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Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

The Duke of Ben posted:

I think the idea is that a vigilante justice system would be the norm, and you would simply let your friends and neighbors know that you have been robbed, so you can get a mob together and lynch the guy go get your stuff back.


So that time Reddit got mad at a girl because she said she was raped, and reddit totally thought she wasn't and posted a bunch of personal information about her - that is like, halfway there. In an optimal system, the mob of redditors would also get to physically hurt her.

Everything just makes this sound more and more like a wonderful future.

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Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

If customer service was completely automatable, it would have been done by now. Many have tried. Most large firms incorporate dynamic help files and a complicated phone tree. But ultimately, many companies still needs people to be on the phone, willing to talk to angry people.

That job sucks. It sucks so much that payment is necessary.

Same for a lot of jobs that cannot be automated.

Even a lot of simple-seeming tasks require a lot of thinking on the fly. Fishing. Logging. Hanging drywall. These things all totally suck, too. You need to pay people to do these.

Any automation solution to these jobs is even by the standards of your utopia, not feasible. If we ever make a robot smart enough to build a house when the soil consistency is way different than planned and the architect hosed up one of the bedrooms, then we have built a robot as smart as us.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Hello friends. It is clear that capitalism has some failings. Therefore we should institute a dystopia that will not even meet the same standards of living capitalism provides. Also, police will be replaced by redditors. Here are 25 more paragraphs saying almost nothing. Good day.

~time passes~

Everyone is being so hostile. That must mean it is they who are wrong.

What I really love here is the supreme irony that Eripsa's plans are failing the only metric Eripsa recognizes as valid - crowdsourcing. Eripsa takes this to mean that in this and only this instance, crowdsourcing itself is showing the deficiencies of the crowd. Crowdsourcing remains, of course, the optimal method for distribution of toothpaste.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

No, see, that is because it is poisoned by capitalism. Imagine how great life would be if you had to run a kickstarter campaign to get enough attention to be allowed a unit of hemorrhoid cream.


edit



God, that's depressing. But who are we to doubt the wisdom of crowds? Harlem probably has too many art centers, and the vanguards of twitter are effectively preventing them from being greedy.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:


People in this thread literally believe that money is so inevitable that people would be unable to take care of ourselves and provide for our basic needs without it. People think that we are so selfish and petty and stupid that we need to be shackled to a job to have any value to society, and that if we don't perform for our paychecks then tough poo poo, we starve. And people think this system is so loving good that even mentioning the possibility that it was optional, and that there was a better way to do it, is itself grounds for suspicion of mental instability. I don't know, man, but y'all look like monkey whores to me.


So hey Eripsa, how do we motivate people to do all the incredibly unpleasant jobs in society currently without some form of compensation?

*dodge dodge dodge*

It so clearly is outside your level of concern or even interest that maybe most people don't even like doing what they have to do to make a living (except as a damning indictment of capitalism maybe) that man, I just have to wonder how soft your entire life has been, if even working for a living doing something unpleasant is totally outside your sphere.

This isn't some minor niggling detail. It is the entire core of any economic system. And yet, you barely even seem to care about this - one of the primary issues to any economic system. In not having a real answer to this fundamental question, you show you aren't really proposing a system of alternate economics at all. You're just wanking.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:


I am guessing you've never been unemployed for a significant amount of time, or that you don't sit on huge medical bills that basically take your paycheck before you've touched it. I'm guessing you've never found yourself at the end of the month wondering how you will feed yourself for a week until you get paid, knowing that you still have to drag yourself to work for this whole week despite your growling stomach.


Clearly, working for free a/o being shamed by redditors who have access to every detail of my life is preferable.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Money is exploitative. Basically, slavery.

To solve this problem, we should structure society to ensure that some people are forced to work in mines for free.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

This also means that rates of consumption and use will also change, just as a result of changed patterns of activity. Maybe people don't commute so much when they don't need to drive. Maybe that's a good thing. We know our currently levels of use and consumption are not sustainable, so maybe it is a good thing that people cut back and slow down and don't rush for the work.

And maybe after all those inefficiencies are ironed out (since no one got the joke the first time), and you still have something socially necessary that needs to be harvested, but maybe then you have a manageable problem of that can be solved by the few people still left who passionately want to see it accomplished, given its clear necessity. If there was a "We are about to run out of Iron Ore and need 5 volunteers!" campaign on Twitter, and everyone was educated about the importance of that resource for the global economy, I'm sure you'd get 5 volunteers.

