Quote from: becoin on May 06, 2015, 09:44:10 PM

Quote from: btchris on May 06, 2015, 06:11:09 PM

If 10 people I respect tell me I am wrong, I have to accept that conclusion even if I do not understand why.

Couple of years ago when I said BFL are crooks and low life 10 people I respected (incl. mods) told me I was wrong. They were just bribed by BFL to do so. At that time mods were not in a hurry to label BFL as scammers.

If we brush off all the pseudo scientific gibberish what gmaxell is basically saying we should treat all the irregularities as regular because of the big figures. Do we have to accept this knowledgeable explanation and move on just for the sake of protecting bitcoin from possible FUD?

Bribed mods? Shocked

Quote from: btchris on May 06, 2015, 06:11:09 PM

I mean no disrespect. I only hope that you can be this type of enlightened individual.

Sorry, but I can't agree. Enlightened individual is whoever thinks by himself, and not who follows blindly a leader or guru.

I believe the proper thing to do is to have a brain and think by yourself.

"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." Henrik Ibsen.

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." Henry Poincaré

The data is there for anyone to analyze and reach conclusions if these are normal statistical anomalies or far out of normal.

Statistics are tricky and one needs to have some intuition and expertise about it to not confuse normal rare statistical deviations from irregular ones. Irregular ones are detected because of coincidence of various independent indications.

Someone can come and claim that he found a collision with a bitcoin address in the blockchain. We know that mathematically speaking this is imposible and we may call this guy a liar and a fool. But we know that defective implementations of wallets with not enough entropy can indeed duplicate addresses.

I don't want to enter into the question if gmaxwell or I are right or wrong. This always deviates into a stupid fight of egos. The data is there and everyone can reach its own conclusions about the possibilities. No hardfeelings. No stress. Don't need to get your blood boiling.And finally...if you dont believe me or dont get it, I dont have time to try to convince you, sorry. Grin