02:34:01 topic is: Bitcoin research, hardfork wishlist, ideas for the future - see also: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/alt_ideas 02:34:01 Users on #bitcoin-wizards: andytoshi-logbot _ingsoc Emcy kinlo mappum orperelman jtimon skinnkavaj go1111111 adam3us hnz Graet MoALTz nsh OneFixt CodeShark maaku spinza_ realazthat edulix jgarzik Hunger- wumpus Krellan wangbus amiller warren BlueMatt hno jrmithdobbs harrow forrestv iddo K1773R firepacket HM2 Ryan52 cfields lianj jarpiain trn COGSMITH pigeons UukGoblin epscy Muis tucenaber gribble Luke-Jr EasyAt petertodd michagogo|cloud nanotube deepc0re_ 02:34:01 Users on #bitcoin-wizards: azariah4 @gmaxwell typex phantomcircuit helo Mikalv Fistful_of_LTC midnightmagic 03:51:18 I had some ideas for bitcoin, would anyone want to listen? 03:52:41 Dylan_: its always best to just go for it instead of asking if you can...whether or not you get responses is a function of who's online, but there are plenty of people who read scrollback, so it'll be seen eventually 03:57:24 I was thinking about an automated system for the distribution of electricity (watts of the network) to reward people for to caputre electricity using solar panels, in the same way the miner are rewarded for computation 04:00:23 I figure there are two ways to do it. 1. to have a box that plugs into the volage meter, that would send bitcoins to a wallet for electricy into the grid 2. to have a premined coin that was regulated by a power company that was sent when an owner put power into the grid 04:01:29 but, I am stuggling over the first solution. How would one design a box to assure someone didn't break the voltage meter.... etc 04:02:00 Has anyone been thinking about this? 04:04:25 I'm not sure if you can/want to handle checking of hardware modification at the currency layer... 04:05:28 there are ways to try to address it (make the thing fail if its case is opened, have someone physically go check it every month, etc), but I think thats all at a layer way higher than what you're paying with 04:06:13 well, its definately a plan for after the ASIC's come out, and I definately need help to figure out if authenticating the watts is worth it.... 04:07:00 yeah, my intuition says it is possible, but my conscious brain says... duh 04:07:23 maybe I need more long walk, and showers or something 04:08:16 would love to make it open source 04:08:44 I think dealing with hardware drm is something that happens way higher level than here 04:08:47 and easy enough for my grandmother to use 04:09:06 (eg put private key in the thing, wipe the key when the box is opened, require key for payment from the power company) 04:10:05 that way would use the premined version 04:10:29 all a distributed system would need is a web page/server 04:13:35 maybe having both systems to compete against eachother would also be good 04:17:50 I'm not sure what your model is here, if you mean no power company and completely decentralized grid...I'm not sure how well thats gonna work to begin with 04:27:11 well, it depends on the country and the existing grid... but I would like to at least try to develope a model for both of them 04:27:38 centralized and decentralized grids.... 04:29:45 but solar panels are pretty good for both types of grids, which is why I would like to start there... and perhaps try and limit it there, because I don't think fosil fuel or wind tech are very good, 04:30:37 maybe geothermal.... but now I am rambling... 06:12:53 /msg NickServ IDENTIFY ****REMOVED BY asp**** 06:13:03 oops, better change that. 06:15:26 <_ingsoc> Lmao. 06:16:34 *^_^* 06:52:34 wow RSA took $10 measly MM of NSA cash to deliberately gimp thier crypto 06:53:20 Had a long chat with my friend who worked on RSA's BSafe. Two comments: "i saw that this morning and was filled with a sense of shame" 06:53:22 yea, see the thing I find the most surprising in that story is it only took $10 million... 06:53:35 But no, he had no idea NSA had done some payoff and he was working on code apparently deliberately gimped. ;( 06:53:54 hmm those are quote tweets, i jave no RSA friend 06:54:28 BlueMatt yeah its not a lot of money for flushing your company rep down the toilet is it. NSA total budget for this sort of aubterfuge is 250MM apparently 06:56:04 I SINCERELY hope the word gets out about this far and wide and the market sorts this one out 07:36:19 has anyone heard news about truecrypt's independent audit? 