Your solution actually is to replace compensation with unpaid "volunteers." Because money is slavery!

But what if - and I know this is unlikely, but what if - not enough people want to do customer service phone support / design medical tracking software / work the midnight shift in the ER / pick up garbage / work on a cargo ship / assemble ipods / build houses / farm / etc / etc / etc (ad infinity)

What then?

I kind of love that in between being mad at people for not taking your seriously enough, you actually have no idea that labor is unpleasant.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

But I don't think it is impossible. We would just need to think hard about how to do it. I'm not telling you what that solution will look like, I'm just telling you that it will be the solution.


Well hopefully we can get an answer sometime after the revolution and shortly before reddit crowdsources hiring Blackwater to make sure their xbox's get built on time.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

OatmealRaisin posted:

He does. He doesn't care. FOR THE GREATER GOOD.

Money is slavery, therefore we need to enable redditors to know everything about every person so that certain people can be shamed into working in coal mines for free.

That is literally his proposal. Utopianism that doesn't even bother to promise a utopia.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

Why isn't this problem taken care of by weighting the experts?

Wait, there's experts? Do they get their expert status by doing lots of coal mining? Because otherwise, it looks like you are introducing an entirely new form of attention based-value not related to labor, which completely contradicts your entire (ridiculous) system up to this point. Why should some "expert" get more attention than I do, when I hand built a radio? I deserve more attention units because I did the work, right?

And how are these experts certified? Crowdsourcing?

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

Yes, there are experts, and they get their expertise from mining coal, and they don't get more attention than you for being experts, they get more attention for the work they do, an they get their expertise from doing that work as well, and their attention gives them influence over the distribution of resources, and they deserve that disproportionate share of influence because they are experts and you don't know poo poo. These experts are certified by open and transparent standards by the people qualified to make those judgments, and the people will self-organize in ways to keep those standards legitimate and sound. You know, sort of like now except without temptation of trying to distort that system with money.

So how do I become an expert on global warming? What if someone if someone, like so many Americans, does not believe in global warming? And what if that person mines more coal than I do?

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

You become an expert on global warming by studying it for a long time and making acquaintance with other people in the field and being part of the global warming research community. Someone who does not believe in global warming would probably not be accepted in that group as an expert. If they mine more coal than you then maybe they get more of a say in coal mining, but their say must be put along side the issues surrounding global warming, and you aren't an expert on that subject.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. If your point was to say that a debate we are currently struggling with will still be a struggle, I haven't guaranteed that anyone will live a struggle free life, or that all the difficult questions will suddenly be made easy. I think answering the question "should we mine more or less coal" is easier to answer when money isn't involved, if that helps?

So there is an insular "expert community" who decides its own membership, and whose attention afforded to them is not tied to labor. That directly contradicts your earlier statement in which you said:

quote:

Yes, there are experts, and they get their expertise from mining coal, and they don't get more attention than you for being experts, they get more attention for the work they do, an they get their expertise from doing that work as well, and their attention gives them influence over the distribution of resources, and they deserve that disproportionate share of influence because they are experts and you don't know poo poo.

But more critically, it radically changes your entire premise. Up till now, value was based on attention, and we get attention by work. But now you introduce that we can also get attention by joining a self-selecting guild of expertness. So, there are two currencies now in the eripsa economy - we have attention, and expertise.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

You haven't solved the coordination problem, at all, ever. Who mines the materials and why, who drives the materials and why, who assembles the widgets and why, who ships them across the ocean and why, who shows up at the ports at 3am with trucks to offload the widgets and why, etc etc etc. You have not addressed any of this except by hand waving and wishes. Oh I can get more "attention" well gee whiz I better work in a factory for 40 hours a week. Then I can use this attention to



To what, eripsa? What do I do with it? What is your dumb replacement currency actually used for? That's all it is, a currency. You are replacing money with a less useful, less transmittable currency, and at the low low cost of sacrificing all privacy forever.

But back to the 'coordination problem' - no, it is not solved. Why am I bailing hay? Baling hay sucks. Why am I doing it? Earlier I thought I was baling hay so people could pay attention to me, which was pretty dumb, but now I learn that even that is not true, that my attention is worth less than an "expert" who didn't have to bale any hay at all. That sounds like some pretty fundamental social injustice right there.

I think in that circumstance I wouldn't actually bale hay, and not enough people would. I wasn't psyced about doing it for attention, but I sure as poo poo won't do it for nothing at all.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Achmed Jones posted:

They are values that are binary: either you agree with a science fiction techno-fascist dystopia or you literally think food wastage and slavery are good things. Welcome to the future beep boop.

