Capital Formation Weekly #1
7029 sats \ 30 comments \ @elvismercury 25 Feb mostly_harmless

What is this?
I was inspired by synthesis posts by @ek (example) and by @siggy47 (example). These are so great, and add so much value to SN -- building layers of meaning atop other meaningful layers, the best kind of capital formation helping things along toward evergreen-ness. I wanted to try my hand at something similar.
Caveat emptor: if you're generally interested in the kinds of things that I say and think, this series may interest you even more, because it's like the second derivative of that. If you're not, these posts will be even more tedious to you than my posts normally are.

1. The homelessness crisis by @Undisciplined
Homelessness is tragic and sad and gross and infuriating, all at the same time. We've all run into it, probably, and probably all felt deeply uneasy, physically and morally, that such a thing is possible.
This is one of my favorite posts ever on SN. People who have quite different worldviews are on display, and the topic brushes up against a lot of sacred cows, and yet the discussion was nuanced and respectful. Made me feel good about being a 'citizen' of SN and about its future.

2. A [pro] Marathon Slipstream rant by @mallardshead
(Here's @k00b's original post about the Slipstream announcement.)
In the beginning everything was simple -- blocks were mostly empty, you transacted btc essentially for free, and used it to buy your gift cards or weed or fake IDs or whatever people bought in those days.
But shit has now got real, the block subsidy is about to get cut in half, the mempool will probably never clear again, and hopium-fueled ignorance is starting to give way to the pragmatic idea that somebody is going to have to pay for things we used to take for granted. Like transacting in btc.
What are the implications when extra financial layers get stacked on top of the simple transaction model? What happens when the mempool fragments into sub-mempools? It's complicated, as far as I can tell, but I love that @mallardshead is exploring it.
(Actually, this topic just made me remember this under-rated post by @BITC0IN about the game-theoretic analysis of btc. The book is a rare example of really digging into some of the emergent features of btc security, which has bearing on private mempools, too.)

3. Supper, place, village, city, state by @kr
People inhabit multiple identities simultaneously. You are an individual person, animated by whatever is flying across your mind right now, and by your personal circumstances. But at another zoom level you're the member of a nation, whether you want to be or not, and your life is hugely influenced by that in a million ways. Even what you think of as the most foundational parts of your perceptual system are hugly influenced by culture [1, 2].
The article explores how identity is cultivated across these multiple zoom levels. The implications for online communities like SN are obvious; but the implications for your individual life, and for the modern world, and the future of social organization, are even more obvious.
(Reminds me of this post, also by @kr, covering Geoffrey West's book about multi-scalar organization. Interesting to see @kr's mind at work on this topic...)

4. The curious case of digital signatures by @ek
What does it mean to have an identity, in the digital world? And what's the technical process of creating it, proving it, communicating it?
Many people, including myself, have spent countless hours soaking in btc and the cryptographic setting around it without every really understanding wtf it all meant. If that's you, then @ek is your huckleberry -- this post gives you the context you need to understand how the pieces fit together.

5. Good ways to spend more time with people by @Signal312
It's been on my mind a lot that, when all is said and done, relationships are everything, or nearly everything, that matters in life. But what should you do, if you believe that? Most people -- including me -- act like good relationships will drop off the tree like coconuts.
This article digs into ways to be more intentional about spending time with people. Related to another @kr post about friendship in decline.

6. Btc as tea party by @elvismercury
I think it's fair to say that I have an obsession about not deluding myself about btc's "inevitability" and this is a post digging into that. Specifically, about how much solace we should take, and what conclusions we should draw, from the resilience of mining in China despite that nation's putative 'crackdown' on the industry.
For my taste, there's way too much fixation on the drunken-bumbling-uncle view of the state, staggering around throwing haymakers that never land, and not enough fixation on the horrific shit the state did, and does, when it feels seriously under threat. Like, invading Iraq, or rounding up people and putting them into death camps. I continue to think that most bitcoiners are not focused enough on this.
You know that "good times make weak men" thing? Is there a chance that that's you, right now? And you're just confused about what good times means, and how weak manifests in this space? And you're mistaking the patty cake culture-warring of the last couple decades with, you know, actual war? Or what a govt will do when it wants something (also here or here) or the lengths it will go to when it wants to know something?
People keep saying: it failed in all those pursuits, eventually. I keep saying: that should not much comfort you.

