The secret identity of 'Satoshi Nakamoto' could be Wei Dai, Nick Szabo and Hal Finney (together) - the joint creators of Bitcoin.
I won't post or link to the evidence, but for those interested, the hacker community /reddit seem to have some convincing evidence that these folks are indeed the joint creators of Bitcoin.
These folks are known to the transhumanist community. Wei Dai in particular, is known to be involved in AGI research and has made real independent research breakthroughs on his own ('Less Wrong' top-rated poster).
Point of interest: 'Satoshi Nakamoto' could control 1 million bitcoins, with an estimated value currently approaching $US 1 billion. This is more than enough to run a secret Manhattan-style AGI project that no government agency or corporation could match.
"If technology collapsed, there would be no similar incremental approach available for successor civilizations. They would have to jump from scavenging our landfills to mile-deep mines. I think the same would hold true for oil and gas drilling."
Some of the survivors would remember (not in the least through archaeology) what is possible technologically and they would know about deep lying resource deposits. Technology could advance with far less initial resource consumption because the search for new resources and technologies could be directed (they wouldn't need an entire consumer society to support innovative enterprise because governments and businesses would already know a lot of inventions are possible and commercially viable: investment where profit is assured.) Even if everyone forgot about the old world they'd eventually rediscover scientific principles but development would be slow because science would be less profitable.
The secret identity of 'Satoshi Nakamoto' could be Wei Dai, Nick Szabo and Hal Finney (together) - the joint creators of Bitcoin.
I won't post or link to the evidence, but for those interested, the hacker community /reddit seem to have some convincing evidence that these folks are indeed the joint creators of Bitcoin.
These folks are known to the transhumanist community. Wei Dai in particular, is known to be involved in AGI research and has made real independent research breakthroughs on his own ('Less Wrong' top-rated poster).
Point of interest: 'Satoshi Nakamoto' could control 1 million bitcoins, with an estimated value currently approaching $US 1 billion. This is more than enough to run a secret Manhattan-style AGI project that no government agency or corporation could match.
"If technology collapsed, there would be no similar incremental approach available for successor civilizations. They would have to jump from scavenging our landfills to mile-deep mines. I think the same would hold true for oil and gas drilling."
Some of the survivors would remember (not in the least through archaeology) what is possible technologically and they would know about deep lying resource deposits. Technology could advance with far less initial resource consumption because the search for new resources and technologies could be directed (they wouldn't need an entire consumer society to support innovative enterprise because governments and businesses would already know a lot of inventions are possible and commercially viable: investment where profit is assured.) Even if everyone forgot about the old world they'd eventually rediscover scientific principles but development would be slow because science would be less profitable.