Actually, hell let me throw a challenge at you:

Please explain the value in trying to understand gravity in a way that is general enough to also apply to numerous other fields that are deemed to "have value" but that excludes trying to understand human behavior.

If you can do so in a way that is meaningful and isn't intellectually dishonest I'll be surprised.

I use "probably" because I'm able to recognize the weaknesses and potential for flaws in the results inherent in any study that involves humans as the subjects and more importantly, the mind and behaviors. It's funny that you're taking someone being honest about known limitations of a field as somehow a bad thing. Instead of being intellectually honest and acknowledging that, should I have tried for rhetorical points and overstated my case?

As to your request for empirical evidence about the value of the experiments, you do understand that "value" is inherently subjective, right? There are plenty of people who find no value what-so-ever in science or any other intellectual pursuit (and we make fun of them here on /. quite frequently). Given this discussion, I'm quite certain that you and I ascribe different values to a great many things. I personally think there's a cost/benefit to any field of study, and that if the benefits outweigh the costs, there's value in that study. In this case, you may not find value in trying to understand why human beings do the things they do, and that's your right; I, however, do find value in trying to understand human behaviors. In fact, I find enough value in it that I'm willing to accept that the investigation into those behaviors will be challenging, probabilistic vs. deterministic, and often frustrating when compared to other disciplines.

The tl;dr thing is this: I find as much value in trying to understand gravity as I do in trying to understand why human beings do the things they do, even if it's a hell of a lot harder to design experiments and the results are a hell of a lot muddier when you involve subjects as complex as humans.

There's different levels of replication.

In physics, you can generally replicate an experiment vary precisely if you've got a handle on the factors that went into that experiment - control the environment, etc. You can have an almost perfect replication. Yay, science!

In social psychology research you can't ever even approach that same level of control over the environment the experiment takes place in. The subject will be different - even if it's the same subject used in the first experiment, because people change over time/exposure. The interviewer will be different because people change over time. The dynamic between interviewer and subject will be different. The history of the subject will be different as will the history of the interviewer as will the place the interview is taking place, etc. etc. etc.

The best such research can do is to either find that there is a tendency for x to happen in y circumstances, but it might not always be the case.

And, actually, there is a fair amount of basic replication that goes on in many psychological studies; when I was in the field working on studies we would routinely include certain basic measures that had been used in tens of thousands of studies before and compare anticipated vs. actual outcomes.

But even if it doesn't get replicated it actually has some value in that it would indicate that whatever the original experiment felt was a contributing factor to the main reported effect, a lack of easy replication under mostly similar circumstances indicates that that factor probably isn't as strong as hypothesized, and it cuts off a (probably) blind alley.

Dude, seriously, you are such the caricature of an internet tough guy, it's fucking awesome. And I admire your commitment to the charade, too.

Just remember, some people aren't in on the joke and might take you seriously and think the incredibly stupid shit you're claiming you have done is a good idea.

Just saying "that's not cool" would do more than sitting around passively when you do see it happen.

I won't shit on people who don't say anything when they see something happen - maybe they're afraid, I don't know - but I certainly will applaud people who do say something.

Actually, what I want is for people to quit being assholes to each other over pointless bullshit, but that's not going to happen. It's not so much "treat me better" but more "treat EVERYONE better." That's not a man thing, a girl thing, a woman thing, or whatever - it's a person thing. And to be honest, the whole "men should put up with constant verbal abuse because they are manly" thing (paraphrased, of course) is pretty fucking stupid.

If one is incapable of engaging in an activity without a massive amount of insanely crude shit talking, perhaps one should not be spending time around other people until one becomes more civilized, no? In online gaming, fortunately, we have many options for removing those who won't remove themselves. Ignore lists exist for a reason, and being willing and able to kick or ban people who routinely go out of their way to shit on other people helps as well. I don't take shit-talking personally, as the person doing it knows nothing about me, but that doesn't mean I care to have my gaming time be an unending stream of abuse. I give people engaging in it 1 chance, and if they keep going after I politely request they tone it down, they (usually) functionally cease to exist for me. And, I should say, my threshold for what I consider egregious is pretty high, though usually some kind of highly targeted insult (usually to race, gender, etc.) will do the trick.

The reason for trying to cultivate a more civil community is not that I want to control what other people do or how they behave. It's that I really, really like gaming, I enjoy gaming online, and I want it to thrive and be something more people can partake in without feeling like they need to take a shower after every round because of all the terrible people they run across. A community dominated by trolls will die off very quickly; the best communities I've seen online are ones that have a bit of cultivation/moderation so that the absolute shitlords at least get weeded out.

If the government sold US dollars for bitcoin, I would say that sets a precedent that they are treating bitcoin like legal tender. A weak precedent, since the argument could be made that they "sell" US dollars for fighter jets, and yet fighter jets are not legal tender.

If the government accepted bitcoin for other things they offer, I would say that sets a precedent that they are treating bitcoins like legal tender. That would be a much stronger precedent.

If the government purchased things with bitcoin directly - as in used it to settle debts - then that would be the strongest possible precedent (short of them flat out saying "bitcoin is now legal tender") that they are treating bitcoin as legal tender.

The government is not treating bitcoins like they treat legal tender, not in any way, shape or form. I know you're probably just being silly with the "buy bitcoin with bitcoin" line, but there are - as I pointed out above - ways that you could establish a precedent that don't involve sophistry.

I didn't say anything about the intelligence of the process, or the fairness - just it is what it is.

They want their money as fast as they can get it, and couldn't care less about being "fair." They organize the sales of their items in whatever ways will make it more likely to sell and to make it as easy as possible for them to get rid of those things because they are not in the business of managing assets.

