Thank you for the detailed and interesting comment. I wish I could maintain my productivity for extended periods of time like you do. Unfortunately I find that my cognitive abilities drop-off very quickly when become tired.
Also you talk of an 'intelligence switch'. Could you explain what you mean by that?
Sure. It might be quite long if I really explained in detail, though. I really need to write the book of that eventually. Here's the very incomplete gist of it.
The idea of an intelligence switch is basically a set of methods, a system, to train and foster the use of some "meta" forms of intelligence so to speak, whose primary purpose is to improve / enable / train intelligence itself. It's very much not a hack (efforts...) but does yield compound-like growth. It's very transdisciplinary in nature in that it does require exposing yourself to many fields and many mental frameworks or logics/models (the more, the better I suppose).
I guess you could say it's a framework for the languages of intelligences, whose output (UI) is conscious thought and effect is actual real-world skills (actions) or models (world views) — technical, mental, social, emotional, political etc. What an exquisitely cheesy yet accurate-enough metaphor.
It's pratically very comprehensive and probably sounds like "be great all-around with a super-trained brain" to most people, I'm afraid. Not quantum science though, elements and concepts are quite simple, but there's no shortcut to training each step.
If you want pointers you might recognize, there's the book "Mindset" by Carol Dweck (2008, iirc), and a certain branch of (very practical, down-to-earth) philosophy dating back to Ancient Stoics all the way to 20th century Stephen Covey (the famous "7 habits", at least one in particular), passing by Viktor Frankl ("3rd" school of psychoanalysis dubbed "logotherapy" from logos, speech).
You might have heard the quote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Well, the training/building of this "space" + a "growth" mindset, I argue, can take 80% of people at least halfway there (leaps and bounds further than whatever is/are current average intelligences, well enough to kickstart and reap massive further improvements over the next generations).
Knowledge of these methods and principles reminds me a lot of the Scientific Method for instance, hard at first to mold your brain with such rigor, but once internalized a formidable enabler of thought — at a civilizational scale. It's just vastly more general in scope than science or logic, and encompasses — by definition, not necessarily easily/always felt — all possible forms of intelligence, including meta-intelligence itself.
It's no secret either, most of it is out there for the taking, has been for decades, sometimes millennia; but there is so much noise and intox obfuscating.
The training is a mix of: obsession, up to and beyond exhaustion; grit, driven by passion; a relatively 'fast' metabolism, fueled by food and naps. Nothing magic, bootcamp-style.
Basically, working your day thing (studies, work, obligations) then spending all your free time nerding on something. It progressively morphed from goofing around to learning with a professional mindset, building stuff.
It's important to pace yourself; it's a marathon on a daily basis. However in the long run, over the weeks, it's more like an agile sprint: you work a lot for some weeks or a few months at most, then relax, rinse and repeat.
____
The happiness switch
I've found there are fundamental functions in human beings that pretty much describe us entirely. It's a model, deduced from reality, which in turn helps me 'mold' my reality (i.e. aspects of my personality, how I choose to experience things).
This set of skills can be trained; it seems to be 'working' with anyone, but there are 'prerequisites'; exactly which is unclear (for now).
One of the by-products of this is a happiness switch: your emotions inevitably vary, but you are able to maintain your desired "global state" nonetheless. So you do feel sad sometimes, or angry etc.; but at the same time, it's only one aspect of you, one function, namely emotions are the "language of the body", it's just information. They shouldn't drive you, but inform your decisions, your choices. That's one thing you can train. This is where Shakespeare's famous quote takes its full meaning imho: “nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Emotions are energy though: all our functions produce some 'effect', which may be usable, alone or in combination with others — for instance, cognitively we know that emotions act as a catalyst for memory, to break out of 'RAM' into long-term knowledge. This is a bridge (a powerful one, it's called 'passion' in some cases, 'impression' in other contexts...) between emotions and thinking.
The main sources are Stoicism and/or comparable schools of thought (Zen notably, and a cross-slice of many religions, myths), some critically validated modern 'self-development', cognitive studies (psychology, neurology, etc., e.g. the "hexaco" model), and books/authors/ideas in-between that demonstrate the empirical/statistical 'truth' of some principles (those that endure the test of time, with success). Also a bunch of business/consulting literature that strongly validates ideas, if only empirically — plus autobiographies etc. The spirit of the general enterprise is to validate sources by who speaks — e.g. only take advice from those who succeeded at what you seek, preferably the greatest, including people you don't like — and validate ideas themselves by experience, by real-world application.
So while the endeavor might seem quite intellectual, it's only the tip of the iceberg, the small gate of knowledge — immediately after lies practice, lifelong mantras. That's actual philosophy, what the word meant until the turn of the 20th century: practical advice and repipes for a good living.
Or perhaps these people simply aren't hedonists that orientate their lives around momentary pleasures. Instead, they derive pleasure from achievement and building things.
