Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Norway]

EDITED BECAUSE I COULDN'T QUOTE FROM THE BU SLACK CHANNEL: @Peter R has still not admitted that he didn't win his bet with CSW.

But neither Peter nor Craig gave the correct answer to this bet, because "the expected time at which an honest miner will find a competing block at height N" depends on where you are in time when you calculate the expected time.

I first made Peter aware of this by filing a "bug report" about the bet.

Bugreport:

The sentence

"What is the expected time at which an honest miner will find a competing block at height N?"

should be

"At t=0, what is the expected time at which an honest miner will find a competing block at height N?"

EDIT: If the sentence is applied at t=-10, Craig would be right.

Source:
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/wright-or-wrong-lets-read-craig-wrights-selfish-miner-fallacy-paper-together-and-find-out.2426/page-2#post-41795

As a response, Peter constructed a new dimension with new rules to fit his narrative. A time dimension where you know what will happen in the future. A dimension where the concept of time has changed and where mining is not memoryless, but clairvoyant:

@Norway:

At t = -10 min, the expected time is still t = 15 min, but only because we have extra information. We know a priori that the honest miners won't solve a block between t = -10 and t = 0. So the question, when asked from t = -10, is equivalent to asking "what is the expected arrival time given that no block is find during the first 10 minutes of trying?"

Peter should have fixed the flaw in his bet, but he went full Rick and Morty:

The correct answer to Peter&Craig's bet was this:

@Peter R
I would say that you are adding context that is not a part of the bet now. You assume that we are at t=0, having info that the honest miner have not solved a block. At t=-10, it's not possible to have this info.

I would call the bet a draw. Or even better, both @Peter R and Craig Wright failed, because the bet is not specific enough to give either t=5 or t=15 conclusively.

The answer depends on where you are on the time scale, and should be expressed as a function of t.


ExpectedSolutionTimeForHonestMiner(t) = t + 15

So I get 2 bitcoins now?

Source:
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/wright-or-wrong-lets-read-craig-wrights-selfish-miner-fallacy-paper-together-and-find-out.2426/page-2#post-41799

 

[Norway]

@Peter R, do you still think you won the bet?

 

[Norway]

Great talk on double spends by @shadders

 

[cypherblock]

@Norway I would agree there are a few ways to interpret "the bet" in short I think both sides handled that very poorly. In fact, csw's main miscue on this subject, as shown in this paper, and other places, is that he completely fails to interpret SM in the context post difficulty adjustment (which is where the Eyal&Sirer paper is meant to be considered).

Selfish mining in the Eyal&Sirer form can be viewed as an attack on the difficulty algorithm. What happens is that, as blocks are orphaned at a higher rate, the number of blocks rewarded (not found) will change from its original 10min/block avg when the SM attack starts, rewarded blocks will arrive more slowly. Then difficulty (use btc diff adjust algorithm for context) will adjust making it easier (for everyone) to find blocks.

In CSW's paper, linked above, in Figures 1-3, you can see that ~39 blocks were rewarded in the 500 min shown. SM got rewarded for 13 of them, or 33% (their hash rate). But note the time it took for 39 blocks. It took 500 min. Why didn't it take 390 minutes???? Because difficulty has not adjusted yet. CSW fails to see this (or purposely avoids it). According to CSW, the SM could have had more blocks in the given timespan if they had mined honestly. THIS IS TRUE pre-difficulty adjustment. SM will lose money during this ramp up phase.

So CSW still is losing, regardless of "the Bet".

 

[NewLiberty]

Why do people with thousands or tens of thousands of followers protect their twitter account? It's not like they can personally know all of their followers who they deem trustworthy enough to view their tweets. First JVP and now CSW. I don't use twitter for posting but I used to read what those guys tweeted.

Its less about trustworthiness, nor (in my case) policing the opinions of others commenting on tweets as CSW does.

Its more that twitter and social media generally has less value for any of my purposes now, and am winding down social connections and interaction.

