RichardGibbons

Come on, you and I both know that nothing I write will ever get a kinder response from you. In 2008, oil demand in the USA alone fell by 1.1M barrels in a single year without the tailwinds of rising environmentalism and the compelling economics of renewables. 5M is unlikely but plausible, particularly considering that pretty well everywhere but USA cares about climate change. (Plus, I think you don't really understand the concept of tipping points, but whatever.) That said, I understand your reaction. If a hypothetical scenario would completely annihilate your portfolio, it's more comfortable closing your eyes and attacking the hypothetical than seriously thinking about the question. (The irony is, I think I'm probably doing you a disservice on this thread. By raising these questions, I'm making you entrench yourself into position which will make you slower to change your opinion when scary stuff starts to happen. Sorry for that.)

I agree with that--barring a significant breakthrough like cold-fusion, I don't think we get rid of all combustion-based generation. But if we are able to get rid of half, I would still think that would have a huge impact on the use of oil and gas. I really like the theoretical idea of using electric vehicle batteries to address variance in demands for electricity, even if there are huge practical issues with that strategy.

Yeah, that's what I've done, and what's inspired my comment. The interesting thing is that, if I listen to liberals as you think I am, my conclusion would be that nothing is being done to target CO2. It's mainly the non-liberal point of views that are leading me in the direction of: "change is coming". Of course, I suppose that your way of communicating is to constantly use ad hominem attacks before substance, so I'm not really surprised that you responded to my honest question in this way. It's a pity though, because I feel like you could actually contribute a lot of value if you weren't so angry.

I wonder about whether the energy stocks are buggy-whip companies. It feels like we're on the edge of a pretty fast transformation to environmentally-friendly energy sources (e.g. the economics of solar and wind, the move to electric vehicles, the move to autonomous vehicles). I wonder what will happen if, for instance, demand falls by 5M barrels over the course of a couple of years and then keeps declining. With a commodity like oil, I feel a 5% drop in demand could nuke prices. Thus, it seems to me that energy doesn't have much margin of safety when the demand is uncertain. I'm curious what perspectives other people have on this.

Interesting. Thanks for your perspective and honesty, Grant. It sounds like you've done a fair amount of research on the topic--and I'm clueless when it comes to engineering--so it's interesting to hear your impressions. It's pretty rare to read such an honest analysis of where you think you could be wrong and how you'd handle it if you were, so I really appreciate that. I really respect that degree of intellectual honesty.

You sound pretty logical and pretty convinced of your view, Grant, so I'm curious how you will respond if you're proven false. (I know that you don't view it as possible, but I'm curious about the hypothetical scenario, even if it could never come to pass.) So, if hypothetically, he does succeed in one of these impossible projects, would you conclude that you just aren't that good an engineer? Or maybe you just aren't good at judging other people's work? Or would it be more like you just didn't see the thing that made the project possible, and so you're a good engineer, but just missed something? Something else? The reason I'm asking is because I find resolving cognitive dissonance fascinating. You're logical and have made a huge statement that stakes your view of yourself on Musk's inability to achieve his goals. Since you seem to value intellectual honesty highly, I'm really curious how you'd resolve the cognitive dissonance in a scenario where you proved to be wrong. (And also, since you value intellectual honesty, I suspect you might be able to answer this hypothetical question honestly, which is why I'm asking it now.)

Don't worry about it, Cardboard. I'm pretty sure that everyone who's read your messages understands what's going on here.

I agree completely. That's why it's entertainment, not an attempt to get rich. It literally isn't worth my time to mine, and it also isn't worth my time to take the money I've put into mining and invest it elsewhere because the amounts we're discussing are negligible. It's only worthwhile doing because I get entertainment from it. When I stop getting entertained by it, I'll stop. The electricity cost is interesting in that my electricity usage has gone down year over year since I started doing this. My only hypothesis for why that would happen is because I replaced my PC and monitor, and current technology is significantly more efficient than the old.

Hmm, I guess the other factor is the residual value of the card. Right now, there's bids of $530 for it on eBay, so that closes the gap even more. If I sell the card and get something $300 cheaper (to completely reverse the cryptocurrency part of the purchase), then by your math, I've actually come out ahead compared to buying bitcoin. That's surprising to me. Like you, I would have thought that, over this period of time with the big bitcoin appreciation, bitcoin would've been way ahead of my mining. I don't think it makes the decision good or bad, but it is interesting.

No, I didn't see that, or at least I didn't remember it. That's totally not cool, I think.

