Thinking Aloud, Along the Way

Our credibility and accountability are more important in the hyper-online, post-truth world than ever before. Our public conversations need more honest brokers and we need more transparent ways to demonstrate that quality. To that end, I believe it's important to clearly state opinions, outlooks and expectations about the world - and to do so in a public place that is open to scrutiny and resistant to cheating.

My goal with this page is to work towards that. I intend to prepend items to the top of this list and for each one to provide a link to a timestamped proof that the opinion or prediction therein was made on a particular date and hasn't been altered. As my stances on certain issues change, I will add new items, never update old items.
In this way, I hope that it will be clear how and why my position on certain topics has changed over time. We should be comfortable changing our minds as our inventories of values and knowledge change over time and as the world changes around us (and we should support other people changing their minds, as well).

A Bitcoin strategic reserve will not be created in 2025

Trump will either not attempt to create a Bitcoin strategic reserve, or he will be blocked somewhere else. Either way, I don't think this will happen in 2025.

As a result, the Bitcoin price will drop, probably with support around the $70,000 area. Following the general historical pattern of a sound money emerging on the market, this will be a "temporary" slump and the price will return to and surpass current levels over the longer run (3-4 years).

That said... If a strategic reserve does get created: The Bitcoin price will skyrocket to multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars or more; other countries (potentially just the non-BRICS-countries) will follow.

Health guidance will become politicized

Whatever the thing is that homogenizes opinion in all of: corporate news media, mainstream entertainment, three-letter-agency guidelines and pharmaceutial business interests - this thing is going to become hostile to healthy lifestyles.

This mindshare complex will give advice that is the opposite of whatever you should do to be healthy. And given that this complex is highly aligned with the Blue Team of American politics, anyone seeking to improve their health will be cast as Red Team members - often unfairly.

Many similar topics are needlessly politicized in this manner. I suspect human health will be the next to fall.

Update on 2024-11-12: Two months after my prediction, the NY Times (a deep blue team player) is right on schedule: link to article archive. Not only is much of this article in conflict with high-quality nutritional science, but it needlessly politicizes the topic: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others claim [seed oils] are harming our health, but the evidence suggests otherwise".

Omicron: greater transmissibility, lower virulence

Omicron will be more transmissible than previous COVID variants, but its virulence will prove to be lower. That is, fewer severe cases and deaths, after controlling for vaccination status.

I believe that the mainstream media will try to obscure this good news for as long as possible. Longer than scientific prudence warrants, at least.

Example first item

This is the description of where I stand on this item and what has recently influenced this position.

You'll notice that if you follow the "Timestamp proof" link, the content of that GitHub Gist is identical to this element, and that its created date matches the date noted here (and that it has no revisions since then). Sometimes a nostr post will be used instead, but the concept remains the same - a timestamped artifact.