I realize that Wikipedia is not the most authoritative source, but I think it is likely more authoritative than I am. — Ludwig V

Wikipedia's "no original research" policy pretty much guarantees that its pages stand or fall with the objective justification in its original sources.

For some subjects, that is solid enough.

For other subjects, the problem is that the original research itself generally lacks objective justification.

In that case, Wikipedia is still not worse than its original sources. However, it may give the false impression that the information is legitimate, while it often isn't.

Wikipedia generally does a great job linking to the original research. Reading the original research is often an excellent way of deepening your own investigation.

some societies just have laws that they can’t be bother policing — apokrisis

Quite a few laws are indeed just political statements with absolutely zero intention of setting up a specialized police department to hunt down cases to prosecute. The existing police are usually not even aware of the new law, and they simply don't care either.

Welcome to the real world!

I happen to know a Malay homosexual who more or less fled Malaysia. You wouldn't know they're homosexual without knowing them personally. — jorndoe

He is almost surely exaggerating about "gay persecution":

https://www.holidify.com/pages/gay-bars-in-kuala-lumpur-4392.html

10 Best Gay Bars in Kuala Lumpur for a Lively Night

If you are a proud part of LGBTQ pride and are looking for a stress-free and safe time of the night in Kuala Lampur, then these LGBTQ-friendly bars are perfect for you! Here are the top 11 gay bars in Kuala Lumpur.

He was most likely complaining about "persecution" by his own family who do not accept his sexual orientation. Traditional families expect you to marry a member from the opposite sex and to have children.

I happen to know a Malay homosexual who more or less fled Malaysia. — jorndoe

I have no clue about how things are in Malaysia for homosexual people.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g298570-Activities-c20-t109-Kuala_Lumpur_Wilayah_Persekutuan.html

Dance Clubs & Discos in Kuala Lumpur

But then again, I am certainly aware of Malaysia's casual sex scene.

If I were homosexual myself, I would probably know much better what the gay scene is like. So, you are simply asking the wrong person.

I have, though, provided you multiple academic legal opinions to the contrary - at least oen from within Indonesia. Malaysia, I am less ofay with. — AmadeusD

You really don't know Indonesia, do you?

https://uncoverasia.com/best-clubs-in-bali

7 Must-Visit Clubs in Bali for the Ultimate Party/Nightlife Experience

1. Club Jenja – A Sleek, Spacious & Sexy Club

What’s a trip to Bali if you don’t hit at least two or three nightclubs during your stay?

When the sun sets in Bali, the party animals come out to play (or shall we say, rave) and here’s where these creatures of the night flock to to wreak havoc.

A hotspot for the Balinese youth and elites, the club attracts some of the world’s finest DJs—Sander Van Doorn, Quintino, etc—and is definitely where you should be if you’re looking to party in style.

Plainly untrue. This is entirely enforceable, i'm unsure why you would suggest otherwise. If a report is filed, and the police process the report, it can be prosecuted. End of discussion. — AmadeusD

Concerning Indonesia, you don't know what you are talking about, do you? You simply have no clue whatsoever.

https://discoveryourindonesia.com/jakarta-nightlife/

11 Unforgettable Jakarta Nightclubs for a Crazy Weekend

Have you ever experienced Jakarta nightlife? What was your favourite Jakarta nightclub? Share your thoughts with other travellers in the comments below.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

By the way, I do not recommend the use of nightclubs to pick up local one-night stands, be it in Indonesia or elsewhere. I personally consider casual sex to be rather lawless behavior. But then again, I don't give a flying fart if other people want to do that. To each his own.

The big difficulty is that one has to have competence in a field in order to assess how authoritative a source is. — Ludwig V

Concerning original research, it depends on whether the subject has a standard justification method.

In mathematics, it does not matter who exactly proposes a theorem. The only thing that matters, is that the proof is unobjectionable. In science, it does not matter who proposes a scientific claim. The only thing that matters, is that it is supported by a reproducible experimental test report. Other fields may have other objective justification methods.

If the field does not have an objective justification method, then such original research is not a knowledge claim to begin with. In that case, no publication by whoever is authoritative.

In that sense, we can say that: if who makes the claim matters, then what he claims cannot possibly matter.

I understand what you're trying to get at, but its simply not the case. — AmadeusD

In my Indonesian and Malaysian experience, it simply is.

Do not get started on Indonesia. — AmadeusD

The law making consensual sex outside of marriage a criminal offense is a full-scale assault against the right to privacy, permitting intrusions into the most intimate decisions of individuals and families, Human Rights Watch said.

Even Afghanistan does not manage to enforce this. Again, what's on the books is irrelevant. The only thing that really matters, is what they truly enforce. The above is simply unenforceable.

Being an atheist is theoretically punishable by death (not the dumbest law on the books, it seems). — AmadeusD

Impossible to enforce. It is just a populist political statement. If push comes to shove, your lawyer would simply argue that you are technically not an atheist but that you believe in something whatever. The prosecutor's office will routinely drop the case. Impossible to get a conviction. Not worth their time.

