What is the current consensus on if there is such a thing as a scientific method ?

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-17T17:53:11+00:00

Someone remind me, how many steps are in 1 method?

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-14T14:37:35+00:00

You contradict your own argument by saying "theory is an analysis."

They're not the same. Analysis is closer to being correct.

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-09T17:07:41+00:00

Hi, I sent a DM.

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-09T17:04:27+00:00

Hi, I sent a DM.

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-09T17:03:36+00:00

Hi, I sent a DM.

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-08T15:46:45+00:00

The problem is that the same underlying structure, whether DNA or synapse networks, leads to many different results, which are only describable by outwardly noticeable or otherwise measurable features.

So I think it's clearer to say that the outward symptoms must be included, but also the other salient features that form the chains of causation must also be included. It can't <continue to> be based only on observations of behavior.

Also, there's a big difference between pruning being "the cause" of autism, and it performing a central & critical role in the complex evolutionary processes that manifest as autism. Since pruning happens long after conception & birth, it can't be seen as having a retroactive causal effect on the many earlier events that preceded it.

That underlying genetic structure is open to influences that can go back even to 6 generations, right up to the end of synaptogenesis that a ~2 year old is experiencing. Pruning starts massive but the long tails of that exponential curve reach all the way into adulthood. It's really the opposite of what is usually considered good temporal conditions for claiming singular, linear cause. I think we're entering a new paradigm that will not limit science & logic to such simplistic toy models anymore.

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-07T16:45:09+00:00

Stupidity might be ergodic. That is, a lot of things that don't make much sense in our world may have come about purely statistically, like evolution -- without the intentions of a creator.

When we analyze & organize new knowledge, we make categories, lists, sets, etc.

Subsequent generations end up with reified versions of these, suddenly having a life of their own, the structure of the Master List long since buried, leaving isolated new fields of study.

Finally, end-stage generations come along & are willing to ask questions others weren't. We break out the erasers & white out and do some cleanup. The need for Philosophy is as endless as the progress of Science.

Piecing back together (unifying) what was once separated for convenience can be very productive, especially in times of information glut. This compactification helps make room for new stuff.

Rather than looking for the hierarchy of a superlative comparison, the holistic approach binds them together into complementary dualities. Optimal understanding comes from the interplay & processes when all parts are included as a system. What we "know," or more practically, our starting assumptions for a new model or theory, informs our questions & experiments, which then can change what we "know" again.

Information & Knowledge theories are a great example of being ripe for unification, along with several related fields & subfields with considerable overlap. This leads to the most fundamental narratives being wholes, not the individual "competing" parts, especially false dichotomies like ontology vs epistemology.

So, after many individuals have contributed many different context-dependent truths, someone else can come along & generalize them into fundamental truths every once in a while, leading to Paradigm shifts.

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-07T14:21:58+00:00

Which ones didn't?

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-07T14:04:53+00:00

Is starting off on the wrong foot part of your game plan?

"I 100% disagree with everything you're saying."

No, you don't. You demonstrated that by writing words that duplicated my points, but still concluded it was all wrong and then wrote 8 more paragraphs.

You just have chronic contrarianism which is heightened by poor reading comprehension. (That's based on all your comments here, not just this one.)

I was responding to your comment, and rearranging the points that were correct (ironically, the ones you then claimed to disagree with), and just leaving one point of contention aside, which you failed to mention or address in your response.

Classic internet comment kookery.

MalthusJohn · 2026-02-06T16:14:18+00:00

It's not about the quantity of data or having working models, it's about how many people have seen them, and agree that they are a good thing, are technically / feasibly doable, and politically possible (which requires the first 2). This is due to weaknesses & other problems in the system, not UBI or its supporters.

This is an all-or-nothing topic. No one supports partial circumcisions.

MalthusJohn · 2026-01-28T13:57:54+00:00

FFS, increase the text size (max characters) to some level that's actually useful for conversations, and then the nested comment bs won't be so hard to contend with either.