Refs
[1] Nisbett, R. E., & Masuda, T. (2003). Culture and point of view. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(19), 11163-11170. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1934527100
[2] Chua, H. F., Boland, J. E., & Nisbett, R. E. (2005). Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(35), 12629-12633. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0506162102
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1404 sats \ 9 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
Excellent idea. I just took my dog for a long walk and thought about your ideas regarding synthesis, and your suggestion for me to do a meta post about my newsletter. Your idea here is even better. I remember a few months back when you were hounding @k00b and @ek about something like "embedded search", but I didn't know what you were talking about. Once it was implemented, the value it brings is immense in tying posts together and increasing visibility for older content. This post is similar. During my first year on SN I spent a lot of time dredging up old posts to read. It felt like a shame that, at least for me, they were so difficult to find. I actually toyed with the idea of doing a weekly newsletter where I would dredge up "golden oldies" and highlight a few for visibility. That was probably why I started the Books And Articles newsletter after @Scoresby suggested it.
I can't wait to see where you take your idea
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366 sats \ 8 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
Once it was implemented, the value it brings is immense in tying posts together and increasing visibility for older content.
I think you mean the update that @k00b did to our search engine which now uses a neural network to find similar posts with "once it was implemented".
I agree, it's very valuable to find similar posts this way. Kudos to @k00b for that!
But I think with "embedded search", a search while writing a reply was meant.1 For example, you could simply type / in your reply and a search would popup to find the post you want to link to. Just like you can currently @ and a search for all users shows up. This way, you don't need to stop writing your comment to link to a post. We haven't implemented that yet though.
During my first year on SN I spent a lot of time dredging up old posts to read. It felt like a shame that, at least for me, they were so difficult to find.
It's still a shame that there are no obvious, only abstract rewards for that currently but we will get there, I think. :)
Footnotes
  1. https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news/issues/542 ↩
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138 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 25 Feb
Ha, you guys are both right:
  • I was talking about embeddings-based search, which is an incredibly flexible and powerful way to find similar content. I still have many ideas about this -- the current [upgraded] search I believe uses something in this direction, but not what I was imagining.
  • The ability to do embeddings in an embedded fashion, akin to a PKM and w/ a fluid UI, would truly be a game changer. But that's a more challenging design problem, and you could get a long way even without this.
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90 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 25 Feb
The term is text embeddings fyi
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100 sats \ 5 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
Okay. I thought I had the terms wrong, and maybe I credited the wrong person. I do really like it, whoever did it and whatever it's called.
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40 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
Haha, no worries, just wanted to add some context since people seem to like context :)
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1319 sats \ 3 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
I always look forward to your subtle ball breaking😀
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128 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
Now you need to help me out. What is "ball breaking"? I only found references to baseball. The first thing that I was thinking of was a very painful thing haha
maybe you meant exactly "ball breaking" as in baseball, just applied to my comments in some way 👀
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352 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 25 Feb
Your first thought was accurate:) Lots of US people of my generation (old) use that expression. I don't hear it as much anymore.
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128 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
oof, in that case you're now breaking my balls in a subtle way haha
I should have immediately asked Urban Dictionary
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508 sats \ 16 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
I was inspired by synthesis posts by @ek (example) and by @siggy47 (example). These are so great, and add so much value to SN -- building layers of meaning atop other meaningful layers, the best kind of capital formation helping things along toward evergreen-ness. I wanted to try my hand at something similar.
Funny, I was actually thinking today about my Z2Z series and how I start to miss engaging with SN content as intense as I used to during this phase so I can highlight the content I liked the most every day. My post about digital signatures that you also linked made me think about that.
Feels good that other people are doing similar things now. But I don't want to take too much credit for that. The SN newsletter by @k00b (which was @dk's idea1) can be seen as the first synthesis. Makes sense since @k00b was also the first dancing guy here.