Is a complete contradiction. Smelling anything yet? — AmadeusD

Assisting the poor and the needy is a perfectly legitimate moral obligation. If your own wealth exceeds a particular threshold, the laws of the Almighty insist that you help others in need. It is, however, not the government's job to enforce this. It is your own conscience that is supposed to do that.

What does this have to do with anything? — AmadeusD

I am a foreigner in these countries. Therefore, it matters to me. If they would never enforce a particular rule against me, this rule is obviously irrelevant to me.

It sounds as if you would trust a Global Theocratic Hegemony tho? — AmadeusD

I do not believe that the clergy should be the ruling class.

In the UAE, for example, the emir of Dubai is not a cleric. In Islamic history, the ruling sultan was rarely a cleric. Instead, he was typically the supreme commander of the armed forces. I do not believe at all that clergy should be the head of the army.

The role of clergy in society is substantially different from the army, the police, or the security forces in general.

You seem to be confused as to the role of the Islamic clergy ("ulema") in society. They lead the prayers ("imam"). They give jurisprudential advice ("mufti"). They get appointed as judges in personal status or criminal law ("qadi") by the emir or the sultan.

The majority of governments outside of the west violate either (1) via religious/sex-specific regulation — AmadeusD

If you don't sign any marriage-related government documents, these governments simply won't get involved.

I spent one whole year in Indonesia in the past.In what way do they regulate anything sex-specific? I certainly did not notice anything. In all practical terms, it is based on self-discipline. I also did several multi-month stints in Malaysia. Again, sexual regulations are based on self-discipline.

It all depends on the woman's self-discipline and on your own.

If she is completely lawless, she'll be willing to do pretty much whatever, especially for some money.

But then again, you can find this type of women everywhere in the world. Still, if your dealings with her do not disturb public order, the government won't lift a finger to do anything about it.

a Sharia country asked you to 'donate' you'd be doing the same thing as paying a tax — AmadeusD

Zakaat, i.e. mandatory charity, is usually not enforced by government. Some countries do it, but most don't.

The calculations are too complicated anyway.

Only you can know how much you have given in charity already during this fiscal year and how much you still owe to the poor and the needy.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no country in the world that would try to enforce mandatory charity on foreigners.

They generally don't even try to force the locals to pay it, and certainly not successfully. It's rather that the clergy will start preaching about zakaat at the end of Ramadan and exhort the believers not to forget about it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat

Today, in most Muslim countries, Zakat is at the discretion of Muslims over how and whether to pay, typically enforced by fear of God, peer pressure and an individual's personal feelings.[17]

In six of the 47 Muslim-majority countries—Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen—zakat is obligatory and collected by the state.[17][18][83][84] In Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, the zakat is regulated by the state, but contributions are voluntary.[85]

Under compulsory systems of zakat tax collection, such as Malaysia and Pakistan, evasion is very common and the zakat (alms tax) is regressive.[17] A considerable number of Muslims accept their duty to pay zakat, but deny that the state has a right to levy it, and they may pay zakat voluntarily while evading official collection.[83] In discretion-based systems of collection, studies suggest zakat is collected from and paid only by a fraction of Muslim population who can pay.[17]

If you pay zakaat to the government, you trust that they will correctly identify the poor and the needy and really provide your payment to them. I personally do not trust the local ruling mafia for that job.

Furthermore, your own relatives and in-laws have priority in the distribution of zakaat.

(Note that parents and other ascendants fall under a different support obligation. They are not legitimate recipients of zakaat.)

It is only the remainder that can go to complete strangers.

Cool. More a point for Tarskian then, who's taken a more absolutist line in saying because you cannot eliminate it you might as well accept any version of it that works for you as an individual. — Moliere

I am actually not very or particularly demanding.

(1) Most importantly, as a government, do not interfere in my private family life concerning women and/or children. Whatever the problem may be, there is no problem in the world that the government won't make worse.

(2) In all practical terms, I do not pay personal income tax, wealth tax, or capital gains tax. It just won't happen.

The less I need to bend myself into corners to avoid paying that kind of things, the better.

It's not that I reject the entire notion of taxes.

However, don't come and ask me how much I make or how much I own because the answer will always be: "nothing".

I don't look at what laws they have on the books because that is largely irrelevant. I only look at what they really try to enforce.

If I happen to receive a tax return form from the local ruling mafia, I will be on the next plane out of there. Bye bye.

Most governments outside the West are acceptable to me and generally meet my requirements.

In practice, I think you will find, there always has been some kind of hierarchy and that is suggestive. — Ludwig V

Yes, agreed, and not only amongst humans:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/these-4-animals-depend-on-leadership-to-survive

At the top of chimpanzee groups stands the alpha. How this male achieves this status can depend on his personality, as the Jane Goodall Institute explains. Some may arrive there due to sheer brutality and force. In short, many dominant chimps behave like “self-interested thugs."

Others can dole out favors – such as grooming – to build alliances with other group members. Once in a position of dominance, the alpha gets prime choice on mating and can halt fighting amongst those further down the social ladder.

How this relates to survival is uncertain, but those in the alpha’s coalition or with higher social rank can benefit. In chimp groups, however, being at the top is precarious, as the alpha must always keep a wary eye on those beneath him.

