Strangecoin: a calvinball economy

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Strangecoin: a calvinball economy

Precambrian Video Games: Aug 19, 2002

I recommend implementing StrangeCoin on the forums first. Imagine if you had a system whereby you could endorse and inhibit the posts of others, and the net number of posts never changed. Perhaps the net number of posts in a given thread would change non-linearly at first as people mine new posts, but then would be limited by a cap, after which inhibited posts would disappear in favour of endorsed posts, only to re-appear in a poorly-endorsed thread elsewhere on the forums.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:21

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# ? May 13, 2024 17:42

Slo-Tek: Jun 8, 2001; WINDOWS 98 BEAT HIS FRIEND WITH A SHOVEL

DrSunshine posted:

So, uh, speaking as someone who majored in Earth Sciences and tried reallllllly hard to read the OP and the subsequent posts... if I understand it correctly, the OP describes basically a system where the money is on fire? And whenever you buy something with it, some of the pieces fall off and you get more flaming money? So the faster you play the game of hot-potato, the more flaming money you can make?

Pretty sure Heinlein? or was it Niven? Anyway, one of those sci-fi guys wrote an essay about the Radium standard. Where you were provided with compelling incentive to move your money as quickly as possible, and not to let too much of it pile up in any one place...By Atomic Physics!

I think it was supposed to be a joke.

It was also short, abundantly clear on the first reading, and explained what concerns it addressed, and why. That may argue against it.

Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:22

Contra Duck: Nov 4, 2004; #1 DAD

RealityApologist posted:

I'm not calling you lazy, I'm accusing you of failing to have any conversational charity.

In a normal conversation, parties attempt to interpret each other in the most charitable possible light. That means if you come across something that looks contradictory, your first reaction should be to look for alternative interpretations that make better sense of the claims. You've demonstrated no attempt to give a charitable interpretation of my views, you've knee-jerk rejected them without any consideration beyond the first apparent inconsistency you think you've found. That's not an objection at all.

Imagine I was trying to explain to you government assistance for children, and you responded "lol so I get paid more if I have more children? what stops me from having a hundred kids and becoming instantly rich? THEORY FAIL."

Should I take this seriously as a challenge to the idea of welfare? Of course not. The claim demonstrates no attempt to understanding the proposal under consideration, they've merely caricatured one aspect of it and then laughed at it. That's not an objection, that's a strawman.

I ask you three times to address the fact that your currency gives everyone infinite money at all times and you still don't have an answer to it. You keep blaming me for being mean and for not helping you enough when I'm actually helping you as much as I can by showing you that your idea is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned. You don't realise this though because you've been too busy masturbating about how many paradigms you're shifting to actually look at things with a critical eye and thinking about what can possibly go wrong.

Now let's all watch as you continue to ignore all of the massive problems with your idea and instead post essays about how it's going to synergise with crowd-sourced self-organising social networks that are indistinguishable from the output of the post-modern essay generator.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:30

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Contra Duck posted:

Now let's all watch as you continue to ignore all of the massive problems with your idea and instead post essays about how it's going to synergise with crowd-sourced self-organising social networks that are indistinguishable from the output of the post-modern essay generator.

The patented *coin strategy. Brought to you by Von Mises: Where literally making poo poo up and ignoring your critics is key to survival and propagation of your flawed hypothesis

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:32

A Fancy 400 lbs: Jul 24, 2008

karthun posted:

RealityApologist/Estrada is a philosophy grad student.

To be fair, if you ran a philosophy department, wouldn't you keep an Eripsa around for essentially infinite laughs and examples of what not to do?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:34

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

RealityApologist posted:

Strangecoin mining is modeled on bitcoin mining. There are a finite amount of bitcoins, and once they are mined there are no more bitcoins. There's also a finite amount of Strangecoin, and when they are minded they are deposited into TUA, and once they are all mined there aren't any more.

I've certainly not proposed anything where the number of coins in circulation is fluctuating by orders of magnitude on a regular basis.

