Bitcoin has mainly thus far mostly allowed for some geeks to get rich and some criminals to move around money. It's actual impact on society is best described as it wasted a bunch of electricity.

Maybe, but crypto currency in some form could see widespread use at some point. Perhaps it won't be Bitcoin, but the underlying technology. Turing's machines weren't directly used, but the principles he came up with impact us today.

I'm quite sure that his Enigma-like machines were used heavily and most enthusiastically.

edit: Specifically, this machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe

The enigma machines were typewriter like devices of nazi manufacture designed to allow users to type clear text and produce cypher text that could be typed into devices that shared a secret to produce the original clear text.

Alan Turing is known for

- Being a primary figure in the effort to break the enigma machine code so that messages could be decoded without stealing the secret keys used. This was tactically valuable.

- Creating one of 2 mathematically equivalent logical models of computation eventually shown to be equivalent.

He is thus of pivotal importance in the development of modern computers, the defeat of the nazis, and codebreaking.

If you haven't heard of any of this it behooves you to read up a bit.

> - Being a primary figure in the effort to break the enigma machine code so that messages could be decoded without stealing the secret keys used. This was tactically valuable.

That is obviously what I'm referring to, what are you on about? It would behoove you to refrain from needlessly condescending replies.

I wasn't aware of any similarity between Turings Machines and the enigma machines. That's actually interesting thanks.

Did the original post say "his enigma machine" implying turings enigma machine? or did it say Enigma-"like" machine.

I certainly make enough typographical mistakes myself no particular shame in that.

The post that I responded to said "Turing's machines," I assume this didn't mean "Turing machines" because that's an abstract concept so what would it even mean for it to be "used directly?"

All I meant to say is that machines designed/built by Turing were in fact very, very useful in their time. I was too lazy about it though and should have looked up the name in the beginning.

Its impact on global warming includes not only the carbon footprint of all the electricity it wastes, but also all the hot air and fermenting bullshit generated by people yapping and shilling about it.

crypto-facilitated access to psychedelics alone has radically changed 10s of thousands of lives & will have deep long term societal ripples.

You would need to substantiate that

- A greater number of people took psychedelics because they could now order them via the mail and pay in crypto

- Psychedelics change people's lives meaningfully

- the kind of people who buy drugs on the internet are the kind that are demographically likely to experience positive life changes from psychedelics.

I'm not saying your wrong. I'm more saying send me the link to the book when you write it.

'would need to' lol.

What about pragmatic discussions in domains where clear data isn't accessible?

Deriving high probability conclusions from high probability premises?

>A greater number of people took psychedelics because they're more accessible due to anonymous, location independent markets

Likelihood of this not being true approaches zero IMO.

> Psychedelics change people's lives meaningfully

Sufficient research exists to back this up. Michael Pollan's book cites many.

> the kind of people who buy drugs on the internet are the kind that are demographically likely to experience positive life changes from psychedelics.

You may want to note: most would agree by volume, those buying psychs online are also distribute them with their social sphere. The dark net facilitates local area networks of psych access. There's no a 1st order relationship here.

If any legitimate currency were ever transitioned to a cryptocurrency backing, this would be an obvious choice. If not, it wouldn't. Although not knowing who is Satoshi Nakamoto makes it very hard to put his face on a banknote.

It's not straightforward to put a face of an anonymous entity on a banknote.