07:47:36 theyve engaged an audit firm 07:47:54 what i dont know is whats stopping that firm getting a nice fat NSL about it 08:44:29 Personally I'm waiting to hear about the lawsuits from ex-NSA people who are now unemployable. 09:01:47 they picked thier side 10:30:45 Dylan_: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/12/an-update-on-truecrypt.html 10:42:46 goedgoed_ is now known as goedgoed 14:03:54 some scroll-back comment: petertodd or maaku were talking about how the minimal function needed from the network is tx ordering (if you ignore SPV functionality). i agree with this. the fact that committed tx are respendable in committed form to full nodes is in fact an illustration of this fact. 14:07:56 in some way you can see that the distributed function offered by bitcoin network if you remove tx validation (as respendable committed tx do) is that it is a secure namespace. (first come first served, first to announce owns; and can opt to transfer ownership. transferring ownership decommits because it involves a signature. anyway a distributed namespace is a slightly higher level function built on a distributed timestamp. 14:10:26 and in fact again, other than for optimization, full nodes could survive fine with a distributed timestamping service only (no name uniqueness guarantee) as the timestamping defines ordering. they can therefore build first to publish just by ignoring later republications (and validating themselves either via committed tx key knowledge, or by validating clear text but unvalidated tx) 16:36:57 adam3us: just ignoring later publications isn't good enough though, you need to be able to be sure that a prior publication *doesn't exist* at all 16:37:17 adam3us: if you can't, then you're not sure if your coins are valid 16:37:58 adam3us: assuming bitcoin-style fixed inflation that is... 16:38:23 adam3us: you could have a system where double-spends were valid if accompanied by more pow of cource 16:38:28 *course 16:39:17 adam3us: basically the scheme I came up with back in highschool for a decentralized crypto-currency after reading a certain paper about hashcash :P 16:39:57 adam3us: dunno if you've heard about it, you do a partial-preimage against... :P 17:02:04 petertodd: yes. i meant to imply the full node scans from genesis and is thereby convinced that a given string is the first copy 18:55:34 adam3us: "if you ignore SPV functionality" <--- that's a big thing to ignore 18:56:23 it's the difference between academic wankery and a system that is actually deployable and workable 18:57:23 maaku: this is -wizards, we're doing research and development 19:04:45 maaku: i think if you're aware of the simplifications (and ofc petertodd is), spherical blockchain reasoning is useful 19:05:18 eg bitcoin solves problems independently enough that you can think of timestamping apart from everything else 19:07:16 anyway, with additional technology you probably can make such systems usable on low-resources too, for instance via SCIP to compactly validate coin histories, or via economic tricks to limit the scope of fraud 19:12:34 I wish more of petertodd's ideas were being tried in practice :) 19:13:06 CodeShark: same :P 19:13:34 CodeShark: it'll be nice finally getting some free time to work on them properly soon 19:18:01 need any help? 19:18:12 or rather, would you like some help? :) 19:18:45 yes! 19:18:56 although frankly, I think right now coinjoin is what needs dev effort on the most 19:19:11 other stuff is cool, but it really needs to actually see implementations 19:19:45 not sure whether stronger privacy or blockchain/utxo prunability are a higher priority 19:20:14 maaku: yes SPV is the current scaling model. i like to re-examine assumptions. sometimes i find ways to re-write them along the way. so thinking back to the minimal function for the global part is good. more secure even. and then try other ways to scale maybe there are better ways. 19:20:36 it's easier to throw hardware at making bitcoin scale than it is to throw hardware at making bitcoin private 19:20:41 maaku: eg commitd tx have strong policy advantages over clear/validated tx 19:21:04 maaku: more resistant to centralization for example 19:21:52 throwing more hardware at making bitcoin scale seems to encourage greater centralization, though 19:22:12 maaku: anyway the comment was part of some wide-ranging what-ifs i tried to isolate the dependency bitcoin puts on mining, and it turns out there are multiple entangled reasons 19:22:40 yes, but bitcoin will easily survive having transactions gradually become more expensive 19:23:18 "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept." -The Architect. 