Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[molecular]

On the panel, did Ryan Charles just independently announce that Bitcoin is Turing complete and can do everything Ethereum and many other altcoins can do, as well as confirming what CSW said two years ago and Nick Szabo and the Core devs just shook their head in response to?

That would be huge on several different levels. Gargantuan even. Potentially that obsoletes Ethereum and many other altcoins (with a view to obliterating possibly all of them), shows up the Bitcoin wizards and CS "experts" of Core, and establishes that CSW definitely is an expert (not to mention raises priors for the credibility of the other things he has mentioned that would be damning to Core and the notion that we cannot scale massively on chain).

Couple general thoughts on this (haven't looked at the paper, if it's even out)

* CSW mentioned it's a certain kind of turing completeness: he said something like "virtually", don't remember the wording. So it's probably not Turing Complete in a strict sense.

* Turing completeness is a theoretical classification for machines. Such classifications make no claims about the efficiency of the machines. So it could well be that Bitcoin is turing complete in some way, but it could very well be that the code is extremely large (and thus expensive), even prohibitevly so.

* From CSWs presentation slide on this issue (which I got to look at for a couple of seconds during the presentation (if one wants to call it that)) I got the impression that what was shown to be turing-complete was not a single instance of a bitcoin script, but rather a linked sequence of transactions (he mentioned a test-case of his ran out of money due to high fee, which fits this suspicion). It seemed to me the picture on the slide depicted the execution of a simple cellular automaton. CSW gave the name of it even and I figured it was from a naming scheme invented by Stephen Wolfram (see his book "A new kind of science").

If those assumptions are correct, I don't think it's fair to derive turinng-completeness of Bitcoin from that and it's probably misleading when having any practical purposes in mind, like concluding "ethereum is obsolete" from that.

So.. the whole turing-completeness thing might just be "marketing BS", so to speak.

[doublepost=1498995846][/doublepost]Theo Goodman interviewed Jihan Wu at the conference.


My main takeaway: "no segwit without blocksize increase".

EDIT: fixed a critical typo in last line (with -> without)

 

[Peter R]

CSW mentioned it's a certain kind of turing completeness: he said something like "virtually", don't remember the wording. So it's probably not Turing Complete in a strict sense.

I don't think this is correct. Something is either Turing complete or not; there is no grey area.

Turing completeness is a theoretical classification for machines. Such classifications make no claims about the efficiency of the machines. So it could well be that Bitcoin is turing complete in some way, but it could very well be that the code is extremely large (and thus expensive), even prohibitevly so.

Yes, definitely.

I was really excited about Stephan Wolfram's ideas after he published "A New Kind of Science" and read extensively on this topic, and as far as I know we are not even close to being able to compile, for example, a general C program into an encoding that would run on a Rule 110 cellular automaton.

From CSWs presentation slide on this issue (which I got to look at for a couple of seconds during the presentation (if one wants to call it that)) I got the impression that what was shown to be turing-complete was not a single instance of a bitcoin script, but rather a linked sequence of transactions (he mentioned a test-case of his ran out of money due to high fee, which fits this suspicion). It seemed to me the picture on the slide depicted the execution of a simple cellular automaton. CSW gave the name of it even and I figured it was from a naming scheme invented by Stephen Wolfram (see his book "A new kind of science").

My view as well.

If those assumptions are correct, I don't think it's fair to derive turinng-completeness of Bitcoin from that and it's probably misleading when having any practical purposes in mind, like concluding "ethereum is obsolete" from that.

Agreed.

So.. the whole turing-completeness thing might just be "marketing BS", so to speak.

Haha...I'm not sure. I think it's an interesting twist to the Bitcoin/Ethereum narrative, and it's already caught Greg in more lies:

(Lol so no physical machine is Turing complete according to Greg because all physical machines have finite memory. WTF)

^ should I pull a Maxwell and accuse CSW and Ryan X Charles of "plagerism"? / sarc

 

[go1111111]

Moderates? Our side lacks fighters and suffers from too many moderate

IMO, the reason we don't already have big blocks is because of the opposite problem. Big blockers have consistently pushed the envelope past what could have gotten broad community support.