Ah, there we go, deflationary currency. The Bitcoin threads explained repeatedly why a deflationary currency is a very bad idea and pretty much tore it to shreds. I'm not sure if it will make a difference to anyone, but the very simple gist is that a deflationary currency discourages spending; if you're money's going to be worth more tomorrow, why would you spend any more than you absolutely have to today? Since consumer spending is the bedrock of an economy, any deflationary currency will have a dysfunctional economy at best, with those who have vast stores of wealth (the rich) being the best off, and those with little wealth (the poor) being the worst off.

Good Citizen posted:

The switchover. My god, the transition. Can you even begin to imagine how the transition from pure cash to pure coins would work? It would be god drat financial Armageddon. I can't even begin to describe the problems here while phone posting on my way to the office.

This, this, loving this. Even if a system is a marked improvement over what we have, trying to implement something new is essentially impossible. During the debt ceiling crisis (both of them :suicide:

) it was mentioned that the US financial system is pretty much running on 1970's coding and technology, with less than 200 people even knowing how it works or how to modify it. The system works that way because it was designed to be backwards comparable with loving punch cards, and any glitches caused by upgrading to a modern system would throw the world economy into chaos. That's something that needs an upgrade, and we still aren't going to do it until we absolutely have to.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:35

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

fade5 posted:

This, this, loving this. Even if a system is a marked improvement over what we have, trying to implement something new is essentially impossible. During the debt ceiling crisis (both of them) it was mentioned that the US financial system is pretty much running on 1970's coding and technology, with less than 200 people even knowing how it works or how to modify it. The system works that way because it was designed to be backwards comparable with loving punch cards, and any glitches caused by upgrading to a modern system would throw the world economy into chaos. That's something that needs an upgrade, and we still aren't going to do it until we absolutely have to.

Yes, and its a loving awful system. It was awesome back when it was first put into production, and did its job well while allowing older financial systems to integrate into it.

Now is a rotting behemoth that is basically tying the financial industry down. Have seen a couple of these systems, its mind boggling that they still hold together. Its laughable that *coiners still think that Bitcoin or some of its ilk will EVER replace such a structured and rigid system.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:39

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

fade5 posted:

This, this, loving this. Even if a system is a marked improvement over what we have, trying to implement something new is essentially impossible. During the debt ceiling crisis (both of them) it was mentioned that the US financial system is pretty much running on 1970's coding and technology, with less than 200 people even knowing how it works or how to modify it. The system works that way because it was designed to be backwards comparable with loving punch cards, and any glitches caused by upgrading to a modern system would throw the world economy into chaos. That's something that needs an upgrade, and we still aren't going to do it until we absolutely have to.

Kinda explains why people are desperate to design something better.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:39

Good Citizen: Aug 12, 2008; trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

To be fair, if you ran a philosophy department, wouldn't you keep an Eripsa around for essentially infinite laughs and examples of what not to do?

Maybe he's actually good at philosophy? I honestly wouldn't know. I don't walk around pretending I can evaluate and completely redefine disciplines I don't know poo poo about.

Imagine that

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:41

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Zombywuf posted:

Kinda explains why people are desperate to design something better.

True, but the problem is almost all of these groups doing so, do so with NO knowledge of how such a system actually works, and base it solely on how paper currency functions, with no respect to the intricate and complex system that backs it.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:42

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Slo-Tek posted:

Pretty sure Heinlein? or was it Niven? Anyway, one of those sci-fi guys wrote an essay about the Radium standard. Where you were provided with compelling incentive to move your money as quickly as possible, and not to let too much of it pile up in any one place...By Atomic Physics!

I think it was supposed to be a joke.

It was also short, abundantly clear on the first reading, and explained what concerns it addressed, and why. That may argue against it.

It was Niven

http://www.larryniven.net/stories/roentgen.shtml

It isn't the worst idea in the world though that is only the case because strangecoin is worse

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:43

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

CommieGIR posted:

True, but the problem is almost all of these groups doing so, do so with NO knowledge of how such a system actually works, and base it solely on how paper currency functions, with no respect to the intricate and complex system that backs it.