Then you can be one of the good guys, and try to figure out ways to replace the literal slavery of getting paid to do work on a voluntary basis, with the much preferable system of finding ways to compel people to do unpleasant labor for free.

What gets me most about Eripsa's system is just how nakedly evil it all is. "No no, see, we make it so everyone can find out everything on everyone. The trick is, figuring out a way to make it so this system forces people to mine coal for free." It's one cape and skull shaped island from appearing in a comic book. Which makes eripsa's frequent haranguing of his hecklers on moral terms even more hilarious.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

No, I don't.

The endgame for your ideal system as proposed here has always been slavery, as 1) no tangible reward for hard labor, and 2) extreme demands for technological goods are both core, non-negotiable concepts to your system. The only thing you are willing to negotiate on is what precise means of compulsion will ensure that back breaking labor continues in your system without real compensation. The only form of compensation you have ever offered for back breaking labor is "attention," and even on that note, you have recently recanted even that, as you make clear the "attention" of a laborer will never be equal to the "attention" bestowed on an "expert" subject to no labor requirement at all.

You are advocating pure ridiculous comic book level dystopia and it continues to be pretty hilarious.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

What happens if people don't want to do back breaking labor voluntarily and for free?

I realize this is highly theoretical but humor me please.

Seriously, I can tell you have never been involved in any actual volunteer effort. "Hey guys, we all agree this thing is super important, right? Great. So we just need to all show up on Sunday for an hour." ~3 people show up, late~

And that's for immediate, important things like electing a president or saving a beloved local park. And all folks had to do was show up.

You expect iron to be mined using this system.

Slavery. The only real end result of your plans are slavery. Because you made money illegal and poo poo still needs to get done and you also require an immense amount of computers to be built so that everyone can twitter and every single object can be tracked.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

That's a good point. Later guys, I'm going to go mine coal for free!

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

"Let's destroy the current global economy and replace it with a system that cannot possibly work, or maybe slavery. Also, I believe in magic."

"No. Also, magic does not exist."

"GEEZ GUYS WAY TO NOT HELP HIM OUT"

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

I tried doing that myself, years ago. Citing neuroscience. Everyone dismissed me as a lunatic, but I got a PM from this guy - Kane - who identified himself as a neuroscience graduate student in Tel Aviv who is seeing the exact same trends I'm seeing. Since then, Kane tried his hand at starting a learderless, self-organizing protest movement (between Egypt's revolution and Libya's) and got 500,000 people to show up. I'd call that a proof-of-concept.


No, I don't think Uglycat or Uglycat's friend did the Egyptian revolution.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

counterpoint: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/egyptian-activists-action-plan-translated/70388/

but no, Kane had nothing to do with Egypt. He just watched it play out exactly as one would expect, given the new realities we face today*. It did inspire him to start this though -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/04/israel-protests-social-justice

*the very same realities so many in this thread are stubbornly refusing to accept

Congratulations on getting a PM from someone who may or may not exist and who may or may not actually be involved with what you think this possibly real person is involved with.

meanwhile. . .

Eripsa's ideas are still senseless, dumb, and from a certain point of view, pretty outright comic book evil. We're still waiting on answers on how we get enough free but trust me it's totally not slavery I promise labor to build all the spy satellites and computers that will track every single thing every single person does, so that redditors can make fun of people for using too much toothpaste.*


*These are Eripsa's actual ideas.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat, if you think I am strawmanning and not literally stating things Eripsa has proposed in this thread, that means you are the one who has not being reading Eripsa's posts.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Tracking every single thing every one does (including by satellites), as supported by free labor, and using twitter and social media to shame excess production are Eripsa's core concepts.

Why are you even commenting here if you haven't been reading his posts?

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

No, those are real-world examples he's cited (not as a 'proof of concept', but as a hint at what we're moving towards) to defend his assertion that an attention-based economy might be able to better allocate resources than a profit-driven capitalist system.

Why are you even commenting here if you haven't been [edit]comprehending[/edit] his posts?

Here is the very first post where Eripsa talks about the mechanism to make the 'attention based economy' work, from the front page of this thread:

Eripsa posted:

Imagine that every human being alive straps a little box on their foreheads. These little boxes shoot out tiny invisible marbles at some constant rate, say 10 marbles a minute. It shoots these marbles out at the objects you happen to be looking at, which are equipped with other boxes to absorb those incoming marbles. These marbles are a crude approximation of the attention you pay. Every time you pay attention to some object, it gets bombarded with your marbles.

