Category: Do Not Crosspost

2024-11(Nov)-23(Sat)—1542EST

“In the Church, however, judgement must be passed on the state and place of [the races of men] not on the basis of a Latin word [Gentiles] borrowed from the heathen, but on the basis of Holy Scripture.”

——

Gerhard’s original comment is about Hell and infernus, but it is equally true as repurposed.

2024-11(Nov)-16(Sat)—1606EST

There is a pernicious myth that ‘EQ’ (‘emotional intelligence’) is a (wholly) separate thing from IQ. If you have been deceived into believing this myth, permit me to disabuse you of that belief. Intelligence and emotional perceptivity are not distinct capacities; they are, in fact, rather closely related.

The man of exceptional intelligence will be able to accurately perceive the emotional states of others with a high degree of accuracy and with fewer clues than most men. Further, the highly intelligent are not, as a rule, ‘emotionally stunted’ or ‘emotionally handicapped’ — quite the opposite. Emotion is a key component of what it means to be human, and the highly intelligent possess a share of this that is roughly commensurate with their other intellectual gifts.

It is not that the highly intelligent are cold or uncaring or unfeeling or inhuman; rather, the will and the intellect are very closely linked, and a man of exceptional intelligence will almost invariably also possess an exceptional degree of self-control. It is one thing to have emotions; it is another thing to display them for all the world.

The caricature of the intellectually exceptional is that of the physically weak, sickly, and socially stunted outcast, but this is a set of pernicious lies — lies a certain sort of man finds comforting, hence their popularity. Contrary to this caricature, those of exceptional intelligence are typically physically more fit, genetically healthier, and socially capable, if sometimes reserved or controlled. The caricature exists on account of malice and is perpetuated because of envy. To hold such perniciously false and bitterly misguided beliefs is unbecoming of any man.

2024-11(Nov)-16(Sat)—1514EST

The African is inferior in virtually every way when compared to the European. The African is less intellectually capable, less attractive, less self-controlled; the African is more violent, more destructive, more gullible; and the African is more prone to demon worship, to syncretism, to heresy. There is, in fact, only one way in which the African is equal to the European:

The African, like the European, can be saved only by the blood of Christ.

The European cannot be saved by his race, but he is also not burdened by it — unlike the African.

2024-11(Nov)-11(Mon)—1315EST

Bitcoin continues to be an issue on the Right, so let me go over a few facts:

  1. The Bitcoin system is eminently vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks — most relevantly, a majority attack (we’ll call it, for the sake of clarity and convenience).
  2. The safety mechanisms built into the Bitcoin system are meaningless and ineffective in the face of a majority attack.
  3. A majority attack would be, admittedly, expensive to execute, but not prohibitively expensive.
  4. China was widely recognized as controlling 60+% of the mining capacity of the system back in 2021.
  5. It would be difficult (if not effectively impossible) to calculate China’s total percentage control of the Bitcoin system (in terms of nodes, not ‘coins’).
  6. An actor with a majority control over the Bitcoin system (again, in terms of nodes, not ‘coins’) could effectively seize control of the entire system. This would, in fact, be trivial to accomplish.
  7. The required investment to control a majority of nodes in the Bitcoin system would be something in the range of $20–30B.
  8. The current Chinese economy is just shy of $20T.
  9. $20B is 0.1% of $20T.

A Majority Attack
A majority attack against the Bitcoin system would consist of gaining control over a majority of the nodes in the system (this can be accomplished simply by investing in hardware). An actor (almost certainly a State actor) in possession of a majority of nodes could simply:

  1. reject all blocks or transactions from minority nodes (i.e., those not under the control of the attacker),
  2. create its own version of the transaction history,
  3. force this version to be accepted as correct or canonical, and
  4. make it impossible for minority nodes to form an alternative consensus.

This is not even particularly complicated.

Notably, all of this is essentially, once sufficiently abstracted, just fairly basic game theory.