Let's list the ways this has happened:

(1) Bitcoin XT: A lot of people (including many miners) who would have supported a fixed 8 MB cap were uncomfortable with the exponential growth.

(2) Bitcoin Classic: This started out promising, with Gavin and Jeff working on a simple 2 MB patch. However the project started losing support when the Toomim brothers started pushing for more extensive changes to how Bitcoin is governed (even though their website wouldn't really affect Bitcoin governance, it still scared people), and it lost more support when Gavin chose a 28 day activation period.

(3) Bitcoin Unlimited: bad marketing / UI that lead people to associate "unlimited" with "unlimited block size" instead of "unlimited choice." Instead of a simple block size increase, a complex "Emergent Consensus" algorithm was proposed which moderates couldn't understand very well, making it easy for Core to play on people's fears of 1 GB blocks in the short term. Additionally, the BU team bundled the "fork away from Core with a block size increase" decision with a "new implementation of compact blocks," whose eventual bugginess scared moderates away.

4. Now we seem to have pretty broad consensus to fork away from Core (segwit2x), yet parts of the big block community are doing things to make it less likely.

The issue with all of these things is the failure to realize that any fork away from Core acts as the first domino in a sequence of events that brings us to market governance. It almost doesn't matter at all what the first fork is.

(And on top of that, he has the courage to go on a public stage and call out the toxic devs of Core / Blockstream by name - such as Luke-Jr, Greg Maxwell and Peter Todd - and tell them to fuck off. And it's about goddamn time someone stood up like that and fought fire with fire.

Right, most of Craig's appeal is similar to Trump's. People found Trump's message appealing because they really dislike liberals and social justice warriors, and no other well known people were calling them out so forcefully. Similarly, people really dislike Core and no one else who is moderately popular is calling them out so forcefully.

There is one key differences between supporting Trump and supporting Craig though:

Any alternative to Trump would have continued the status quo on immigration and accepting the social justice narrative (all the other Republican candidates bought into the liberal frame on these topics). In Bitcoin, the current "default" path looks like it involves forking away from Core later this month. Any fork away from Core is so important that it should be the top priority. The fork will probably happen because lots of moderates have finally reached their breaking point with Core. These are the kind of people who become more worried when they see big blockers endorsing bad technical arguments. Even if a particular fork doesn't seem ideal to you, any such fork will clearly expose Core's narrative that controversial forks will be disastrous and that we need Core to guide the community.

I propose that anyone who has been hyping Craig lately because it feels good to watch someone say bad things about Core instead switch to hyping the writing/tweets/other content of Justus Ranvier. Justus is just as forceful in his anti-Core sentiment as Craig, writes much more clearly, and is much better on technical topics.

 

[Dusty]

Recordings of the second day of the conference:

 

[Zarathustra]

I propose that anyone who has been hyping Craig lately because it feels good to watch someone say bad things about Core instead switch to hyping the writing/tweets/other content of Justus Ranvier. Justus is just as forceful in his anti-Core sentiment as Craig, writes much more clearly, and is much better on technical topics.

I hyped Justus' tweets and posts regularly, even though he never ever 'liked' my posts, since I opposed his opinions about the society and the homo oeconomicus. No problem.

But, did Justus ever say that he is convinced that Craig is not Satoshi (or a main part of the Satoshi team)? Why did Ian Grigg - who is not an idiot - write: "Craig Wright has just outed himself as the leader of the Satoshi Nakamoto team. I confirm that this is true, both from direct knowledge and a base of evidence."

Why does Greg fight Peter R. and Craig Wright the most? Food for thought! I know why.

And then there is the opinion of u/homerjthompson:

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

The issue with all of these things is the failure to realize that any fork away from Core acts as the first domino in a sequence of events that brings us to market governance. It almost doesn't matter at all what the first fork is.

This is a crucial point that many miss. It's like sliding a refridgerator, you have to get past the static friction first, then it gets much easier.

