Ugggghhhhhhhh.

Welp, I'll wade in, though I'm curious whether the posters in this thread are interested in actually having a true debate on this topic, as opposed to biding their time or answering just to toss in their BTC.02.

For me, ethics, morality, and free will are topics I'm personally very interested in discussing, so here's to a spirited debate!

In the spirit of debate, I will start with the absolutely most important question that no one in the thread has asked:


What system [of axioms] of morality is the basis for making this assessment?

All answers to this point have been implicitly prefaced by "Well, I think that...." Because we are all approaching the question from different axioms, without answering this question, it is impossible to judge the validity of a particular answer --- no one knows where each other is coming from. The closest that I've seen is from the OP:


Furthermore, I'd wager that most people haven't considered the question enough to know where they themselves are coming from, making the discussion even more pointless. This is evidenced by the fallback to the "illegal = immoral" inconsistency, or the flawed comparison that capitalism does the same thing, and capitalism is accepted, so therefore this should be accepted (though with more than a hint of sarcasm).

Judging by the analysis in the thread so far, there are very few, aside from the OP, who have considered their own moral beliefs, much less who are interested in discussing the actual morals of the situation.

Side note before answering the OP's question (sorry, this has been bugging me):


I would strongly argue that the law of the excluded middle does not hold in this moral debate, subject to the moral axioms of the particular answer. In this case in particular, I view the OP as asking for a constructive answer to the moral permissibility / impermissibility of entering into this "game," though I will of course defer to his judgment.

As to my answer, my axiom would be the Golden Rule / Categorical Imperative.

Basis for action

• "I am entering the game because I know my position and the rules of the game. I enter the game expecting to receive 2x my contribution." [I will abbreviate this as "the situation."]
• Although it can be derived from the axioms stated, let us take as granted that I could not morally participate in the game if doing so would permit me to receive money from people that did not understand the situation upon entering.

Assumptions

• All players contribute the same amount. This lets us consider the game as a binary tree.
• Every player knows their position in the tree before entering. In other words, we are not considering concurrency issues.
• All players currently in the game knew the situation before entering.

Application of the Golden Rule

So let us say that I enter the game. In order for me to receive my payout, I must have 2 children in the game tree. In order for me to morally participate, my 2 children must participate under the same conditions that I have. Easy enough.

However, in order for me to have 2 children in the first place, enough players must join to complete my level of the tree and to fill the next level until my children are reached. Under the conditions of my moral participation in the game, all of my siblings and nephews (and nieces) must have joined under the same conditions that I did --- otherwise, my payout would be predicated upon someone else immorally receiving money; alternately, those players would not have joined if they were not aware of their situation without violating my moral participation in the game.

We can unroll the recursion to my kids --- under the golden rule, if they must be able to morally join the game under these same conditions --- my kids' nieces, nephews, and siblings have all joined the game under the same understanding of their situation. Otherwise, my kids could not have morally joined the game, which would jeopardize my moral participation in the game in the first place. We can continue unrolling the recursion as long as the game is played. It must be noted that this situation holds even after I receive my payout.

Synopsis / tl; dr

Under the system described, you can certainly participate in the game morally, so long as everyone that joins after you participates morally as well (i.e., understands their situation). However, should any participant not understand their situation in respect to the game, then collecting any money from the game (even if you collected it before they joined) cannot be proven to be moral. In other words, if you wish to participate in the game morally, you take on the responsibility that all players after you join are participating under the same conditions (relative to their positions) that you joined under. While logically sound under the axiom of the golden rule, it is intractable from a practical perspective. Therefore, if you wish to behave morally under the system of the golden rule, you cannot reasonably participate in such a game, even if you know the rules beforehand.

Namely, don't trust sites that "encrypt" your password with MD5 or anything similar? Don't trust sites that do not understand the fundamentals of encryption?

Read this. Bear in mind that the $2000 CUDA systems he's referring to are the same sorts of systems that are described in the BTC mining threads.

Then consider how much having a "strong" password, by any definition of "strong" you'd like, would save you under those circumstances.

What would be the difference between this and a simple redirect from the Satoshi page to the BTC page?

Number 1 rule of information management: duplication of potentially changing information is to be avoided like the PLAGUE.

Consolidation of information (which was the issue at hand) =/= historical revisionism. The cultural history of Satoshi was not at issue, simply the location of that information. The current cultural history related to Satoshi is directly and solely tied to the cultural history of BTC. As they noted in the discussion, if Satoshi does something noteworthy outside of his work with BTC, the page can be recreated. The information was not, as far as I can tell, deleted; it was merely moved.


You mean they concluded that a flash event right at the end was an outlier and therefore should be ignored? That sounds vaguely familiar...


And you're seriously tossing this in? Like, you're making a poor attempt at trolling or being funny, right? Right??

I don't understand what your objective is. Yes, incentives help spur change in behavior, but I don't see what change in behavior you're wanting to effect.

Judging by the forum you're posting this on, I'm surmising that your objective is to get people to use BTC. If that is the case, then judging by recent events, the focus should be on achieving parity with the existing currency systems, especially in terms of trust, security, reliability, accountability, and soforth. If people are as rational as I gather this forum assumes them to be, then on something like money, there's not an incentive large enough to convince someone to use a new system that cannot perform as well as the existing system (i.e., according to any sort of a baseline, bare-minimum acceptable manner), aside from the prospect of making a quick buck by screwing over his fellow man before the bottom falls out.

If BTC is as good a principle as y'all are claiming it to be, then stop trying to focus on getting more people to use them and focus on getting the infrastructure up to par. A better system, by definition, subsumes and surpasses the lesser system. Can you honestly say that the current infrastructure (the exchanges, etc.) are as good as those for traditional currencies?

Until such time as parity is achieved, discussing terms like the NEW WORLD ECONOMY is pointless - good for nothing than playing buzzword bingo and daydreaming about how you're going to be the driving force for the obviously inevitable paradigm shift.

And that's the optimistic take on it - honestly, when I see discussions like these, all it seems to me is that you're trying to get more victims suckers investors to put their money in the pyramid scheme system to improve your profits before everything goes tits-up.

P.S.: To be clear, I'm not trolling or flaming. I have my strong doubts, but I'm curious to see where the whole system goes, and I do wish everyone here well. However, I don't see a point in pulling punches either.

Happen to have a link? I can't find such an article on Ars, though I might not be looking hard enough.

Howdy, what's up?