19:23:59 nsh: transactions already actually cost like $50 each; fees can go up a hell of a lot 19:24:21 $50 each?!?!? 19:24:25 hmm 19:24:46 are you talking about international wire transfers, petertodd? :) 19:24:48 CodeShark: yup. total new bitcoins created out of thin air * $/BTC / # of transactions = $50 19:24:49 there are multiple paths to policy neutrality: actual decentralization, moderately central nodes having insufficient info to do policy (committed tx) 19:25:31 petertodd: yeah but thats a point in time description allocating all of reward to tx fees; as number of tx increases and reward decreases the cost/tx falls 19:25:58 petertodd: I don't follow - block rewards don't cost the parties transacting bitcoins 19:26:14 it has a small inflationary effect, perhaps 19:26:17 but that affects everyone 19:26:40 adam3us: sure, but the point is the *economics* are such that bitcoin works at a real cost of $50/tx, which implies that the core usage of bitcoin is as a store-of-value/speculation 19:27:14 adam3us: maybe it'd start to get ugly at $10/tx, but we can certainely survive $1/tx 19:27:22 petertodd: so you're saying that each transaction spreads a cost of $50 amongst all holders of bitcoins? 19:28:02 petertodd: seems like the reward is the reward, its just a distribution mechanism/bootstrap mechanism. i dont see a reason to equate it to tx cost at current tx rates 19:28:04 CodeShark: no, I'm saying the cost to run the whole bitcoin system is $50/transaction 19:28:22 petertodd: that's saying subsidy is $50/transaction 19:28:27 petertodd: who foots the bill? 19:28:30 CodeShark: that's not to say the *marginal* cost of a transaction is $50, but it strongly suggests that much higher fees are economically feasible 19:28:40 petertodd: the supposition is that % of income from mining crosses over as tx # increase so that fees take over as reward tapers 19:29:45 adam3us: exactly, and given the system functions just fine with a huge fixed cost, making that into a marginal cost is likely fine to a first approximation - my main worry is actually off-chain systems being *too good* and not supporting miners enough 19:30:08 adam3us: but we probably have ~10 years before that's a big deal... 19:30:50 so far no one made a remotely plausible off chain anything other than TDs micropaymens channel but thats point to point so its just a way to avoid aborts on a tab 19:31:09 adam3us: micropayment channels are *not* off-chain, don't call them that 19:31:17 adam3us: freimarkets 19:31:42 adam3us: and I'd say fidelity bonded banks, especially w/ trusted hardware, are perfectly plausible, they just won't happen unless fees make them happen 19:31:44 but i think you have some confusion over what off-chain is 19:31:46 maaku: isnt freimarkets on chain (on freicoin or other coin) 19:32:06 petertodd: there you go that is off-chain 19:32:24 adam3us: I think you a word 19:32:25 adam3us: private accounting servers (with atomic transfers with the public chain, including bitcoin) are part of the spec 19:32:29 maaku: off-chain is like not on-chain ;;) 19:33:11 and i'd count open transactions too 19:33:17 maaku: yeah you could say chris odom open transactions is focussing on off-chain 19:33:51 maaku: the problem is all the off-chain stuff i've seen loses fundamentaly 1 or 2 important and useful bitcoin functions 19:34:00 well the key part is how value is moved on and off chain 19:34:11 chris only figured that out with his "holy grail" voting pools 19:34:20 which still aren't implemented, i think 19:34:59 adam3us: if it didn't lose bitcoin functionality, it'd replace bitcoin entirely 19:35:01 maaku: or what properties are left once you have the coin in some offchain situation. eg what OT tokens backed in bitcoin? thts not going to be as secure, nor distributed etc 19:35:09 adam3us: and to that, so what? losing my $100 morning coffee slush funds every once in a while isn't a big deal 19:35:22 :( https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/512 19:36:23 let me rephase ... you can't expect an off-chain solution to be better or equal to bitcoin in every way, or else it will be strictly speaking better (off-chain scales better), so what are we doing? 