They're in it to make money after all, and discrimination hurts profits. — Michael

Here's the thing. They don't have enough employees to check everyone, they don't want to hire more, and thus they have limited resources. They focus resources on most valuable customers (statistically). Probably, statistics indicate that customers from certain countries spend more than others - they will get those approved first.

Proof that I am busy, unlike you who talks non-stop about business and appears non-stop to be on TPF. Gosh, some people. (L) — TimeLine

Ohhh poor TimeLine feels the need to say she has a bigger one :D

I had a reply within 48 hours that my copy of my driver's license wasn't good enough. Just uploaded it again. Seems ok. Must be a discriminatory thing. — Benkei

Yeah, most likely. I also uploaded driver's license, but I made sure I scanned it at 600dpi. That they run a discriminatory practice isn't a problem to me, just that they ought to be upfront about it - we only accept customers from these countries.

You know what they say about assumptions? Did I say I that I expected anything or that I was frustrated? — Janus

You said that you DEMAND quality. You said that you are not satisfied when I asked you. Seems quite evident now, no need to backtrack Sir ;)

Everything. — Janus

I was taught by Diogenes to lower my expectation and I'll never be frustrated again! You should try it! ;)

Because I demand quality. — Janus

Quality in what?

No. ;) — Janus

Why are you so hard to satisfy then?!

Thanks, I really needed a picture of your feet as proof that you are on a tram...

Gosh, some people... >:O

Does that answer satisfy you dear? :P

Is business the only conceivable form of busy-ness? :s — Janus

Yes >:O

incredibly busy lifestyle. — TimeLine

:-} - and you're not even in the business world...

I have a hunch that those who are dismissive of meditation are probably responding to what they see as a negative attitude towards thinking. Often meditation can focus on feeling and bodily experience and classify thinking as unhelpful. Inevitably this sometimes results in "my way is better than your way" with people dissing each others methods. — Perplexed

Yeah, when I first learned meditation, I was told I was too much in my head Ö

There should be no judgement or denial: only passive acceptance. — Bitter Crank

Yes, but it depends on the definition of denial. When I am very anxious about a particular problem and I meditate, then I am fully accepting of the anxiety I experience, but I try to detach from the effort to mentally solve the problem. That is a sort of temporary "denial" of solving the problem, since I realise that I cannot solve it in that state.

Yeah, "by the book" ;)

It need only be internally coherent and can be built up deductively using the rules we put into it. It could be many years later that a practical utility is found for a system that was initially believed to be only a mathematical curiosity. — Perplexed

Sure, but we build by building on what exists before, trying to make it more general, and extend it. Like the factorial situation. We don't have negative factorials, so we try to find a way to have negative factorials that is in agreement with what we already have.

It's as if you're saying non-euclidian a posteriori discoveries are true and a priori euclidian intuitions are false. — Hanover

Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying. I'm a bit uneasy about your use of "intuition" there though.

Alas - if a so-called a priori claims something that contradicts what an a posteriori reveals, then obviously the latter is true, and the former is false. You cannot have two contradictory statements hold as true with regards to the same subject matter at the same time.

How do you know which is true when truth is noumenal? — Hanover

I don't understand the question?

All we're talking about is phenomenal, and it's perfectly logical to say that euclidian intuitions are necessary for phenomenal experience even if a posteriori knowledge might be discovered that is incomprehensible on an intuitive level. — Hanover

A posteriori experience, and physical experiments are also phenomenal. They investigate the phenomenon, by no means do they investigate the noumenon. A posteriori non-euclidean statements hold with regards to the phenomenon. According to Kant's definitions at least.

Why would an empirical discovery (an a posteriori truth) impact an a priori one? — Hanover

Simple - the latter isn't a priori, it was only mistaken to be a priori.

Why does the queen look like an angry man?

For example, how math grows. We have no negative factorials. Some people are trying to introduce negative factorials and form a coherent concept of them. If this invention proves useful, it will be kept, otherwise, to the dustbin of history.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/10124/the-factorial-of-1-2-3

I mean it gives us an applicable framework with which we can make sense and order our experiences. It is a pure form which the principals of physics take up to accurately predict events that we all perceive. — Perplexed

No, this gives you the wrong idea of mathematics. If you go back 2000 years ago, the math we had back then was completely different from the math we have today. Math has developed over the centuries - parts of new developments were kept, others were thrown out. For example, some cultures have thought that zero was not a number. It was a huge conceptual breakthrough to introduce negative numbers! Imagine what is a negative quantity? Makes no sense. Imaginary numbers? Give me a break! And complex numbers too?! Trigonometry applied outside of triangles? Limits? Calculus? Etc.

These are all mathematical inventions - and these are only the small set of inventions that were accepted over time. But there are a whole host of other ones that were rejected. Of course, you don't take all those into account. Human beings have created math, and continue to create math - and they keep what is useful, and throw everything else away.

Now, you and I, are affected by a bias - Kant too. Namely, we look at all the math that has proven useful and we have kept, and we say "Ahh what an achievement! How was this at all possible?" But we forget all that we've thrown away along the way - all the math that didn't work. We also forget about the ridiculousness of some mathematical concepts like imaginary numbers, which are still used, to this day, and practically applied in physics and engineering. Imagine for a moment that you did not know about the state of mathematics, and someone started telling you about imaginary numbers! You'd kick him out. What about stuff like 0! = 1? n! = 1*2*3*...*n . So how does it make sense that 0! = 1! = 1? But it does! Again - these are just modes of behaving and thinking about things that have proven useful. We tend to celebrate successful "method" and ignore the productive disclosing that made it possible to begin with. We are blinded by success.

