I, nullius, am a 118-year-old Russian princess named Anastasia! (← If I were to say this seriously, and say it loudly enough, and insist on it with neither uncertainty nor hesitation, then somebody, somewhere would actually believe itand more somebodies would have some doubts.)
I must preface this by noting that I doubt Craig Wrights own ability to carry off such awell, a psy-op by himself. In view of how the Faketoshi sham is being handled overall, I expect that Wright has some sound advice in some form or another. He is a shrewd scammer, but he was never so smart as one who could understand the deeper details of human psychology. Money and power are on the line. Cui bono?
Blackhat Mindhacking 101: Exploiting Wetware Insecurity
This is a basic exploit in human psychologya sort of stack-smashing buffer overflow of the capacity to assess falsehoods:
Damn. You made me look outside at the sky, just to double-check! And then, I started wondering if maybe, just maybe, I am colourblindprotanopia often does cause difficulty distinguishing green from blue!or perchance, I went slightly insane, and I confused the meanings of basic English words blue and green in some Twilight Zone style psychosis...
You sounded so sure. Nobody would sound so sure unless he is sure, and hes telling the truth. Subjectively, I know that I wouldnt dare to tell such a whopperand if I tried, I would stammer and stare at my toes or glance around nervously, instead of saying it straight while looking you in the eye.
Of course, it is not necessary for me to be so introspective as to think through all of this: I feel that nobody could tell such a lie, because I instinctively feel that I myself couldnt. I empathize: I feel what a liar would feel in that position, and thus, I feel that he must not be lying. It feels terrifying to me.
It is not because I am so virtuous. I know that I could probably get away with the petty little lies that most people sometimes tell themselves and others. But such a ghastly monster of a lie, telling people that the sky is green? I would fear being caught; I wouldnt dare! When I see Dr. Wright declare that he invented Bitcoin, I wince, and wonder in the back of my mind what the consequences will be if hes lyingno, I wouldnt dare! Therefore, nobody would dare...
Add to that: You apparently have more education than I do, and you definitely have more money than I do, and youve got plenty of friends for social proofhell, you are even better-looking than I am!I am just some guy on the Internet; how I am to be sure youre wrong? And who am I to say so? I am a no-name nobody; Im a nothing, a nullity. (nullius = Latin: of nobody, of nothing, of zero.)
Could the sky be green? You made me seriously question my own judgment, just because you sound so certain!
Ive been advised that I am nowhere near as smart as [I] (and apparently many merit sources) think I am. Since my childhood, Ive been told that I should be humble. How can I be sure of the authority of my own mind? Dare I risk being left to stand alone?
And the delicate Internet tea-party debate-club members would never dream of using ad hominem argumentation, even when it is objectively correct! Need I remind you that argumentum ad hominem is only an informal fallacy, and is not at all fallacious when personality and personal credibility are relevant tono, are the issues being argued? Oops, I forgot that. I became so logical that I feel like I should avoid anything ad hominem.
Furthermore, Ive been told that it is rude to insult someone by calling him a liar. Mother said so: I should judge actions and not people, and put things in terms of I statements and diffident requests, not harsh demands: Dr. Wright, you make me feel like your claims are incredible; would you please provide me a verifiable Satoshi signature at the threshold, or at least explain to me one more time why you refuse to do so? Im sure that you are a good personwe are all good people, deep down inside!there must be some little misunderstanding. Maybe I misunderstood something. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings; I apologise! Its not you; its me.
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive... is what I was taught not to be by my mother, and my kindergarten teacher,* and the finger-wagging Sunday-school teacher who told me that the meek shall inherit the Earth, by the mass-media culture, the movies, the teevee, and the beauty-pageant winner who said that all she wants is world peace and to meet a nice guy. Sounds great in a swimsuit. To stand up and face someone down is to be a jerk: Cruel, contemptuous, forceful, domineering, heartless, as if Im some aristocrat who looks down his nose at everybody. It is indubitably unkind and unsympathetic. Why cant I at least be nice to somebody who tells me that the sky is green?
