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The price of a commodity and the quantity of it in use don’t strictly correlate in the way you suggest here. 50% of gold being tied up in industry, jewellery, etc. does not mean the price floor is at 50% of the current price.

By the standard you have set here, you have implicitly disqualified Bitcoin and Zcash. If gold is not good enough because it could fall to its price floor (your claim being 50%), then Bitcoin and Zcash are even worse because they have no floor at all. It might be more precise to say the floor is zero.

The reason to back a currency with gold or some other commodity is that the commodity has other utility aside from being used as money. This sets a floor on the price, making it a store of value.

Bitcoin and Zcash have no utility beyond their transferability. The only way either would ever be money is if a government made it their legal tender, forcing transactions to be done with it exclusively.

To use US Dollar as an example again, the only reason it is money is that it has the alternative utility function of being the only thing the government will accept for tax payments. In that sense it is the only currency that keeps you out jail if you use it in its designated geographical area (!). If that weren’t the case then people would quickly swap to using something else—something that isn’t being manipulated by the government.

(To prevent any confusion, please understand that I believe governments should be completely agnostic to how people carry out their transactions, including allowing them to use any currency and even old-school barter if they wish.)

TL;DR The only way for the US Dollar, or Bitcoin, or Zcash (or any other unbacked currencies) to be useful as money is if a government makes them legal tender, and prohibits anything else being used in transactions.

You misunderstood my criticism. I said the US Federal Reserve Notes used to be backed by gold, not that the gold itself was backed by something.

What happened here?

“Bitcoin is not backed by anything” can also be stated as “Bitcoin is not redeemable in anything”.

“POW” or “computational work” or “encryption” are not things you can redeem if you own bitcoin.

This is in contrast to gold-backed currencies, for example, which are currencies which can be redeemed in gold. The United States Federal Reserve Note only became fiat when it was no longer redeemable in gold.

“Bitcoin is not backed by anything” can also be stated as “Bitcoin is not redeemable in anything”.

“POW” or “computational work” or “encryption” and not things you can redeem if you own bitcoin.

This is in contrast to gold-backed currencies, for example, which are currencies which can be redeemed in gold. The United States Federal Reserve Note only became fiat when it was no longer redeemable in gold.

Bitcoin (and by extension Zcash) does not solve fiat. A key problem of fiat is that it isn’t backed by anything. Bitcoin isn’t backed my anything, and as far as I know, neither is Zcash.

Bitcoin (and by extension Zcash) does not solve fiat. The problem of fiat is that it isn’t backed by anything. Bitcoin isn’t backed my anything, and as far as I know, neither is Zcash.

Pure genetic knowledge could colonise the galaxy, it'd take much longer than with memes.

Deutsch disagrees. Quote:

The difference between biological evolution and human creative thought is that biological evolution is inherently limited in its range. That’s because biological evolution has no foresight. It can’t see a problem and conjecture a solution.

and quote:

The bombardier beetles squirt boiling water at their enemies. You can easily see that just squirting cold water at your enemies is not totally unhelpful. Then making it a bit hotter and a bit hotter. Squirting boiling water no doubt required many adaptations to make sure the beetle didn’t boil itself while it was making this boiling water. That happened because there was a sequence of steps in between, all of which were useful. But with campfires, it’s very hard to see how that could happen.

Humans have explanatory creativity. Once you have that, you can get to the moon. You can cause asteroids which are heading towards the earth to turn around and go away. Perhaps no other planet in the universe has that power, and it has it only because of the presence of explanatory creativity on it.

Pure genetic knowledge could colonise the galaxy, it'd take much longer than with memes.

Deutsch disagrees. Quote:

The difference between biological evolution and human creative thought is that biological evolution is inherently limited in its range. That’s because biological evolution has no foresight. It can’t see a problem and conjecture a solution.

and quote:

The bombardier beetles squirt boiling water at their enemies. You can easily see that just squirting cold water at your enemies is not totally unhelpful. Then making it a bit hotter and a bit hotter. Squirting boiling water no doubt required many adaptations to make sure the beetle didn’t boil itself while it was making this boiling water. That happened because there was a sequence of steps in between, all of which were useful. But with campfires, it’s very hard to see how that could happen.