19:36:27 gmaxwell: huh? every time you make a paymen tto an address it goes into the "used" bin and gets hidden 19:37:11 maaku: well itd be nice to minimize the feature loss offchain. maybe its possible to not give up anything even. we can at least try with that objective 19:38:04 adam3us: don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough 19:38:30 adam3us: well i'm on board with that. recognizing that the goal is something we weill probably never achieve (and if we did we'd replace bitcoin entirely) 19:38:37 maaku: eg say btc gets to minimum amount of $10k on chain, perhaps a solution is multiple side-chains and atomic swaps into the main chain for example 19:38:42 but shoot for the moon and you'll at least land among the stars 19:39:39 maaku: i just like to understand clearly the requirements (rather than think in terms of the artefacts of the current system) not all of the artefacts may be actual fundamental limitations 19:39:50 who knows what the minimal, least impactful features are that we'd have to give up, so might as well try to keep them all 19:41:08 atomic swaps would also permit a fully decentralized cryptocoin exchange :) 19:41:12 maaku: yeah well so far all my design rejigging attempts ended up making something worse, its definitely hard; seems like bitcoin only-just-works, and its multiple features so inter-dependent on mining its hard to modify anything 19:42:33 CodeShark: what's the value of having more than 1-2 decentralized currencies? :P 19:42:52 CodeShark: this is true; somewhat. you also need script extension to have non-stalling (otherwise people will stuff the order book to manipulate price with cryptocoins they have no actual intention of selling). ie so you can take the ask, by definition by satisfying its price 19:43:24 maaku: there are different use cases where different features might be more/less desirable - economic parameters, confirmation times, etc... 19:43:25 maaku: i think one digital scarcity definition (bitcoin) is the limit, 19:43:50 CodeShark: they are mostly excuses for me-too-coins aka pump & dumps with no transactions and so no intrinsic value 19:44:06 CodeShark: I challenge you to come up with one real example that isn't better served by some other off-chain solution 19:44:35 gmaxwell: oh hang on, just tried that myself... weird, recv addr list not getting repopulated, yeah, that's a WTF 19:44:43 gmaxwell: recent bug I think 19:44:45 bitcoin-staging with 1:1 peg (as discussed a few days ago by BlueMatt & gmaxwell) is the answer IMO 19:45:04 adam3us: I'm familiar with that argument - and while true that all the alt coins are essentially bitcoin ripoffs, I see it differently - I think the parameters Satoshi chose for bitcoin are completely arbitrary - what's not arbitrary is the block chain concept as a decentralized timestamping mechanism. why should we get stuck on a specific set of arbitrary parameters? 19:45:04 anyone not doing that needs their pump & dump sabotaging financially of via mining difficulty attacks 19:45:12 adam3us: in my view changing the nature of the decentralized money is the only valid reason to try a different coin (like we've done with freicoin, and I'm sure there are other possible variations) 19:45:47 but changing interblock time, proof of work algorithm, subsidy algorithm, etc. has ~zero real world benefit 19:45:50 CodeShark: they aren't completely arbritary, as alts have been created which only changed the "arbritary" ones and turned into fireballs as a result. 19:45:54 maaku: yes freicoin actually and namecoin are not param tweaks 19:46:25 CodeShark: yeah satoshi clearly but extensive modeling into the params; pretty much all alts are outright worse 19:47:20 adam3us: Satoshi is the wright brothers and bitcoin is the first powered airplane. 