By the way, your concern about people mindlessly following CSW is appreciated. I have a lot of experience dealing with maverick thinkers who come off as cranks, and it turns out some of them are right or have good insights, and there are often no easy ways to test whether they are cranks if their ideas are unconventional enough. The character traits of an unconventional thinker are often things like not caring what other people think, which can reach such a degree that they don't even care if they come off as wrong initially and may even end up investing too little effort in communicating effectively. They lack the usual social impulse to not come off as a fool or insane, which motivates most high-level intellectuals to become quite good at writing and speaking persuasively.

It is inevitable that some people will be swayed irrationally to discount his ideas, or the opposite - to pay them undue heed - just due to the polarizing nature of what he has said and done.

I myself am working to carefully investigate his claims and so far I have only found a few things where I think he is making a reasoning error, and many things that are novel, true, and important. A big hint is that cranks usually have nothing to offer. Though there are also people like Anonymint who are clearly very intelligent but tend to get caught up on certain things, so that they can both have very right and very wrong ideas. I'm sure CSW is wrong about some things, but nothing major I have seen yet.

Regarding other experts, Clemens Ley has independently discovered the Turing complete thing. Cyril Grunspan has seemingly confirmed that the Selfish Mining probability calculations are likely incorrect. CSW's point that nodes always meant miners is fairly self-evident when you read back in the early code and whitepaper, yet no one ever seems to mention it and it is crucial to unraveling the Core narrative. JVP and Ian Grigg are pretty staid academic guys and they outright attest that they have firsthand knowledge that CSW was the main guy behind Bitcoin, which would mean CSW has contributed quite a lot. I also recall being shown good evidence that his degrees are real, and the SANS and other inhuman amount of security certs on the security websites don't seem like the profile of someone whose modus operandi is to gather followers and deceive people. I have certainly never seen him ask for money, but he has offered money to people several times (for confirmation or disconfirmation of his ideas) and is clearly very wealthy (there are leaked ATO hearings online, he's started many likely-unprofitable companies with many employees, has shown photos of him with valuable artifacts in his home like the original copy of Bastiat's Cursed Money, which talks about how money is a ledger (quite a long - and obscure - way to go for a pretender)).

Having conversed with him for weeks now, I see that he's a certain type of scattershot intellectual who doesn't communicate well and relies on others to interpret him. Genius doesn't always come in a neat package. We only have this impression due to survivorship bias: the geniuses who failed to communicate well or find someone to help them do so are lost to history.
[doublepost=1499036725][/doublepost]@all Check out #2pda on btcchat Slack (you'll need an invite to get into the locked channel, can PM @zbingledack (me) or anyone else you know there) for more details on the Turing complete thing.

 

[AdrianX]

How was the beer and coffee shops?

I can't comment on the coffee but the beer was good thanks @Norway​

 

[go1111111]

I have certainly never seen him ask for money, but he has offered money to people several times (for confirmation or disconfirmation of his ideas)

Just in case anyone doesn't remember the details of the last scam: if CSW is a scammer (which I believe he is), the scam is not to ask regular people for money. The scam is described here: http://fusion.kinja.com/why-craig-wright-so-desperately-wanted-to-be-bitcoin-cr-1793857666

Relevant excerpt: "O’Hagan reports that Wright struck a deal with a Canadian peer-to-peer payment company called nTrust. After an old friend of Wright's convinced nTrust CEO Robert MacGregor that Wright was Satoshi, the company acquired Wright's various debt-laden computer companies and IP rights for $15 million and placed them in a new company called nCrypt. Once the world knew Wright was Satoshi, MacGregor's plan was to sell the dozens of bitcoin technology-related patents Wright claimed to be working on for upwards of $1 billion dollars. That turned out not to be a sound investment."

After Craig failed to prove he was Satoshi, apparently no one bought his patents. Note that what is happening right now looks a lot like a repeat of the same scam attempt:

(1) nChain looks like a company whose main purpose is to serve as a holding container for blockchain patents.