Putting aside the entertainment from mining and the (non-mining) utility of a good graphics card, this still isn't the sort of reasoning I use because it's difficult to predict what will happen with security prices in the short term. For instance, based on this reasoning, it doesn't make any sense to have bought Bitcoin in September because you could have just bought Ripple in September at $0.171, and it's currently at $1.185. So, for every $300 of bitcoin you've held since then, you've lost $1,228. And you'd have done even better if you'd just bet it all on black 11 on the roulette wheel just before it came up. Deciding whether a short-term bet on volatile securities was a good decision based on the outcome is usually a mistake, I think. Particularly if you allow the outcome to influence your emotions or future decision-making. (Like, what are you going to do today with the information that Ripple greatly outperformed Bitcoin over the last 3 months? Based on your "you shouldn't have bought a card, you should have bought bitcoin" reasoning, you're probably now required to sell all your bitcoins to buy ripple. :) )

Yeah, this is a good warning, SD. In my case, I bought a PC in September because my old one was 7 years old, slow, and getting BSOD every few days. I got a better graphics card than I would have otherwise--maybe an incremental cost of $300--so I could mine effectively. Normally my computer is on whenever I'm awake, so the incremental cost of electricity is low. I don't know if it was a good decision, but seemed like a reasonable gamble in that $300 isn't that much money to me and I've enjoyed doing it. Economically, it has paid off, returning about $600 so far. Of course, that's just an outcome that says little about whether the decision to buy the better card had a positive expected return. Even if one happens to win at roulette, it doesn't imply it was a smart decision to play.

You think that head to head hit was a deliberate attempt to injure? It was certainly a penalty, but it looks to me like a random mistake in a fast-moving game, akin to the safety's mistake against Minnesota last week. (That said, this was a bigger mistake. That one cost one football game. This sort of mistake can cost careers.)

Interesting. Based on your thoughts, I may give it a shot too.

FWIW, I am mining zcash with a 1070, and recently I've been making in the region of $3-5 per day. At this instant, it's $3.54 per day. Your son's 1070 TI should be slightly better than that. It's not going to make anyone wealthy, but it's pretty fun.

Thanks Cigar. The Fortin-Paradis paper is interesting. I don't actually buy their conclusions because most of their conclusions are derived from a survey of people who are extremely biased to present a particular view, plus they seem to hand-wave away social costs. (Like, if you think immigration is a key component of the Vancouver bubble, what is the cost of locals not actually being able to afford accommodation in the city? What's the cost of businesses not actually being able to hire employees because it isn't economically feasible to work here when housing prices are so high?) The other interesting part was the quantification of the value of the 5-year loans the investors provide the government. If the authors believe these loans were so valuable, I wonder if they'd support the government simply borrowing money on the open market (saving most of the administrative costs of the program, while paying interest), and investing themselves without bothering with the "immigrant investor" part. It's hard to know from the numbers they provide if this is economical, but I suspect that their number support this sort of centralized economy. Nevertheless, despite the flaws, it is interesting seeing someone attempt to quantify the value. I find the tax numbers a far more compelling argument, but I think all those tax numbers came out after this study, so the authors can't be criticized for missing those. Richard

I'd be interested in the stats that you have that show it's a good one. From what I have seen, it looks like win/lose. After five years, people coming in through IIP declare less income than refugees. One could make the the argument that they're "investing" in houses, but I don't think this is a good thing when most IIPs are settling in two overcrowded cities, helping to push housing prices far out of reach of the median household. Thus, to me, it seems like investor immigrants are a big net negative. On the other hand, it seems like refugees and immigrants--who will build a life here, work hard, and contribute to the country--add far more value. Richard

I agree that there's a change in tone. I think it's largely the result of different people posting, as opposed to people who were bearish becoming bullish.

Yes, it is. There have been hundreds of different coins created, none of which even comes within two orders of magnitude of 100K tx/s. It's certainly a big technical problem, even if it's a problem for which people have proposed solutions. Richard

Bitcoin can't even process 10 transactions per second. (In contrast, Visa has processed 47,000 transactions per second.) To actually do a transaction, it costs $6-20. If the network can't handle people purchasing stuff with bitcoin, and people get charged huge amounts to actually make a purchase, it seems unlikely to ever be a currency.

As far as I can see, foreign exchange gains and losses are taxable. Like, if you were trading regular currencies, you'd have to pay tax, right? Is there something I'm missing? I'm also confused by your reasoning on #2. Don't the people who own the crypto have a domicile, so therefore they have to pay taxes? I'm not sure why crypto existing only in cyberspace matters. I hope I'm wrong about this--I was planning to pay tax on my crypto gains. So, if you're right about those answers, I'm really interested. Or is your argument more like, "the IRS has no way of knowing, therefore you don't have to pay tax"?

No. Resilience means "recover quickly from difficulties". Anti-fragile means "become stronger as a result of difficulties".

It's pretty amazing actually. Even on the simplest, non-controversial thread, Cardboard feels the need to start attacking people personally. I'm guessing that it might be because, when he feels unsure of his knowledge or position, he goes ad hominem to make himself feel less uncertain. Or maybe it's more of a vendetta thing, where Cardboard has classifies some posters as "enemies", and therefore needs to attack whenever he sees them, akin to a dog barking at the postman. Or something else?

For me, it was somewhere around 1987 when I was 15. I started with TA, quickly abandoned that, and went toward mining stocks (basically buying when no news was coming out, and selling just before drilling results were released) and options investing. In grad school in 1996, I abandoned mining stocks to gravitate toward value investing. In the mid-2005, I began to focus less on cigar-butts and more on competitive advantages. In the last 4-5 years, I've been much more about growth with competitive advantages.

You know, Cardboard really seems to love turning investment threads into political threads. I've been respecting Sanjeev's decision to restrict the political discussion to the political boards, but if the group believes that these threads should be politicized, I'll start throwing my hat in. After all, embarrassing, foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing rants like Cardboard's previous post really do encourage responses. Or at least some mockery.