19:47:51 CodeShark: and our job as bitcoin developers is to upgrade that airplane to a modern Boeing 787, without landing 19:48:03 gmaxwell: i saw that comment on #bitcoin too, i left 19:48:12 idk how you can tolerate so much of that channel at once 19:48:36 my secret is copious consumption of crack cocaine 19:48:49 andytoshi: my contacts at the vatican say greg's getting canonized when he kicks the bucket 19:49:05 CodeShark: you know the wright brothers spent years in their private wind tunnel perfecting their airplane before it ever flew ;) 19:49:19 CodeShark: like i said i think param tweak alts that try to start a new race are pump & dumps; and if one did come along that got real transactions, it would rise to instead be dangerous to the confidence in digital scarcity which is too valuable a new concept jeopardize with toy pump & dumps 19:49:35 maaku: the wright brothers didn't even understand swept wing designs or the fundamental subsonic limitations of propellers 19:50:00 point is, Satoshi surely missed many things, too 19:50:47 CodeShark: thought experiment: if ltc got real transactions, overtook btc in market cap, and then perhaps btc users dump btc to buy ltc causing a btc price crash; then ltc users notice ftc catchng up with its market cap - next thing you know people lose confidence in the asset class of digital scarcity and turn the whole thing into a digital tulip 19:51:12 CodeShark: I dont want that outcome. alts must die. use bitcoin-staging to try useful new params or features. 19:51:56 anyhow, I'm not going to get sucked into a religious debate 19:52:48 alts are inevitable - we must learn to cope with them. they won't die 19:53:00 CodeShark: i am just saying alts are stupid and maybe even dangerous. 19:53:04 the same decentralized nature of the technology which makes bitcoin so hard to kill makes alts hard to kill 19:53:24 CodeShark: I think most of the pump & dumps will die soon enough. they have no intrinsic value because there are no transactions. eventually they die 19:54:13 CodeShark: bitcoin has first mover advantage - big intrinsic value, infrastructure and stored-value; the alts are abuses trying to make-money-fast with param-tweaks, 99% of them. 19:54:44 the core technology is agnostic to these parameters - the core technology consists of a decentralized timestamping mechanism using proof-of-work 19:55:51 you can think of alts as simply param tweaks on bitcoin - I see it a different way - I would like to see the decentralized timestamping mechanism Satoshi invented applied to many problems 19:55:52 CodeShark: if you like analogies its like the wrong brothers came along and cloned the write brothers plane and painted it blue and then tried to claim they invented or profit from the wright brothers work 19:56:20 I think the original bitcoin client isn't sufficiently modular and flexible 19:56:21 CodeShark: "look at my blue plane".... its "BLUE" so its like cool and stuff, please mine it and make me money fast :) 19:56:35 CodeShark: so work on making it modular and flexible 19:56:41 I have been :) 20:01:11 adam3us: my motivation here is not making money fast - my motivation is seeing this technology evolve 20:02:00 CodeShark: ok, me too. i think the best for tht to happen is bitcoin-staging with 1:1 peg. BlueMatt & gmaxwell had a plausible argument that a 1:1 peg maybe possible 20:02:44 CodeShark: the one change to rule them all as greg put it 20:03:11 CodeShark: it allows btc denominated (21 million coin cap preserving) alts or beta-coins 20:03:46 adam3us 1:1 is possible but very unconvinient 20:04:06 how so? 20:04:09 what would you make bitcoin's security depend on another chain? 20:04:26 jtimon: i think its fantastic; thats the clever part - onl the coins moved are at risk 20:05:23 well, the whole altchain is at risk if the validity of its transactions depend on bitcoin's chain 20:05:39 a reorg in one can cause a reorg in the other 20:05:57 depends on the nature of the dependency :) 20:06:13 sure 20:06:14 jtimon: yes. but it seems unlikely for the mid-term that an alt will be more secure than bitcoin; and most alts are also uninteresting - no tx, and no intrinsic value 20:06:47 jtimon: i think a reorg in the alt is designed not to do anyting to btc; g like mining a long conf time 20:06:48 that doesn't say anything in favor of a bitcoin-pegged currency 20:07:18 jtimon: most of the thinly veiled excuses for alts are "oh the innovation" (like param tweak or hash function swap) 20:07:37 jtimon: so if they can peg to btc, then they have no excuse, they can do the innovation or go away 20:07:55 alts are just tinkering with parameters that a suffiiciently modularized technology would allow you to freely tweak anyhow 20:08:05 I don't see how a bitcoin-pegged currency will prevent stupid people from doing and saying stupid things 20:08:40 jtimon: yes but they wont be starting a digital scarcity race and no one will risk btc in them, so its less wasteful