Linguistic Analysis Says Newsweek Named The Wrong Man As Bitcoin's Creator

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2014/03/10/data-analysis-says-newsweek-named-the-wrong-man-as-bitcoins-creator/

by atmosx • 12 years ago

116 63 12 years ago

forbes.com

matznerd• 12 years ago

I do not think it is him.

netw1z2• 12 years ago

why

netw1z2• 12 years ago

did I really get a downvote for asking why? wow. tough crowd.

pierrebai• 12 years ago

Does anyone knows enough about the stylometry to judge if letters to editors and a letter to a local government can really be compared to a white paper? It seems to me that in tones, style and vocabulary, these are very different format which would not yield good result.

Has the expert actually ever tried his technique to infer the author of a white paper based on sample of correspondence?

anaphor• 12 years ago

Here is a non-biased description of their technique: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5536

I would take it with a few grains of salt.

edit: woops, I meant to link the original as well http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5315

jnbiche2• 12 years ago

I don't know about "stylometry", but textual analysis is definitely a field that is grounded in statistics and probability.

And here's an excellent textual analysis of Satoshi's writing -- really quite convincing: https://likeinamirror.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/satoshi-nakam...

The verdict? Nick Szabo, a professor of computer science at GWU and trained attorney, with significant expertise in the digital economy and smart contracts. He's got a fascinating blog at: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/

To be honest, I was convinced by this particular analysis back in December, but I haven't been passing it around because I respected Satoshi's desire for anonymity. However, now that an innocent man is being hounded and harassed, I think it's about time that the creator step up and claim his creation. We also need to know what happened to the Satoshi stash for this amazing project to move forward with greater certainty.

So I would encourage the real Satoshi to step up. I'm not at all convinced that Dorian Nakamoto -- albeit a pretty fascinating man -- is actually the creator of Bitcoin.

rdl2• 12 years ago

It's a weak tie between Szabo and Satoshi. Both write in cryptographer/academic/cypherpunk style. That's true of plenty of other likely Satoshis. Most of the specific phrases which link the two are fairly standard phrases within the community.

I do think Szabo is in a top-100 list of Satoshi candidates, and the most damning linkage is Satoshi's failure to cite Szabo, but it's far from conclusive.

VMG2• 12 years ago

Nitpick: you linked to his very interesting static page, his blog is at http://unenumerated.blogspot.de/

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

However, now that an innocent man is being hounded and harassed, I think it's about time that the creator step up and claim his creation.

The creator would have to balance his desire to protect Dorian's family against his desire to protect his own family.

mzs• 12 years ago

I don't know about your particular question regarding the different styles for a white paper vs the Dorian writings, but in this case there is enough writing by Satoshi Nakamoto ignoring the whitepaper itself, some examples:

http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November...

So you can compare Dorian's vs those where both include more off the cuff wrirings. Personally I think it's pretty evident that Satoshi Nakamoto has a better handle on English than Dorian. I also believe that a textual analysis of the white paper vs. other shorter writings by Satoshi Nakamoto would show a strong correlation, maybe even finding rare pairs, while Dorian's would not match strongly at all.

newerguy• 12 years ago

The real Satoshi would have thought of linguistic analysis and taken appropriate action during his writing.

baq• 12 years ago

the real satoshi wouldn't go out of cover.

fragsworth• 12 years ago

And then use his real name in the paper? That doesn't make much sense.

r00fus• 12 years ago

But is the "real Satoshi" a true Scotsman?

saraid2163• 12 years ago

The real Satoshi is obviously Japanese and thus would have a katana available at all times.

http://www.xkcd.com/225/

ig1• 12 years ago

The Cuckoo's Calling was identified as being Rowling's work due to the fact her lawyer leaked it, the fact this analyst is claiming credit for it (but is carefully worded to allow for multiple readings) doesn't give me a lot of confidence in their ability.

raverbashing• 12 years ago

Yes, still, someone could leak "Book X is by Author A" regardless of it being true.