The difficulty is that if maths is a conceit, how is it that it can be applied to the world? — Perplexed

What do you mean by applied to the world?

I've tried Coinbase, Bitstamp, Krakken, CEX, Gemini. Only Bitstamp and Krakken worked for my country, and Krakken was laggy, so I quit it. Bitstamp - worst approval process ever. I regret wasting time sending my documents to them.

We'll see. I'm not interested in going through other exchanges at this point. BitStamp is a one stop shop for me with low transaction costs for the cryptos I want. — Benkei

Yeah, I thought the same. Also, gives a lot of options for trading. Bitstamp was also one of the few reputable ones that accepted people from non-Western countries. But it's obvious that they will discriminate and approve Western accounts before looking at others, since mine wasn't approved for close to 2 months, even after sending them all documents and contacting support twice.

I finally got a wallet and I'm setting up with BitStamp (3 week wait) for 2 specific cryptocurrencies for the blockchain process they're trying to implement. I'll probably buy a few different ones for testing purposes as well. I'll get some XRP and ETH but no BTC. — Benkei

I waited with BitStamp 2 months >:O - in fact, even after contacting support 2 times, they still haven't approved me, so I just closed the damn account.

And you and Fox News assume that Obama et al. are guilty before proven to be guilty. — Michael

No, I just said I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.

Here's the thing with Trump. With all other people, we assume they are innocent until proven guilty. With Trump, the Crooked Media always assumes Trump is guilty before proven to be guilty...

Sorry to hear about what you and your family are going through :(

When he cannot remember me does it get easier? Does this confusion scare him as much as it scares me? Can he tell he is slipping away? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I don't know... I don't think we can know. There comes a point when a person resigns to their fate in the face of danger that they cannot control - and then they are relatively at peace, since they no longer try to control what they cannot control. That's what I personally think. Nature helps you do this too - you don't have the strength anymore to fight.

And how, How do I keep myself from ever being in the position he is in now? Everybody goes there thinking they will work hard enough to go home again but that was 2 years ago now... — ArguingWAristotleTiff

It is impossible to "keep yourself from ever being in the position he is in now". We don't have such control - any day you, I, anyone can be afflicted by illness, and there's nothing we can do that will guarantee, beyond any doubt, that it will not happen to us. We are finite beings, and hence perpetually vulnerable. All you can do is do your best, hope for the best, and then accept whatever happens. That's my outlook, anyways.

Well, it is you who wants to know so much, so you should ask him! Remember, you said you wouldn't be surprised if the Pee Pee tape is true.

So then you should first find out if he would be embarrassed by it.

Whether or not you see a reason for the embarrassment isn't relevant. What matters is whether or not Trump would be embarrassed. If so, he's open to blackmail. That's the issue surrounding the alleged piss table. — Michael

Good, how do you know he would be embarrassed by it?

And it's reasonable to believe that somebody would be embarrassed by a video showing them watching prostitutes they've paid to piss on a bed, whatever the reason for the embarrassment would be. — Michael

No.

Supposedly, so the story goes, Trump paid the prostitutes to piss on the bed because Obama and Michelle slept there? :s I find this reason to be, frankly, unbelievable. If anything, he should have pissed on the bed himself, but why pay the prostitutes to do it? The story just makes no sense. Even if it happened, Trump didn't do anything himself, so I don't see why it would be embarrassing for him.

Why is invading bodily privacy cause for embarrassment? — Michael

Just like the little child, you keep pushing with the why. I've answered your first why, so if I answer this second order why, will you ask another why? Because if you will, we'll get nowhere. So you must decide to come to a stop with the whys at some point. When will this point occur?

No, you said that invading bodily privacy is embarrassing — Michael

No, that's not what I said. I said having others take pictures of you naked in the shower which are then shown to the public is embarrassing because it is invading your bodily privacy. So no more word twisting here please.

This line of paranoid thinking falls under a similar class of counter-intuitive observations made by Machiavelli: "when one sees an enemy commit a grave blunder, one ought to believe that there is deception beneath it." — Erik

Yes, however, there is danger even here. Because if it is a real blunder, then you will have missed an opportunity - and if it's not a real blunder, then you will have fallen into a trap. Sometimes the enemy may commit a grave blunder because, if the blunder is not attended to immediately, it will turn out to be profitable for him later on - and he is banking on the fact that you will interpret the blunder as deception.

I just told you why.

just as I can't explain why it's embarrassing if it's a naked photo of them, e.g. in the shower. — Michael

That's easy to explain. That's because their bodily privacy would be invaded, obviously.

Can you explain why it is embarrassing if they are not engaged in the activity themselves?

If there was a tape of you watching two prostitutes piss on a bed for you, wouldn't you want that kept out of the public eye? — Michael

Why is that compromising? He's just watching a golden shower, he's not involved in the activity or anything of that sort.

If you have a video of me watching a dog pee, is that compromising? :s

pee tape is real — Michael

Well, that tape supposedly involves girls taking a golden shower on a bed. Trump is not naked (presumably) in it. Why is it compromising?

So you just assume that it's underhanded, in lieu of any actual evidence? — Michael

I was kidding actually about that part.

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.

I think that bit is underhanded, since he showed that he was willing to hide things from Trump and his team.