Humans have explanatory creativity. Once you have that, you can get to the moon. You can cause asteroids which are heading towards the earth to turn around and go away. Perhaps no other planet in the universe has that power, and it has it only because of the presence of explanatory creativity on it.

No, I think the ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea is too different to Veritula for it to be a competitor. Veritula is primarily a discussion tool. I envision more of an encyclopedia of competing ideas presented independently of each other, with no (or very little) discussion functionality.

For example, on the topic of addiction, this site would contain different articles explaining different models of what addiction is, how it works, etc. Each article would explain the given model from within its own framework, rather than from some pre-approved framework and set of sources (as is currently the case at Wikipedia).

I realise “methods of criticism” in my reply above may have confused that somewhat.

I think my idea could be made within Veritula, if you would be interested. Different explanations could be cataloged in Wikipedia-style articles (with versioning), which could then be referred to and discussed in threads here. Maybe we should open a discussion for this potential feature?

At the end of the day, I think something like that should exist in the world, and I am indifferent to how it might come about. It wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t involved. I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.

No, I think the ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea is too different to Veritula for it to be a competitor. Veritula is primarily a discussion tool. I envision more of an encyclopedia of competing ideas presented independently of each other, with no (or very little) discussion functionality.

For example, on the topic of addiction, this site would contain different articles explaining different models of what addiction is, how it works, etc. Each article would explain the given model from within its own framework, rather than from some pre-approved framework and set of sources (as is currently the case at Wikipedia).

I realise “methods of criticism” in my reply above may have confused that somewhat.

I think my idea could be made within Veritula, if you would be interested. Different explanations could be cataloged in Wikipedia-style articles (with versioning), which could then be referred to and discussed in threads here.

At the end of the day, I think something like that should exist in the world, and I am indifferent to how it might come about. It wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t involved. I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.

No, I think the ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea is too different to Veritula for it to be a competitor. Veritula is primarily a discussion tool. I envision more of an encyclopedia of competing ideas presented independently of each other, with no (or very little) discussion functionality.

For example, on the topic of addiction, this site would contain different articles explaining different models of what addiction is, how it works, etc. Each article would explain the given model from within its own framework, rather than from some pre-approved framework and set of sources (as is currently the case at Wikipedia).

I realise “methods of criticism” in my reply above may have confused that somewhat.

I think my idea could be made within Veritula, if you would be interested. Different explanations could be cataloged in Wikipedia-style articles (with versioning), which could then be referred to and discussed in threads here.

At the end of that day, I think something like that should exist in the world, and I am indifferent to how it might come about. It wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t involved. I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.

I think correspondence is to epistemology as adaptation is to evolution. Knowledge that corresponds more to reality tends to be more useful (and/or has more reach), similar to biological adaptation.

I think correspondence is to epistemology as adaptation is to evolution. Knowledge that corresponds more to reality tends to be more useful (and with more reach), similar to biological adaptation.

This may make it harder for me to discuss sensitive topics (e.g. navigating personal relationships, health issues, etc.) since it may reveal things to people who know me personally, things that I may wish to keep to myself, that I would only discuss online behind a pseudonym.

Using my true name here causes me to take more care in what I write. I’m not hiding behind an identity I can discard.

People often say there are safety issues involved in using your true name online.

@dennis.hackethal Please share your reasoning for your request that Veritula users use their true names.

I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?

I believe I came across it while exploring your blog. My ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea was particularly sharp in my mind in that moment, so I was very excited to see how you had set things up here. I think a tremendous amount of it is transferable.

My vision is for an online encyclopedia that contains complete articles describing the totality of a perspective, with articles for alternate explanations readily available. I see many problems with this idea but I think it is worth exploring.

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

Veritula emphasises making one point at a time for ease of criticism and discussion, which is useful in a forum but makes absorbing the totality of an idea a little more tedious compared to a quick glance at an encyclopedia article. (It is possible I have misunderstood some aspect of Veritula here.)

Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.

One thing that Wikipedia articles are very good for is providing well-structured information on a given subject. Discussion threads are not so well structured (the order of information is not based on how high-level or foundational it is, like an encyclopedia entry would be, but rather on the nested chronology of whatever discussion happened to take place.)

I started a discussion earlier, and what I wrote in the “about” section of the discussion was not written well. I would like to revise it. Is this possible? If not, is there an intention to make this possible eventually?