 

[Norway]

@cypherblock
I notice that you start to talk about SM and end your post with "CSW is still losing, regardless of 'the bet'". I am not particulary interested in SM, because miners are free to form pools the size they want and SM have not been a problem for anybody the last ten years.

The reason I revisited the bet, was because Peter is still using it to convince people that he is better at math than CSW, even though I debunked his own bet one and a half year ago.

 

[Richy_T]

I wrote a reply. Then I noticed that I hadn't read the problem properly so I deleted the post and now I'm annoyed because I'd actually written something that would have been useful and I don't want to type it out again.

Anyway, Peter is right. The "now" is at t=0 from the wording of the question. "The selfish miner at t=0 finds the next block and keeps it hidden. What is the expected time at which an honest miner will find the next block". The quoted text establishes the "now" at t=0 (as expected from the context t being 0). The "expected time" (a *very* poor turn of phrase for what is a statistical process. "average time" would be more correct) would be 15 minutes from then. i.e. t=15.

 

[Norway]

@Richy_T
I'm sure the reference time for the calculation of the expected time, what you call "now", was at t=0 in Peter's head when he wrote down the bet. But it's not 100% clear from the text. There are two events mentioned, one at t=-10 and one at t=0. The event at t=0 is not relevant to the honest miner's expected time. Try to swap the numbers -10 and 0 with 09:23 and 09:33, and it may become more clear to you.

This is why I suggested that Peter should specify the time the expected time was measured from, to avoid confusion. But then he doubled down and created a time dimension where the future was known, AKA clairvoyant mining.

The expected time for the next bitcoin block to be found right now is ten minutes into the future, regardless of when the block is actually found.

 

[Peter R]

It doesn't matter when "now" is. The only thing that matters are the facts as described in the question. If "now" was "t = 12 hours" the expected time is still t = 15 min because the passage of time doesn't change the information available to the reader of the question (from which the reader is to predict the block time t).

Here's an example: "It is currently 8:30pm Vancouver time. The "expected time" of the next block is 8:40pm." Now imagine I turn off all my internet connections and go to sleep, and then wake up in the morning. If I were to bet [1], without the ability to look at what the answer was, on when that "next block" was found, I would still bet 8:40pm. It doesn't matter that time has passed. It only matters that the information I have to make my prediction has not changed. In the case of "The Bet," the facts are that a SM miners finds the next block (height N) at t = 0. Given this fact, the expected time for the HM's competing block is t = 15 minutes regardless of when "now" is.

(The phrase "expected time" is statistics jargon for "imagine repeating this measurement over an ensemble of a million such experimental, and then taking the average of the block times.")

[1] Assume a payout inversely proportional the square of my estimation error.

 

[Richy_T]

Again, read the quoted text. It quite clearly indicates what is to be considered as "now".

The only issue I can see is the metacontext. I have a physics background, like Peter and the way he has laid out the question appears unequivocal to me. The clock starts ticking at "The selfish miner [...] finds the next block." Laymen are used to using terms in a more flexible manner (Like you should never ask a programmer if he likes chocolate OR caramel). That Craig didn't get this is more of an indictment to me than if he had just got things wrong.

In case you think I'm siding with Peter in some way, I was originally going to call them both out as wrong but I had failed to notice the division of the hash rate and that we were looking for an honestly-mined block.

The expected time for the next bitcoin block to be found right now is ten minutes into the future, regardless of when the block is actually found.

Agreed.
[doublepost=1544503586][/doublepost]

If "now" was "t = 12 hours" the expected time is still t = 15 min because the passage of time doesn't change the information available to the reader of the question (from which the reader is to predict the block time t).

Well, there's a reason I put "now" in quotes. real now is whatever but "now" is the event from which you start your measurement which, by your text is "The selfish miner [...] finds the next block.".
[doublepost=1544503662][/doublepost]Could we stop using the phrase "expected time"? It sets off my OCD. . It's now 10:49pm cst. If a block is mined at 10:50pm, is it unexpected?