Because the ones who know how it works rigged it in their favor and this have no incentive to change it

Death is certain

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:44

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Fried Chicken posted:

Because the ones who know how it works rigged it in their favor and this have no incentive to change it

Death is certain

...not really. The system is too chaotic for one person to really grasp how it functions, we can estimate rises and falls and know how to influence them, but we have no exact control over the entire system. There are too many competing interests in the infrastructure to really re-design it right now.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:48

A Fancy 400 lbs: Jul 24, 2008

Good Citizen posted:

Maybe he's actually good at philosophy? I honestly wouldn't know. I don't walk around pretending I can evaluate and completely redefine disciplines I don't know poo poo about.

Imagine that

Dadaist art sought to divorce art from order and logic. Eripsa does the same to language, but much more effectively.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:52

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

Dadaist art sought to divorce art from order and logic. Eripsa does the same to language, but much more effectively.

Truly we are in the presence of an artiste.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 16:54

crime weed: Nov 9, 2009

You should honestly do like every other person who makes a bitcoin clone and:
*Post this on the bitcoin forums
*Premine
*Launch the bitcoin clone
*Sell once enough shills buy in

You have a lot of words here. Bitcoiners like that. They'll look at the words and say "look at how complicated these words are, these words create value", and buy them.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:06

GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

quote:

1. Why is it desirable for income to equal expenses rather than exceed it?
2. Why is it desirable to have a balance cap?
3. What stops evasion of the balance cap by increasing spending, or trading to subsidiaries?

RealityApologist posted:

1. Because there's a cap on balances, and when you hit that cap all the modifiers to your income (which make you a desirable partner in a transaction) vanish. That doesn't prevent people from hitting the cap, but it provides a pretty strong incentive to avoid it.

2. Because it motivates people to balance their accounts both globally and locally over time.

3. If by "subsidiaries" you mean other nodes in the network, then nothing. The point is to encourage that behavior.

How has no one commented that he didn't actually even bother to answer the first two questions, but instead seems to have answered some completely DIFFERENT set of questions?

Seriously, dude, why is what you are describing desirable. Until you've actually created a justification for why others might want to even *begin* to consider your idea, what is the point? Especially since you clearly don't appreciate criticism, I don't understand why you've even bothered to post about this.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:08

CheesyDog: Jul 4, 2007; by FactsAreUseless

OP, it may seem like we are criticizing you but you are actually just experiencing non-linear support.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:13

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

CommieGIR posted:

True, but the problem is almost all of these groups doing so, do so with NO knowledge of how such a system actually works, and base it solely on how paper currency functions, with no respect to the intricate and complex system that backs it.

I don't think I've seen a cryptocurrency based on the idea of how paper money functions, they're based on the shiny rock principle.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:18

Captain_Maclaine: Sep 30, 2001

Escolopendra posted:

Wait a moment, what is the basis exactly for fearing future cyborg discrimination? There are people right now with mechanical prostheses, and they don�t seem to be objects of hate and discrimination.

Eripsa's entire basis for such fears were his own feverish sense of self-importance, and hopes to somehow shame those of us laughing at our lunatic ideas by comparing himself to civil-/gay-right activists. Oh, and someone used the term "glasshole" to describe a particularly obnoxious Google glass wearer, which is clearly equivalent to a Jim Crow lynch mob.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:19

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Zombywuf posted:

I don't think I've seen a cryptocurrency based on the idea of how paper money functions, they're based on the shiny rock principle.

Well, that too.

The idea is you are handing someone something of some inherit worth (like a USD), but its that exact problem that basically screws bitcoin: Bitcoin is only as good as the real currency you can extract from it. Bitcoin by itself is worthless.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:24

Perfidia: Nov 25, 2007; It's a fact!

ozmunkeh posted:

Wait, wait, wait. What if...
massive bong rip
skateboards attached to little goats.
cough
No, no, no listen, right, we'll plant grass all over the city and

Parkour Lewis Can't Lose

e: oh crap a whole new page just appeared; sorry

ee:

fade5 posted:

Ah, there we go, deflationary currency. The Bitcoin threads explained repeatedly why a deflationary currency is a very bad idea and pretty much tore it to shreds. I'm not sure if it will make a difference to anyone, but the very simple gist is that a deflationary currency discourages spending; if you're money's going to be worth more tomorrow, why would you spend any more than you absolutely have to today? Since consumer spending is the bedrock of an economy, any deflationary currency will have a dysfunctional economy at best, with those who have vast stores of wealth (the rich) being the best off, and those with little wealth (the poor) being the worst off.