And I know, gmaxwell, Dr. Wrights (actual) credentials do not compare to yourshowever, Gavin Andresens socially important credentials do! Why, he even has the mark of popular fame in $CURRENT_YEAR: A Wikipedia page! Sorry, I could not find one for you (despite your @wikimedia address). And Gavin is the official Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, he has a three-digit forum ID, he hob-nobs with big cheeses in the government and the Council on Foreign Relations... Even if I were so terrifically prideful as to argue against Dr. Wright, who am I to argue with Gavin? Who am I, just-nobody, to stand alone and call him out, cast the first stone and say that he is an untrustworthy liar?
Dr. Wright has been expertly verified by the Bitcoin Chief Scientist. He also has some peer pressure on his side. hv_ and his buddies are Internet nobodies; but then, Im the guy who named himself of nobody on the Internet. Who am I to call hv_ such nasty names as shill, liar, etc.? Him, and plenty like him (a dime a dozen)... Who am I to stand against Dr. Wright and the Bitcoin Chief Scientist and a crowd of folks? Authority plus peer pressure!*again When Dr. Wright sounds so sure...
Anyway, Sir Maxwell, I feel sheepish; I admit that you may have a point here. If I dare to repudiate your fully self-confident declaration that the sky is green, then either people will think Im a jerk, or people will think Im a fool. Maybe both! I dunno. Maybe you are right.
Maybe my eyes are lying to me, or maybe I made a big mistakeand then everyone will laugh at me, because the sky actually is green, and the Earth is flat, and 2 + 2 = 5, and Dr. Craig Steven Wright invented Bitcoin, and Im just so stupid that I didnt realize it.
Craig Wright does not need for a majority of people to believe him: He needs only for a hard core of shills and fanatics to believe him, whilst the majority wavers.
Military counterinsurgency studies show that a revolution can be carried off by as little as 10% of the population. This applies to both violent and nonviolent revolutions in the sense that the deciding factor is social change of opinion. The majority is always deadweight: Apathetic fence-sitters, at best. If the majority has no too-strong opinion, then its opinion will be carried by a vocal, absolutely fanatical minorityif there is no opposing minority of equal or greater strength and certitude.
In the current context: If Craig Wright can play the mass-media to introduce doubt into the minds of most people who have heard of Bitcoin, and if he is shilled to the hilt by a cadre of hv_ types, and if the only significant opposition is a bunch of forum theorists who wont push the issue as hard as hv_ does, then Faketoshi will win.
That he is wrong is irrelevant. History shows that contra popular delusions, the truth is a fragile and precious thing. Lies are robust, because they appeal to the power of human frailtyand because they can be manufactured at will: I have only one truth, but Craig Wright can make up a new lie every day so as to drown my protests of truth in endless arguments.
A compounding factor is the distaste that many Bitcoiners have for drama, hostility, and especially, emotionalist arguments and ad hominem attacks. It is good to have a culture that values logical argumentsbut do not confuse critical thinking skills for efficacy at persuasive argument. If Craig Wright wields false persuasive arguments against your facts and logic, then he will win the heartsand minds of the majority, whose critical thinking skills are negligible. As I have said before: Dont bring a sword to a gunfight.
If you debate the question of Craig Wrights claims to or before the average person, then you may mostly convince himyet he will harbour a lingering doubt: How can I be sure that Craig Wright isnt Satoshi? He seems so sure... As aforesaid, the doubt is Faketoshis trump card, his secret nuclear weapon. And you allowed that doubt to persist, via your first mistake: Debating a question in a reasonable manner, which implies that there is a reasonable question to debate!
Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. He did not invent Bitcoin. He is a liar, a scammer, and a grand-scale identity thief. Every expert who has ever examined the matter has so concluded, without any doubtexcept for Gavin, the same Gavin of the thoroughly corrupted so-called Bitcoin Foundation, the same Gavin who visited the CIA and the CFR before embarking on a years-long campaign of fork attacks against Bitcoin! Gavin has no credibility.
That is a conclusion, not an argumentand certainly not an invitation to debate. I will only debate Faketoshi or his shills if they can produce the most basic piece of evidence: A verifiable signed statement by one of Satoshis known keys, identifying Craig Wright as Satoshi. They do not do so, because they are liars or dupesperiod. That is the truth, the objective truth, based on facts and not debates. Complaints >/dev/null
Dont waver in the face of lies. Dont quibble with liars. The emotional question in the minds of those watching these debates: Are you as confident that Craig Wright is not Satoshi, as he seems to be when he declares that he is?