Calling it "synthesis posts" is also nice. I didn't think about them this way. It was just me trying to reward the content that I want to see directly out of my pocket. I was highly aware of how biased it was and tried to mention it as much since that was the point. The point was basically what you call "modeling":
My experience is that it's less toxic than it used to be, in terms of general norms and behavior; and that territories have helped with that, since SN seems less appealing to brainless maxi types who just want somewhere to vomit the creed they read on Twitter into each other's mouths. Real people talking about their lives seems to be a countervailing force against extremist stupidity -- that's what I've observed in real time since July.
Whatever badness is leftover is a function of humans at scale. If you don't like it, model something better. It works.
-- @elvismercury, #430755
Just like you model something better now, every time someone links to an old but gold post, I zap it (even if I already zapped it) to model evergreen content at least to some abstract degree.
What is also great about these kind of posts is that we get to know each other better. We tell each other what we like, why we like it and our own unsolicited personal context, thoughts and opinions. Like true friendships.2
Footnotes
  1. #372141 ↩
  2. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the comment from you that I wanted to link to regarding "friendships on SN" in a reasonable amount of time. But maybe you know which comment I mean anyway. ↩
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441 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 25 Feb
every time someone links to an old but gold post, I zap it (even if I already zapped it) to model evergreen content at least to some abstract degree.
This is a good idea -- I'll start doing that, too. I think there's a chance to have something really special w/ these evergreens -- you can imagine something that's good pulling in sats for years afterward. That would be a great signal -- imagine what it might inspire, if thoughtfulness and honesty paid a dividend, vs shouting and snark? It's interesting to think about what tools / incentives would help with it.
What is also great about these kind of posts is that we get to know each other better. We tell each other what we like, why we like it and our own unsolicited personal context, thoughts and opinions. Like true friendships.
I really like that aspect of SN, and I do think I know the comment you're referring to, I was thinking about it recently. It's interesting that this aspect of online community seems to build verrrrry slowly, but when you move through time and have conversations that jump back and forth, it's like a layer cake. Reminds me of growing up in a small town, a bit -- stories layered on stories.
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410 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
It's interesting to think about what tools / incentives would help with it.
Showing which items accumulate sats over longer periods of time would be the first tool, I think. We want to have way better satistics, not only for stackers but for every single item.
Currently, it's limited to this:
So all one can currently find out about the "performance" of an item is a) how many stackers zapped anything and b) how many sats in total this item received. No idea about the distribution or timing.
I really like that aspect of SN, and I do think I know the comment you're referring to, I was thinking about it recently. It's interesting that this aspect of online community seems to build verrrrry slowly, but when you move through time and have conversations that jump back and forth, it's like a layer cake. Reminds me of growing up in a small town, a bit -- stories layered on stories.
Yes! I even tend to get FOMO now on missing out modeling this part. But so far, I was pretty bad at figuring out how to allocate time for posting on SN consistently. Maybe my time is better spent at building more stuff in the background and less using the product? I don't know. That's what I am trying to figure out.
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379 sats \ 13 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
Bias is something I worry about a lot too. That's why I'm relying more on zaprank to get a general stacker consensus. Maybe I don't understand it fully, though. What do you think about it? It takes zaps into account, obviously, but also number of stackers who zap, I think. Does it also take into account zapper's trust level? I really want to fight my own bias in boosting visibility of content.
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556 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury OP 25 Feb
Hot take: there are times when you want to be brutal in rooting out bias; and there are times when bias is exactly what is wanted.
For this post (and whatever variants that follow) I want to be maximally biased -- this is the sense I've made of this little slice of the world, and that's what I'm giving to you. If people value the elvismercury bias, it will be useful; if they don't, no shame.
I try really hard not to fool myself with self-soothing messages, though. That's a kind of bias that chokes the life out of you, eventually. Or out of a community. But if you buy a can of Coke, you bloody well expect Coke to be inside.
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410 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