Ah, but here's the clever part to handle the bolded bit: if you have too much hoarded money, right, it sort of evaporates! See, told you this was a clever coin.

Perfidia fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:30

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

Who What Now posted:

If the balance of coins doesn't matter then there is no reason to mine them. Simply have [X] amount from the start, rather than starting with [X/y] amount and "mining" from there.

Yeah that's pretty baffling. Like if you can't just ex nihilio up money if there's a finite quantity (unless whatever magic Strange+ accounts your mutual trading created is borrowed against discovery of future Coinz). So basically you have a system that reaches Peak Coin, then all the Coinerz start cannibalizing each others' balances in an effort to keep someone else's Mutually Beneficial Burger Transaction (MBBT) from draining your non-linear account?

So basically, the MBBT endgame is huge zombie botnets autotrading small amounts to keep you in the game?

In an effort to combat this Strange apocalypse, I'm debuting CookieCoin: an accelerationist currency that is non-deflationary, nutritive, and delicious.

I am having problems solving liquidity issues with CookieCoin. Please advise.

FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:31

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

RealityApologist posted:

Traditional economics is like alchemy, and I'm like one of the early chemists before the periodic table or anything else was developed but who has a pretty good sense that alchemy is just bad methodology and that there's an alternative science just around the corner. And you all are like "but why should I believe in the atom" as if I'm heretical for suggesting alchemy needs some updating, and there's honestly nothing I can say to satisfy the lot of you. The only thing I can do is be earnest and try my best. It's never good enough, but I can't reasonably expect anything more.

OK I actually got annoyed at this. But then I started really thinking about it and realized the power Eripsa has just awarded to us. We don't need to understand disciplines, we just need to dimly perceive that there's bad methodology going on (understanding of that methodology required: zero) and that something else is "around the corner." Then we're Newton!

With this in mind, I'd like to award myself the title of petroleum engineer, those guys make bank. I don't really have the background but I understand that oil is dirty and finite and something else like wind or rainbows is "just around the corner." Employ me BP! I no longer need the weirding module.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:32

PrBacterio: Jul 19, 2000

SedanChair posted:

With this in mind, I'd like to award myself the title of petroleum engineer, those guys make bank. I don't really have the background but I understand that oil is dirty and finite and something else like wind or rainbows is "just around the corner." Employ me BP! I no longer need the weirding module.

Really though, at this point is there any reason why continued discussion of this topic SHOULDN'T go into the Pseudoscience thread in SAL? Because to me it pretty darn well ticks all the required checkboxes.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:37

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Zombywuf posted:

I don't think I've seen a cryptocurrency based on the idea of how paper money functions, they're based on the shiny rock principle.

It's because we already have a secure, stable, easily usable and robust currency, they're called Federal Reserve Notes*

*replace with Pounds Sterling or Euros as applicable

icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:38

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

FilthyImp posted:

I am having problems solving liquidity issues with CookieCoin. Please advise.

I'm looking forward to having this discussion. We can have this discussion.

*rides into sunset*

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:40

a neurotic ai: Mar 22, 2012

Good Citizen posted:

Maybe he's actually good at philosophy? I honestly wouldn't know. I don't walk around pretending I can evaluate and completely redefine disciplines I don't know poo poo about.

Imagine that

No he's pretty godawful as far as justifying his argument is concerned. From the purely philosophical perspective there is an overwhelming presumption in favour of the fact that we will retain our current monetary system (given how much people are invested in it).

This has the handy effect of shifting the burden of proof onto him to justify not only that this system can undo the relative apathy people have to this topic but by also allaying the concerns of potential lost values in millions of man hours of work hours made useless by this new system.

In short, he requires one hell of an argument to justify switching systems beyond 'well my 'compression' system emphasises different things'.

As far as I can tell he has to do the following to make an argument even worth considering by anybody sane and serious.

-Understand the current system at an extremely complex level beyond what most economists can in order to perceive wholly the flaws contained.

-Demonstrate to the wider academic community and then the public that these flaws are so cripplingly massive that essentially the entire system is considered doomed anyway. This then allows more scope for detaching people from their savings and investments.