Of course, this will all be done digitally without little boxes strapped to anyone's head. And where a person is looking is a terrible indicator of attention; to do this properly we'd need to retina-tracking hardware or sophisticated real-time brain scanners. But leave these technical details aside for the moment. I want to give you the big picture of what the Attention Economy looks like. So boxes on foreheads with marbles shooting out at a constant rate and getting absorbed by other objects. Still with me?

From the start, devices to track attention have been at the center of his/her system. As the thread has progressed (which you have also clearly not read, despite feeling just fine commenting on it), he/she has elaborated on what these devices would be and how they work, up to and including tracking satellites.

That was from the first page. And yet clearly, you haven't even bothered to read that, before wading in here with your opinion. And opinion so valuable that someone PM'd you once, I realize. But, still. It may serve your purposes to read about the things you choose to comment on. I realize, however, that this is contrary to your whole thing.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

You are writing to me on a machine that tracks your attention.


Just read this thread before commenting on it is all I am asking.

I am also finding your insistence that it is I who am not reading things infuriatingly ironic. So ironic and infuriating I am typing entirely in italics.



edit

holy god uglycat the post eripsa made right after yours

quote:

That's not a matter of definition or stipulation, because every activity generates use patterns that need to be tracked by the system.

I mean holy gently caress having a lot of technological tracking mechanisms for "attention" is his entire loving thing.

Just loving read the thread.

Read it.

Stop commenting and read it.

Then maybe comment if you have something to say but for god's sake read it first, you are not representing eripsa's position accurately at all.

Still italics. still frustrated here.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

I didn't realize it upsets you so much to be wholly and utterly refuted. If I knew, I'd have gone easier on you.

You haven't refuted anything. You just keep saying "I'm right, I'm right." You aren't even quoting Eripsa. Because that would involve reading the thread.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

Eripsa proposed that an attention-based economy might do better than a profit-driven economy at allocating resources (by a humanist measure).

He then gave an elaborate thought-experiment to help illustrate his point.


This, in reference to using satellites to track 'attention':

uglycat posted:


No, those are real-world examples he's cited (not as a 'proof of concept', but as a hint at what we're moving towards) to defend his assertion that an attention-based economy might be able to better allocate resources than a profit-driven capitalist system.

In the above quoted statement you allege that eripsa was holding up the tracking technology as an example of the failures of our current system. This was, and still is, completely contrary to what Eripsa was saying. The "thought experiment" in this context was about technologies that could make his system work, not on how his system would be less wasteful. Which is directly contrary to what you allege above.

On the upside, I think I actually prefer your blatant trolling posts to the usual 5 paragraphs of nonsense and unearned condescension, so I'm probably doing a disservice to the greater discourse here by even encouraging you to read the thread

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

It's only absurd because you don't comprehend it, of course. In fact, when reading high-level stuff, apparent absurdity is generally a good indicator that you don't actually grasp what's being discussed.

Congratulations on having finally read some of the thread. As your reward, I will graciously decline to point out how your characterization of eripsa's statements has completely reversed.

Your description of these ideas as being too "high level" for my puny mind to understand has just made my evening. Thank you.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Uglycat posted:

Now, suppose you actually identified a REAL problem with Eripsa's thought experiment (to my knowledge, you've not). Would that refute Eripsa's initial hypothesis? Would it be possible for it to be the case that
"An attention-based economy could outperform a currency-based economy (by certain humanist measures"
is true, even if you really did point out an actual bona-fide problem with Eripsa's thought experiment?

So, you still haven't read the thread. Okay.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:


Seriously, is money the only thing keeping you doing a good job?


You must have led a very soft, privileged life to make this statement.

The overwhelming majority of jobs on this Earth are not fun or rewarding enough to justify doing without concrete reward, and often are outright terrible.

Perhaps you should go outside and have a chat with your landscaper, or try to catch your garbage man some early morning, or the UPS driver the next time he or she visits.

I'm personally in the extremely privileged position of having a white collar job, and I would stop showing up the minute I didn't need it to live.


edit to add:


In short, yes, money is the only thing keeping me doing a good job. Lots and lots of people like me exist. (I would also expect that this set of people includes nearly all those involved in highly monotonous physical labor, which is a good fraction of all jobs on earth.)

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa, what is your job history?

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Dallan Invictus posted:

This keeps getting asked. I believe he's already mentioned he's currently a teacher at a community college, but I might be misremembering.