Primates live in gangs and follow the lead of a mafia boss. It's preprogrammed biology.

But there is still ambivalence, as one can see in the USA and Europe, especially Britain. — Ludwig V

I am the only foreigner in my street, well, in the entire neighborhood, really. In fact, there are a few Chinese here, but they are not really counted as foreigners in Indochina. They are rather seen as something in between.

Unlike immigrants, digital nomads, nomad capitalists, and retirees are not looking for opportunities in the local economy. We are not interested in finding a job or setting up a business locally. In fact, we are mostly just spending money locally for a while before moving on.

If there are too many of us, it leads to gentrification, pricing the locals out of housing, and other local price inflation. The locals become less interested, less friendly, and in some cases even outright hostile. There are so many other places to choose from instead, that I do not understand why anybody would burden the local population by doing that. We can so easily avoid that. Just stay away from places that are too popular.

There is more to say, and I think there are problems with this idea, but what do you guys think? — hypericin

No problem for visual and auditory information. We can include written language as a specialized subset of auditory information. Practical problems abound, however, with information related to smell, touch, and taste.

Digital scent is considered experimental and quite impractical. There may actually not even be that much demand for it outside specialized application niches:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_scent_technology

Digital scent technology (or olfactory technology) is the engineering discipline dealing with olfactory representation. It is a technology to sense, transmit and receive scent-enabled digital media (such as motion pictures, video games, virtual reality, extended reality, web pages, and music). The sensing part of this technology works by using olfactometers and electronic noses.

Current challenges. Current obstacles of mainstream adoption include the timing and distribution of scents, a fundamental understanding of human olfactory perception, the health dangers of synthetic scents, and other hurdles.

Digitizing taste is experimental only:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustatory_technology

Virtual taste refers to a taste experience generated by a digital taste simulator. Electrodes are used to simulate the taste and feel of real food in the mouth.[1] In 2012, Dr. Nimesha Ranasinghe and a team of researchers at the National University of Singapore developed the digital lollipop, an electronic device capable of transmitting four major taste sensations (salty, sour, sweet and bitter) to the tongue.

Digitizing touch is also highly experimental research with currently no practical applications so to speak of:

https://contextualrobotics.ucsd.edu/seminars/digitizing-touch-sense-unveiling-perceptual-essence-tactile-textures

Imagine you could feel your pet's fur on a Zoom call, the fabric of the clothes you are considering purchasing online, or tissues in medical images. We are all familiar with the impact of digitization of audio and visual information in our daily lives - every time we take videos or pictures on our phones. Yet, there is no such equivalent for our sense of touch. This talk will encompass my scientific efforts in digitizing naturalistic tactile information for the last decade. I will explain the methodologies and interfaces we have been developing with my team and collaborators for capturing, encoding, and recreating the perceptually salient features of tactile textures for active bare-finger interactions. I will also discuss current challenges, future research paths, and potential applications in tactile digitization.

But colonization is over and many find it difficult to find another environment that will accept them. — Ludwig V

During colonial times, the colonizing powers strictly prohibited access from the motherland to the colonies, except for some colonies earmarked for settling purposes, such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

For example, you could not just settle in French Indochina from France or in Indonesia from the Netherlands. You needed permission based on a good reason to actually be there such as employment or an authorized business.

In fact, you were considered a liability by the colonial authorities, requiring expensive protection during local insurgencies or rebellions.

This problem no longer exists. The local population does not attack foreigners during an insurgency, because we are not politically associated with the local regime. The local powers also do not use us as a tool of oppression against the locals.

In fact, in my experience, every country where there is no serious excess of visitors -- think Barcelona and Venice -- tends to be welcoming, or even very welcoming to foreigners. They mostly treat you as a curiosum. They want to talk with you, go out with you, and so on.

There are so many places around the world where they are curious about foreigners and eager to get the opportunity to meet them.

These places are just not the ones where everybody goes to; exactly because everybody goes there already.

For example, in the Philippines, don't go to the Boracay island. Nobody is waiting there for you, because you will just be twelve in a dozen.

Go for example to Dumaguete on Negros island or Tacloban on Leyte island instead. There are lots of even more obscure islands in the Visayas that are even better for the purpose of being "popular" with the locals.

It has always been the policy of the government of the Philippines to allow you in all practical terms to stay in the country pretty much for as long as you want (if you don't cause trouble, of course).

It is not as if you could ever need the protection of the state when some gang ties you up in a chair and starts hacking your flesh until you give up the key to your digital wallet. — apokrisis

There is quite a bit of literature on the $5 wrench attack.

The reality is that there are no gangs that specialize in this crime, simply because other types of crime are much more profitable.

Seriously, how do you even find individuals who have substantial amounts of Bitcoin? There's no database where you can find how many coins I have. Such database simply does not exist.

It is much easier for criminals to target individuals with large bank balances. Criminals can get that information by hacking a banking server system or by corrupting bank staff or by intercepting mail or other communications, and they certainly do.

