estimates are too low: the idea that sensitivity can be estimated from any source of forcing (of which there are many), and not just CO2. This would seem to suggest that we have more evidence on climate sensitivity (even if its all proxy records) than I'd of first guessed. However, unless proxy records can cover all significant forcings, I would doubt their usefulness. Do we have a proxy record of cloud cover, for example?

Since holding irrational beliefs tends to result in eventually loosing one's wealth and power,

I'm not sure this is true because of standby-rationality mode. Also known as hypocrisy.

Completely wrong.

As a software engineer at a company with way too much work to go around, I can tell you that making a "good effort" goes a long way. 90% of the time you don't have to "make it work or get a zero". As long as you are showing progress you can generally keep the client happy (or at least not firing you) as you get things done, even if you are missing deadlines. And this seems very much normal to me. I'm not sure where in the market you have to "make it work or get a zero". I'm not even convinced that exists.