The main issue are the candidates. However, I believe that for this type of analysis exclusion of a certain candidate is much more reliable than finding the one who did it (as the article exemplifies)

trackofalljades• 12 years ago

"Linguistic analysis" and...pretty much every facet of evidence there is. Newsweek is such a joke.

jnye131• 12 years ago

What terrible UI on that website. I think in 2014 we know how to scroll already and don't need a full page pop-over to explain it.

bduerst• 12 years ago

I think Forbes recently rolled out their endless scroll to get recent with web UI standards. They're softening the blow to their less tech savvy users.

annnnd• 12 years ago

You can't document your way out of UI mess, so it's still failure on their side.

AJ0072• 12 years ago

I was just thinking about this earlier today. I realized that most desktop websites were plenty readable on my early smart phones and tablets. Now, the tablet and mobile designed sites are barely usable. Some just crash the browser. The touch buttons are out of place. Mobile install rollovers block basic UI spots.

The number of sites I don't read on mobile anymore is increasing.

trillium• 12 years ago

Linguistic analysis isn't a field I particularly trust. If they were analyzing his Reddit posts, I'd find that potentially an issue. People post quite differently on Reddit.

mathattack2• 12 years ago

And a true paranoid could fake styles.

VMG2• 12 years ago

And would not use his real name.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Would Dorian Nakamoto's writing style still be identifiable if he had the Bitcoin paper professionally edited? If he had that done on-line, it would have cost very little.

runner84111• 12 years ago

Who has other people edit their tex files...

codezero• 12 years ago

Most physicists. Though it's usually in the form of corrections to the printed version not edits to the raw TeX.

davorak• 12 years ago

It is pretty easy. If the editor works in word then you copy the tex and past it into word. Then tell the editor to not mess with the funny symbols and images etc. Use track changes and reject any changes that would mess up the tex.

Then just compile the tex to enjoy a beautiful laid out and professionally edited document.

tasty_freeze• 12 years ago

You raise a question which was raised in the article. Did you read all of it?

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Yes. Read that passage. They make some vague claims of being able to identify both an author and editor. That might be true for a book-length manuscript, or even a dissertation of dozens of pages, but the Bitcoin paper is eight and a half pages including diagrams and references. That leaves less than six pages of text. Hire some TaskRabbit to wash out the awkward grammar and usage and you might well eliminate all trace of Nakamoto.

MWil• 12 years ago

Her twitter posts at the bottom take the Newsweek reporter's credibility even lower if you ask me. A lot of people would have loved to talk with you pre-story, lady!

jonnathanson2• 12 years ago

She doesn't come off well in those comments, but neither does the Forbes writer. Journalistic etiquette and best practice is to ask someone for comment if you're going to be writing about her. Ideally, you should make that attempt in earnest and in advance.

If, as alleged, he emailed her at 10:50pm the night before he went to press -- and then said "she could not be reached for comment" and/or "she did not respond" -- he was being either lazy or disingenuous in that regard.

Her Twitter comments make her sound petty, but at least one of her complaints seems legitimate. She felt that she got railroaded here.

AJ0072• 12 years ago

Welcome to pageview journalism. There is no etiquette, accuracy doesn't matter. Pageviews do.

In the past if you published crap you lost the high quality advertisers. Now advertisers just go where the audience is, like the Huffington Post and Business Insider. In other words, all journalists are gossip columnists now. Even better if they wrote for free.

centizen• 12 years ago

Well considering that she really has no problem sidestepping the generally accepted etiquette and ethics of journalism when it suits her, I think that was exactly the way Forbes should have handled it.

Tycho• 12 years ago

There was a recent episode of House of Cards where the protagonists were exposed in the media over something. They came up with a false cover story, but they also deliberately bungled their response (asked another party to deny the claims completely, then somewhat contracted them in their own statement). The reasoning was that people would smell a cover up if everything was too neat.

I wonder if Dorian Satoshi used the same tactic. Once a journalist discovers him, he tacitly admits to being the Bitcoiner, then in his next public statement retracts this and says it was a misunderstanding. Now everyone's going about saying the real Satoshi would never have responded to the journalist like that.