I exceed his confidence because I am a Bitcoin expert, I have examined the facts, and I know that Wright is dead wrong. I know the truth. I do not need to argue.
* A small personal storynot quite about kindergarten, per se: When I was in the sixth grade, a teacher said something gratuitously rude to the class unpopular kidand the whole class laughed at him, except for me. He was the stereotypical unpopular kid: Jewish, nerdy as hell, a face as handsome as dog barf, skinny and runty, but inadvertently too wont to advertise his 148 IQand he was enthusiastic about books of tricky riddles and little mathematical puzzles.
He was admittedly annoying: Mostly harmless; but all he ever wanted to talk about was puzzle books, Star Trek (yes!), or this top-of-the-line new computer that his family had just bought, way back when that was a big thing... And since he knew that he annoyed people, he had the exact opposite of self-confidence. He thus annoyed all the worse, with a self-conscious, desperate puppy-dog friendliness.
I dont remember what the teacher said to him; it was forgettable, just a matter of picking on him like everybody else did. There certainly was no reason. He was supinely diffident, a wannabe teachers pet; he wouldnt have even imagined doing anything to incur the teachers negative opinion, much less dared it. And for my part, the teacher never would have expected me to dare opposing authority. A congenital tendency to orderliness is easily mistaken for blind obedience by those who see only the surface.
I abruptly stood up on my chair, and told the teacher with cold courtesy that she was wrong. Cue twenty pairs of eyes suddenly staring at meof a sudden, you could have heard a pin drop. Twas the silence of mass shock, from the teacher on down.
Later that day, the teacher approached me in the hallway, hugged me, and profusely apologised to me. I have no idea what she said to him, if anything at all. I never asked him, because I wasnt really his friend, either: I was born to be nobodys; I kept everybody at arms length. He liked me, thoughprobably because I didnt treat him like dirt, he could invite me to his birthday party without the risk of a crushing rejection, and he respected my IQ of higher-than-his.
Now, I am not sure whether I accidentally wrote a saccharine glurge story, or showed myself tenfold as arrogant for my sense that noblesse oblige. Anyway, the point of the story is about the social pressure of combined authority and peer opinions in the abstract, irrespective of the particulars of the circumstance. Moreover, I have with myself a running contest for the title of the longest footnote in historyso to speak.
Postscript: A Liars Equivocation
Boldface is mine:
Soooooo... Let me get this straight. After he played a pivotal rôle in the creation of a monster, your excuse for Gavin is that he equivocates?
...and that he sometimes may whine that, in substantial effect, would you please ignore something that is very embarrassing to himwhich he himself is too dishonest, too cowardly, and/or too compromised to repudiate with the same mass-media Bitcoin Foundation Chief Scientist starburst as with which he originally verified Faketoshi?
You see, that is the nice* thing about equivocation: Faketoshi can get the support he needs, and Gavin can try to repair his reputation without actually repudiating his verification unequivocally, in no uncertain terms.
(* See above notes on nice etymology.)
Gavin has done massive actual harm: Bitcoin Foundation, XT, Faketoshi verification, Btrash shilling... You are defending him because he says theres an equal chance that Craig Wright is either a scammer or Satoshi!?
Not falling for that one. If he ever wants to be known as anything but a malicious liar, he needs to come clean and put serious effort into repairing the actual damage that he did. Shrugging doesnt cut it.
Whereas BSV propaganda is actually more effective than Bcash propaganda, because contra what you were told as a child, a half-truth isnt the worst lie...
I must preface this by noting that I doubt Craig Wrights own ability to carry off such awell, a psy-op by himself. In view of how the Faketoshi sham is being handled overall, I expect that Wright has some sound advice in some form or another. He is a shrewd scammer, but he was never so smart as one who could understand the deeper details of human psychology. Money and power are on the line. Cui bono?