 

[Peter R]

@Richy_T: I know you understand; I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

As you implied, the question is written so that you imagine the problem as an observer at t = 0. The answer is t = 15 min regardless of when "now" is (it's just easier to see that the answer is t = 15 min if you imagine "now" being t = 0).

 

[Richy_T]

To further explore the idea of the "now", look at it like this: Before "now", there is the known, things which are set in stone. After the "now" is the unknown, things which are open to statistical chance. In Peter's question, these things are known: There was a block found at time t=-10, there was a period from t=-10 to t=0 where no blocks were found by either honest or dishonest miners and at time t=0, a block was found by a "dishonest" miner (this is not known to all participants but *is* known to the reader). Everything after that is an unknown and is the subject of the question. This quite clearly puts the "now" for statistical calculation purposes at t=0.

Additionally, a honestly found block at t<0 would not be a "competing block" since there would be nothing to compete with.

 

[Richy_T]

Perhaps if we removed all irrelevant information? I know this is not what the actual bet was based on but it does contain all directly relevant information that would affect the answer.

To be fair to Craig, I do make mistakes and might have called it his way at first if I didn't have my wits about me. But I believe I would see the errors of my ways fairly quickly if shown why. There is actually a conversation I had with Stolfi on the old Wall Observer thread on a similar topic where I had a brainfart at first but quickly came around when he described the correct solution.

 

[Norway]

It doesn't matter when "now" is. The only thing that matters are the facts as described in the question. If "now" was "t = 12 hours" the expected time is still t = 15 min because the passage of time doesn't change the information available to the reader of the question (from which the reader is to predict the block time t).

It's getting late here, so I'll just address these first sentences. You're getting it wrong right off the bat because you are using the variable t to represent both an absolute time, and a time interval (Δt). At t=12 hours, the expected time would be 12 hours and 15 minutes, not 15 minutes. If you made the same mistake when you wrote the bet, this could be an explanation for your error.

 

[Zarathustra]

So many bets. The wording of this bet is also not clear! Who/what will not show up? @Peter R and friends or the double spended transactions? Or both?

 

[wrstuv31]

The expected time for the next bitcoin block to be found right now is ten minutes into the future, regardless of when the block is actually found.

This is how I see it as well. The expected time is +5 minutes, but the selfish miner found a block at t=0.

The question is kind of ambiguous, a professor would likely assign marks to both approaches on an exam.

 

[sickpig]

The first quote either 1) assumes insanity or incompetence or 2) is an honest effort to eliminate priors and unstated assumptions. The reader has no way of telling which until you made it clear that it was the latter, and even then some cultures will assume sarcasm where it isn't intended.

The latter, indeed.

As a general point I'm not good at using sarcasm, especially when speaking/writing with a tool that I am not fluent in, so I tend to avoid it or at least I try to use an explicit tag so that no ambiguity could arise.

 

[molecular]

huge bull flag?
paint the tape, guys

If I was daytrading (which I refrain from because taxes), I knew what to do. Liquidity in this particular market is ridiculously low.

 

[bitsko]

Most people outside of this space are aware that the majority of anarchists and anarchist thought is red anarchism; anarcho communism and anarcho sydicalism.

likely the second most common type of anarchism is green anarchism. a bit more privledged and western than red anarchism.

The anarchist poseurs in the bitcoin scene that claim to represent yellow anarchism seem to have a great disdain for property rights and wax on about notions of a communistic knowledge base aka 'open source'.

Id argue that this adds some red anarchism into their yellow anarchism.

Id like to coin the term 'Orange Anarchism' for these types.

Ive checked with my comrades in the artist syndicate and they can confirm that mixing red and yellow makes orange.

one more thing to think about since i'm posting;

'An honest person will never commit criminal acts but a criminal will readily engage in legal acts.' -Nassim Taleb

 

[cypherdoc]

huge bull flag?
paint the tape, guys

If I was daytrading (which I refrain from because taxes), I knew what to do. Liquidity in this particular market is ridiculously low.

switching to the dark side?

good pickup.