Bakkot

Re: reading level: do give the Simple English Wikipedia a try!

Not really. A lot of people at Google are on Macs. I think it's more that the Chrome team doesn't prioritize Java support, which I think shows their priorities are pretty much in order.

Nah, there's several other active, established markets already - SR2 wasn't even one of the top three.

The thing is, in the absence of collective action people choose to defect in prisoner's dilemmas. Giving people the option results in everyone defecting. Having it be preset results in everyone cooperating. Everyone cooperating is a better outcome for everyone.

Yeah, sure, but now suppose that you're going to decide the rule that everyone's car will follow. Are you still going to choose what amounts to defecting in the prisoner's dilemma?

Put it another way: this is one of those very rare occasion where collective cooperation (a la prisoner's dilemma) is possible. Shouldn't that... be the thing we want?

I've never understood this logic, especially since you're deciding on the rule for all cars, not just your car. Shouldn't you prefer that the rule be to minimize the number of people harmed, since this is the option which (when taken over all cars) will minimize the likelihood of you being harmed?

> Who in their right mind would get inside a car that is programmed to commit suicide in certain "ethical" circumstances?

Maybe you'll find this version more interesting: suppose the car has the opportunity to save a dozen people (who are not themselves at fault) by sacrificing you (or failing to do everything in its power to protect you). Should it?

If no, which seems to be the answer you think is obvious, consider that you are far more likely to find yourself as one of the dozen potential people saved than as the sacrifice, especially since we're deciding on the rule for all autonomous cars, not just yours. So following your logic makes it more likely for you to get killed.

Regulations are only possible because the technology to "transfer dollars electronically", as you say, requires lots of infrastructure and trust - the entire banking system, basically. If I want to send you a dollar electronically, I can't do so without using the banks. And the banks are both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to impose regulations, which they can do by limiting access to their transfer-money services.

But access to the technology to transfer bitcoin does not require infrastructure and trust. I can send you a bitcoin without needing a bank or any other large authority. Moreover, I can do so relatively anonymously, and from anywhere in the world. It is therefore much, much harder to impose restrictions on moving bitcoin than moving USD or other non-digital currencies, because there are no large authorities capable of enforcing those restrictions.

(That is, the government can of course pass laws saying I can't send you bitcoin, or limiting the circumstances in which I could. But the most they can do is punish me if they can catch me - they can't actually stop it. Whereas banks do have the power to actually stop me from sending you USD. [Unless I want to do so physically, which is hard to do in quantity or over any distance.])

The answer to basically all of your questions is that to transfer money, you need to move money. This can be basically a promise of money, as with wire transfers, or physical, as you'd do by transporting bullion or cash.

The problem with using a promise to move money is that you have to trust whoever's promising. That works alright if there's a central authority, like a bank, but less well if you don't want to trust the authority, don't have access to the authority, or are unable to comply with the rules of the authority. Also it's kind of a shitty experience, as is. (You wouldn't pay for all of your Amazon purchases with wire transfers, I'd imagine.)

The problem with moving physical money is that it's difficult to do over long distances or en masse.

In order to solve the problems with existing money transfer, then, bitcoin needs to be able to do without a central authority and without using a physical representation of money. Which it accomplishes by allowing you to store money - not just a representation or promise thereof - digitally.

... Well that's an ancient typo. Corrected, thanks.

Well, I'm not going to have a compact answer for you, but to do so you need to develop some kind of self-reference. (Like Godel!) If you like thinking about this sort of thing, Raymond Smullyan has a lot of great writing - I'd recommend eg Forever Undecided or To Mock a Mockingbird for a more informal treatment, or First-Order Logic for a formal one.

One which doesn't exploit quantum-mechanical principles of computation.