Recreational drugs, on the other hand, have ruined millions of people lives. You are being disengenuous to suggest that they have a positive effect to most people.
Finally, no one "intended" drugs to be anything. They are simply tools that humans have discovered. It is ludicrous to suggest that they have specific intention.
You're right, people should eschew such debasing wordly pleasures for the noble task of checks notes tracking the living hell of anyone with an internet device to serve them with personalized ads. Much achievement, very world-building.
>Recreational drugs, on the other hand, have ruined millions of people lives.
Yes all recreational drugs are opiates and physically addictive. People have been overdosing on mushrooms and LSD for decades before the government undertook heroic prohibition efforts. That's definitely what's happened.
>It is ludicrous to suggest that they have specific intention.
The original users did them with a specific intention. That's what is meant by the passive form of 'intended'. Of course I am not forbidding you to enhance your IQ with minute LSD microdosings so that you can perform better at your next hackathon, by all means feel free to change the world.
> a link to the white paper. no idea what this does/use case
From the white paper:
"Velocity is an automated system for hedging risk on asset prices. It allows anyone to establish
and participate in a marketplace on publicly accessible price feeds. The platform enables
hedgers and speculators to take part in a market that reduces the threat of systemic risk."
Hedging against exposure to fluctuations in asset prices is very useful and necessary to many businesses.
right. not to be unkind but i follow ethereum and i dont have time to read every whitepaper that comes out. unless there is a good website that explains how and why, it doesn't matter what the technical details are. i skimmed the whitepaper before i even posted, its just that when twitter/facebook ect launched or even simple bank or wealth front for something fintech they weren't:
* send text to internet, read whitepaper.
* banking, read the whitepaper
* easier investing, wp
they explained what they did, which was not only obvious because they were way more traditional, but neccessary.
so i don't care about another derivatives play in the space that didn't put a what we do section in
edit: if i have to read your whitepaper to figure out why i would use your product you lost. every blockchain company releases a whitepaper, but they need to build community and security. id think it was astroturfing/sabotage if not for the 1990s
> The community that already understands it isn't doing a very good job making it so that others can reach it
Where I disagree is that I don't believe that all ideas/concepts can be made "easy to understand" to a general audience. Many concepts - especially those technical in nature - simply require a large amount of background knowledge to understand.
You can be the best mathematics teacher in the world, but you won't be able to (and no one expects you to) make the Riemann hypothesis widely understood to the general public. It's just not feasible. And I posit that Bitcoin (whilst maybe not as technical as the Riemann hypothesis) similarly requires a large amount of background knowledge and is not an "easy" concept to understand in 30 minutes.
The good news is that there are millions of things that people use every day that they don't understand - cars, computers, TVs - in fact, due to the specialization of knowledge, most things people encounter they do not fully understand. I don't think this is a big deal.
Noun, 1. money laundering:
Concealing the source of illegally gotten money.
Do you have any evidence that suggests that all users of mixers obtained their Bitcoin illegally?
This HN post is a criticism of the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. Mixers can improve the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. I don't see how your comment adds to this discussion, unless you think financial privacy is a crime - in which case your statement applies equally to cash transactions.
> Do you have any evidence that suggests that all users of mixers obtained their Bitcoin illegally?
And why would I require that? I haven't accused all bitcoin users of anything.
> This HN post is a criticism of the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. Mixers can improve the privacy of Bitcoin transactions. I don't see how your comment adds to this discussion, unless you think financial privacy is a crime - in which case your statement applies equally to cash transactions.
The law thinks financial privacy is a crime, thus KYC laws, and as such it's on topic for any discussion of bitcoin privacy since said discussion should include the issue that you fix social problems with engineering. You can't break the law "because the protocol just works that way".
You accused them of money laundering, which is a crime by itself most first world nations. Except that phrase doesn't apply unless another crime has been committed, because it only applies to funds gotten illegally.
As the name implies, this law only applies to (financial) businesses and their customers. Most Bitcoin transactions are P2P and hence there is no business/customer relationship and hence there is no KYC law applicable.
> Most Bitcoin transactions are P2P and hence there is no business/customer relationship and hence there is no KYC law applicable.
That's a bit of a nonsense statement. It's a P2P payment network so you have no way of knowing if most of the transactions going across it are between businesses and customers or person to person. Quite simply that's a claim you can't back up.
KYC laws apply to financial businesses, like those whose sole servers is the transfer of money, i.e. bitcoins. Exchanges for example must comply with KYC laws. Money laundering, aka mixing, is itself a purely financial service. There are no mixing services that are on steady legal ground; they are proving a service that expressly allows one to launder money as such they will always be a target for authorities.
If you think it does, then I assume you also want to ban cash?
By the way, that is a valid opinion to have - it's just that not everyone agrees that it optimal in the long run for all personal information to be auditable by a government in real time.
Well, I live in a country where cash is very uncommon. I can't even remember the last time I saw cash in real life so banning it wouldn't make much difference for me personally.
