
Newton the Alchemist - unquote
https://literaryreview.co.uk/going-for-gold-2
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ASlave2Gravity
I'm just wrapping up reading The Confusion by Neal Stephenson. The collection,
the Baroque Cycle, dramatizes much of Newton's alchemikal endeavours. It's a
brilliant read.

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KineticLensman
Agree. It's a great example of a science fiction writer who brings their SF
perspective to historical events / technologies (in this case the invention of
science and modern financial systems) that to the characters are massively
disruptive.

The beginning and end events (spoiler...) where the same character as a boy
witnesses the hanging of a witch and as a (very) old man sees a commercial
steam engine are great bookmarks on a massively transformative period of
history.

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ajuc
Alchemy was their String Theory. A long shot, but not obviously false at the
time.

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daniel-cussen
It was also their internet currency. If only it worked, it'd be as big as
Bitcoin if not bigger. But they could only come up with Flooz.

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ajuc
The funny thing is - we now CAN transmute lead to gold :) It's just not
profitable :)

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olooney
Ironically, it's much easier to turn gold into lead. Simply leave a bar of
gold near a fission reactor or other neutron source for a couple of years, and
eventually it will turn to lead.

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BubRoss
Does tungsten turn into anything different?

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PlayfulTrick
It is tremendously a trait of innovators, albeit a measure non-admitting even
within their very own (this effect increasing with time development; the more
contemporary) cognitive administrative architecture (which in extent signifies
further development and refinement/ complexity of it's heuristic use);
individuals whose cognition ordinarily traverses the realms of particularly
pristine& volatile perceptual/ mental artifacts to gesture rhetorically or
rather as a mechanic of latent functional measure in their productive
procedure to affirm ideological scientific outsiders in the described&
mentioned -customized- regard, and while transferring it vertically sub and
supra explicattion (mechanism of formal non-necessity; logico-formal
decostructive (active) dodging)via their analytic process (extra category of
consideration acts as cognitive surplus), for their powerful evaluatory
productive engine augments itself in accord to affirmed ideologically derived
motivational/generative hyper(regular)-excitation to (seeking, calculating,
articulating) derivation of efficiency ordained further normally agreeing to
tended psycho-developmental trajectories / pathways these kinds of individuals
incline to make (rec sum as projective subsequent cognitive architecture:ego-
regulatory accessibility; success; hyper(regular)-excitation + ~ well
dispersed and replicated across domains efficiency) all while the operative or
ontological/formal/proof associated non-relatedness of this custom signifies
reflectively a special objective orientation whereas pre-affirmed premise
stands repeatedly not fulfilled duo to it's non(less)-pragmatic virtue,
leading to long-term (macro-scale) assembly of supra-regular array of multiple
(inter/intra-category) objectives or elements pertinent to a partial / near
(in perceptioN) complete realization of novel objectives supported via a such
internal paradigm stance, rendering(producing) a greater magnitude of content
quality of outcome(s) and higher rate of return in attempted schematized
configurations of resolvative compound propositions to open-problems.

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BucketSort
I actually bear a contention to the purported truths herein exposited. The
pragmatic psycho-developmental trajectories inherent to greater schematized
efficacy is contrary to the supra-regular array of hyper-excitation stimulated
by the cognitive architecture latent to domains such as this. I'm sure many
here would concur with this rather apparent folly in your conjecture.

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nprateem
The interesting question to me is why people in earlier times valued gold at
all (i.e. before understanding its uses in electrical circuits, etc.). Why
would people care for it? I mean, OK it doesn't rust, but why's it so special?

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roenxi
Well, the key property is it doesn't rust :P. 2nd key property is that it is
hard to come by. Gold has a big advantage over, say, (picking a random
substance that is expensive by weight) printer ink because with printer ink if
you don't store it properly it is likely to lose its value. Gold storage can
be delegated to any idiot (such as a central bank official, heh heh) and as
long as they do not lose it everything will be fine. Doesn't burn, doesn't
rust, doesn't dissolve in water.

Anything as difficult to extract as gold is worth about as much (gold isn't
especially profitable to mine). Gold just happens to be about as
indestructible as anything we know of and have a very convenient value/volume
ratio to procure. It is also a pleasing shade of yellow, which counts for
something.

If we are trading without me having something you need right now then I need a
way to show you that I'm not some layabout asking you to do stuff for free.
Gold is a guarantee that if we unwound the chain of trades at some point
someone did something real. That sounds really silly, but it turns out that
some axiom like that is needed for trading to make sense.