So sure, it is possible to live the transient life of a digital nomad. But it ain't some kind of alternative politics or superior moral order. — apokrisis

This life strategy acknowledges the very limited or even inexistent ability of the individual to improve his current political environment while emphasizing his very real ability to simply choose another one.

It is morally superior because it encourages the individual to do something about the problem instead of endlessly complaining about it.

gloat about the naive local women — apokrisis

They are not naive at all.

Supply and demand are simply different in their environment. Your personal SMV (Sexual Market Value) is very location dependent.

For example, a man who is 5 foot 6 inch is considered really short in North America and Western Europe, or even in China or South Korea.

This will act as a serious impediment to attract the kind of women that he would want to get with, even if he is technically still taller than them.

He could complain and lament his fate, develop all kinds of insecurities, and possibly even want to jump out of the window, but he could also consider the following information instead:

The average Guatemalan man is 163.4cm (5 feet 4.33 inches) tall. The average Guatemalan woman is 149.38cm (4 feet 10.81cm) tall.

Some people are good at solving their own problems while others are clearly not.

Some people are even insidious.

Instead of congratulating this man for successfully solving his problem, they will argue that he is taking advantage of these naive Guatemalan women.

WTF !?

Furthermore, life is not only about discussing pie in the sky.

If you have a problem, then solve it, instead of running around in circles. Life is unfair only to people who refuse to do something about it. In fact, that is not even unfair.

What about VAT or sales tax? — Ludwig V

Again a question of company or retailer size. The large businesses pay it. The small businesses don't.

But then there's the moral argument that, just as there should be no taxation without representation, there should be no representation without taxation. — Ludwig V

Other taxes such as import duties are more important. Also, government expenditure as a percentage of GDP is much lower. The government simply spends less.

There was no personal income tax anywhere in the world until around the first world war.

Representation is an illusion anyway. Why pay for an illusion? Or give people the choice if they want to pay for that. I don't.

Now, I have a virus-checker (Norton). I have never had any security problem. — Ludwig V

A well-structured operating system does not need a virus-checker. I don't have one installed, because it is irrelevant in my context. In fact, anti-virus software does not even exist for Linux because by design viruses cannot spread on Linux.

... apart from your ability to pay your taxes? — Ludwig V

In all practical terms, personal income tax is not even implemented outside the West.

They may theoretically have it on the books but almost no country outside the West has rolled it out in practice.

Instead, they have a final salary tax in the part of the economy that makes use of formal employment but that is just a (small) part of the economy. Normally, "small employers" are exempt. They usually also have a corporate income tax but "small businesses" are typically exempt.

There are many reasons for that, even just practical ones.

For a starters, half the population may be subsistence farmers who would not even be able to pay any personal income tax or who would be exempt anyway. They would also have serious trouble filling out the form. Secondly, they typically do not have a sufficiently complete population registry and address database, for them to send an income tax return to the entire population, let alone, to transient foreigners.

The ability to send out and process personal tax returns is in practice far beyond with most countries in the world can do.

And then you still have the problem of running after the masses of subsistence farmers and informal-economy traders such as street food vendors to get them to pay what they supposedly owe -- probably peanuts anyway.

Concerning foreigners, imagine that the local ruling mafia started harassing the foreign retirees here for personal income tax, or the digital nomads or the nomad capitalists? If just the rumor started spreading that they were about to do that, they would all jump on the plane to a neighboring country, be gone in no time, never to come back.

I do not have a TIN (Tax Identification Number) here and the vast majority of the locals do not have one either.

So you know how far to trust them? Or do you just think you know? Put a foot wrong and you might become an object of great political interest. — Ludwig V

The power of the local ruling mafia is continuously being challenged by other political clans who want to replace them. If you've got nothing to do with that, you are simply of no interest to them.

I'm really sorry, but the fact is that I have had many firm reassurances that IT is absolutely, finally secure, only to discover that it isn't. — Ludwig V

What exactly is insecure?

It really depends on the software that you use.

The software needs to be reproducible-build compliant free and open source only, turtles all the way down to the operating system. Example: Debian Linux running the Electrum wallet.

Secondly, it is necessary to physically prevent the secret from being exposed to the network. The secret may only be available on a network-disconnected machine -- or virtual machine, if you know how to manage that carefully. You always need two machines, physical or virtual ones, to implement this security principle.

I have used these principles since 2013. I have never had any security problem related to Bitcoin.

It's certainly a protection in a different league. So I'm not saying you are wrong to trust it. How does that square with your policy of distrust? — Ludwig V

I would have to distrust the math/cryptography. In fact, mathematicians and cryptographers generally do. That is why they invariably demand proof and then scrutinize it thoroughly. The method itself is already one of systematic distrust.

Some people regard those as very restricting. — Ludwig V

They are mostly a matter of self-discipline. If you happen to lapse -- shit happens -- then you can try to find the resolve to avoid that in the future. They are, in fact, not that restricting because they are supposed to reflect human nature. You can easily get used to it. Of course, you may have to unlearn some bad habits, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's like the habit of going to the gym. It's actually not that hard. People exaggerate that.

