170 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 19h \ on: Oklahoma signs bill into law protecting crypto spending, mining, & self-custody bitcoin
This seems like big news -- not so much bc Oklahoma is a powerhouse of btc industry, but as a precedent-setter, and a signal. Would be interested in savvier takes than mine, though.
52 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 15 May \ parent \ on: What Bitcoin Is And Why It Matters bitcoin
It's got something for every thoughtful person, I think. RR would be a cool dude to talk to I bet.
79 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 15 May \ parent \ on: What Bitcoin Is And Why It Matters bitcoin
Not literally, but the fact that RR ranges so broadly, and talks about whatever he wants, and brings a general economics mindset to whatever topic, so Econ Talk is less about economics than topic X informed by wide reading and great economic literacy.
If you replace "economic literacy" with "bitcoin" that's pretty close to the podcast I'd want to be capable of doing.
41 sats \ 4 replies \ @elvismercury 15 May \ parent \ on: What Bitcoin Is And Why It Matters bitcoin
I wish RR would re-engage w/ btc. Seems like plenty of new angles to think about, and he's a really eclectic guy. Actually he seems like a good candidate to do the podcast that I want to do.
I think that's sort-of true, and is one implication of an exoself of sufficient breadth / magnitude that other people care about it, or that it even incorporates them in some fashion s.t. they become part of each other in important ways.
But there are also much "smaller" variants that are interesting to me. For instance, a friend of mine, the most talented hacker that I know, has turned his house into an extension of himself -- both how the place is designed, how it's decorated, and the million little hacky features where he's built to augment it. To go into his house is to enter a part of his Being. You're very aware of being present in the heart of a respirating meta-organism, part of it.
This guy is pretty amazing and stands a reasonable chance of being remembered in 100 years for other things, but this would still be a beautiful and impressive type of exoself even if that weren't true.
Possession of money by a man is definitely a correlate of attractiveness. It's not the only way to be attractive obviously, but it's pretty effective.
129 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 12 May \ parent \ on: Thoughts on the exoself mostly_harmless
I was hoping there might be an interesting double standard. Like, thoughts are sacred and their manifestations aren't.
There's an intriguing idea. Perhaps: the more obviously connected in origin to a human being, the more sacred? And the more connected to abstract hierarchies (e.g., a company) the more profane?
Although I can immediately think of examples that violate it.
I expect there's something to your idea, but it's super nuanced, just like Terry Regier's work showed the underlying sensibility of why prepositions work the way they do.
150 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury OP 12 May \ parent \ on: Thoughts on the exoself mostly_harmless
The political boundaries for and against IP were the most surprising.
I wonder if it's because the default situation without IP, or at least, the mythology of it, is some lone inventor spends his life pursuing something and then dies a pauper, while others grow fat on the profits of that work.
To me, this one seems damn near impossible to even research with good intentions, since figuring out how to control for assorted factors would make natural experiments really hard to do. I expect people get the results they want to get.
10 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 12 May \ parent \ on: Thoughts on the exoself mostly_harmless
And also to reflect on what you might mindfully curate, or aspire to curate. That's my principal obsession, anyway.
I think the
evergreen beings must have a different perceptual system than do we, their constituents. Which means:If we aren't divorced from the consequences of our digital selves, if we can stay human online
may be misleading in its consequences. Although I'd still greatly prefer it to the current state of affairs.
I didn't think about this till now, but this is really just an implicit prisoner's dilemma game, and cad-ness is basically defaulting on something on something of medium and below consequence; so the question is: when would you like to default? When everyone else is defaulting, or everyone else is cooperating?
The real essence of being a cad is that the defaults aren't so costly that really bad consequences ensue. If you're the only guy stealing pies from windowsills, they probably roll their eyes. If everyone is doing it, the pie-makers start shooting people.
Anyway, the real thing I came to say is this:
It's probably also fun to be a saint in a high-trust society.
Very possibly not. Don't have time to search for original text, but:
Durkheim imagines a ‘society of saints’ populated by perfect individuals. In such a society there might be no murder or robbery, but there would still be deviance. The general standards of behaviour would be so high that the slightest slip would be regarded as a serious offence. Thus the individual who simply showed bad taste, or was merely impolite, would attract strong disapproval.
From here. This is another idea taking up major real-estate in my head.
There's a quote I read and can't attribute, but that I love:
It's fun to be a cad in a high-trust society.
So many layers. Worthy of deep meditation.
131 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 10 May \ parent \ on: Swan Announces Managed Bitcoin Mining Service bitcoin
Yeah, it is really puzzling to me. Cory's brand is all about speaking the truth, calling out bad actors, even if there's just the merest wisp of a bad smell. You'd think he would have his own shit in order beyond any possibility of reproach and go the extra mile on everything. Since he seems like a bright guy, I can only infer that there's something complicated that he can't say out loud that's more important than whatever reputation damage he's incurred.
Actually, I could also infer that my personal perception of what is a giant controversy is incredibly skewed. I forget that 99.9% of bitcoiners have never heard of Matt Odell in the first place, despite his super high reputation and seeming (to me) prominence.
Has there been any update on Odell's beef w/ Swan? He appeared very dubious of their claims around mining last year, but I didn't follow closely enough to see how it resolved, or didn't.
Here's the deal: you don't read Thomas Pynchon for his plots.
I think you're right, and I've always wondered what you do read Pynchon for. Not just him, there are others in that same boat, who write giant tomes that feel like homework, or repairing some arcane machine that you don't have parts for. I own a literal handbook designed to allow people to comprehend Gravity's Rainbow; I got a modest way through it before I came to my senses.
I am not a stranger to effortful reading, but I've never understand what reward people get by reading Pynchon except the veneer of intelligence that reading him seems to confer; or that the reader believes is conferred.
He's got a gift for sucking you in so that when you finally come back up for air, you're wondering whether you've been reading for five minutes or fifty. But it can be tiring and sometimes you end up never finishing.
Question, and this isn't me trying to be a jerk: if nobody knew the name Pynchon, would you really bother with it? If the world hadn't concluded that James Joyce, DeLillo were geniuses, would a naiive stranger grab Finnegan's and be like: holy shit, this is astounding? Or would they say: jesus, what a sad attempt at being original, and toss it in recycling?
It really comes across as the lady protesting too much. For what little payout you describe, it seems that there are nearly infinity better options than Pynchon. What am I missing?
I take what's probably an unpopular view on this one: people are super happy to benefit from other people's content. They consume it with abandon, they block ads if they can, they do what they can get away with. That's well and good, go ahead, but acting like it's some big moral thing when other entities -- companies, in this case -- make use of what you've freely given in ways you didn't expect -
I just don't feel it. You relinquish all control to everything when you put it online. If you cringe in horror at someone making use of it, keep your mouth shut, that's my philosophy. It's the wild west and has been since 1970 or whenever.
I've heard that for infrastructural reasons -- e.g., getting plumbing, electricity, etc., to standards / amounts sufficient to the task -- the "re-purposing" is way trickier than it seems at first. Have no real expertise on the topic, though.
A very wise article.
All you need to benefit from a technology is utility. It just has to improve people’s lives somehow, whether they understand it at a granular level or not. We can tell people about bitcoin’s benefits until we’re exhausted and they’re annoyed. What matters is how they actually experience it. We should stop telling them how great the bitcoin economy is going to be and start showing them. Less theory, more practice.