-Once the scope of the debate has opened up to alternatives to our 'doomed' system, he then has to prove that his new system adequately avoids the pitfalls of the old system whilst also preventing any other critical flaws from arising.

So far I have seen none of this and am extremely skeptical about anyone being able to satisfactorily meet those conditions.

a neurotic ai fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:41

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

icantfindaname posted:

It's because we already have a secure, stable, easily usable and robust currency, they're called Federal Reserve Notes.

Who's 'we' yank?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:43

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Zombywuf posted:

Who's 'we' yank?

You. Do you live on Earth?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:47

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Zombywuf posted:

Who's 'we' yank?

fixed my post just for you

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:48

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

If anyone still has that short-story posted in one of the OP's last threads about the Attention-based Society and the big Cat Video Gundam vs Porno-Titan battle please post it. This is a perfect time to reread it and I wanna share it with some friends.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:49

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

SedanChair posted:

You. Do you live on Earth?

I use 5 currencies on a regular basis*, none of them a federal reserve notes.

* 4 of which are pegged to the 5th.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:51

a neurotic ai: Mar 22, 2012

Zombywuf posted:

I use 5 currencies on a regular basis*, none of them a federal reserve notes.

* 4 of which are pegged to the 5th.

Riot points, wow gold, ISK and Steam Wallet funds don't count.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:55

Captain_Maclaine: Sep 30, 2001

Who What Now posted:

If anyone still has that short-story posted in one of the OP's last threads about the Attention-based Society and the big Cat Video Gundam vs Porno-Titan battle please post it. This is a perfect time to reread it and I wanna share it with some friends.

Your wish is my command, in this and only this specific instance:

Cefte posted:

Attention Deficit Disorder

The afternoon sun angled through a tear in the tent. Ma Bao-Zhi grunted, then shifted his face towards the shade and screwed up his eyes. In the absence of light, the retinal burns from his always-on pupil-tracking HUD-halo danced before his field of vision. He sat up and stretched. It was a new day.

The corner of his visual field that was perpetually occupied by the DistroNet feed blinked. A major announcement was incoming from the most influential association of experts that he had ever been a part of: The Council Of Two Million With A Remit Of Everything.

The upstart replacement of last year's not-hegemon, the Coven of Eight to the Seven; Masters of Knowledge, the Council had, yesterday, consisted of just over 50.3% of the surviving inhabitants of what had once been Taiwan SAR. However, as he scanned the headlines, he noted that an overnight disputation on the meaning of Buddha-nature had resulted in nearly two hundred being purged from the membership roster, and, more importantly, from the Council's ReDistroList. Ma had never posted to any discussion regarding Buddha-nature, for which he was now extremely thankful.

Attention Distribution Cannot Be Gamed, he though, nodding to himself. It was a mantra every child knew, and it was obviously true. 'Gaming' would imply an illegitimate practice, and since the attention economy was inherently legitimate, any practice that arose thereof could not be 'gaming'. The use of randomly-assigned attention redistribution lists to strengthen the network-influence of an association of experts was one of the most powerful practices there was - without it, no modern association of experts could compete.

With the saccadic grace of long practice, his pupils flipped to the updated, slightly smaller ReDistroList, and settled down to start his highly-encouraged ten hours of daily network-reinforcement. Ten hours - ten icons - each one painstakingly designed by the expert it represented. The Coven of Eight to the Seven had highly encouraged eight hours of ReDistroList attention, but the Council's superior attention ethic had led to an expert association network both wider and deeper in links, and thus, far more influential. The Coven defined their area of expertise too narrowly, and left themselves open to a ratio attack. It was a trivial task for the Council to dial down the attention ratio of key knowledge industries overnight, leaving the Coven rudderless and sinking. Ma had been a third-quartile defector, holding out longer than most; his punishment was to enter the Council with six month's half-ratio deficit. Half as likely to be randomly assigned to other experts ReDistroList, he counted himself lucky - the fourth quartile had been exiled entirely. As is, he was comfortably off in a deficit camp outside Taibao.

Ma shook himself; introspection was an audience of one. The first icon belonged to Tracy Liu: 166kg, pink highlights and moderator by acclaim of a yaoi fandom for the ancient classic, Glengarry Glen Ross.