I'm sure you're not. They might be watching. — Ludwig V

Well, that would require one particular local ruling mafia in SE Asia to be interested in me, while I am not even there all the time, as I regularly end up in another ruling mafia's territory in SE Asia. Are they going to waste their time on that? I guess that they could. However, that is typically not what any local ruling mafia is interested in. They have other politically more interesting people on their radar as well as limited resources to watch them. For example, would the Vietnamese or Thai government be interested in me? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

You realize that the biblical God is the first practitioner of genocide, yes? And a serial offender at that. No interpretation required; it's just reading the words. And in the Laws sections it does indeed both prescribe and proscribe. Some of it still makes sense, some doesn't, and some disgusting. — tim wood

You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Sovereign nations will fight each other -- that is human nature -- and the results are invariably ugly. Lions will attack and kill deer as well. Life as a principle requires animals to devour other animals. None of that will ever change. Welcome to the real world!

In my opinion we're in the middle of the age of the death of religions based on the supernatural. And it will take multiple generations because believers won't change, but will instead die out. — tim wood

In terms of successful sexual reproduction, it is rather the unbelievers who are slated to die out. Religious people are pretty much never anti-natalist. Seriously, who makes all the children? Religious people or atheists?

I warned against anyone trying to do so and am against anyone trying to do so. I am against Hitlers and Pol Pots who put plans in action for their own personal utopian ideal. — I like sushi

I think that the truth about Nazi Germany is even worse than that.

Hitler was merely good at voicing what a large number of Germans were thinking already. If Hitler hadn't done it, someone else would have. Nowadays, they conveniently blame Hitler because the German people were supposedly innocent bystanders. They damn well know that they weren't.

Of course, there is another complication. The Versailles treaty was indeed quite unfair to the German Volk. So, not all their complaints were necessarily far-fetched. So, at least part of the problem was actually caused by the French desire for excessive vengeance.

Even the German animosity against the international Jewry did not come completely out of the blue. The Balfour Declaration led the Germans to suspect that the Rothschild clan had somehow managed to throw Germany under the bus. That was, of course, still not a reason to blame that on all the Jews.

https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/family_interests/walter_rothschild_and_the_balfour_declaration

Beginning in 1916, the British hoped that in exchange for their support of Zionism, “the Jews” would help to finance the growing expenses of the First World War, which was becoming increasingly burdensome. More importantly, policy-makers in the Foreign Office believed that Jews could be prevailed upon to persuade the United States to join the War.

If the Rothschild family was indeed instrumental in dragging the Americans kicking and screaming into world war I, then they did indeed throw Germany under the bus.

Their wikipedia page admits that the Rothschild family had been instrumental in funding the British victory in the Napoleonic wars but does not confirm their involvement in getting the Americans to join the war on the allied side in WWI.

On the flipside I would disagree with what I said in terms of personal goals but stick firmly to in if attempting to apply to society at large. — I like sushi

Changing society at large ... Have you already managed to pull off one, single change to society, no matter how small?

If not, then why do you expect to be able to do that in the future?

Choosing another society that has the desired change already, is much more realistic.

Dozens of millions of people have done it already. Doing so also requires some effort, but at least it is feasible.

I personally manage to avoid the top ten obnoxious annoyances on my own list of desiderata just by living in SE Asia instead of the West.

The West is slated to become even more obnoxious in the future but it won't be my problem. Isn't that a more realistic way of building your own utopia?

unless you are a fraudster! — Ludwig V

The anatomy of a Bitcoin heist typically falls into three categories:

- social engineering (80%). No solution.
- faulty implementation of hot server side wallet (15%). Not your keys, not your coins
- trusting client side wallet software that cannot be trusted (5%). https://walletscrutiny.com

What is true freedom? — Ludwig V

I define true (or maximum) freedom as keeping just the laws of God. This level of freedom is probably unattainable. At times, you will still have to cave in to the whims of the local ruling mafia. But then again, hopefully as little as possible.

You seem to trust Bitcoin. — Ludwig V

It's based on a collection of math/cryptographic theories, that I investigated -- starting in 2013 -- and that are not easy to refute. Well, I am still waiting for someone to successfully do that. If someone really can, he will probably become a trillionaire.

I definitely consider this impediment to confiscation to be more solid than a flimsy promise by the local ruling mafia. I consider so-called legal property rights to be mostly an illusion.

For example, I'd rather park my money in Bitcoin than in buying a house. I simply don't trust the house's deed. It's just a piece of paper that the local ruling mafia can revoke with the press of a button. They often do. Just forget to pay a parking fine and there you go.

Every inhabited place on earth is governed by a local ruling mafia. That is inevitable, simply, because that is human nature.

Fortunately, you can still choose which local ruling mafia that you are going to suffer.

Some are actually not that bad. They may even be quite welcoming. Some of them are even willing to issue a digital nomad visa, if you politely ask them, and if you pay the associated fee, of course.

The local ruling mafia is actually a quite manageable problem. I am certainly not complaining.

Nonetheless, in practice, it seems to last a lot better than political power. — Ludwig V

Seizure-prone wealth is protected by the flimsy promise by the government that they will respect your so-called "property rights".

