Benjamin Davies
@benjamin-davies·Member since October 2025
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#2639·Dennis HackethalOP, 5 days agoTo be clear, if you copy the entire box quote and paste it into a textarea, it will start with the > sign. I just double checked.
You’re saying you’d still want the > if you only copy/pasted part of the box quote, right?
To be clear, if you copy the entire box quote and paste it into a textarea, it will start with the > sign. I just double checked.
This doesn't work for me the way it does for you. I tried copying the entire quote, and also in a separate attempt, copying extra stuff above and below the box quote, and neither gave me the > sign.
I have tried on my windows computer and my iPad.
When copying a box quote from Veritula, the box quote formatting (>) is lost.
removed incorrect use of “retroactively, and added emphasis
It is one thing to retroactively explain why a particular god spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.
Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.
It is one thing to explain why a particular god spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.
Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.
typo
It is one thing to retroactively explain why a particular good spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.
Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.
It is one thing to retroactively explain why a particular god spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.
Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.
#2568·Erik OrrjeOP, 8 days agoIt is the same as arguing for a specific god because the god you like has specific features. The god itself is still easy to vary.
I could still see someone with knowledge of psychology and theology provide a good explanation as to why certain gods and religions have spread in favour of others. All ideas are solutions to some problem.
It is one thing to retroactively explain why a particular good spread more than others in the past, but it is another thing to claim that your specific god of choice will spread more than others in the future.
Your claim is that Zcash is the next money, which is analogous to claiming your niche god of choice is under-appreciated and will be the next big one.
#2567·Erik OrrjeOP, 8 days agoThe part that is easy to vary is that an arbitrary amount of different cryptos can be made with the same features.
There's never an arbitrary amount of solutions to a specific problem. In this case, the problems are the centralisation and the lack of privacy of our current money. They may not be problems for you specifically (e.g. if you live in a high-trust jurisdiction), but I'd like to hear arguments as to why nobody in the world would consider them problems.
I don’t deny that Zcash might be decentralised and private.
For Zcash to become the next money, it is not sufficient for it to just be durable, fungible, private, decentralised, etc.
As long as it doesn’t have any underlying value, it will not be suitable as money.
You are using secondary attributes of good money as positive justifications for Zcash as good money, but you are failing to answer the criticism that Zcash has no underlying value.
#2566·Erik OrrjeOP, 8 days agoValue comes from solving a problem.
Money solves (among other things) the problem of barter by being a medium of exchange. Different media solve this problem better than others. That determines its value.
I still don't see why there has to be a price floor set by the commodity's utility (for other things than being money)? Also, the value could still go to zero if that utility was no longer needed: Gold isn't guaranteed to be valued in industry or jewellry in the future.
Money needs to be a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value.
Features that support a price floor create the conditions where one can expect that their wealth won’t completely evaporate for one reason or another. Something that has no features supporting a price floor is not good money.
If gold no longer has features supporting a price floor at some point in the future (as you claim might happen), then gold would also not be good money in that future.
Zcash has nothing going for it that makes it a store of value. To the degree that it is ‘worth’ anything in the future, it is because of the dynamics I refer to in #2497.
#2540·Dennis HackethalOP, 9 days agoWe could try to save Deutsch’s terminology this way, sure. But I don’t think that’s what he means. He sees room for different gradations of ‘good’. For example, from BoI ch. 9:
[W]e should choose between policies not on the basis of their origin, but according to how good they are as explanations: how hard to vary.
Thank you for sharing this. I missed this in my read of BoI, and I agree now that Deutsch is wrong on this point.
Separate from Deutsch and going forward with our own epistemological practices, I think it would be appropriate for us to use terms like ‘good’ and ‘hard to vary’ in the sense of ‘not bad’ and ‘not easy to vary’. This eliminates the problem of gradation and positive argument, while preserving a shared and otherwise useful set of terminology.
Removed focus on ‘good vs bad’ as a particularly important dichotomy
If “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper? (Using Edwin’s conception of good and bad.)
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?
I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
Similarly, “hard to vary” would just be an equivalent of “not easy to vary”.
If “good” is considered the same as “not bad” (or the equivalent in any epistemological dichotomy) doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper?
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?
I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
Similarly, “hard to vary” would just be an equivalent of “not easy to vary”.
#2560·Benjamin Davies, 8 days agoI meant this conception from #2073:
My current view is that the only meaningful dichotomy is good vs. bad
If we take ‘good vs bad’ to be the only meaningful dichotomy, and if we state that ‘good’ is the equivalent of ‘not bad’, I think that bridges Popper and Deutsch.
We don’t need to take ‘good vs bad’ to be the only meaningful dichotomy for the idea to stand, so Edwin’s idea is not important to the argument.
#2541·Dennis HackethalOP, 9 days agoIf “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper? (Using Edwin’s conception of good and bad.)
Do you have a quote of Edwin saying good = not bad?