The minutes ticked by, and as the completion bar for the first icon flipped over into green and Tracy's hand-drawn icon faded from sight - young Al Pacino gently cupping young Jack Lemmon's testicles on a bed of index cards - Ma decided that he would treat himself with an hour of free attention. He rucked the covers back from his legs and withdrew his 75MHz future-proofed laptop from its pouch.

Minutes later, halfway through the boot-sequence, Ma heard the unmistakable whirring of a Bother-Gyro. He dug rapidly through the contents of the tent for the thick blanket he'd found the week before, to muffle the fans of the laptop, but the blanket had been redistributed. It was too late anyway: the Bother-Gyro's tracking software had heard the fans.

"Go away!" shouted Ma.

< Hello Friend And How Are You And Woo! >

The Bother-Gyro hovered just out of Ma's reach.

"滚蛋!"

< Would You Like A Comestible?! Marmalade Is In This Week! >

"gently caress off."

Bother-Gyros were increasingly common, flying over the water from the Penghu Collective, and Ma had tangled with them before, when he was a high-ratio member of the Coven: an attractive target. The Collective were Min-speakers, and the language barrier was starving them of culture-based attention, and forcing them to desperate measures. He knew that while they would advertise to any moving object, their main purpose was to gain the attention of the victim. Even compared to the average camp member, Ma's influence ratio was low...

"Hey! Bot! There's a high-ratio family just over that wall! You can bother them all at once! Think of the attention gains!"

Unfortunately for Ma, the Bother-Gyro was also running off a 75MHz chip, which did not support voice recognition. Even more unfortunately, what little resources it did have to bring to bear were mainly concentrated on measuring the direction of gaze of the victim, and Ma's gaze had briefly moved from the Gyro to the wall he was gesturing at. The Gyro aimed a module at the RFID tag on Ma's halo.

*pffffsss*

"gently caress!"

Pepper-spray will catch anyone's attention.

Whilst Ma rolled around in the dirt, the Bother-Gyro gently settled on the ground next to him, conserving battery. Proximity was worth less attention than direct eye-contact, but it was still worth something. After a minute, the database updated the Gyro on Ma's uninspiring attention value, and it buzzed off in search of less deficient prey.

----

The afternoon was nearly over before Ma's eyes stopped watering, and the pupil-tracker started to update correctly. Luckily, his HUD-halo was undamaged - it could still receive and transmit audio, video, pupil-tracking data and, indeed, record everything that Ma did. Nine hours of ReDistroList remained on his schedule, but he had bigger things on his mind. Of all the places, his deficit camp was lucky enough to be in viewing distance of a celebrity battle.

It wasn't entirely by chance, of course. Celebrity Mechas were very power-hungry, and required tethering to the grid network, and deficit camps had the tendency to spring up in unused land along grid lines. While city dwellers might have had the massed influence to force such a destructive event outside their municipal margins, a deficit camp by definition could not face up to even the most minor celebrity's choice of land-resource.

This particular battle was between the gigantic robots piloted by a pornography magnate and a man who was extremely good at making videos of cats. Hovering cameras darted about the provided every possible angle around the machines, while in-cockpit vision was granted by cameras attached to both control modules. There were no adverts - the battle itself drew all the attention the participants needed.

The pornographer had outfitted his mecha with water sprinklers, providing the substrate for projected holograms of noted starlets and their riveting performances. The cat man, showing disdain for the practice of up-attending, had a far more stripped-down mecha, bowing to demand only by having a control module shaped like a cat's head. While his initial surge in influence had been off the back of a pet British Shorthair, his true power came from his decision to breed several thousand of the creatures and lock them in a vast complex filled with pastel colors and assorted common household items. Cuteness, too, can be brute-forced.

As the two machines started to stride towards each other, Ma watched camp-dwellers who sought influence more than health run between the legs of the mechas. Like so much in the attention economy, it was a dual payoff. Simply being near a mecha guaranteed a proportion of the attention that the pilot was constantly exuding, and that was worth the risk of injury in itself. But, if a camera tracked by millions happened to autofocus on a lucky expert? Why, a single second's worth of attention was more than the expert might otherwise see in a lifetime.