Your house, your car, your business, your stocks, your bonds, the balance on your bank account are just promises not to confiscate them from you, for now.

Furthermore, whatever they demand from you, you will have to cave in. Otherwise, they will simply seize your seizure-prone wealth with a press of the button.

Seizure-prone wealth is a form of slavery. It is not true freedom.

I do not trust promises made by the local ruling mafia, and in fact, I don't have to.

The true value of Bitcoin wealth is its seizure resistance.

It's not just a press of the button to take your coins away from you.

It requires either bullying you into revealing your secret or else solving the intractable elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP).

Formally, the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP) is the problem of finding an integer value e within the bounds of 1 and the number of points on the elliptic curve (which ~= the order of the finite cyclic group), such that the scalar multiplication of a primitive element G with e, i.e. eG, produces another point P on the elliptic curve.

Before solving the ECDLP, the adversary must first successfully carry out a preimage attack on the RIPEMD-160 hash function, known to be quantum resistant.

For the time being, the NSA and other intelligence agencies accept the fact that they simply cannot not pull it off by means of computational power.

Instead of a flimsy promise that they won't attack your wealth, we have something much better here. I vastly prefer to rely on the cryptographic intractability of successfully doing it.

Every time someone wakes up to the fact that the ruling mafia cannot be trusted, Bitcoin further increases in value.

I trust that ultimately the true consensus will be to distrust.

All you have to do is read the texts themselves. God is clearly not a respecter of persons. But society tries to teach us to be respecters of persons. — tim wood

I do not interpret the text like that. It spells out particular types of misbehavior to avoid, but that is exactly what morality is about. I expect these scriptures to remain the dominant guidance for morality in the coming future. A society that teaches the opposite, is to be deemed degenerate.

God's notion of justice doesn't seem very just. — tim wood

Society indoctrinates us from early childhood into believing this. That is why you cannot trust modern people, including oneself, concerning matters of morality.

Driving your car causes inevitable wear and tear. — apokrisis

A car is not a living adversary. If it is not alive, then you can use statistics. If it is alive, then statistics are often misleading.

You are being a perfectionist in a world where averageness is quite good enough as a baseline for action. — apokrisis

In his book, "Black Swan. Impact of the highly improbable.", Nassim Taleb says that there are two situations to consider, mediocristan and extremistan.

In mediocristan, adding an individual to the sample, won't move the needle for the average. For example, if you have measured average height of a thousand people, adding one other person won't make any difference. You can happily model the situation according to a Gaussian bell curve.

In extremistan, adding an individual to the sample can drastically move the needle for the average. For example, adding Bill Gates to measure the average wealth of a thousand people, will completely change the situation. Bell curves do not work in that kind of situation.

According to Taleb, because of massive financialization of the economy and other reasons, we increasingly live in extremistan, where the Gaussian bell curve of averageness is misleading and is not good enough as a baseline for action. Taleb used to be a trader on capital markets. He made inordinate amounts of money by exploiting the fact that the calculation formulas used by his trading counterparts assumed mediocristan while in reality the situation was part of extremistan.

As far as I am concerned, the ruling mafia's bottom line is their problem and not mine. They are perfectly free to believe in fairy tales. However, they should never count on me to send the bill to.

Human attackers of course understand the principle from its other side. And that is what drives the hierarchical complexity. — apokrisis

More statistical theory might help you on how effective solutions are good enough. You don’t need exact precision. — apokrisis

You cannot protect a system from attackers who seek to exploit its vulnerabilities by means of statistically good enough solutions. It won't work.

Example: UNITED STATES v. KLYUSHIN (2022)

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-d-mas/2129870.html

In less than three years, Klyushin’s cybersecurity scam amassed more than $93 million.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/russian-businessman-found-guilty-90-million-hack-trade-conspiracy

Trial evidence showed that, between at least in or about January 2018 and September 2020, Klyushin, and allegedly Ermakov, Irzak, Sladkov and Rumiantcev, conspired to use stolen earnings information to trade in the securities of companies that are publicly traded on U.S. national securities exchanges, including the NASDAQ and the NYSE, in advance of public earnings announcements. Using the same malicious hacking techniques M-13 advertised to customers, Klyushin and, allegedly his co-conspirators, obtained inside information by hacking into the computer networks of two U.S.-based filing agents that publicly-traded companies used to make quarterly and annual filings through the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Armed with this information before it was disclosed to the public, Klyushin, and allegedly his co-conspirators, knew ahead of time, among other things, whether a company’s financial performance would meet, exceed or fall short of market expectations – and thus whether its share price would likely rise or fall following the public earnings announcement. Klyushin then traded based on that stolen information in brokerage accounts held in his own name and in the names of others.

No amount of hierarchical complexity can seal off this kind of vulnerabilities from attack. Every complex system is replete with an endless number of exploitable vulnerabilities. In fact, it is enough that just one low-ranking bureaucrat, who is apparently just some seemingly unimportant cog in the system, leaks the wrong information to the adversary, for corruption to start snow balling. You can imagine the damage if people higher up the ladder decide to start making money from their power, and they routinely do.