and less dangerous 20:09:20 I disagree with your "digital scarcity" argumentation 20:09:58 you can innovate in your own testnet, you don't need a btc-pegged currency nor an altcoin for that 20:11:27 the genie is out of the bottle 20:11:35 hell, these days you can simulate an entire operating economy with some EC2 instances and historical transaction data 20:11:56 regardless of whether or not alts are dangerous to bitcoin, they are inevitable 20:12:05 agreed 20:12:30 network protocols are inevitable too, yet here we are on tcp/ip(v6) :) 20:12:40 (unfortunately) 20:13:30 and a btc-pegged altcoin changes nothing with respect to the rest of altcoins 20:14:19 I think we just need more time and people losing ridiculous amounts of money by speculating in altcoins for the fever to pass 20:14:31 jtimon: it shows them for what they are - pump & dumps or they would use btc-peg (unless they are actually experimenting with the distribution model itself, like freicoin) 20:15:30 I think the btc-pegged altcoin is a bad idea and I'm still missing how it is supposed to change in any way the perception on altcoins 20:15:52 why would they use btc-peg? 20:16:06 that's not better, is worse 20:16:16 technically 20:16:34 an unecessary burden 20:16:51 jtimon: ok say someone wanted to implement freimarket extensions to make them available to bitcoin scripting. 20:17:06 cool 20:17:07 jtimon: they could do that using dogecoin or btc... you choose 20:17:49 jtimon: (and i like freimarket script extensions a lot... a couple of them i thought about before i saw it, very elegant and minimal!) 20:17:58 the hardfork on btc is much more difficult 20:18:24 so I think altcoins will have it first 20:18:51 jtimon: thats the point of bitcoin-staging and btc-peg. make that hard fork, then other hard-forks can happen in pegged-alts 20:18:54 probably freicoin first, then a freicoin-without-demurrage fork or several of them... 20:19:18 jtimon: thats why i said gmaxwell called it to the one change to rule them all - its literal, other forks dont need forks after that 20:19:39 just like can happen in non-pegged alts much more easily I still don't see the point 20:20:52 the whole pegging stuff is a burden in your design I don't see what it adds other than calm some of your "digital scarcity" fears 20:20:58 jtimon: the point is where woud you rather have freimarket extensions available in bbqcoin or to btc users 20:21:17 to all users 20:21:35 but are bbq devs going to rebase their code? 20:21:41 maintain it? 20:21:44 jtimon: no really teh original motivation is the unfortunate conflict between the need to be careful with btc changes, to preserve value, and the desire to implement known useful improvements 20:22:08 jtimon: bbq are a joke, thats my point; it'll probably flame out at some point when the dev gets bored and it breaks 20:22:48 I understand the motiviation, I just disagree that your proposed solution helps in any way or that altcoins are really a problem 20:23:26 many people involved in altcoins haven't seen altcoins die yet 20:23:48 jtimon: give it time. quite a few have died already in flame outs and peter outs 20:24:15 after a couple of them die in their hands they will think twice before speculating on the next proprietary altcoin 20:24:22 jtimon: btw i mean param-tweak alts... should distinguish - i am using alt as short hand for things like bbq coin an doge coin 20:24:45 they're all alts 20:24:58 probably the first ones WEEDS, 100% premined only tx fee currency, and beertokens, backed by 1 bottle of beer, have died 20:25:32 I think "backing" is a bad idea in general 20:25:42 for money 20:26:02 yes, but fun thing is you can prove something is a good or bad idea eventually 20:26:13 a year from now, there will be articles with a long list of death altcoins 20:26:42 it's hard for them to die 20:27:06 well, most of them are zombies as currencies anyway 20:27:24 anyway the client multicoin that sacarlson used by forking bitcoin and pulling out the parameters into config files was used by later altcoins like tenebrix and fairbrix which eventually brought litecoin even though at that point litecoin decided to fork from bitcoin again 20:28:02 yeah, multicoin was an interesting project 20:28:53 he was starting to work on plugin modules for things like difficulty adjustment filters as that started to get more complex than just changing static numbers, but then he got a real