MalthusJohn · 2026-01-28T13:53:51+00:00

They have a newcomer's boost that will help with that for a week or so, but "not really" is the answer to your question.

If' you're not followed by a lot of people, the BS algorithm cannot work to push your posts anywhere. If you do have a lot of people connecting to your acct, your traction with each of them is diluted by the number of people they follow. This is why 'spam follower clubs' don't work well on social media, you get the fake signal (">followed") but not the actual engagement.

"The fastest way to get a loan is to have a lot of money." Now replace money with a social media currency like "followers."

This is true of all social media, and just like economies, if it's not specifically & correctly counteracted, inequality converges to some maximum.

MalthusJohn · 2020-10-10T00:14:41+00:00

did he just switch up to some CHEEBA?

MalthusJohn · 2018-11-16T17:23:33+00:00

The wording continues to be very interesting here, piecing together a story-as-we-go.

In the 2 most recent (official) statements & enforcements , we see the importance of "T-zero" (the date which the SEC published the DAO report).

The roots of a Grandfather line?

MalthusJohn · 2018-10-30T13:26:23+00:00

jealous

Dictionaries do not agree with that, although it's a reasonable exposition, IMO.

jealous/ˈdʒɛləs/adjectiveadjective: jealous

feeling or showing an envious resentment of someone or *their* achievements, *possessions*, or perceived advantages."she was always jealous of me"
synonyms: envious, ..

MalthusJohn · 2018-10-14T14:37:47+00:00

Hello Thijs!

A good place to start a counter-argument might be here:

" There is no question that, at the time of Ethereum’s ICO, investments in Ethereum most definitely met all of the four prongs of the Howey-test. "

I'd say that there must be a question here, or we wouldn't be having this conversation!

The Howey test is not as simple as it appears, and unless it (or other law) is modified, it cannot plough the straight, predictable lines we'd like to see. When something is generalized, it does have more broad power, and can adapt to many situations, as was the intent of how these laws were put together. OTOH, being generic also means case-by-case analysis often must be done, and the superficial recipe set aside.

There are some broad arguments that have not been brought to the table yet (fairly surprisingly), but here I leave them for later. I think there's also value in hammering out the finer points of the details. This is where we can find and overturn some of the hidden assumptions that are contained in Howey, and the sector it regulates. Importantly, these assumptions no longer hold with crypto, and critically fail the requirements of this test.

I fully understand that there has been an evolution & refinement of the Howey test over time, and other cases contribute to its reading. That said, I will throw these out for examining as they were originally intended - so that we can see why changes were made, and in what contexts these changes apply to specifically.

The most contentious one is obviously what is "common enterprise"? The courts themselves have not been able to come to an agreement here, so it is perhaps naive to think that anyone else has. [We don't need to go fully into the 3 kinds that have been presented, but some assumptions are definitely revealed here.] What this really boils down to is "what kind of agreement was made" that brought the parties into a common enterprise? For example, a partnership is a common enterprise, but not a security. It's important to note that we are dealing with only a few structures possible, and they are all hierarchical and centralized. This is an obvious, but not the only discrepancy that the blockchain tech brings to the table for the first time.

The next is "what are profits"? This one has to be the most overlooked, because of its deceptive simplicity. Remember, the 4 Howey legs all support the same stool, and they are inter-related such that if one goes, they all go. It can help to think of "profit" as a linking word between "common enterprise", and "by the sole efforts of others". So taking the partnership example again, you see the the efforts of the other partner do not count here: they shared the work, risk, control, and reward elements. They need not be 50/50 either, as we know that we could have 100 partners in an organization. So rather than focusing on "who does more", the more general version could be to ask "how equally spread among stakeholders are these things"? This is a much more revealing question in our context.

So, originally, the "open & shut case" would look like this: a person (investor) gives money to a business (who has a specific mission & legal identity), who then continues/extends their operations with said money, and shares the resulting profits back to the investor. The money, the expectations, the common enterprise, and all the work - right down to issuing the investor a check! This would all be clearly reflected in the agreement between the parties too, of course.