Blackhat Mindhacking 101: Exploiting Wetware Insecurity
This is a basic exploit in human psychologya sort of stack-smashing buffer overflow of the capacity to assess falsehoods:
I think in general the pattern we've seen from Wright is that he isn't particularly convincing or persuasive, but rather he exploits the fact that people are usually unprepared to deal with such an audacious liar. ... the sort of person who will go literally red faced screaming at you that NO, IN FACT THE SKY IS GREEN NOT BLUE THE SKY IS GREEN. When faced with behaviour like that some people just start wondering if maybe its legit because they'd personally never act that way unless they were telling the truth and were absolutely sure of it.
Damn. You made me look outside at the sky, just to double-check! And then, I started wondering if maybe, just maybe, I am colourblindprotanopia often does cause difficulty distinguishing green from blue!or perchance, I went slightly insane, and I confused the meanings of basic English words blue and green in some Twilight Zone style psychosis...
You sounded so sure. Nobody would sound so sure unless he is sure, and hes telling the truth. Subjectively, I know that I wouldnt dare to tell such a whopperand if I tried, I would stammer and stare at my toes or glance around nervously, instead of saying it straight while looking you in the eye.
Of course, it is not necessary for me to be so introspective as to think through all of this: I feel that nobody could tell such a lie, because I instinctively feel that I myself couldnt. I empathize: I feel what a liar would feel in that position, and thus, I feel that he must not be lying. It feels terrifying to me.
It is not because I am so virtuous. I know that I could probably get away with the petty little lies that most people sometimes tell themselves and others. But such a ghastly monster of a lie, telling people that the sky is green? I would fear being caught; I wouldnt dare! When I see Dr. Wright declare that he invented Bitcoin, I wince, and wonder in the back of my mind what the consequences will be if hes lyingno, I wouldnt dare! Therefore, nobody would dare...
Add to that: You apparently have more education than I do, and you definitely have more money than I do, and youve got plenty of friends for social proofhell, you are even better-looking than I am!I am just some guy on the Internet; how I am to be sure youre wrong? And who am I to say so? I am a no-name nobody; Im a nothing, a nullity. (nullius = Latin: of nobody, of nothing, of zero.)
Doctor Craig Satoshi
fresh-scrubbed and dolled up as best he can manage,
showing credentials, looking confident,
surrounded by a retinue (see also):
Who am I to question him? Dare I?
fresh-scrubbed and dolled up as best he can manage,
showing credentials, looking confident,
surrounded by a retinue (see also):
Who am I to question him? Dare I?
Could the sky be green? You made me seriously question my own judgment, just because you sound so certain!
Ive been advised that I am nowhere near as smart as [I] (and apparently many merit sources) think I am. Since my childhood, Ive been told that I should be humble. How can I be sure of the authority of my own mind? Dare I risk being left to stand alone?
Quote
Nullian Rule: To exercise fully independent judgment in the face of opposition requires that ones humility be inversely proportional to the strength of the opposition.
And the delicate Internet tea-party debate-club members would never dream of using ad hominem argumentation, even when it is objectively correct! Need I remind you that argumentum ad hominem is only an informal fallacy, and is not at all fallacious when personality and personal credibility are relevant tono, are the issues being argued? Oops, I forgot that. I became so logical that I feel like I should avoid anything ad hominem.
Furthermore, Ive been told that it is rude to insult someone by calling him a liar. Mother said so: I should judge actions and not people, and put things in terms of I statements and diffident requests, not harsh demands: Dr. Wright, you make me feel like your claims are incredible; would you please provide me a verifiable Satoshi signature at the threshold, or at least explain to me one more time why you refuse to do so? Im sure that you are a good personwe are all good people, deep down inside!there must be some little misunderstanding. Maybe I misunderstood something. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings; I apologise! Its not you; its me.
Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive... is what I was taught not to be by my mother, and my kindergarten teacher,* and the finger-wagging Sunday-school teacher who told me that the meek shall inherit the Earth, by the mass-media culture, the movies, the teevee, and the beauty-pageant winner who said that all she wants is world peace and to meet a nice guy. Sounds great in a swimsuit. To stand up and face someone down is to be a jerk: Cruel, contemptuous, forceful, domineering, heartless, as if Im some aristocrat who looks down his nose at everybody. It is indubitably unkind and unsympathetic. Why cant I at least be nice to somebody who tells me that the sky is green?