I just wonder how he could have gone through life without ever doing a job that is both necessary, on some sort of level, for other people, and yet also not completely unpleasant to do. The frequent rejoinder of "do you need money to do a good job??" is so completely out of line of the world of digging ditches, or for that matter, the world of attending soul crushing meetings and arguing with people on the phone and in email, that I'm just a little taken aback. It's pretty clear Eripsa has never actually had a lovely job, and that's pretty great for him, but the inability to develop some empathy for the vast majority of the world that has is consistently blowing my mind. I don't mean empathy on the "know their suffering" level, just the most basic "oh yeah, ditch digging probably isn't intrinsically rewarding" kind of level.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

That's right. I totally accept the concern that my system is computationally difficult, and it isn't the most efficient way to solve the problem.

As long as we agree that it is not only logically possible but actually feasible in the "we could really do it if we tried but of course we never will because we are idiots and we'd rather bicker about birth control than fix the burning planet" sense, then I think my argument is fine. The point isn't to optimize everything, its just to do the best we can to solve the coordination problem in a self-organized and sustainable way. There will be energy sinks and waste somewhere, and that's okay.

Until you give a non-comedy answer to how bauxite gets mined, wheat gets sown, goods transported and deliver, sewage systems monitored, and the Eripsa Model T laptop gets assembled, you have not solved anything. Your solution to the "coordination problem" is a means of signaling what is needed where, but it in no way effectively addresses how things get where. Your only answers on this front are handwaving, and asserting the moral failings of your interlocutors.

Even just as a means of signaling, your solution is not clearly even theoretically possible on a technical level, and quite clearly reliant on unprecedented amounts of labor and industry - the very things you keep handwaving around and ignoring. In a world where a substantial amount of the population cannot get clean water, you would like us to focus efforts on assembling trillions of computer chips and putting them in almost everything, then handing everyone a laptop.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

I am writing a lot of words right now, but I can make this very simple and give you guys a head start with your gasping astonishment at my ridiculous view.

The consensus process in action.

You mean how all those people did a silly thing they were told to do by a man in a middle of a stadium with a flag? The above video you posted is the very definition of subservience to an arbitrary authority. Where is the consensus? Do you think all those people in the stadium agreed to do it on their own volition, and not out of a sense of social shame at being the oddball out? That's absurd. And it certainly wasn't a democratic idea, democratically decided. Here is the youtube description for that video:

quote:

In Late Aug. 2008 @ the NASCAR event "the Sharpie 500" Sprint Cup the smallest track that always gets the most people a half mile oval with over ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE in the crowd, shatter the last world record by more than 20 thousand more people at some world cup soccer game is the HUMAN WAVE BY NASCAR FANS !!! YYYEEEEAAAAHHHH BABY!! GIT'R'DONE!!

Clearly, the did not show up to that stadium to do a dumb thing on video. They showed up to watch some NASCAR. Then the teletron and a man with a flag told them to do something, and they did.

Where is the consensus in any of this?

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

Consensus is a shared understanding.

"Welp, looks like we are doing this thing" is the consensus of the crowd, behaving as a crowd. Not everyone participated. Not everyone who participated wanted to. Nevertheless, this is a self-organized, cooperative system.

How in gods name is them doing what a man with a flag in the middle of a stadium told them to do, on command, 'self-organized?'

edit:

Here is some more self organized, emergent behavior as per Eripsa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUSsiV7nJnk&feature=related

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Install Gentoo posted:

I have a better video of a wide consensus group:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHs2coAzLJ8

:)

Behaving as a crowd? Check.

Aaaaaaaannd, that's it. That is the only requirement, according to Eripsa. Per this:

Eripsa posted:



"Welp, looks like we are doing this thing" is the consensus of the crowd, behaving as a crowd. Not everyone participated. Not everyone who participated wanted to. Nevertheless, this is a self-organized, cooperative system.

That is indeed some consensus right there.

At this point, what doesn't consensus mean?

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

Contrast the Triumph of the Will. That system is not self-organized by the independent actions of its participants, but is organized by a top down hierarchy that not only describes the methods of coordination, but also limits the roles and behaviors that constitute legitimate participation in the system.

How is every single word of this not also true for the Nascar wave? Top down hierarchy: man with flag -> crowd. Limiting roles and behavior that constitute legitimate behavior in that system: standing up early and waving arms is not supported by the system.


You started your post in such a clear, declarative way:

Eripsa posted:

I want to be clear that I'm using the term "consensus" in a technical way.