The battle was joined, and as the mechas stamped to and fro, they came closer and closer to the western edge of the camp - the edge furthest from Ma. Even those experts in the camp whose lack of attention ethics had placed them dangerously close to exile from their associations could not help but pay heed. Lasers flashed, missiles flew, and clouds of smoke emerged even when not strictly necessary. In fact, the battle, like most battles, was more bark than bite: it was considered bad form to actually kill another celebrity, not least because it tended to alienate part of your potential audience. After all, who didn't enjoy both pornography and cat videos?

The din didn't just attract the attention of experts - from miles around, Bother-Gyros wheeled in, guided by the very human tendency to correlate decibels and attention. Ma gazed in wonder as a two flocks of gyros of different manufacture, bathed in the proximity wash from the mechas, each mistook the other flock as the source of attention. Overriding the normal guideline that led them to disperse for maximal coverage, the gyros spiralled madly in ever decreasing circles as they sought to increase that flow.

As he watched, the gyrating super-flock, consisting of nearly a hundred Bother-Gyros, whirled into the cloud of spray being produced by pornographer's mechanical contraption. A hundred automatic protection circuits flared into action, and the mass of gyros punched in the opposite direction - straight into the air intake ducts of the cat-mecha.

One gyro would have been unfortunate. Five would have led to an emergency shutdown. But no mecha-designer had considered such a freak occurrence as the emergent behaviour so briefly displayed by the gyro-flocks. Admittedly, QA and Safety were neglected disciplines ever since the advent of the attention economy - who would dedicate their lives to a discipline that involved something so unquantifiable as preventing rare occurrences? After all, it's not as though someone might lose their accumulated attention - just their lives.

With a massive crunch, the flywheels at the center of the cat-mecha broke apart, releasing a torrent of kinetic energy, and sending parts of the mecha in every direction. The pornographer tried to backpedal his mecha away from the burning debris, but his attention elsewhere, he stepped directly on one of the experts that had been trailing his footsteps. As his machine overturned, the pornographer clutched at the control panel, seeking the emergency eject key, but by chance also fat-fingering the steam overcharge system. The porn-mecha's control module blasted off the chassis - straight into the side of one of the few fixed-wall buildings in the camp. The steam explosion, while softer, was far more deadly.

Ma had hit the ground as soon as he saw the first gyro sucked into the air-intake - luckily so, as burning debris had taken out several of his neighbours. Now, his view obscured by what remained of the same three foot-wall he had urged the gyro to surmount earlier that day, he flicked his eyes to open a newsline. The events of the past minute had gone viral - his feed was already filling with commentary from the other side of the world. Every last survivor would soon be bombarded with requests for commentary on the death of the celebrities.

Celebrities plural? The feed from the cat-mecha was still active. In fact, the explosion had blown the control module right over the camp, landing to the east, far from the screams of the scalded and poisoned camp dwellers. Ma held a rag over as much of his mouth and nose as he could reach through his HUD-halo, and levered himself to his feet.

The cat man was alive. In fact, he was almost unhurt - a mere fractured collarbone. He was, however, trapped inside his module, and mouthing something - the audio feed from his cockpit had cut out. Ma tore his attention from his HUD-halo and looked out, directly at the smoking module in the distance.

Never mind proximity attention - to be the man who saved a celebrity from almost certain death? To be the only source of an audio feed for the sole celebrity survivor of what the international feeds were calling the Disaster of Taibao?

Ma started to trot towards the control module, avoiding the prone bodies of those less fortunate survivors, around some of whom flames still flickered. He tore his foot away from the grasp of one, whilst muttering thanks for the last few seconds of absolute attention they granted him. He stepped over a corpse, then briefly glanced behind him. The least concussed of the able-bodied camp survivors were already moving after him. Turning his back to the setting sun, Ma broke into a run.

For those of you who are having their first go-around with Eripsa's feverish lunacy, I highly recommend reading the thread that really started all this, or at least clued us in that he and reality have been seeing other people for some time now.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:55

Zombywuf: Mar 29, 2008

Ocrassus posted:

Riot points, wow gold, ISK and Steam Wallet funds don't count.