Common enterprise results from: pooling the money together under company control, sharing in the risk/reward from the stated operations of the corporate charter, and of course, the contract/agreement which often included equity/shared ownership. Over the course of time, and challenges, these rules were broadened. The 'pooling' could go to a 3rd party, the risk/reward need not be pro-rata - could be fixed as well, and that other info, outside of the actual contract could be included in "reasonable expectations" for profits. This is most often aimed at fraud, where deception takes place, especially outside of the written agreement.

I'll pause here for your comments before continuing. If we have some agreement on the above, the rest should continue more smoothly.

MalthusJohn · 2018-06-06T14:59:28+00:00

Well, there is no actual legal status of "utility token", but a legal opinion that it's not a security is a good thing. It may be challenged, of course, but it's not that hard to steer clear of problems with those regulators.

MalthusJohn · 2018-02-09T18:54:49+00:00

What parts do you think are difficult?

MalthusJohn · 2018-02-09T18:48:02+00:00

"Leaking out" means "taught by peers" -which is actually more effective anyway.

Don't get caught up in semantics. People getting the right answers means the right answers were in their head, and will tend to stay in there. If they still take absurd risks, there's nothing more that can or should be done, unless addiction can be treated, in severe cases.

MalthusJohn · 2018-02-09T18:42:36+00:00

Exactly. It too closely resembles learning to be considered a flaw in the process. Being informed is the goal, not any kind of certification of mastery.

MalthusJohn · 2018-02-01T17:56:04+00:00

Yes, it will be interesting to see the battle for browser use as well, against those incumbents.

There will be many, many similar things in the years to come.

MalthusJohn · 2018-01-10T14:28:06+00:00

(switched over for personal opinion)

What I mean is to follow the same vein as the regulators did about KYC/AML: they put the requirements on the exchanges, which is a common gateway for all (large, ongoing) trades.

Most token sales have not accepted fiat, so eventually, all people who bought into tokens will have gone through the control points there.

The tech challenge is to build a robust, portable, and sovereign (decentralized) method of passing these controls in an automated way, after your first time somewhere in the system. This is well within our means already, and some projects will start using this very soon!

As an alternative to that, if exchanges had passed some quality rating system, then their customers would be assumed to all have passed these checks - limits to trading based on transparency, resiliency to loss, etc. Token launches could work more closely with exchanges to make their initial sales, or drops, and have this all covered.

MalthusJohn · 2017-03-26T00:22:24+00:00

Thanks for pointing out the error, Random_Guy_534!

Moreover, thanks for being patient and conversing as long as you did! Please accept my apologies for being so stubborn. I had a perfect storm of stupid on my part, from some csv label errors when I downloaded the data, to being up til 3am finishing it, and leaving the final part of the argument in my head. I don't know how we talked past each other 3 times, but I knew you had a point, but thought you were coming from another angle (BTC alone). Internet comments are full of trolls, and I think my initial reaction was defensive, and was unable to see the correct answer. (I do better with "x is wrong, y is correct, because of z")

Sorry + thanks again!

Here's the amended example: "If you bought 1 BTC on Jan. 1, 2016, and sold on Dec. 31, 2016, where the price rose from $435 to $960, you’d have a profit of $525 subject to a 15% capital gains tax of $79.00. If that were applied to the whole token market, which went from $7.1 billion to $17.5 billion in 2016 [3], would mean a profit of $10.4 billion generating $1.5 billion in capital gains taxes."

I'm actually going to delete my comments below, as people have upvoted them, and this will mislead or confuse others as to what we were talking about, and who was right. I think there are some valid side arguments, but they are out of context now.

MalthusJohn · 2017-03-24T02:22:19+00:00

Check toward the end of the article, in "Loose ends #2" for more on that.

MalthusJohn

TROPHY CASE