Well if you don't want to be connected to the Ethereum blockchain then you probably should just use a webserver. The advantage of using a blockchain like Ethereum is that it is very secure and very reliable compared to a webserver - also it is perhaps less work maintaining a DAO than a webserver.
So if you want to issue tokens for your hackspace, it would be nice if they existed on a public blockchain so that users could trade then and see their balance at any time - no need to worry about server uptime or vulnerabilities.
I find it amusing that you spend so much time commenting on every Ethereum post on hacker news. For someone who is so dismissive of Ethereum as a technology, you sure spend a lot of time criticizing it.
But more directly to you post: forking an altcoin would be a terrible idea for this person's usecase. Do so not only requires more work (creating and deploying clients) but also is completely insecure as such an altcoin would have no mining power behind it.
Creating a token on an existing blockchain, like Ethereum, would be a much better idea since the clients would already exist and the network would be much more secure. Moreover tokens on the Ethereum blockchain are light-client friendly and have access to smart-contract functinality.
I comment on almost every blockchain related post I have something to add. I am not dismissive of blockchain technology but ethereum is not a technology but an implementation & I recognize its only benefit as ease of use.
The security that you mention is surely a good thing but rather an overkill in a hackspace environment. If he was purely behind mining power then he should rather start a sidechain based on litecoin.
I find it amusing that you take technical criticism so personally that you target me commenting on just a couple of ethereum post with your ad hominems. Coming to the point, I will argue based on technical viewpoints because this is HN & rather have you keep it clean too please.
I agree with your initial appraisal to some extent. However, forking bitcoin/ethereum or modifying some other coin for a hacketspace would likely be a learning excercise so the tech/coin used should be related to their interests. Hackerspaces are as much about learning as creating and given the usecase and context learning would be a focus likely more than the actual token usage.
> ethereum is not a technology
By definition is a technology a case could be made whether it is a protocol or simply an extension of an existing one. I understand what you are saying here, and once again to some extent, I agree.
However what does "easier" mean. Obviously they used blockchain technology so by definition, blockchain can do anything ethereum can do and it is likely bitcoin can or will be able to as well.
Ethereum is the first company to provide a widespread platform that is secure, easy to use, well documented and designed to build distributed apps and smart contracts. If we assume it works the way it is intended, it is important technology.
Bitcoin is the first implementation and to my knowledge, the designer itself worked on it personally. It also has a cap of coins produced.
I am not looking at the numbers, but commerce on the internet is near 10% in america and i think 4% now.
Just haphazard napkin calculations would mean that if the world accepted bitcoin at a similar rate it would be too concentrated, valuable and need too much mining to work.
Amzn did the first sale in 94.
There is ~5-6 trillion in the world.
Sonewhere between 5-10 percent of all transactions are online.
If we assume adoption to occor similar to this, that would mean 5-10 percent of the economy becomes bitcoin. I think a trajectory like this is possible.
Bitcoin was designed as a currency and ethereum was designed as an energy product.
All coins are priced in bitcoin because you can not buy most directly. Soeculators must buy bitcoin and convert it into something else.
Bitcoin will be much more of a wealth store and peg than the underlying consumable resource used in decentralized application (directly).
So that is why ethereum is important. It is an easy cheap way to allow high throughput access to a distributed database.
It would be annoying if ethereum failed to meet expectations. If bitcoin does not, it will certainly diminish ALL coins and slow blockchain develoment years (or be catastrophic if already widespread)
So yes, ethereum could or could not be a cool hackerspace token. Either way the technology is amazing in blockchain, mining, etc so it would be a good project
I noticed last year that ubuntu.com - despite being the source from which most people download Ubuntu .isos - has no HTTPS capability and doesn't offer any checksums or gpg signatures on their download page. I believe you can find gpg signatures if you scratch around on their ftp server, but it is ridiculous to assume users will do this (especially when Ubuntu is trying to be a user-friendly distro).
Anyway, as a result I ended up emailing their webmaster asking why Ubuntu.com has no SSL cert. and I haven't heard anything back yet. I think it is pretty poor that a company like Canonical can have such a flagrant disregard for basic security practices, especially when it likes to market Ubuntu as a 'secure' OS.
If you are running Ubuntu then you already have signing key (run apt-key list), otherwise you can compare the full fingerprint with the one printed in terminal output in the guide that's hosted on https.
Encryption enforces privacy. In a world with no privacy vulnerable people are easily abused by people in positions of authority. Also note that the legal system is not a perfect mapping to human morality - things that are are legal are not always moral and things that are moral are not always legal. Hence it is dangerous to have a world where right and wrong is determined only by an all-powerful legal system.
In my opinion it is important for society to maintain the privacy that humans have experienced for thousands of years. Remember that mass surveillance of every conversation that you have ever had is new thing. Before the internet society had much more privacy. Encryption is a way to ensure privacy in the internet era.
Also you talk of an 'intelligence switch'. Could you explain what you mean by that?