Quote
Philological protip: Compare the etymological development of the word nice with the proposition, ...der ungefährliche Mensch sein muss: er ist gutmüthig, leicht zu betrügen, ein bischen dumm vielleicht, un bonhomme. Überall, wo die Sklaven-Moral zum Übergewicht kommt, zeigt die Sprache eine Neigung, die Worte gut und dumm einander anzunähern.
And I know, gmaxwell, Dr. Wrights (actual) credentials do not compare to yourshowever, Gavin Andresens socially important credentials do! Why, he even has the mark of popular fame in $CURRENT_YEAR: A Wikipedia page! Sorry, I could not find one for you (despite your @wikimedia address). And Gavin is the official Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, he has a three-digit forum ID, he hob-nobs with big cheeses in the government and the Council on Foreign Relations... Even if I were so terrifically prideful as to argue against Dr. Wright, who am I to argue with Gavin? Who am I, just-nobody, to stand alone and call him out, cast the first stone and say that he is an untrustworthy liar?
Dr. Wright has been expertly verified by the Bitcoin Chief Scientist. He also has some peer pressure on his side. hv_ and his buddies are Internet nobodies; but then, Im the guy who named himself of nobody on the Internet. Who am I to call hv_ such nasty names as shill, liar, etc.? Him, and plenty like him (a dime a dozen)... Who am I to stand against Dr. Wright and the Bitcoin Chief Scientist and a crowd of folks? Authority plus peer pressure!*again When Dr. Wright sounds so sure...
Anyway, Sir Maxwell, I feel sheepish; I admit that you may have a point here. If I dare to repudiate your fully self-confident declaration that the sky is green, then either people will think Im a jerk, or people will think Im a fool. Maybe both! I dunno. Maybe you are right.
Maybe my eyes are lying to me, or maybe I made a big mistakeand then everyone will laugh at me, because the sky actually is green, and the Earth is flat, and 2 + 2 = 5, and Dr. Craig Steven Wright invented Bitcoin, and Im just so stupid that I didnt realize it.
* nullius is suddenly feeling so insecure. :-(
Craig Wright does not need for a majority of people to believe him: He needs only for a hard core of shills and fanatics to believe him, whilst the majority wavers.
Military counterinsurgency studies show that a revolution can be carried off by as little as 10% of the population. This applies to both violent and nonviolent revolutions in the sense that the deciding factor is social change of opinion. The majority is always deadweight: Apathetic fence-sitters, at best. If the majority has no too-strong opinion, then its opinion will be carried by a vocal, absolutely fanatical minorityif there is no opposing minority of equal or greater strength and certitude.
In the current context: If Craig Wright can play the mass-media to introduce doubt into the minds of most people who have heard of Bitcoin, and if he is shilled to the hilt by a cadre of hv_ types, and if the only significant opposition is a bunch of forum theorists who wont push the issue as hard as hv_ does, then Faketoshi will win.
That he is wrong is irrelevant. History shows that contra popular delusions, the truth is a fragile and precious thing. Lies are robust, because they appeal to the power of human frailtyand because they can be manufactured at will: I have only one truth, but Craig Wright can make up a new lie every day so as to drown my protests of truth in endless arguments.
A compounding factor is the distaste that many Bitcoiners have for drama, hostility, and especially, emotionalist arguments and ad hominem attacks. It is good to have a culture that values logical argumentsbut do not confuse critical thinking skills for efficacy at persuasive argument. If Craig Wright wields false persuasive arguments against your facts and logic, then he will win the hearts
If you debate the question of Craig Wrights claims to or before the average person, then you may mostly convince himyet he will harbour a lingering doubt: How can I be sure that Craig Wright isnt Satoshi? He seems so sure... As aforesaid, the doubt is Faketoshis trump card, his secret nuclear weapon. And you allowed that doubt to persist, via your first mistake: Debating a question in a reasonable manner, which implies that there is a reasonable question to debate!
Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. He did not invent Bitcoin. He is a liar, a scammer, and a grand-scale identity thief. Every expert who has ever examined the matter has so concluded, without any doubtexcept for Gavin, the same Gavin of the thoroughly corrupted so-called Bitcoin Foundation, the same Gavin who visited the CIA and the CFR before embarking on a years-long campaign of fork attacks against Bitcoin! Gavin has no credibility.
