Quote from: ArcticWolf on July 06, 2013, 11:56:19 PM

Quote

He has very strong economic incentives to take the money and run. The fact that others have scammed gives us a lot of information:
- Anonymous people here often favor the economic incentive to scam over the moral / reputational incentive not to
- Post count / duration on board is not a reliable indicator of trust
- A significant portion of the trusted people here have simply been pulling long-cons
(These actually do affect the likelihood that dooglus will scam, because probability.)

By this logic you are best off not investing in bitcoin in the first place

That most certainly does not follow from what I have said. 'Bitcoin' as an entity cannot scam me, judging by my own review of the code as well as that of others.

Please explain your reasoning.

Quote from: juhakall on July 07, 2013, 12:43:44 AM

It's worth noting that 'dooglus' with the same real name has had a definite online presence well before the beginning of Bitcoin. It's a rather well thought out scam, if he indeed did create a false online personality for scamming purposes before Bitcoin was invented.

Creating a false personality for scamming purposes is not the only possible scenario. Another is that Bitcoin provides a way to capitalize on trust through irreversible online transactions.

If you were dooglus, would you value your online persona at more than $1M?

Quote from: shawshankinmate37927 on July 07, 2013, 01:29:06 AM

Quote from: nimda on July 06, 2013, 11:52:58 PM

Quote from: shawshankinmate37927 on July 06, 2013, 03:16:18 AM

There is nothing anyone can do to prove they are trustworthy. Someone can only be proven to be untrustworthy, and that's only after they've scammed someone, not before.

I disagree on every level except the binary "someone is trustworthy or they aren't" level. I'd rather invest in a just-dice created by dooglus than most other forum members. Trustworthiness is not a bit, it's a gradient.

I agree that there are levels of trustworthiness and we all have different criteria for deciding who we want to trust, but that doesn't change the fact that there is nothing someone can do to prove that they will never violate that trust.

This statement is a little wonky. "Proving that they will never violate trust" is an absolute: it's white, 1, one bit. Levels of trustworthiness are probabilities that the person will not violate the trust.

Quote from: shawshankinmate37927 on July 07, 2013, 01:29:06 AM

Bitcoin eliminates the need to trust bankers and their currencies. With bankers out of the loop, we each individually have to decide who we are going to trust when we transact or invest. That's inescapable. Yes, some have scammed, but that doesn't mean everyone is going to scam, just because they have the opportunity to.

It means that the chance of scam is higher. The fact that many other people have scammed and gotten away with it increases the risk here. I never said that everyone is going to scam, nor did I claim with 100% certainty that dooglus is going to scam.

Quote from: shawshankinmate37927 on July 07, 2013, 01:29:06 AM

Quote from: nimda on July 06, 2013, 11:52:58 PM

Quote from: shawshankinmate37927 on July 06, 2013, 03:16:18 AM

I believe having a diversified portfolio is the best way for me to "hedge" my investments and protects me from having something go horribly wrong with one of them.

If we disagree on the probabilities of outcomes, there is always money to be made.

There is also money to be made by investing in projects run by individuals that I consider to be competent and trustworthy. That's been working well for me so far.

That's a rather silly statement. You say it like you're contradicting me or giving a reason to avoid my offer, but you haven't actually put forth a logical objection. I'm offering you a chance to make more money, by way of a hedge that has, from your estimated probabilities, a positive expected value.

I stand by my above statement, that there is money to be made, until you can offer an actual opposing argument rather than a pattern-matched statement pretending to be an argument.

There is money to be made in selling salt. There is also money to be made in selling pepper. This latter fact does not contradict the first statement, and it does not mean that pepper vendors should not sell salt.

Quote from: Dabs on July 07, 2013, 01:38:09 AM

Re dooglus, I think he was also a contributing programmer for MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) before bitcoin existed. Can't verify that, but there are chat logs from 2005 on some ubuntu discussion.

See above response to juhakall. That unverifiable thought adds to the uniqueness and value of his persona, but I don't think it is enough. It makes it a more costly identity to throw away, and a more costly identity to replicate, but I wouldn't value those costs at 14K BTC.
I'd be happy to lend $5 to an anonymous person with 1000 page-long posts, no questions asked, because their identity is likely worth more than $5 to them. I would not lend a newbie $5, nor would I lend the aforementioned anonymous person $1M.

NOTE: I'm not some kind of doomsayer. With pirate the question was "when" but with dooglus the question is "whether." I assign his being a scammer a less than 50% probability. I have a few BTC invested, and I'm wondering how much more to put in; it will probably be a few thousand dollars worth.