Quote from: toknormal on December 21, 2015, 01:36:02 AM

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on December 21, 2015, 01:00:39 AM

Conflation. It may very well be that to protect her anonymity it is also necessary to encrypt the message for one reason or another, e.g.....her name was also elided or encrypted, else she'd not be anonymous.

I really think this is semantic nonsense - at least with regards to money. I can't think of a single case in history of cash media where eliding had anything to do with anonymity. Things are either synonymous with an identity or they aren't. Have a look at the coins in your pocket and see if you can see any "eliding" there. Everything's present and crystal clear - otherwise it'd simply be a corruption.

Her name isn't on the card, only the words I LOVE YOU are. You elide any of that and you make the message ambiguous. You encrypt it and it's unreadable. The only thing that protects her anonymity is the fact that I can't tell it apart from any other card.

You consider one case and conclude that is the general category. My IQ is more generalized when building a model (actually I am a reductionist who seeks the generative essence because I prefer to remember a concept than memorize cases). The model includes eliding the markers of identity when achieving anonymity on the internet, e.g. eliding (via mixnet obfuscation or Zerocash encryption) the IP address.

You are repeating again your incorrect model that conflates fungibility with eliding. The cash isn't anonymous. The user who transfers the cash is anonymous if the user elides his/her identity in the process of that transfer. That the cash has the property of not automatically carrying the user's identity is incidental, because for example the cash can't turn off the surveillance cameras. You've conflated where the anonymous originates from, i.e. not from the cash.

Quote from: toknormal on December 21, 2015, 01:36:02 AM

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on December 21, 2015, 01:00:39 AM

Seems you are conflating fungibility with the state of being elided. Fungibility has to do with being substitutable. If elided information is what makes fungibility, then vacuous would be the ultimate fungibility which makes no sense because fungible items have to existential.

LoL ! I thought you were doing that. I don't have any disagreement there - I've been arguing exactly this for the best part of a year. I don't know how you arrive at the conclusion that I'm conflating those two.

Quote from: TPTB_need_war on December 21, 2015, 01:00:39 AM

Encryption can indeed make you anonymous, but it doesn't have to. What do you think Cryptonote is? It is encrypting the UTXO payer (but not the IP address or other meta-data correlations).

If I send a message to a friend and encrypt it, I may be anonymous but the message isn't because nobody can read it, so as far as the message goes your "vacious" state above applies - i.e. no third party can see the message to read it. For the message to be anonymous (as distinct from private) it has to be:

[1] - totally readable by any third party
[2] - not be associated with an identifiable sender

Those two requirements are independent properties of the message which should not impact adversely on each other. Your cryptonote example does exactly that - encrypts the UTXO address.

I can't comprehend your point. Seems discombobulated. Maybe because I am sleepy, or more likely because you haven't communicated clearly.

Quote from: toknormal on December 21, 2015, 01:36:02 AM

I also notice that you use a personal pronoun instead of the word "address" in encrypting the UTXO payer. We're not talking about credit systems here, we're talking about cash ones, so no personal pronouns apply.

Firstly I am incredibly sleepy so my prose will lose attention to detail. Secondly "payer" in that context is intended to mean the sending address as opposed to payee which is the receiving address. The use of those terms doesn't have to imply persons.

Quote from: toknormal on December 21, 2015, 01:36:02 AM

The blockchain address (UTXO sender) is already anonymous and needs to be shown.

Non-sequitur because if the blockchain was anonymous, we wouldn't need Cryptonote.

Quote from: toknormal on December 21, 2015, 01:36:02 AM

This brings us right back to my original argument that fungibility - not obfuscation (using encryption or any other means) of blockchain transactions is what optimises anonymity.

Poor logic. Fungibility might be aided by anonymity but it doesn't guarantee/provide anonymity any more than cash can turn off surveillance cameras.

In other words, anonymity -> fungibility not the other direction on the arrow.