I wouldn't go telling the Scots that their 3 currencies are equivalent to a Steam Wallet.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 18:06

Slanderer: May 6, 2007

This is somehow worse than Bitcoin---the original Bitcoin whitepaper actually explained in a technical sense what it was setting out to achieve, and how it would be done:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

By presenting it as such, people could actually debate the technical merits of Bitcoins as well as the economic merits. Technically, it was a surprisingly sound idea, but from an economic perspective it's real dumb. That part was clearly outside of the author's area, so it's not surprising.

With Eripsa's ideas, there is neither a technical or economic structure presented---he can't express either "How is this implemented exactly?" or "Why is *this* something worth implementing?". The details of implementation have always been anathema to him, presumably because they are completely outside of his field / he's an "ideas guy". So, we end up with some useless metaphors, a couple of "equations" that below the level of intro econ. In fact, I can only come to the conclusion that he hasn't bothered to study any Economics, because I don't think he's heard of utility theory. Or maybe he has, and dismissed it because it actually uses math.

The latter question, "Why should we do this?" is also never answered. At best, we are told, "Well, our system now is bad!" or "Lossy compression!!!". It's worth noting that the "compression" metaphor is particularly relevatory--it insinuates cause and effect in order to make things more seem "technical", instead of admitting that concepts such as "value" are emergent phenomena of a distributed system.

So, we are presented with a dilemma--the same dilemma, in fact, that was present in the Attention Economy thread(s): We can't criticize the technical aspects, because they are not sufficiently well-defined to make informed critiques. If someone decides to make a bunch of wild suppositions and say "Well, I guess if we assume A, B, and C then maybe you could squint your eyes and assume that D is plausible", Eripsa will latch on and declare that someone finally "gets it". He will do this multiple times, with multiple sets of irreconcilable assumptions. The only conclusion is that he is a technical evangelist who is incapable of technical work, and is desperate for others to fill in the blanks of his idea. The same dilemma affects the "why?" side of this---the question is irrelevant to him, because his idea is Good and it is Smart. He is looking for us to tell him why is idea is good instead of calling it poo poo-stupid.

TL;DR--Eripsa once again has a solution in need of a problem.

Slanderer fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 18:07

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

Captain_Maclaine posted:

Your wish is my command, in this and only this specific instance:

For those of you who are having their first go-around with Eripsa's feverish lunacy, I highly recommend reading the thread that really started all this, or at least clued us in that he and reality have been seeing other people for some time now.

Awesome, thank you! You're a good person.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 18:08

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Sometimes it makes me sad that people are going into debt to sit in a classroom listening to Eripsa. Or at least they used to. There's something broken in whole disciplines of academia.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 18:13

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# ? May 13, 2024 17:42

Adar: Jul 27, 2001

Serious reply in between laughing really hard:

Kilty Monroe posted:

What would be real-world examples of coupling and inhibition? I'm having a little trouble penetrating the overly technical language, but they appear to be agreements between two people that end up pulling extra money out of the Monopoly bank rather than each other, and I'm not aware of anything similar in reality.

The Universal Account can loosely be thought of as the Fed (disclaimer: this is a retarded analogy but I'm not going to give Eripsa more precious attention by coming up with something more accurate). The Fed distributes money to banks at the prime rate. If the prime rate falls, the banks get cheaper (more) money = coupling. If the prime rate rises, they get less = inhibition.

Another real world example of coupling is OPEC, which successfully distributes more money amongst all of its members by cartelizing a key resource. I know it's shocking that this dumb idea might have unforeseen problems if applied to everything IRL but here we are!

quote:

Also, if there really is no functional difference aside from the balance cap, but this system would still result in hyperinflation, then would just imposing a wealth cap in the real world also result in hyperinflation?

Honest, non-rhetorical questions here, this isn't my strongest subject.

As someone put it, the system here imagines that money is literally on fire and *must* be spent at the risk of losing it. This naturally results in massive evasion or shockwaves of utterly socially useless spending on garbage or both. It certainly introduces hyperinflation at the basic income level.

You can get around this by also implementing rigid price controls on everything, preventing your citizens from trading with the outside world and very harsh penalties for doing anything with money without prior approval. This particular "innovation" might even work on the consumer level. Ask the Soviets how well that model worked when applied to actual industrial output.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 18:13

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