(2) Craig's patents would be more valuable to any acquirer if Craig actually was Satoshi (he would have already proven capable of a huge computer science breakthrough), so we see him continuing to push the narrative the he is Satoshi, but in a more subtle way. Instead of making more bold claims that he knows he can't fulfill (like the time he claimed he'd publicly prove ownership of Satoshi's keys), he's taking a more grass roots approach and trying to build support among non-technical people, trying to become a populist hero using Trump-like tactics.

(3) Craig is spending lots of time and effort publicizing the idea that he's working on academic papers and patents (exactly the kind of thing that a gullible acquirer will want to see happening). But so far, Craig hasn't released anything to the tech community to be critiqued (exactly what we'd expect if this was mostly for the purpose of scamming an acquirer).

 

[Zarathustra]

Yes, there are strong signs that he is not Satoshi. And there are strong signs, that he is (at least part of) Satoshi. Many 'possibilities' are conceivable, but only one is actually possible. I don't know which one it is and therefore I cannot claim he is the inventor, or just a brilliant scammer. Or both at the same time.

 

[awemany]

Hey guys,

first: Absolutely great conference @ Arnhem!

second: I understood @Jihan's talk as adding all kinds of functionality on top of Bitcoin for making it more competitive with Ethereum on that end, but now some other folks on reddit seem to understand it as adding all kinds of functionality to the base layer. How should I interpret this?

 

[AdrianX]

some other folks on reddit seem to understand it as adding all kinds of functionality to the base layer

.

That's my initial interpretation I'll need to watch it again as I prefer your interpretation.

 

[albin]

Bottom line is fundamentally I think Wright's basic gameplan is in the right direction. Obviously lots of area for contention and potential repudiation, but the reality is this:

By spring 2015 the Core position, as articulated by mailing list posts by Sipa, Maxwell, Wladimir, etc. was along the lines of "let's delay until we see what second-layer stuff can do".

We're now in the middle of 2017.

There is no sign of viable second-layer technology in the foreseeable future that will affect the situation in any meaningful way.

It's over, we can't wait forever for something that might be impossible and/or may never come, now it's time to raise the blocksize, or even bare minimum if someone is completely drinking the Koolaid on Lightning, it's at least time to re-assess.

 

[awemany]

@AdrianX: Fully agreed. If we can just get the simple parameter fix of bigger blocks, that would be great.

Ethereum might have a lot of hype going on right now and ICO fads and whatnot. But I strongly believe the most important thing is to just provide the $%&!!4#! capacity on-chain, like folks have argued for since many, many years.

We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and should not make the silly mistake of misreading the simple and obvious problem of $2 fees due to the idiotic 1MB limit and a toxic and an incompetent to malicious developer team as the market somehow screaming for adding all kinds of ugly software warts to Bitcoin, with dubious value at best.

I rather like the 'invisible hand' steering Bitcoin to be a steady hand. And I think it would help if the bigger parties are steady here as well.

 

[Norway]

I'm still in shock from how awesome this conference was. Meeting so many of you guys in this thead in real life was so cool. I actually suggested in the early planning committee on Slack that Craig Steven Wright or someone else from nChain should be invited, and I think @Peter R made that happen. But I never got to say "hallo" to the guy, because I was busy talking to you GCBU guys!

A lot of other interesting people outside this forum thread. I can't even start naming names. The list is long.

I am so inspired, and I think what will happen is this:,

- SegWit2x will be a little delayed for reasons so ...
- UASF will activate. (If the hat people don't do it, I will)
- UAHF will kick in as a counter measure. A big hammer killing a small mosquito, ha ha.

┗(°0°)┛
[doublepost=1499114678][/doublepost]And I just remembered: The group photo was taken by @Mengerian ! Publish it right here!

 

[Norway]

I over slept. So I didn't get to see some of the great talks live. And I waitethe d until I got home. I know @Peter R has a great bass voice. So I watched his talk with a premium sound system on a big screen at home. ge

As an armchair commenter, I also have to give much cred to @Roger_Murdock for his talk about digital contracts. It all boils down to the "oracles". right?

