pontus

9 ms·

31.
by pontus 4y ago
So stuff like precious metals, commodities (energy, corn, pork, ...), stocks that don't pay dividends, etc are then also equally worthless? I don't think holding a barrel of oil or a bar of gold, or a share of Berkshire Hathaway w
32.
by pontus 4y ago
Isn't that true of anything that doesn't include the fed? I mean unless you can print money, you can't change the amount of fiat in any subset of the economy. You can still add value though which would be evident by more peop
33.
by pontus 4y ago
Thanks for this! That being said, I think that makes it an even better slogan. Taking something that was well known and using it in a new context where the meaning was, in fact, reversed. Kind of brilliant.
34.
by pontus 4y ago
Each product's value can be judged along many different dimensions. The fact that a product is not the top most used in a category does not mean that it is inferior along all dimensions. For example, many people here on HN would say th
35.
by pontus 4y ago
It's amazing to see people on both sides of this debate speak with such intense and unapologetic certainty. In 10 years or so one side will be found correct and say things like "I told you so, this was obvious from the beginning.
36.
by pontus 4y ago
Why would one expect Bitcoin which is more-or-less trying to disrupt the world order to be stable at this point in its evolution? Maybe in 20 years it'll be stable, but now? Sort of like saying that there was political instability in U
37.
by pontus 4y ago
It's a fun idea, but I found it super frustrating because it gets harder and harder to come up with consistent words. I'd personally like an "easy setting" where there's another key color that indicates if a letter
38.
by pontus 4y ago
Right, I mentioned above that the resolution to this is that the expected value of both envelopes is infinite before you open anything and thus the difference is undefined. Once you open one, the difference becomes well defined. I still thi
39.
by pontus 4y ago
The point I'm making is that if you open the envelope you will always conclude that it's advantageous to switch regardless of what you see in that envelope. In the case where you see $1, you're guaranteed that switching is a
40.
by pontus 4y ago
No, k >= 0 in my example. In one case you know for sure that you have the smallest envelope since you see that it has $1 in it. I'm this case you should absolutely switch. In all other cases, you should still switch although you can
41.
by pontus 4y ago
There actually is a paradox: Select a power of 2 according to the probability P(2^k) = 0.2 * 0.8^k i.e. p(1) = 20%, p(2) = 16%, p(4) = 12.8%, etc. Then place this amount in one envelope and twice that I'm the other envelope. Then, rand
42.
by pontus 4y ago
I did a pretty deep analysis of this problem a while back here in case you're interested: https://mindbowling.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/two-envelope-pa...
43.
by pontus 4y ago
Yeah, I agree. This setup though is the one to which the original "naive" argument applies which is why I think it's interesting to ponder.
44.
by pontus 4y ago
It depends on how the envelopes are prepared. If the two envelopes have x and 2x in them and one is randomly handed to you, there's a symmetry between them that tells you there is no benefit in switching. However, suppose x is placed i
45.
by pontus 4y ago
I wrote a pretty detailed analysis about this problem here in case you're interested: https://mindbowling.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/two-envelope-pa... It all depends on how the envelopes are prepared.
46.
by pontus 4y ago
I wrote up a pretty detailed analysis of this problem a while back here: https://mindbowling.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/two-envelope-pa... At the end I constructed a super weird example where regardless of what
47.
by pontus 4y ago
This is quite outdated, I believe. With the launch of NU5/Halo2 in a couple of weeks, all transactions will be private by default. Plus, even without that change, the shielded pool is way larger these days. Finally, a fairer comparison
48.
by pontus 4y ago
Both of these are no longer a thing with NU5 / Halo 2
49.
by pontus 4y ago
Well, if you want true privacy you should try Zcash.
50.
by pontus 4y ago
I mostly agree with you. Just to play devil's advocate though, I wonder if this is just an artifact of him being overly open / verbose. In other words, I suspect that all this stuff would normally happen behind closed doors anyway
51.
by pontus 4y ago
Because of scale? Tech is an insane force multiplier. Instead of deceiving ~100 people by talking to them face-to-face you can now deceive ~10k, 100k, maybe millions. The cost is also so low to allow pretty much anyone to engage in this beh
52.
by pontus 4y ago
I came here to write the exact same thing. Amazing content.
53.
by pontus 4y ago
No, that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying that if someone seated next to me is allergic to my pet (or for whatever reason doesn't want to sit next to it), then they could relocate either me or that person so that
54.
by pontus 4y ago
When I used to fly with my dog (~10lbs so they were allowed in the cabin) I had to pay $200 for them which is fine. But then it turns out that the dog also counted toward my carry-on! WTF!? I mean either charge me or have it count toward my
55.
by pontus 4y ago
I used to have a dog and got this feedback from people quite often. As far as I understand, pet allergies are not like peanut allergies in that they're not actually lethal (correct me if I'm wrong!) As such, I feel like it's
56.
by pontus 4y ago
What a ridiculous oversimplification of life...
57.
by pontus 5y ago
I disagree. If there really is only one universe which is 3D, this argument does not in any way explain why it is 3D. If you use Bayesian probability, you would in this case start with p(3d) = 1 since there's only one universe which is
58.
by pontus 5y ago
I know you explicitly asked for non-string theory answers, but I have to give one anyway -- sorry! There's an argument in string theory called the brandenberger-vafa mechanism that I think is pretty clever: Imagine that a bunch of part
59.
by pontus 5y ago
Anthropic arguments only work if there's a mechanism for generating other versions besides the one you're observing. For example, you could use the anthropic argument to explain why earth is in the "goldilocks zone" beca
60.
by pontus 5y ago
The entire point of string theory not being testable is not specific to string theory but rather to quantum gravity. Any theory of quantum gravity will only deviate from our current understanding (general relativity) at the Planck Scale. So

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