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30 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 1h \ parent \ on: Future Agenda mostly_harmless
If you hit the "Read more" link at the bottom you get another chunk, but they're not very long, just a broad orientation to the topic. I found it most interesting for things I hadn't really thought much about.
Yeah. The question is, which of those actions is more entropic? After you shake the snow globe, where does the snow settle?
43 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 30 Jun \ parent \ on: Why the $25,000 car is going extinct econ
It's interesting to consider cars as a nice example given the role of tech and productivity gains in pushing prices DOWN; and yet it's the reverse. W debasement, and nothing else, I'd expect holding steady. Seems like there's scarcity / status effects at work - cars as baseball cards.
The symbolic is just as important as the technical. Slower for the effects to manifest in some cases, though.
This is the category of thing some of the proposed opcodes could really help with -- security even in the face of keys being possessed. Having complex spend conditions seems like a giant unlock. Hopefully we'll get there.
Also, periodic reminder that this is a social problem. But the more technical tools to deal w/ it the better, I guess.
Ha, at first I thought you were referring to this book which I wholeheartedly endorse, if you're a writer; and which packs a similar philosophical punch, although less directly.
All of this stuff, in the end, grounds out in what you think matters. There is no escaping the question, and if you don't explicitly answer it, you discover you've been performing an implicit answer. Safety, status, shits and giggles, domination. Something.
I'm sure of that. I'm unsure to what degree the answers we arrive at are a matter of choice.
This book made a big impression on me. I read it when I was a lot dumber, and wonder what I'd make of it now. Too many un-read books to re-read it, though.
I have found a lot of alpha in being good at recognizing quality people.
It seems simple, but this thread gives many examples of why it's not. Assuming that the hated tribe is composed entirely of idiots is the most trivial illustration, but there are others, most of them rooted in the almost overwhelming need to feel good about yourself, about the rightness of your own beliefs and to justify the things that you're doing and want to do.
Hard swim upstream of that, but worth it. You make better and more useful friends, if nothing else.
Yes. It takes a deeper interaction before the tyranny of small differences sets in. Bitcoiners mos def do not get along if you wait long enough, as the recent OP_RETURN thing amply demonstrates. Many such examples.
That's one of the flaws I mean. There is not just one class of "normies." There are many. Calling someone a "normie" is just another thing Bitcoiners do to simplify the world enough that it fits in their head.
You have my axe!
Great insight.
Here's an even more unsettling implication: imagine how basically everyone in the world doesn't want all this shit being mailed to them, and yet, for the reasons you say, we just live with it. So it's this insane idiot dance of them mailing you shit (which they would prefer not to do) and you getting the shit (which you would prefer not to get), and throwing it instantly away, and it accumulating in landfills (which we would all, collectively, prefer to not happen).
None of the participants are happy with the outcome, and yet we continue to produce eight zillion tons of garbage while we all soak in it. The human condition, ladies and gentlemen.
So the treasury trick works for the shittiest of shitcoins, too? That's really interesting, since it sort of harpoons the bitcoin narrative that this is a really good idea for the usual maxi reasons and forces us to acknowledge that it's just another flavor of bullshit financial engineering that most of us presumably hate.
A little game I play, because I am a fool, is to look at coinmarketcap from time to time when I'm feeling good about myself and my deep commitment to intellectual honesty. And I see that ETH, SOL, DOGE, and (especially) XRP are all soaring; and despite the usual bitcoiner cope, that people who invested in them have made a pile of fucking money, although the devil is in the details on how much compared to btc; but you can find periods where any of those were just as good or better.
And then I feel much less good about myself.
Haven't listened to it, but your rec means a lot, and will pass on to someone I know who really needs it, or something like it. Thanks for posting.
I forget if I told this story before, but:
In college I really loved basketball and organized a summer league at a park in my hometown, where my friends who were home from college would drive every Wed, and we'd play until it was too dark or the bugs got too bad.
But the court was kind of shitty -- it would get sand on it, and I cared the most, so I started showing up early to sweep it; and then I started bringing towels, bc if it had rained recently puddles would collect in the uneven parts, so I'd mop it up. And I'd bring water for myself, of course, because I sweat copiously; but then people would forget their water, and I'd let them have some of mine, and then I didn't have enough water, so I started bringing several gallons of water, and people would just drink all those.
It goes without saying that never did anyone offer to help, or pick up part of these duties; and in fact, people got lax about bringing water because I was there to save them.
--
I fucking hate the "lesson" in this. I refuse to absorb it all the way. But I have absorbed it a little.
Now that I write this, I don't think I ever asked anyone else to step up, never tried to uplift them in a way that might have worked, because that kind of thing is too uncomfortable. How funny, that the hard conversation turned out to be harder than the work itself.
Maybe that's the better lesson. It's certainly the more hopeful one.