So, uncountable sets prevent us from totting up the universe as a whole? — ucarr

I don't understand how one can disprove Laplace's Demon using Cantor's theorem. Do you mind elaborating? — MoK

It was a reference to David Wolpert's and Josef Rukavicka's publications:

Cantor diagonalization. In 2008, David Wolpert used Cantor diagonalization to challenge the idea of Laplace's demon ... Wolpert's paper was cited in 2014 in a paper of Josef Rukavicka, where a significantly simpler argument is presented that disproves Laplace's demon using Turing machines, under the assumption of free will.[12]

They apparently used Cantor's theorem directly. It sounds like they could also have used Turing's Halting Problem instead.

Noson S. Yanofsky pointed out that Cantor's theorem is implicit in a whole host of diagonalization theorems including Turing's Halting Problem:

You cannot establish an onto mapping between a set and its power set.

(The power set of a set is the set of all its subsets)

Yanofsky demonstrates in his paper that Cantor's theorem is implicit also in theorems such as Godel's incompleteness theorem and Tarski's undefinability of the truth.

Cantor originally used this diagonalization argument between the natural numbers and the real numbers (which is its power set) to prove that there is a clear distinction between the countable infinity and uncountable infinity cardinalities.

(The cardinality of a set is just the number of elements in a set)

It basically means that a set and its power set never have the same size. The power set is always larger. This is the principle that ultimately seems to be at the core of the foundational crisis in mathematics.

As to the justice of "God's law," you're kidding, right? — tim wood

No. I believe that it is built into our biological firmware. We were preprogrammed with a sense for justice from birth. Societal education, however, corrupts it.

Corruption only needs to be kept within tolerable bounds. — apokrisis

The average strength of the wall of a besieged city does not matter. Only the weakest spot does.

The same holds true for protecting a computer system from a cyber attack. It simply does not matter that you have closed 99% of the open doors.

The same holds true for governments and their finances. It does not matter that corruption is under control in the department of education. It only means that the flood gates at the department of defense will go open even wider.

Statistics do not work against a living adversary.

You can indeed use statistical calculations to control the damage caused by hurricanes. You cannot do that, however, when it is about human adversaries.

That's true. But I was also thinking of the political influence wealth can have indirectly, not by influencing politicians. Where does that new factory go? Who going to be laid off? Where am I going to put my money? That sort of thing. Money talks. To put it another way, "it's all about economics, stupid" — Ludwig V

Yes, but most wealth is not seizure resistant.

If you do not fall in line, you may suddenly get an "audit" from the IRS, or from some other federal departments who will conveniently discover a host of worrisome "irregularities".

The wealth is your until the government decides that it isn't anymore.

There is no option to not obey a law that is enforced. — kudos

Actually, there certainly is.

A law is enforced only in a particular jurisdiction. Outside of it, there are other sovereign states with their own laws.

Therefore, you can avoid annoying laws by engaging in jurisdiction shopping.

You can physically move elsewhere, you can set up companies elsewhere, you can buy assets such as for example real estate elsewhere. You can even switch to a different passport and avoid passport-based harassment. You can divorce yourself completely from any particular ruling mafia by replacing it by other ones.

Hence, if you do not like a particular ruling mafia, you can certainly get rid of it completely.

That works the other way round, as well. It is simply not possible to prevent the concentration of wealth and therefore of political power. — Ludwig V

I'm not sure if wealth necessarily leads to political power.

You would still need to make the connections with people who actually have the political power. Some wealthy people pull that off, but not all.

All politically powerful people get approached by wealthy people for political privileges, but not necessarily the other way around.

BUT rich people from SE Asia go to the US for better quality. — LuckyR

Better quality of what?

Abraham and the Exodus are folklore. The Israelites occupied a specific area.

Muhammad had a number of occupations. The Arabs weren't nomadic. — frank

Oh wow. I wasn’t expecting your ideology to be quite so narrowly based. — apokrisis

Imagine that I say that every claim is corrupt.

It won't work because in that case, the claim that claims that, is also corrupt.

Hence, there must exist truthful statements. The question is now: Where do we find them?

Well, not in our contemporary society. Everybody alive today has been corrupted from early childhood by our degenerate society. So, let's go back as far as we can to find a society with substantially less corruption. That is how I ended up at the nomadic shepherds. Going back earlier than that, is not possible, because the people who came before that, did not leave any written records.

I simply do not believe what modern people say on morality because their views were inculcated by the degenerate society in which we live.

"If we knew everything about the positions of every particle in the universe, we would have a complete physics database and could predict every physical event." -- Lee Smolin — ucarr

That is another version of Laplace's demon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past could be present before its eyes.

This demon cannot exist because of Cantor's generalized theorem (or "Cantor's diagonalization").

Cantor's generalized theorem says that there is no onto mapping possible between a set and its power set, even when such set has an infinite cardinality.

