An 11 year old pointed out to me that what is in fortune cookies are actually statements.

However, the speed of the computing hardware and the sophistication of the software has no relevance because creativity can't be expressed in an algorithm. Every possible model of the brain will lack the fundamental cause of human creativity— every human brain is unique. Thus each of billions of brains is able to contemplate possibilities and scenarios differently enough so that it is more likely at least one brain will contemplate some unique idea that fits each set of possibilities at each point in time.

An algorithm or model can describe what and how to do and even be generalized to respond to unknown future scenarios by observing patterns and deducing rules about its environment, but it can't vary its imperfections nondeterministically, because the input entropy (to the algorithm) is known a priori and is finite. Whereas, for the collection of all human brains, the entropy is unbounded and thus the future can't be predetermined, i.e. isn't deterministic.

Imagine if life was perfect and without chance. Life would be deterministic and could be modeled with an algorithm, then failure couldn't exist, everything would be known in advance, and thus there could be no change that wasn't predictable, i.e. real change wouldn't exist and the universe would be static. Life requires imperfection and unbounded diversity, else life doesn't exist and isn't alive. Equality and perfection are the ambition of the insane who probably don't realize they must destroy life to reach their goal.

To make the computers as creative as the humans would require inputting the entropy from all the human brains. Yet there is no plausible way to extract the future uniqueness of human brains other than to allow them interact with the environment over unbounded time, because the occurrence of creativity is probablistic (by chance) as the dynamic diversity of human minds interact with the changing environment. The term unbounded means there is no way to observe or capture that uniqueness a priori other than through the future of life as it unfolds.

Inmates can be forced to do manual labor because it is possible to observe the performance of the menial tasks. However, it is impossible (or at least very inefficient and imprecise) to determine whether a human is feigning inability or giving best effort at a knowledge task. Manual labor is fungible, i.e. nearly any person with average IQ and dexterous limbs can be substituted to do the task. Whereas, knowledge production such as programming the computer, authoring content or developing marketing plans, requires diversity of thought.

Unsophisticated thinkers have an incorrect understanding of knowledge creation, idolizing a well-structured top-down sparkling academic cathedral of vastly superior theoretical minds. Rather knowledge primary spawns from accretive learning due to unexpected random chaotic fitness created from multitudes of random path dependencies that can only exist in the bottom-up free market. Top-down systems are inherently fragile because they overcommit to egregious error (link to Taleb's simplest summary of the math).

Relatedly, he also believes that universities are better at public relations and claiming credit than generating knowledge. He argues that knowledge and technology are usually generated by what he calls "stochastic tinkering" rather than by top-down directed research.

Thanks for teaching me why I now hate checkpoints. They could be an insidious vulnerability for the fiat politics to take over the PoW decentralization!

This is one reason why I say that cryptocurrencies simply may not work. Ever. If there are people, there is politics. Possibly math can be made to serve as a partial substitute, but we certainly aren't there yet. As we know giving all the power to the miners is not the way, especially when no demonstrated mechanism for decentralizing them. There are ideas, as we know, so we will see.

I was slightly surprised to see the BCX won that philosophical exchange handily IMO. Impressed.

On the face of it, yes they are only statements and quite cheap to produce. But this ignores how knowledge is formed. BCX's reply eloquently captured Taleb's and my theories about the formulation of value (via knowledge). It is the (long-tail) chance meeting of information that causes symbiosis and genesis.

You actually wrote something that made laugh.  

Maybe if you keep your posts short...

Nobody won or lost, merely a chance meeting of information.

No matter what answer BCX gave my response would have been the same.

He could have replied having used the definition of fortune being wealth.  He did give a good answer.

Another way to knowledge is not to take things for granted and to look at the world and everything you do with fresh eyes.  Children do this and most adults lose this.

Why did I even ask what seems like a meaningless question out of the blue?

This is one reason why I say that cryptocurrencies simply may not work. Ever. If there are people, there is politics. Possibly math can be made to serve as a partial substitute, but we certainly aren't there yet. As we know giving all the power to the miners is not the way, especially when no demonstrated mechanism for decentralizing them. There are ideas, as we know, so we will see.

I think Bitcoiners are especially delusional with regards to what they beleive is actual decentralisation. At least with most altcoin people we can see that true decentralisation is something that's being worked towards.  

Bitcoiners started in 2010-2012 selling people on this "anonymous" cryptocurrency. Then over time that faded away and "trustless" became the sales point. Now we're left with "decentralised" being the primary feature, and we all know how "decentralised" Bitcoin really is.

It just might not be possible to reach that holy grail. People are trying though, so we'll see. But even so, doesn't mean that we can't build interesting things and come up with interesting uses on top of our pseudo-decentralised currencies. They still might offer an effective alternative to some other forms of commerce in certain situations.