cornyNetHandle

Depends on the specific situation. Sometimes it is a damn good idea.

You can charge them with murder all you like, but while brandishing as control is considered standard police practice, you will find it almost impossible to prove any intent.

It may not be ideal, but individuals who amass power and then override other's collective judgement is a large part of how our society behaves.

Some politicians are guilty of mass murder and war crimes under exactly the circumstance you give. And part of the reason those from more powerful countries are not charged is they have made every effort to put themselves above international law. For instance, Bush Jr signed the Hague Invasion Act - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr... - to guard against this very risk.

edit - And in your second scenario, that would be negligence causing a homicide. It wouldn't be murder unless there was an intent to kill the hostage.

The universe where someone else intentionally coerced badly trained and overarmed idiots into being there and made them think they might be shot at.

They both killed the guy. The guy lied with the intent to get heavily armed people to point guns at someone. Anyone who does this and tries to claim that they couldn't possibly know that the risk is deadly, is either lying or lacks basic reasoning skills.

If your retirement fund isn't leaving money on the table, then it is probably not going to be there when you retire.

Why?

Making the Japanese and Nigerian elite look bad, could be a large part of the intent here. That $76M might mainly be a political comment.

In perspective, oil and gas companies spend more than double that lobbying the US government every year and in Mayfair in London, a house went on sale last year for $120M.

The emotional reaction isn't wasted bandwidth.

Consider; "Get some water now, please.", when compared to; "Get some fucking water now!". One of these will usually elicit a much quicker reaction.

They are, on the second hand market.

I come from somewhere where the opposite of that is the dominant culture, so I was explaining Crocker's rules as a method of us pointing out to each other when we are not capable of operating by them, rather than when we are. I had a bad head cold and was trying to work out a diplomatic method to get them to chill out a little. It half worked, some of the time.

It isn't about calling someone a moron, it is about being able to respond, "Thanks, I can be fucking stupid at times, can you show me where I am being moronic here?".

It is also about being able top unguard your own language should you know that the other person is operating by the rules, not to be insulting, but so to not worry about it for that conversation and so not having to run that whole level of extra processing.

I tend to swear a lot, as do most of the people I both work and socialise with. If I were to work with people of a more delicate sensibility, conversations would take a lot longer.

More Silicon Glen, if you really care about origin stories. My family tends to conduct a lot of discussion at full volume with lots of swearing, so being able to say, 'fuck off, not playing by Crocker's rules', is pretty useful.

edit: And Crocker himself is an Aussie.

I showed 'Crockers Rules', after Lee Daniel Crocker, to my mum and my sister over Christmas, as I thought it might help all of us indicate the level of acerbic comment we are currently able to process.

"Declaring yourself to be operating by "Crocker's Rules" means that other people are allowed to optimize their messages for information, not for being nice to you. Crocker's Rules means that you have accepted full responsibility for the operation of your own mind - if you're offended, it's your fault. Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor. (Which, in point of fact, they would be. One of the big problems with this culture is that everyone's afraid to tell you you're wrong, or they think they have to dance around it.) Two people using Crocker's Rules should be able to communicate all relevant information in the minimum amount of time, without paraphrasing or social formatting. Obviously, don't declare yourself to be operating by Crocker's Rules unless you have that kind of mental discipline.

Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you. Crocker's Rules are a discipline, not a privilege. Furthermore, taking advantage of Crocker's Rules does not imply reciprocity. How could it? Crocker's Rules are something you do for yourself, to maximize information received - not something you grit your teeth over and do as a favor."

Leave them on random people's voicemail, probably.

I dunno, it seems fairly sane to stand first in places you are guaranteed not to win, if you want to get started in politics. Lowest risk method of getting experience and people are impressed if you poll anything at all.

If blockchain based currencies prove themselves to be a significant improvement on current monetary systems then state currencies, such as the US dollar, will adopt the new technology, as they have done with all other previous developments in money.

This would seem to indicate that a blockchain coin pegged to the dollar only keeps any marginal utility at all during the period where the technology is novel, as blockchain tech either crashing or becoming successful, would both be events that kill it.

It may attempt to trend towards the dollar over time, but will it be trending that way during the time that you personally need it?

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", springs immediately to mind.

edit: Also, pegging a cryptocurrency to the dollar seems almost comedically perverse. What is it for?

Do you mean anomie? I know a few Kropotkin fans who are fairly certain that they want anarchy.

Governments undermining their own monetary systems is hardly novel, both for stupid reasons and occasionally for clever ones. Governments often implement new economic systems or currencies, with fairly mixed results.

Governments are not superhuman either. I am not talking specifically about the difficulty of writing bitcoin, but the collection of circumstances along side that.

That was an attempt at it, though one made in bad faith by many of the leading proponents. If you are genuinely making something obsolete, you don't usually need to go to the bother of banning it.

Satoshi worked online with a group of developers for more than a year while keeping perfect operational security. Developed a solution to the byzantine generals problem, but has no published maths papers, otherwise something would have come up through text analysis. Designed bitcoin as a financial instrument, indicating inside knowledge of the banking industry. Has mined enough bitcoin to be on the list of the world's 100 richest people, but hasn't shifted them.

Satoshi is a team employed by something very rich, probably a government.

The only 'solution' I can see to this problem, is to develop an alternative to the floating monetary unit, of solving the calculation of exchanging goods and labour.

Money is useful, because it solves for the 'n' of a given trade by using all the pricing of transactions as a form of parallel computation, so the fact that it may often give sub-optimal results is outweighed by the fact that it has such a low overhead, compared to the traditional alternatives, such as planned resource based economies, which have historically been plagued by both sub-optimal results and a very high overhead.

The revolutionary work in economics isn't being done on the blockchain, or in any other new currencies for that matter. It is being done in the world of AI and big-data, when applied to logistics.

If you really want to revolutionise money, you have to try and make it obsolete.

edit: Also, seeking sources of funding may be problematic for such an enterprise - "Please can you invest in this plan to destroy capitalism." - being a particularly difficult sell.

Perhaps if it can be reframed as - "Please can you invest in this plan to destroy capitalism that also has excellent quarterly returns." - then it might get somewhere.

What I never understood with the blockchain is the idea that it would change the politics of finance in favour of the little guy.

As far as I can tell, financial institutions are exceedingly well practiced at co-opting new monetary systems, as they have been doing exactly that for a very long time, so I never thought that a new model of ledger was ever going to really faze them.

No, just that the effect on safety seems minimal compared to other factors.

Requiring licensing for cyclists could indirectly result in more deaths depending on the change in other behaviours.

Off the top of my head, walking is more risky per mile for the traveller than cycling while driving is safer per mile, but increases your risk of obesity and DVT and is more dangerous for everyone else in terms of pollution and accidents.

And they are somehow managing to do so currently without licences.

One thing to consider is how much effect licensing has on car safety anyway. Mexico city has no test requirement at all, you just pay for permission to drive rather than sitting any test, while Peru has more road deaths per capita, despite needing a practical test, written test and medical certificate before you get behind the wheel.

I walk on the road all the time, having grown up in an area with plenty of rural roads without pavements.

I would get into a ton of shit should I visit anywhere that had jaywalking laws, though in the places they exist and are enforced, they presumably get by without a dedicated licensing and testing regime.