Cantor diagonalization. In 2008, David Wolpert used Cantor diagonalization to challenge the idea of Laplace's demon. He did this by assuming that the demon is a computational device and showed that no two such devices can completely predict each other.[10][11] Wolpert's paper was cited in 2014 in a paper of Josef Rukavicka, where a significantly simpler argument is presented that disproves Laplace's demon using Turing machines, under the assumption of free will.[12]

Noson S. Yanofsky pointed out in "A Universal Approach to Self-Referential
Paradoxes, Incompleteness and Fixed Points" that the following theorems are all a consequence of Cantor's generalized theorem:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0305282

Instances of diagonal theorems

• Russell’s Paradox
• Grelling’s Paradox
• Richard’s Paradox
• Liar Paradox
• Turing’s Halting Problem
• Diagonalization Lemma
• Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem
• Gödel-Rosser’s Incompleteness Theorem
• Tarski’s Undefinability of the truth
• Parikh Sentences
• Löb’s Paradox
• The Recursion Theorem
• Rice’s Theorem
• Von Neumann’s Self-reproducing Machines

Just happen to be reading a book about the early Iron Age, and the Israelites weren't nomadic. Arabs weren't either. I can see how you'd get that impression though. — frank

https://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-a-nomad.html

Abraham is the first person in Scripture who seems to be specifically identified as living a nomadic lifestyle. He moved from place to place in a land that was not his own, living in tents.
...
When the people of Israel left Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years living as nomads. Even the tabernacle was mobile, so that it could be moved from place to place.

https://www.the-faith.com/featured-posts/prophet-muhammad-working-as-a-shepherd/

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) was still young, Abu Talib was going through a financial crisis; he had many mouths to feed, and business wasn’t going so well. To help his uncle get through those hard times, the Prophet (peace be upon him) worked as a shepherd. In an authentic Hadith, the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said,“Every Prophet that Allah sent herded sheep (at one time or another during his life).” The companions said, “And even you?” He (peace be upon him) said, “Yes, I herded them upon Qararit.” (Ibn Hajar said that scholars mention two possible meanings of Qararit: it is either a place in Makkah, or it is a portion of a dinar or dirham, in which case the Prophet (peace be upon him) was mentioning his wages. (Al-Bukhari)

But we know quite a lot about hunter-gatherers. And what reliable sources are you using when it comes to nomadic shepherds? Any cites? — apokrisis

The Torah and the Quran emerged out of nomadic shepherds.

And every system can be policed. — apokrisis

That is not the problem. The problem is:

And who exactly polices the police itself?

That is why anti-oligarchy and anti-monopoly policies exist. — apokrisis

That is not the problem. The problem is:

Concerning the people who devise and carry out anti-oligarchy policies, they are an oligarchy themselves. So, who exactly will enforce anti-oligarchy policies against them?

The Romans already understood the problem very well:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase found in the Satires (Satire VI, lines 347–348), a work of the 1st–2nd century Roman poet Juvenal. It may be translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?" or "Who will watch the watchmen?".

The original context deals with the problem of ensuring marital fidelity, though the phrase is now commonly used more generally to refer to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions of power, an issue discussed by Plato in the Republic.

The custodes custodorum problem is fraught with infinite regress and is therefore fundamentally unsolvable. All solutions proposed always amount to bamboozling the populace into believing that they work, while that is simply not possible.

This time, we solved the problem! No, you didn't.

The political question is what do we think about it if we extrapolate the trend - the trickle becoming the flood? Do we still think it such a wonderful thing? Does it successfully scale? — apokrisis

They have apparently reached the limit in Barcelona, Gran Canaria, Mallorca, and Venice. The bottom of Spanish and Italian income ladder are now chanting "Tourist go home!"

I agree. I already said that 10 years ago. These places were dangerous tourist traps back then already. There's little point in visiting a place where 80% of the people around you are just other visitors.

But then again, as a nomad you can go and live for a while in Ulaan Bator, Mongolia, or even better, in one of their provincial cities, and get everyone incessantly staring at you, including the prettiest of their females.

These people want to talk to me. I am apparently "interesting" to them, the reason being that they don't often see a specimen like me in their godforsaken outpost of the world. "Can we invite you over for dinner tonight? We have two daughters!"

Get to that question and you have a political position to advance here. At the moment you are just describing running away from problems rather than fixing problems. — apokrisis

Instead of trying to solve everyone else's problems, I am solving my own. It works like a charm. I am completely satisfied with the outcome.

Why should I be interested in everybody else's problems? Are they even interested in mine?

That is, religion has long served this precise social function. And sadly religious institutions are also famously corruptible. — apokrisis

Welcome to the real world!

My own tactics consist in accepting the morality of the nomadic shepherds as my own moral standard. The first farmers were too degenerate already. I don't trust them.

If I could, I would reprogram myself around the morality of the original hunter-gatherers but these guys could not write. So, they did not transmit a copy of their moral rules to us. That is why I make do with the nomadic shepherds.

A constitutional society seems better. But the US is an example of how that can eventually go if it doesn’t keep its power balancing mechanisms politically up to date. — apokrisis

Power will predictably accumulate inside a small oligarchy. These people have now learned to game the system. It never stood a chance to begin with. Every system can be gamed. If it can be gamed, it will be gamed.