I meant this conception from #2073:
My current view is that the only meaningful dichotomy is good vs. bad
If we take ‘good vs bad’ to be the only meaningful dichotomy, and if we state that ‘good’ is the equivalent of ‘not bad’, I think that bridges Popper and Deutsch.
If “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper?
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?
I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
Similarly, “hard to vary” would just be an equivalent of “not easy to vary”.
If “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper? (Using Edwin’s conception of good and bad.)
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?
I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
Similarly, “hard to vary” would just be an equivalent of “not easy to vary”.
Added “easy to vary” example
If “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper?
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?
I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
If “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper?
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?
I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
Similarly, “hard to vary” would just be an equivalent of “not easy to vary”.
#2239·Dennis HackethalOP revised 24 days agoPasting #2079 here as it’s since been hidden in a resolved child thread and should have applied directly to #2074 in the first place.
My current view is that the only meaningful dichotomy is good vs. bad.
You say yourself in #2071 that one should “always avoid positive arguments.” Calling a theory “good” would be a positive argument.
As I say in #2065, Popperian epistemology has no room for ‘good’ or any other justification. I’m not aware that anyone has successfully proposed a way to measure the ‘hard-to-varyiness’ of theories anyway. We can criticize theories for being arbitrary (which is another word for ‘easy to vary’). That’d be fine. But Popper wouldn’t give them points for not being arbitrary. And arbitrariness isn’t the only type of criticism a theory might receive anyway.
If we follow Popper and get rid of justification, we can’t use ‘good vs bad’ because we can’t use ‘good’. The only dichotomy left standing is ‘has some bad’ vs ‘has no bad’. Another word for ‘pointing out some bad’ is ‘criticism’. So this dichotomy can be rephrased as: ‘has pending criticisms’ vs ‘has no pending criticisms’, or ‘has reasons to be rejected’ vs ‘has no reasons to be rejected’. Note that there’s a difference: if you think some idea is bad, you submit a criticism. If you think it’s good, you can still submit a criticism because it might not yet be as good as you want it to be. So regardless of how good a theory might be, it can still have pending criticisms, and thus reasons to reject it. Think of Newtonian physics, which (I’m told) is a superb theory, but it’s false and (as I understand it) has plenty of pending criticisms.
‘Has pending criticisms’ vs ‘has no pending criticisms’ is directly comparable whereas ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aren’t directly comparable. And ‘has n pending criticisms’ vs ‘has m’ or ‘has 0 pending criticisms’ are even numerically comparable.
Veritula does not implement Deutsch’s epistemology. It implements Popper’s. I don’t think they’re compatible.
(As an aside, I’m not sure how I could implement Deutsch’s epistemology even if I wanted to. Would I give each idea a slider where people can say how ‘good’ the idea is? What values would I give the slider? Would the worst value be -1,000 and the best +1,000? How would users know to assign 500 vs 550? Would a ‘weak’ criticism get a score of 500 and a ‘strong’ one 1,000? What if tomorrow somebody finds an even ‘stronger’ one, does that mean I’d need to extend the slider beyond 1,000? Do I include arbitrary decimal/real numbers? Is an idea’s score reduced by the sum of its criticisms’ scores? If an idea has score 0, what does that mean – undecided? If it has -500, does that mean I should reject it ‘more strongly’ than if it had only -100? And so on. Deutsch says you haven’t understood something if you can’t program it, and I don’t think he could program his epistemology.)
If “good” is considered the same as “not bad” doesn’t that close the gap between Deutsch and Popper?
If “bad” = “contains known flaws”,
and “not bad” = “contains no known flaws”,
why can’t “good” = “contains no known flaws” too?
I can see no reason that “good” means anything more than “not bad”.
Yes, but bad actors are a separate problem to solve (as you have alluded to in #2513, where you mention “good citizens”).
The problem we are addressing here is giving people a fair time window to respond to criticisms after they are published.
Edit: after reviewing the thread, I see that you were more focused on the bad actors problem while I was more focused on giving people fair time to respond. I believe what I am saying still stands.
Yes, but bad actors are a separate problem to solve (as you have alluded to in #2513, where you mention “good citizens”).
The problem we are addressing here is giving people a fair time window to respond to criticisms after they are published.
Edit: after reviewing the thread, I see that you were more focused on the bad actors problem while I was more focused on giving people fair time to respond. I believe what I am saying still stands, but maybe it belongs somewhere higher up the chain.
Yes, but bad actors are a separate problem to solve (as you have alluded to in #2513, where you mention “good citizens”).
The problem we are addressing here is giving people a fair time window to respond to criticisms after they are published.
Yes, but bad actors are a separate problem to solve (as you have alluded to in #2513, where you mention “good citizens”).
The problem we are addressing here is giving people a fair time window to respond to criticisms after they are published.
Edit: after reviewing the thread, I see that you were more focused on the bad actors problem while I was more focused on giving people fair time to respond. I believe what I am saying still stands.