Probably not but arguably it would be the best way to handle the situation if you wanted the story to blow over.

codr• 12 years ago

Given that he did at first admit to being previously involved, you just might be on to something..

epistasis• 12 years ago

Given that he did not really admit to it, but that the journalist chose a quote where there were only pronouns and not the word "BitCoin," my guess would be that this is not the tactic that he employed. It would rely too much on the reporter exactly quoting ambiguous phrasing and also giving it the desired interpretation.

jotux• 12 years ago

His "admission" was very, very weak.

    "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

For all we know he was confused and thought she was talking about his previous, possibly classified, work.

stcredzero• 12 years ago

A new plan:

1) Invent a disruptive technology that threatens the foundations of governments and traditional currencies.

2) Deliberately create a corpus of writing that doesn't look like your natural writing style to linguistic analysis.

3) Have a confederate arrange to have the press "discover" you hiding "in plain sight."

4) Someone "debunks" the discovery through linguistic analysis and you get away scott free.

6d0debc071• 12 years ago

1) Invent a disruptive technology that threatens the foundations of governments and traditional currencies.

2) Upload the idea at a semi-random time in the future, from a random location in a randomly chosen country, over a public network, using a computer bought with cash from a randomly chosen store. Have that computer link to it from as many places as possible.

3) Never speak about it.

-------------

If a highly weight goal of yours is not being found, then you limit your interactions, since you know that you'll leak information whenever you interact with something. And you randomise as many data points as you can think of that someone might correlate with you.

Then again, Satoshi obviously isn't doing 3 - assuming the Satoshi persona is the person who invented it.

caio1982• 12 years ago

As a linguist and computer nerd I can't read articles like this without shouting inside my own head "NLP with no open source code is not NLP!" and then I can never trust the person again, like the author of this... analysis, so even if he's nailed it, and it's really Satoshi, to me it would be just a struck of luck and not a linguistic discovery per se IMHO.

dbbolton• 12 years ago

Using a non-trivial computer program to conduct research and not disclosing the source is basically like leaving the Methods section of a paper blank. The code could literally be doing anything, regardless of what the author claims it does. They don't even need to release it under a free license- just show it.

Ryel• 12 years ago

Personally I hope we never find Satoshi. Chuck Norris was getting old anyway...

fchollet2• 12 years ago

We're talking about a man who doesn't have the Internet at his home (but uses public library computers), a home who writes this kind of email (http://i.imgur.com/DB4oq5s.png), a man with no previous experience with cryptography or economics theory, a man who stated:

"I have never communicated with bitcoins".

Did this man create the first distributed digital cryptocurrency? No. Instead, here's what happened: Newsweek senior writer Leah McGrath Goodman went scouring a database that contained the registration cards of naturalized U.S. citizens (for the record, Nakamoto is the ~400th most common Japanese name). "A Satoshi Nakamoto" then turned up who had a physics/engineering background. She interviewed the man's family, fabricated a few quotes implying involvement with Bitcoin (or took the quotes out of context, which is equivalent), and published a clickbait story destroying the man's privacy.

That's it.

beedogs• 12 years ago

Pretty damning indictment of Newsweek if this is what passes for "investigative journalism" there.

fchollet2• 12 years ago

We're talking about Newsweek here.

Remember the "Heaven is real!" cover? (https://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2012/10/heaven-real-doctors-expe...)

Remember "The Fall of France"? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-sinclair/france-newsweek-...)

dangero• 12 years ago

Where did you read that he does not have internet at his home? Do you have a link? I've been keeping pretty up to date on this story, but I haven't heard that anywhere else. If true that is pretty damning evidence I think.

zby• 12 years ago

Maybe the author of bitcoin used the name Satoshi Nakamoto because he knew that journalists would find Dorian Nakamoto?

Linguistic Analysis Says Newsweek Named The Wrong Man As Bitcoin's Creator

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