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"Evidence that Satoshi Nakamoto must have beee active in the 1990-2000 cypherpunk community, so that he was well-aware of those discussions. This should shed so

"Evidence that Satoshi Nakamoto must have beee active in the 1990-2000 cypherpunk community, so that he was well-aware of those discussions. This should shed some light on his possible identity." I dont think so .... that's just noise. He might have just asked around and received advise from friends/colleagues or random stranger what should be avoided. You are reading too much into this. This sheds no light on possible identity. Only identity it sheds light on is how your mind works with tiny information and how you confuse noise for signal.

BubRoss 7y ago
You are claiming it is noise with no reasoning behind it. If his friends or colleagues knew about this curve, wouldn't that imply they were part of the community.and this he was part of the community? I'm not sure why you would take such a strong position that amounts to 'nope just noise'.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  Sometimes, people can make wrong assumptions by reading one's words alone. First, not everything is carefully worded, sometimes you choose the wrong words and didn't realize until someone responded. Also, not all context/information is necessarily expressed - for example, you know an argument, and you already know more information about your argument, you don't always write them down, because talking on a forum is not your exam. Another example is when you know an argument and its counterargument, and you talk about the argument, someone may come and say: "you are misguided, don't you know its counterargument"? Second, no tone, facial expression, or other social hints are preserved, when you talk about an argument casually, others may assume that you are serious. When I claimed that Satoshi was active in the cypherpunk group, I didn't say that I was also thinking about the citations in the original Bitcoin paper, specifically, Wei Dai's "b-money" or Adam Back's "Hashcash", both came from the infosec community of the late 90s, and they are something that a member of the cypherpunk group should be intimately familiar with. An additional piece of information about his avoidance of using secp256r1 curve fits into the narrative well, and they can be circumstantial evidence if you buy into it. Also, I wasn't being serious at all, I mentioned it simply because it's just an interesting idea related to the original article and other readers may find the idea interesting as well, and I used the phrase "shed some lights", which, according to Merriam-Webster, is a phrase that means, "to make it possible to understand or know more about something", not a bad choice. Unfortunately, I misused the word "evidence", a pretty strong word. I should have used "circumstantial evidence" or "hints". while I was typing the original comment, I was also thinking about the possibility that Satoshi wasn't an active cypherpunk in the 2000s but simply a follower who had read the mailing list archive after the group became inactive, but I didn't mention either. I was not writing a background check for Satoshi, there's enough good articles on the Web. When nonefromabove was replying my comment, nonefromabove, who was being unaware of anything of the above, must have deduced that I was fallen into the "connecting-the-dots" fallacy, or having a somewhat conspiracy theorist's attitude on Satoshi's identity, and I was being completely serious about it. Meanwhile, I was well-aware of the cognitive bias of overfitting data, and I was a fan of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise when his book came out. Nevertheless, I was told that I was "reading too much into this", and how "my mind works with tiny information and how I confuse noise for signal". Perhaps, to avoid misunderstanding like this, we may use a "confidence" label, inc. "almost certain, likely, possible, unlikely", and a "tone" label, inc. "joke, casual, argument, serious", and so on.
dang 7y ago
Hey, can you please not cross into personal attack here? That's against the site rules, because we're trying for a bit better than internet default in this community. If you wouldn't mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and participating in the spirit of this site, we'd be grateful. Your comment would be fine without the last sentence.
- sunstone 7y ago
  It's not easy being dang. Have an up vote :)

BubRoss 7y ago

You are claiming it is noise with no reasoning behind it. If his friends or colleagues knew about this curve, wouldn't that imply they were part of the community.and this he was part of the community? I'm not sure why you would take such a strong position that amounts to 'nope just noise'.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
Sometimes, people can make wrong assumptions by reading one's words alone. First, not everything is carefully worded, sometimes you choose the wrong words and didn't realize until someone responded. Also, not all context/information is necessarily expressed - for example, you know an argument, and you already know more information about your argument, you don't always write them down, because talking on a forum is not your exam. Another example is when you know an argument and its counterargument, and you talk about the argument, someone may come and say: "you are misguided, don't you know its counterargument"? Second, no tone, facial expression, or other social hints are preserved, when you talk about an argument casually, others may assume that you are serious. When I claimed that Satoshi was active in the cypherpunk group, I didn't say that I was also thinking about the citations in the original Bitcoin paper, specifically, Wei Dai's "b-money" or Adam Back's "Hashcash", both came from the infosec community of the late 90s, and they are something that a member of the cypherpunk group should be intimately familiar with. An additional piece of information about his avoidance of using secp256r1 curve fits into the narrative well, and they can be circumstantial evidence if you buy into it. Also, I wasn't being serious at all, I mentioned it simply because it's just an interesting idea related to the original article and other readers may find the idea interesting as well, and I used the phrase "shed some lights", which, according to Merriam-Webster, is a phrase that means, "to make it possible to understand or know more about something", not a bad choice. Unfortunately, I misused the word "evidence", a pretty strong word. I should have used "circumstantial evidence" or "hints". while I was typing the original comment, I was also thinking about the possibility that Satoshi wasn't an active cypherpunk in the 2000s but simply a follower who had read the mailing list archive after the group became inactive, but I didn't mention either. I was not writing a background check for Satoshi, there's enough good articles on the Web. When nonefromabove was replying my comment, nonefromabove, who was being unaware of anything of the above, must have deduced that I was fallen into the "connecting-the-dots" fallacy, or having a somewhat conspiracy theorist's attitude on Satoshi's identity, and I was being completely serious about it. Meanwhile, I was well-aware of the cognitive bias of overfitting data, and I was a fan of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise when his book came out. Nevertheless, I was told that I was "reading too much into this", and how "my mind works with tiny information and how I confuse noise for signal". Perhaps, to avoid misunderstanding like this, we may use a "confidence" label, inc. "almost certain, likely, possible, unlikely", and a "tone" label, inc. "joke, casual, argument, serious", and so on.

dang 7y ago

Hey, can you please not cross into personal attack here? That's against the site rules, because we're trying for a bit better than internet default in this community. If you wouldn't mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and participating in the spirit of this site, we'd be grateful. Your comment would be fine without the last sentence.

sunstone 7y ago
It's not easy being dang. Have an up vote :)