#2515·Dennis HackethalOP revised 11 days agoSorry but I don’t see how that solves the bad-actor problem. Bad actors would still be able to draw out the discussion to avoid paying, wouldn’t they?
Yes, but bad actors are a separate problem to solve (as you have alluded to in #2513, where you mention “good citizens”).
The problem we are addressing here is giving people a fair time window to respond to criticisms after they are published.
#2478·Dennis HackethalOP, 12 days agoI suppose that would make it a bit harder for bad actors because they’d need to monitor multiple deadlines, but they could still submit arbitrary counter-criticisms just in time to avoid paying. Or is there something I’m missing?
Since I am getting an error when I try to edit #2479, I will make a new criticism. I think #2479 is unclear.
I would have it that each criticism and counter-criticism resets the countdown on the bounty deadline. This means everyone involved is given fair time to respond at each turn.
A small downside is that a bounty can go on indefinitely, but that is simply an extension of the fact that solutions to problems don’t come reliably.
#2494·Erik OrrjeOP, 12 days agoThanks for the criticism. New argument: Utility (besides usefulness as money) is not strictly necessary, although it may be nice to have. The value of a currency is set by supply and demand.
Supply: A limited supply (scarcity) may increase the value.
Demand: Demand is set determined by how well people percieve the currency's features as a store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account. Important factors include: Durability, Portability, Divisibility, Fungibility, and Stability. Gold has had most of these features (importantly scarcity, only 2% inflation from mining). However, it severely lacks in portability due to being a metal, compared to hard digital assets.
So the value of a currency is mostly determined by its perceived usefulness as money, not its utility for other things.
Supply: A limited supply (scarcity) may increase the value.
The scarcity of a useless thing doesn’t make it less useless.
#2494·Erik OrrjeOP, 12 days agoThanks for the criticism. New argument: Utility (besides usefulness as money) is not strictly necessary, although it may be nice to have. The value of a currency is set by supply and demand.
Supply: A limited supply (scarcity) may increase the value.
Demand: Demand is set determined by how well people percieve the currency's features as a store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account. Important factors include: Durability, Portability, Divisibility, Fungibility, and Stability. Gold has had most of these features (importantly scarcity, only 2% inflation from mining). However, it severely lacks in portability due to being a metal, compared to hard digital assets.
So the value of a currency is mostly determined by its perceived usefulness as money, not its utility for other things.
Durability, Portability, Divisibility, Fungibility, and Stability
These are all secondary values.
The durability of something is irrelevant if the thing itself is useless.
The portability of something is irrelevant if the thing itself is useless.
The divisibility of something is irrelevant if the thing itself is useless.
Etcetera, etcetera.
The only demand for something like this comes from either a mistaken understanding of what ‘value’ is/means (e.g. believing that the ‘durability’ of something otherwise useless makes it valuable), or from the Keynesian Beauty Contest linked above.
This dynamic makes cryptos wonderful as instruments of speculation, but they will never be money unless they are backed by some independently useful commodity (which IIRC some actually are), or are made legal tender by some government (which defeats the point).
#2495·Erik OrrjeOP, 12 days agoIs "it contains bitcoin's solutions to fiat, and also solves bitcoin's lack of privacy" easy to vary? Could be made harder to vary by explaining the technicals of zero-knowledge proofs as well (though I'm not konwledgeable enough to do that here).
The part that is easy to vary is that an arbitrary amount of different cryptos can be made with the same features.
The features themselves can be as specific as you like but the overall argument is still extremely easy to vary, because it is an argument for a specific cryptocurrency.
It is the same as arguing for a specific god because the god you like has specific features. The god itself is still easy to vary.
#2478·Dennis HackethalOP, 12 days agoI suppose that would make it a bit harder for bad actors because they’d need to monitor multiple deadlines, but they could still submit arbitrary counter-criticisms just in time to avoid paying. Or is there something I’m missing?
The counter-criticism moves the deadline forward again the same fixed amount.
#2473·Dennis HackethalOP, 12 days agoAs much as I dislike LLMs, I’m thinking of using them to show summaries of discussions at the top of the page. Summaries would reflect ideas without pending criticisms.
I think definitely worth trying, sounds like fun
#2472·Dennis HackethalOP, 12 days agoBut then bad actors could always submit arbitrary counter-criticisms just before the deadline to avoid paying.
The timeframe to address the criticism should start counting down from the moment the criticism is made, rather than the original post. So it would be a continuous thing rather than a single deadline for everyone.
The OP could end the bounty if there are no outstanding criticisms and he no longer seeks a solution.
#2471·Dennis HackethalOP, 12 days agoI’m not sure yet, but I’m playing with the idea that the criticism can’t have any pending counter-criticisms by some deadline.
Yes, that was what I was thinking. Presumably the OP could set their own deadline timeframe too.