That is a conclusion, not an argumentand certainly not an invitation to debate. I will only debate Faketoshi or his shills if they can produce the most basic piece of evidence: A verifiable signed statement by one of Satoshis known keys, identifying Craig Wright as Satoshi. They do not do so, because they are liars or dupesperiod. That is the truth, the objective truth, based on facts and not debates. Complaints >/dev/null
This is how its done, folks!
Dont waver in the face of lies. Dont quibble with liars. The emotional question in the minds of those watching these debates: Are you as confident that Craig Wright is not Satoshi, as he seems to be when he declares that he is?
I exceed his confidence because I am a Bitcoin expert, I have examined the facts, and I know that Wright is dead wrong. I know the truth. I do not need to argue.
* A small personal storynot quite about kindergarten, per se: When I was in the sixth grade, a teacher said something gratuitously rude to the class unpopular kidand the whole class laughed at him, except for me. He was the stereotypical unpopular kid: Jewish, nerdy as hell, a face as handsome as dog barf, skinny and runty, but inadvertently too wont to advertise his 148 IQand he was enthusiastic about books of tricky riddles and little mathematical puzzles.
He was admittedly annoying: Mostly harmless; but all he ever wanted to talk about was puzzle books, Star Trek (yes!), or this top-of-the-line new computer that his family had just bought, way back when that was a big thing... And since he knew that he annoyed people, he had the exact opposite of self-confidence. He thus annoyed all the worse, with a self-conscious, desperate puppy-dog friendliness.
I dont remember what the teacher said to him; it was forgettable, just a matter of picking on him like everybody else did. There certainly was no reason. He was supinely diffident, a wannabe teachers pet; he wouldnt have even imagined doing anything to incur the teachers negative opinion, much less dared it. And for my part, the teacher never would have expected me to dare opposing authority. A congenital tendency to orderliness is easily mistaken for blind obedience by those who see only the surface.
I abruptly stood up on my chair, and told the teacher with cold courtesy that she was wrong. Cue twenty pairs of eyes suddenly staring at meof a sudden, you could have heard a pin drop. Twas the silence of mass shock, from the teacher on down.
Later that day, the teacher approached me in the hallway, hugged me, and profusely apologised to me. I have no idea what she said to him, if anything at all. I never asked him, because I wasnt really his friend, either: I was born to be nobodys; I kept everybody at arms length. He liked me, thoughprobably because I didnt treat him like dirt, he could invite me to his birthday party without the risk of a crushing rejection, and he respected my IQ of higher-than-his.
Now, I am not sure whether I accidentally wrote a saccharine glurge story, or showed myself tenfold as arrogant for my sense that noblesse oblige. Anyway, the point of the story is about the social pressure of combined authority and peer opinions in the abstract, irrespective of the particulars of the circumstance. Moreover, I have with myself a running contest for the title of the longest footnote in historyso to speak.
Postscript: A Liars Equivocation
Boldface is mine:
So Gavin believes there's an equal chance that Craig is a "master scammer." The narrative that he completely believes Wright is Satoshi has been bogus since before BSV was even an idea.
Soooooo... Let me get this straight. After he played a pivotal rôle in the creation of a monster, your excuse for Gavin is that he equivocates?
Either way, he clearly says Wright should be ignored.
...and that he sometimes may whine that, in substantial effect, would you please ignore something that is very embarrassing to himwhich he himself is too dishonest, too cowardly, and/or too compromised to repudiate with the same mass-media Bitcoin Foundation Chief Scientist starburst as with which he originally verified Faketoshi?
You never see BSVers talk about this blog entry when they talk about Gavin, its always a YouTube clip of an interview he gave _before_ he wrote this post.
You see, that is the nice* thing about equivocation: Faketoshi can get the support he needs, and Gavin can try to repair his reputation without actually repudiating his verification unequivocally, in no uncertain terms.
(* See above notes on nice etymology.)
Gavin has done massive actual harm: Bitcoin Foundation, XT, Faketoshi verification, Btrash shilling... You are defending him because he says theres an equal chance that Craig Wright is either a scammer or Satoshi!?
Not falling for that one. If he ever wants to be known as anything but a malicious liar, he needs to come clean and put serious effort into repairing the actual damage that he did. Shrugging doesnt cut it.