job 20:29:10 and bitcoin is kind of less interesting now that its big bucks for some 20:29:50 but for some people that makes it more interesting 20:32:30 i think a focus on decentralizing mining would be a good niche for an altcoin. i guess the tools are all there with GBT, and there are example models such as p2pool with real data to look at 20:53:49 kind of off-topic but...does anyone know if the rumors that say coinbase uses mongoDB as their primary store for financial transactions are true or not? 21:07:26 jtimon, i am relatively confident they are true or not, yes 21:08:00 yeah true or not, that's what I thought 21:08:07 it's always the way... 21:08:14 damn you aristotle. damn you to hell... 21:11:06 nsh: you can always study set theory if this dichotomy bothers you ;) 21:12:59 Muis_ is now known as Muis 21:13:02 * nsh smiles 21:14:33 (set-theoretical approches, e.g. fuzzy logic, are still fundamentally predicated upon bivalent membership identity, and can do more than concealing the dichotomy at a lower level of analysis) 21:16:46 (a really non-binary system of logic has values that are qualitatively different to truth and falsity, rather than shades of the two) 21:18:59 i meant, you can reject the law of excluded middle and do logic that way.. 21:19:09 i don't know what field those people claim to be part of 21:19:27 without making any claims as to what's in the middle 21:20:04 hmm, you're still right, it's either true or not --- and false or not 21:20:44 perhaps you should study zen then 21:24:17 it's not just the law of the excluded middle. that's one pillar of bivalence. the other is the law of non-contradiction. every A is A, no A is not-A 21:25:23 it's difficult to imagine a system without the law of non-contradiction. whether this is a reflection of a universal truth [sic] or a result of our historical mathematical/logical/linguistic enculturation is an open question :) 21:25:27 A + 0 = A, A + 1 = 1 21:27:51 you don't need much in the way of axioms for a single contradiction to imply every statement is true.. 21:28:07 so it's definitely baked pretty hard into historical logic 21:28:28 i'm not familiar with the attempts to fix this non-robustness 21:29:18 * nsh nods 21:31:23 there is a body of work due to Lukasiewicz but it's accompanied by an unfortunate tendency of later thinkers to reduce it back to bimodality 21:33:12 More recently A. S. Karpenko. it's my occasional hobby to casually read up on it, but more slips past me than sticks, as with most matters 21:35:57 discussed in some detail here: http://www.oocities.org/m_valuedlets/tranche4.html but unless you have predilection to wading through schizoform word salad it might not be much use to you :) 21:36:16 'fraid not :) 21:36:57 fair enough 21:52:36 pigeons: I thought beertoken was backed by some promise to deliver beer (not just one bottle, but some larger quantity as set by some kind of board or something) 21:59:11 jtimon: I've seen a number of pretty concerning technical behaviors from coinbase, so I'd believe any random thing. 22:58:00 gmaxwell: there wasn't a beertokens comittee, it was just steve, and yes like all these things from silver certificates to mtgox usd it ultimately comes down to a promise 22:58:23 the promise was to redeem each beertoken for one bottle of a specific type of beer that steve liked and was common in thailand where he lived 22:59:00 but he didnt buy the beer and refrigeration and storage, he backed it with bitcoins, which brought up a problem as bitcoins decreased in value a lot from when he set them aside 22:59:47 he ended up buying more coins to make up the difference 23:01:26 and guys, BigDataBorat says "My contact at Coinbase say use of MongoDB strictly for reason of give client plausible deniability." 23:01:38 https://twitter.com/BigDataBorat 23:01:54 what the heck does that mean? 23:02:11 "Estimate of MongoDB's value vary, one replica say $700m, one replica say $1.2 billion, one replica say 1.5 billion." 23:02:18 "when we stole all the coins we could plausably deny it being theft?" 23:02:26 yes that's what it means 23:03:19 lol 23:04:08 hi orperelman. i liked your work on the poincare conjecture 23:04:27 thanks for inventing bitcoin :) 23:05:12 (i'm not personally sure ricci flow with surgery is a valid technique, but i'm not a topologist) 23:48:11 andytoshi: isn't that constructivist math? (removing the law of excluded middle)