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Felix Salmon has a nice write-up on this: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/07/the-satoshi-paradox/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/07

Felix Salmon has a nice write-up on this: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/07/the-satoshi-paradox/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/03/07/the-satoshi... I like his summary: Both answers ("he is Satoshi" and "he isn't Satoshi") are improbable, yet one of them must be true.

mikeash 13y ago
I don't buy that conclusion. The arguments for "isn't" are pretty compelling, starting with the ridiculous idea that this secretive person would use his own name as a "pseudonym" and going from there. The arguments for "is" are silly. The guy is a libertarian (no shortage of those in the tech community). The guy is described as "brilliant"... by his family (what an unbiased source). The guy is obsessed with money (that only describes 90% of humanity). He paints it as this extremely improbable coincidence that this guy is named Satoshi Nakamoto and has exactly the attributes that the creator of Bitcoin would have. But it looks to me like Satoshi Nakamoto isn't a particularly uncommon name (Wikipedia comes up with quite a few famous people named Satoshi, and quite a few named Nakamoto, and the combination doesn't seem like it ought to be rare). The attributes described aren't that uncommon. What are the odds that one of the Satoshi Nakamotos in the world happens to have these fairly general attributes, purely by coincidence? Pretty high, I would say.
- sanderjd 13y ago
  Yeah, maybe for a lot of people it comes down to, "have you ever met somebody who, had their name included 'Satoshi Nakamoto', would have fit the profile used by Newsweek just as well". I think a lot of people involved with technology (and especially those involved with bitcoin itself!) have met such people, but most people in the general populace probably haven't.
- roc 13y ago
  To say nothing of how we're supposed to take his denial of being Satoshi, as evidence of his being Satoshi. That catch-22 (he either admits it or you take his denial as admission) would give you a false positive rate of damn near 100%. Surely that has to be essentially written off as noise if we're going to use a probabilistic approach. That said... while people are talking about the amazon reviews as counter-evidence, due the clear ESL attributes, that bike mirror review throws an interesting curve. Either Dorian has a habit of dictating through someone with far more fluent (and precise) English [1] or he's far better with English than he generally lets on. [2] Which is an interesting wrinkle, but hardly enough to tip any scales. [1] "(i.e., clear though convexed)" [2] Which is something of a stereotype of older, professional Japanese.
  - thrill 13y ago
    To say nothing of how we're supposed to take his denial of being Satoshi, as evidence of his being Satoshi. See if he can float?

mikeash 13y ago

I don't buy that conclusion. The arguments for "isn't" are pretty compelling, starting with the ridiculous idea that this secretive person would use his own name as a "pseudonym" and going from there. The arguments for "is" are silly. The guy is a libertarian (no shortage of those in the tech community). The guy is described as "brilliant"... by his family (what an unbiased source). The guy is obsessed with money (that only describes 90% of humanity). He paints it as this extremely improbable coincidence that this guy is named Satoshi Nakamoto and has exactly the attributes that the creator of Bitcoin would have. But it looks to me like Satoshi Nakamoto isn't a particularly uncommon name (Wikipedia comes up with quite a few famous people named Satoshi, and quite a few named Nakamoto, and the combination doesn't seem like it ought to be rare). The attributes described aren't that uncommon. What are the odds that one of the Satoshi Nakamotos in the world happens to have these fairly general attributes, purely by coincidence? Pretty high, I would say.

sanderjd 13y ago
Yeah, maybe for a lot of people it comes down to, "have you ever met somebody who, had their name included 'Satoshi Nakamoto', would have fit the profile used by Newsweek just as well". I think a lot of people involved with technology (and especially those involved with bitcoin itself!) have met such people, but most people in the general populace probably haven't.
roc 13y ago
To say nothing of how we're supposed to take his denial of being Satoshi, as evidence of his being Satoshi. That catch-22 (he either admits it or you take his denial as admission) would give you a false positive rate of damn near 100%. Surely that has to be essentially written off as noise if we're going to use a probabilistic approach. That said... while people are talking about the amazon reviews as counter-evidence, due the clear ESL attributes, that bike mirror review throws an interesting curve. Either Dorian has a habit of dictating through someone with far more fluent (and precise) English [1] or he's far better with English than he generally lets on. [2] Which is an interesting wrinkle, but hardly enough to tip any scales. [1] "(i.e., clear though convexed)" [2] Which is something of a stereotype of older, professional Japanese.
- thrill 13y ago
  To say nothing of how we're supposed to take his denial of being Satoshi, as evidence of his being Satoshi. See if he can float?