I try really hard not to fool myself with self-soothing messages, though. That's a kind of bias that chokes the life out of you, eventually. Or out of a community. But if you buy a can of Coke, you bloody well expect Coke to be inside.
Yes, we need more authenticity and less conformity. Great example with the coke. I noticed I was very unauthentic for the most part of my life. I was unauthentic for so long, I actually thought that is me. I just am an unauthentic person, lol.
Turns out that's not true, I was just trying to conform too much. And that did choke the life out of me until I realized that's what's happening.
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27 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
Very true. For your territory, bias is the point. It's silly for this to occur to me now. Totally different purposes. For books and articles, I am striving to get out of the way.
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566 sats \ 9 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
Maybe I don't understand it fully, though. What do you think about it? It takes zaps into account, obviously, but also number of stackers who zap, I think.
Yes, zaps are taken into account but the first sats have the most influence. So for example, if someone zaps 1000 sats instead of 100 sats, their influence is only 2x, it's not 10x.
This directly means that the number of stackers indeed has an influence since 100 sats from 10 stackers is more signal than 1000 sats from one stacker even though both equal to 1000 sats for the post.
Does it also take into account zapper's trust level?
Since personalized feeds, it takes into account your trust to the zappers. So there actually is no unbiased view while you're logged in anymore. You'd have to log out to get a consensus view. The consensus view has trust seeds (@k00b, @kr and me) and then we mix that PoV with everyone else's PoV. That's also how Meme Monday is graded.
So everything sorted by hot or top (posts or comments) is now ordered according to your preferences based on what you zapped in the past.1 For example, if A zapped a post and then you zapped that post afterwards, we will now tend to show you more stuff that A zaps in the future since your zap showed us that you might trust A with showing you good content now.2
I hope I didn't get anything wrong. @k00b is more knowledgeable about this stuff.
I really want to fight my own bias in boosting visibility of content.
That's very virtuous of you. My strategy is kind of embracing my own biases though. I am biased towards content that makes me think (or at least try to be). And I think that's not a bad thing if I let that show in my territories or synthesis posts. Maybe your biases are similar.
But I also should consider that I am not aware of all my biases. Maybe being aware of your own biases is even an oxymoron?
Footnotes
  1. hot additionally includes a time decay. ↩
  2. On a side note, it doesn't mean that A trusts you with showing her good content now. ↩
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414 sats \ 8 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
Thanks for this explanation. I guess I'll stick with emphasizing zaprank, but maybe as more of us synthesize a little bias might not be so bad. One of my goals is to shine light on good content that was missed or ignored by most stackers. There can be many reasons for this. I can't prove it, but it seems that it depends when you post, for instance, both as to day of the week and time of day. I think that because so many stackers are from the US, posts made during business hours in North America do better. I would like to check this out empirically.
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128 sats \ 7 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
I can't prove it, but it seems that it depends when you post, for instance, both as to day of the week and time of day. I think that because so many stackers are from the US, posts made during business hours in North America do better.
I think the same. Didn't @davidw do an analysis on that in the past?
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398 sats \ 1 reply \ @davidw 25 Feb
I still haven’t run the numbers again with a bigger sample size yet (@Natalia is plotting my punishment as we speak) but I did post some graphs in this SN comment a month or two back.
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98 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia 25 Feb
nah you are safe - I'm busying digging the PGP and annoying @ek with many questions 👀
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
Cool. Link?
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128 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 25 Feb
Was easier to find than expected, here it is: #386717
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @siggy47 25 Feb
I can't believe I missed this post. I have no idea how. I didn't even zap it. I guess this proves the need to search for those forgotten gems.
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281 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 26 Feb
I was very pleasantly surprised by both the quality and quantity of reactions that my homelessness post received. It's a subject I've certainly thought about a lot (as has the SN community apparently), but it wasn't a post I had given much thought to.
It was just a curiosity of the moment. One of the cool things about SN is that sometimes our idle curiosities catch fire and turn into great conversations.
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27 sats \ 0 replies \ @BITC0IN 25 Feb
Thanks for the shout out!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jetecs6 26 Feb
This is detailed, i want to read moree!!!
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