homogeneous

Does bitfinex have any legal responsibility to its customers? What are the U.S. laws (if any) surrounding the theft of bitcoins?

I hope I have not misinterpreted your position.

> We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence.

I read that as "we are almost certainly going to discover, for example, that some races are more intelligent than other races". From this statement it follows that we will be able to prove that some races are "more intelligent" and some races are "less intelligent", thus it seems fair to conclude that you're asserting that the genetic factors that cause someone to fall into a specific racial category predisposes them to a certain level of intelligence. From that position we can conclude that if an individual displays the phenotypic traits that meet the definition of one of the less intelligent races, it follows that this individual would be genetically predisposed to less intelligence, also known as stupidity.

I do notice that you said "almost certainly", not "inevitably" so I apologize for that, but please let me know if I have otherwise misinterpreted your position.

> I don't know what you mean by "definitive conclusions"

I mean any conclusions that follow from a baseline assumption that certain races are genetically predisposed towards abstract characteristics. For example "we should target white communities for voluntary firearm buy-back programs because white people are genetically pre-disposed to firearm suicide." We know that white people are statistically more likely to commit suicide and statistically more likely to use a gun to do it, we also know that genetics play a large role in suicide risk, what does not follow is that the common genetic factors that culminate to express the phenotypes that are unscientifically identified as "white" necessarily imply the existence of genetic factors that increase suicide risk.

You might ask, "Well what's the practical difference? In your example we should still target white people for the buy-back because the statistics show the population we define as white is the most vulnerable". To this I say, that's ok, we collected data on "white" people so targeting them for assistance is the best we can do, but it doesn't mean that we cannot do better in the future by disentangling the specific genetic factors that increase suicide risk from the opaque genetic category of "white" people.

> It's not a coincidence you can pass people by on the street and readily identify 95% of them as being "white", "Asian", "Indian (/Pakistani/etc)", "black", etc, and that if multiple people perform this task, the agreement will be very high. It's obviously shared genetics that are causing these groupings

Right, what I'm saying is that walking down the street and categorizing people into races based on how they look is a crude and unscientific (but efficient) method for grouping people with some shared genetics. Obviously, shared genetics are at the root of these groupings because genetics are the foundation of all phenotypes, but it is not a given that the presence of the phenotypes used to define arbitrary categories like "white" or "black" or "indian" necessarily account for the genetic factors that culminate to make someone more or less prone to violence, or intelligence, or an affinity for musical composition.

> These differences are already used very widely in discussions about policy, as you noted, and that's exactly part of the reason why it should be fair game to fully investigate those differences.

Investigate away, I have no problem with that, we use racial categories because they are practical, what I reject is the hypothesis that we will one day be able to prove that there is an intrinsic link between the particular genes that cause the expression of a given phenotype and the specific polygenes that constitute complex characteristics like intelligence.

> I think it's clear from your first comment which of us feels superior. Smugness seems to pass as argument in this debate.

Not sure what you're referring to here but I did not use the word superior or make any references to superiority in any of my replies, but I think it's ironic that you accuse me of using smugness as an argument when you only responded to the first sentence of my reply (to tell me I'm smug) instead of the paragraph describing the argument.

> I was clearly distinguishing between those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences and those who would maintain that position if uncomfortable differences were discovered.

What I'm telling you is that "those who hold that position because they think there are no significant differences" is a strawman. Once again, everyone except self-identified racists (they do exist) claim that all people should be treated equally and it is fallacious for you to claim a monopoly on this position because you believe it to be an inevitable truth that some races are genetically predisposed to stupidity.

> My position, on the other hand, is that all people should be afforded the same basic rights, regardless of their differences.

Great, you've espoused the ostensible position of every person who isn't a self-identified racist.

> The position that differences aren't possible

Differences are clearly possible and readily apparent, my point is that any definitive conclusions drawn from correlations to "race" are of dubious merit because our racial definitions (as defined by the government and thus as it relates to policy) are imprecise heuristic amalgamations of apparent phenotypes. Skin tone, hair texture, facial structure in addition to language pretty much constitute the entirety of racial identity, so the impulse to group abstract polygenic characteristics like intelligence into what is essentially an individual's outward appearance doesn't lead to much in the way of profound insight. It's like trying to draw conclusions about road safety by measuring the correlation between car color and rate of receipt of speeding citations.

> We're almost certainly going to discover less palatable differences between races -- e.g. around intelligence.

So whenever that is, I'll be eager to discover which phenotypic traits represent themselves on the spectrum of intelligence. I also wonder what concentration of melanin correlates with laziness and also about the particular hair texture and eye shape that can indicate poor driving skills. We can also demystify the relationship between nose size and financial proficiency (after factoring out penis size, of course).

Based on your condescending tone I'll assume you're a confident expert who can easily point to a true "shining example of web technology" for the benefit of the newbs and the brainwashed.

This seems untrue in my experience. How is the view in any way coupled to the model since the "model" is simply a plain object passed down from a parent component? How could it be any more decoupled? I'm not even sure what a "controller" is in the context of react, but nothing about react or JSX forces you to couple your logic to the render function, in fact, a react "stateless" component is literally a pure function without any knowledge of state or the wider application.

This doesn't really make sense to me, an example would be helpful. Also, wouldn't it be trivial for a "vetted but not trusted" party to mount a 50% attack against the private blockchain since there is very little hashing power backing up the network?

> So, for example, many of the internal private blockchains in use at major banks and corporations will be able to benefit from Raiden.

What is the purpose of a "private blockchain"? Why not just use a traditionally centralized application if your organization is the only user?

> Yes, but that requires a fixed machine (or a cash lock box on every vehicle?).

Of course not. Do it exactly like how rentals work today except in an app instead of in person. Put in your bank card info, a hold is placed on your card, when the vehicle is returned the hold is released and the service fee is charged.

Ok. What I'm saying is that the ability to accept and relinquish an automated security deposit does not require a decentralized technology such as ethereum or even bitcoin.

A machine (like the one I linked above) can accept money and dispense money at the discretion of the business rules that determine the appropriate criteria for these operations (via car sensors or whatever).

The system you describe is already possible today without the need for a smart contract.

> A locker wouldn't have that problem, as there is nothing to break.

There is also no need for collateral or a smart contract in this scenario.

> Public bikes in many big cities don't have that problem either (i.e. there's no assessment of the returned bike).

How does a smart contract improve over the current system?

> A smart car doesn't have to have it either (sensors in the car could detect crashes, for example, and interiors could be built to be tough, like many public cars already - see Paris' AutoLib)

How does a smart contract help?

In all of your examples a smart contract doesn't add anything to the equation because the merchant (or the merchant's automated centralized systems) already have the authority and capability to relinquish deposited funds.