They are allowed to bundle things in a way that allows them to sell stuff and minimize overhead. To wit:

If there were a ton of buyers out there who would be willing and able to buy 3000 $5000 cars in one go, then yes, you bet your ass they would lump the sales of cars they take in that way. But, there aren't many buyers out there willing to spend 15 million dollars on a bunch of shitty used cars, so they instead sell them in smaller lots or individually, because that's the only way that those cars will sell.

With bitcoin, there are a ton of buyers out there who would be willing to pony up the deposit of $200k, as well as who would be willing to buy lots sized of 3000 coins at ~500-1000 dollars per coin, and it's a LOT easier to sell to those people than it is to sell to thousands of people who are buying a single coin or whatever.

And, actually, this is in a way MORE fair than having it open to everyone. Normal people - read: not rich - would not be able to get their hands on a single one of these coins UNLESS the bidding got up so high that the people with tons of money decided that yeah, there's no potential for profit to be made by buying them at that price. So "normal people" wind up paying so much/taking on risk for the coin that moneyed interests aren't willing to touch.

And, to pre-empt any silly "how is this different than the car auction" comparisons again, it's different in that selling a bitcoin on an exchange is (probably) easier to do than selling a used car is. When there are easier ways to make money, shitty used cars aren't worth snapping up to keep away from other people. And, actually, if you ever go to an auction of non-shitty cars, they wind up going almost ALWAYS to someone who has plans to flip the car, not actually use it. "Normal people" aren't going to be getting to participate in the auctions that are about making money rather than just obtaining a shitbox to help with your daily commute.

Okay - I take it back, and you will forevermore be considered "adorbs."

With regards to they (in this case law enforcement agencies involved in busting Silk Road) knowing everything:

I think as part of their investigation and bust of Silk Road, they almost certainly became aware of the identities of multiple people who are both interested and able and willing to buy the bitcoins at auction. I'm also willing to bet, given the strong libertarian/fuck the federal government bent of many people participating in bitcoin, they probably at least sent a memo to other agencies not involved in the Silk Road case directly.

The converse of this is that anyone who participates in this auction AND who cares about the privacy/anonymity aspects of bitcoin would have to be catastrophically stupid and pettily greedy. Not an uncommon combination, unfortunately, but they probably weren't flying under the radar to begin with, you know?

Basically this is just going to be a chance - maybe - for someone who already has money to make a few more bucks; the privacy/anonymity angle is interesting, but it doesn't seem like anything with teeth, I guess.

I dunno how meaningful it will be as a data point:

- You have a seller who (probably) doesn't give 2 shits about what happens to the value of what they are selling once the sale is complete dumping the things as fast as they can.

- It's a one-off transaction selling the things in bulk, through a process that is unique/doesn't follow the regularly used methods for bitcoin selling.

- It's getting a lot of attention because.

One way or another, whatever they get sold at, this bit of data isn't really too meaningful, except, maybe as just being kind of interesting to nerds.

And sorry, I didn't mean to be condescending there by saying adorable - I was more trying to shit on the snooping the US government does on random, inconsequential shit.

I'm going by the stated intent to prevent that which is in the summary. I don't know if there are laws about those associated with a civil forfeiture being eligible to bid on items from that forfeiture, but it seems like that's the intent, and it seems like since it's stated there it would be something worth investigating if trying to set up an entirely new process for handling this kind of disposition of assets.

My point here being not so much "what is right" but more "there are a lot of questions to be asked and answered about changing the way this kind of thing is done, and they are all very expensive to resolve, probably more expensive than the potential improvement of efficiency will ever be worth."

You're very confused.

Being able to pay for something with legal tender (US dollars) does not somehow make the things you buy with legal tender into legal tender itself. Nor does it somehow turn it into a currency. It sets no precedent.

Selling bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - at an auction in exchange for US dollars does not set ANY kind of precedent establishing that bitcoin - or ANYTHING ELSE - is now legal tender. In fact, it establishes the opposite.

What WOULD set a precedent is if the government called up some suppliers and gave them bitcoin directly in exchange for things that aren't legal tender, because then they would be saying that bitcoin is the same as US dollars.

What they are doing here is saying "we have these bitcoins (and other things) and we would rather have US dollars, which are legal tender. We will give you these bitcoins for dollars, which we will then go and use like real money."

This isn't difficult.

It's kind of adorable that you think they don't already know this kind of thing, given the amount of internal snooping they do already.

Also that you think they couldn't tank the value much more easily through other means, if they cared to.

Or that they actually care much about bitcoin beyond "how can we tax it?" type of questions.

They have a thing that they want to turn into cash. They want to do this as quickly as possible, and they don't want to spend time or money trying to take into account the vagaries of all the different kinds of things that they take in order to get maximum value.

Seriously, asking them to try and deal with the details of getting as much as possible from bitcoin would be like asking them to restore classic cars they seize and then try and sell them at various shows or through private channels to get the maximum return. Sure, they could squeeze a few extra bucks out of it, but who gives a shit?

Which "open market" should the government use? What system should they use to manage the sail of those coins? How should they ensure that the market they use is legit and secure? What process should they use to ensure that the Silk Road guys aren't just re-buying their stuff? Who will handle oversight to make sure this all goes off accordingly?

Pretty much answering any one of those questions would be a process that costs far more than the estimated value of the bitcoin they have.

Far better for them to use their existing process of auctioning off random shit they seize.

Also, the government couldn't care less if you can't afford to buy the stuff they auction off.