@theZerg was a busy guy. important stuff is in the pipe right now.. I don't expect to get the opportunity to do my BU voting. I just see these forces pulling in the right direction. And I'm very happy with that.

I want to share some more love to a lot of people, but it's impossible to do without exluding other,
[doublepost=1499129816][/doublepost]I know that we are supposed to be cynical in this complex game, but I just loved to meet @solex for the first time, What a guy!
[doublepost=1499130013][/doublepost](drunk)

 

[Norway]

I want to say this. At the panel discussion at the end of the conference, @solex really had the focus that we are at a crossroads. And I totally support. It's now or never. This is the time.

 

[Norway]

Gotta.a give @solex some more cred/support here. We are not in a middle of a solution, we are in the middle of a war. I think he understands this.

We have to win.

 

[majamalu]

Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

 

[lunar]

@molecular @Peter R @Zangelbert Bingledack or anyone else thats interested please comment.

This is all way above the point, where I even begin to understand, but out the box thinking, I can't help but speculate.

From Stack exchange

To write a program that simulates a 2-PDA (which will be able to process any transition function δ, not just a particular language) what you need to do is to implement a stack class, with just the operations that it is allowed to have. The simulator is essentially a loop that keeps track of the current state of δ, which has to be stored in a suitable way, and of the current input symbol. You will receive as input the encoding of a function, and the input string.

So from CSW presentation at FOB. Bitcoin can produce Wolfram rule 110, which is known to be Turing Complete, and Wolfram 30. (Note Rule 30 is of special interest because it is chaotic - i.e possesses extreme randomness.) Using AnyoneCanPay transactions you could, program either of these rules into Bitcoin. (Did someone grab a copy of that slide from csw at the conference with the automata?)

I've no idea what we are going to see, but I'm beginning to understand where this is heading. We can essentially program anything within the blockchain. At a very basic scaling level, we could have blocks, within blocks, within blocks, like nested Russian dolls, fractal infinite scaling maybe? (seems like subchains idea?), but taken to it's logical conclusion I don't see why we couldn't program some emergent life itself inside the blockchain.

Yes this all sounds like full on matrix level shit, but I think we might be entering yet another, new scientific arena.

​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataflow_architecture

"Dataflow architecture is a computer architecture that directly contrasts the traditional von Neumann architecture or control flow architecture. Dataflow architectures do not have a program counter, or (at least conceptually) the executability and execution of instructions is solely determined based on the availability of input arguments to the instructions, so that the order of instruction execution is unpredictable: i. e. behavior is indeterministic."

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@lunar

Hm. Maybe I really miss the big picture here, or this is all a bit too much hype.

Turing completeness looks like an unnecessary feature for sound money to me. What is the real world application for any of this? (Not that there is anything wrong with exploring possibilities)

Only feature for Turing complete scripting I see at this point would be to drain money from Ether-fans back to Bitcoin and strengthen Bitcoins network effect.

So from CSW presentation at FOB. Bitcoin can produce Wolfram rule 110, which is known to be Turing Complete, and Wolfram 30.

Where is the source code and paper about that? Can anybody reproduce it?

I've no idea what we are going to see, but I'm beginning to understand where this is heading. We can essentially program anything within the blockchain.

And for what reason? To have very slow and expensive computation? Sound like Ethereum marketing tbh.

At a very basic scaling level, we could have blocks, within blocks, within blocks, like nested Russian dolls, fractal infinite scaling maybe?

Hrml. You can't put more information into 1 bit than 1 bit or can you?

(seems like subchains idea?),

Subchains and Bitcoin NG are very good and thoughtful ideas but I don't see a reason to implement them in the near future. Bitcoin works as it is.

but taken to it's logical conclusion I don't see why we couldn't program some emergent life itself inside the blockchain.

I like to see Bitcoin being used as money by the average Joe before the "blockchain starts programming itself" or whatever you are dreaming of here.


I have absolutely no clue about theoretical informatics but I'm wondering why it's so hard to answer whether Bitcoin scripting is Turing complete or not.
But that Greg started his statement why it isn't with the reason of real world memory limits makes me suspicious, that it is.