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Zem

ChatGPT is both incredibly unintelligent and superbly capable at the same time

ChatGPT is still incredibly unintelligent. But it is also superbly capable at the same time. Let me explain with a very simple example. I asked ChatGPT if it could translate from Chinese to English. It replied sure can. So I submitted a long text in Chinese. It pumped out amazingly accurate translation. But then it stopped in the middle, with no further explanation. Zem: “Why did you give up in the middle? Was it because… Read More »ChatGPT is both incredibly unintelligent and superbly capable at the same time

The sleeping beauty paradox is a fallacy

The sleeping beauty paradox is a problem that has puzzled mathematicians and many other scholars for decades. Here is a description of the problem: Participants volunteer to undergo the following experiment and are told all of the following details: On Sunday she will be put to sleep. Depending on a coin toss (see below) during the experiment, she will be either awakened, interviewed just once, or after the first interview put back to sleep with… Read More »The sleeping beauty paradox is a fallacy

The natural and the spiritual

Answering a question about which religion has the most evidence, a friend answered: “I don’t understand how logically Christianity can beat Islam. If you consider the amount of supernatural stuff that each religion contains in its dogma Christianity is a strict superset of Islam. All the hokey magic stuff in Islam is in Christianity plus more. So it follows it is less scientifically plausible.” Like many others, my friend automatically equates ‘scientific evidence’ to ‘evidence’.… Read More »The natural and the spiritual

Technological unification & power decentralization

The idea of a unified blockchain causes anxiety or even antagonism. There is much misunderstanding in this matter, often confusing matters of different nature, such as the philosophical, political, economic and technological. The misunderstanding about technological unification and power centralization runs deep and wide in the crypto world, and is one of the most important...

Read more... The full content of this chapter is available in the two-volume book:

Bit & Coin

Merging Digitality and Physicality

Volume I: Digital Humanity’s Truth Layer - The New Internet, its Authenticity Layer, and Applications
Introduction
Order on Amazon

Volume II: Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Beyond - Essays of Science, Economics, Law, Ethics, and Controversies
Introduction
(coming soon)

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China’s systemic problems compared to America’s

The New York Times: China’s Cities Are Buried in Debt, but They Keep Shoveling It On. The author points out the problems but describes them as if they were some kind of misunderstanding by Chinese leaders and policymakers that can be easily changed or avoided by coming to a better understanding. But at the root of all these problems is not a subjective lack of understanding of economics and policies but an objective core element… Read More »China’s systemic problems compared to America’s

The problem of higher education – a call for decentralized education

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the last 40 years, the US CPI-based overall inflation was 285%, while the cost of higher education increased by 1246% (12.46 times higher, about 4.4 times higher after inflation adjustment). From a financial point of view, higher education is clearly a broken system. But there’s more to this, pointing to even worse problems. First, it is a wealth redistribution problem, as Steven Herzberg pointed out: “It’s… Read More »The problem of higher education – a call for decentralized education

Should bitcoin tokens unite onto Ordinals?

After all these years, someone finally figured out how to do satoshi-based tokens on BTC: the ordinals, each based on a single satoshi and defined by an inclusion of a chunk of data (say a small image). A miner ‘mines’ ordinals (tokens) using a special add-on mining software designed according to a token protocol that defines the ordinals as distinctive tokens. The process of including a chunk of data is called ‘inscription’, likened to inscribing… Read More »Should bitcoin tokens unite onto Ordinals?

IPv6 adoption and its killer app

In this video, Dr. Craig S. Wright and Prof. Latif Ladid talk about Integrating IPv6 and blockchain at the TCP/IP layer. Being the president of the global IPv6 Forum, chairman of the IEEE COMSOC IoT subcommittee, and chairman of IEEE COMSOC 5G subcommittee, Prof. Ladid knows about this from the inside out. In this brief...

Read more... The full content of this chapter is available in the two-volume book:

Bit & Coin

Merging Digitality and Physicality

Volume I: Digital Humanity’s Truth Layer - The New Internet, its Authenticity Layer, and Applications
Introduction
Order on Amazon

Volume II: Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Beyond - Essays of Science, Economics, Law, Ethics, and Controversies
Introduction
(coming soon)

Already a member? Log in here

Safe banking and fractional reserve banking

Caitlin Long has criticized the leveraged banking system. I think her criticism is spot on.  But as to the ‘safe bank’ solution Caitlin advocates, it is debatable.  At the same time, ‘over-capitalization’ is probably an oversimplistic criticism of safe bank model. Yes you can call the safe bank ‘overcapitalized’, but who is to decide? The options today range from the 100% capitalization of the safe bank model to the 3-10% capitalization of the existing banks. That’s… Read More »Safe banking and fractional reserve banking

Communalism vs. communism

Jared A. Brock wrote an interesting piece on ‘Capitalism vs. Communalism‘ based on his experience of a Bruderhof (brotherhood) community. I like the fact that he used the word ‘Communalism’ instead of ‘Communism’. The difference? God, faith, and love. Faith is the linchpin to put together a society like the Bruderhof (brotherhood) community, and the lack thereof is the reason why communism is always a disaster. Historically, this is not even accidental, because everyone who promoted… Read More »Communalism vs. communism