Interesting, but did you really have to be condescending? On top of this, not everyone here is a hacker and not every hacker is a computer security expert.
What do you mean by 'anything significant'? Paper money is not backed by anything material. Rather, it is backed by institutions (central banks, governments, banks) and individuals using them. To me, that's pretty much the same as cryptocurrencies.
They were indeed very naive. In the history of law, there has always been a divide between those who believe that the letter of law should be applied no matter what, and those who believe that social justice should be ensured.
Whatever the terms of theDAO, there WILL be judges to find that what just happened to it is theft. That is why instead of damaging trust in Ether by forking it, the ethereum/DAO management should turn to the law to get its money back.
Smart contracts are a very good thing, but they won't become perfectly safe any time soon (if ever), so the community should recognize that civil and criminal law are a safety net, likely to help smart contract get wider use, because of they create increased trust.
They can easily switch bikes pretending that they have a flat tire, or any other issue. IIRC suspects of using batteries have also been seen to switch bikes at suspicious moments.
If driverless cars always for go for the most favorable route for them, they might increase traffic a lot.
Fortunately, it is also probably easier to force computers than people to follow socially optimal routes.
When you are starting your career, it's quite hard to work part time because of the lower wages and the peer pressure. With more experience, it's really worth reconsidering the balance between work and money.
The problem is that money is currently the universal standard for measuring success. There are many more dimensions to success and in fact, everyone should build their own model of what constitutes success, including things like spending time with your family, reading a good books and so on.
It would be nice to have other comparable sources, not least because The Economist is very influential, and like any other institution or person, they are often wrong.
They seem pretty aware of this, and they write their articles in way that their readers can exert critical thinking.
So in the absence of alternatives, we are kind of forced/encouraged to think critically, which is not such a bad thing in the end.