Awesome! So let's get a definition!

And then, a definition never happens. It's like everything else you post. This thing you like is part of this word you like. This other thing you don't like isn't part of that same word you like, even though it meets all the criteria you list for it. You claim to have some background or credentials in philosophy, but man, you are lazy and reckless with words.

Define consensus. Just, define it. Define your terms. I don't get how you can write to loving much and say so little. Define your terms, adequately, and proceed forward, otherwise discussion here is impossible. When challenged on your terms you say, just like here, that you are using your words in an unconventional sense. That's great. Define them then.

But lastly, I can't not comment on this. This is just loving ridiculous - on the NASCAR wave:

quote:

The crowd doing the wave is a self-organized system, and it is organized on the basis of a consensus among the crowd. The consensus is the shared understanding among the participants that they are about to do the wave. This shared goal gets executed with some central coordination, but the coordination is not what is motivating the participation of the members. The fact of coordination doesn't make something other-organized.

Of loving course that wave was "other organized." Unless you want to redefine "other" and "organized." Was it being led by a man not in the crowd? Yes. Would it have happened without that man in the crowd? No. He is an other to the crowd, and he organized it.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

Consensus is achieved when there is a shared understanding among a crowd.


That is not a definition.

quote:

The guy with the flag is a functional part of the crowd. The guy with the flag is like tRNA.

This is why I asked for a definition. If a man telling a crowd to do something the crowd would not have done otherwise is "part of the crowd," and part of the crowd's "consensus," then the following things I can also reasonable presume to be consensus:

-Platoons marching by order of a drill instructor.
-My boss telling me what to do
-Pretty much every single group action on Earth, currently


And yet somehow, what is depicted in Triumph of the Will is not consensus, because. . .


You need to define consensus in a way that has some meaning. Right now, it doesn't have meaning. When things you like happen, that meets your standard for consensus. When things you don't like happen, they don't. You are not giving a real definition. If you gave a real definition, then it would be apparent what does and does not meet that definition. All you have given is use cases. And even these use cases have been highly inconsistent.

This is not philosophy. It is barely even wankery. Philosophy requires definitions, and consistent use of words.

Best Friends
Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

Yes it is. You aren't asking for a definition, you are asking for some way to determine if a consensus has been reached. I'm just telling you what it means when you have it, and that's enough for a definition.

Okay, here is your "definition"

quote:


Consensus is achieved when there is a shared understanding among a crowd.

Here is an equivalent 'definition' for "boat"

quote:

A boat is constructed when the workers construct a craft.

All that "definition" tells me is one process which produces the outcome named as the word in question. It does not tell me what the word in question is. Is boat a paddleball? A rule set for a board game? A dildo? I don't know what boat is, because I do not have a definition of boat. Instead, I have a description of one particular process that results in "boat." We don't actually know what a boat is based on that process description, just like we don't know what consensus is based on your process description.

So no, you still have not defined consensus.

quote:

So before I go on, I just want to say one more time that I have been incredibly consistent in my use of the key concepts and definitions at work in this thread.

That is a laughable statement, considering:

quote:

Does that help? Okay, so let's take your list again:

-Platoons marching by order of a drill instructor.

Yep, there's consensus here. In fact, this is the core motivation for rejecting the Nuremberg Defense. So think about this carefully, are you really arguing that the soldier does not consent to his orders?

Of course, platoons don't operate as self-organized systems. They have very clear top-down hierarchical structures. But I never said anything to suggest that a platoon was self-organized, and there is nothing inconsistent with my view for claiming that platoons are consensus-based.


So then how the hell is what is depicted in "Triumph of the Will" not consensus?


Define consensus. For real.

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Nov 4, 2011

Eripsa posted:

I never said it wasn't.

A consensus is a shared understanding among a community. This is a definition. This is the definition I have used consistently. This is not a meaningless definition.

You are not pointing out a problem with my theory. You are wasting space in this thread making a lot of noise that demonstrates only that you have not read or comprehended anything I've written in this thread.

It makes you look like an idiot, because you are an idiot.

Correct, I was mistaken. You insist rather that it is not 'self organized' whereas a crowd doing exactly what a man with a flag tells them to is. This remains completely ridiculous, but it is not currently central to what I'm saying.

Nonetheless, you have still not provided a real definition. You have not told us what consensus is. You have only told us various means of arriving at this thing called "consensus."

You may also find it useful to your argument (such as it is) to define other terms you are using unconventionally. Or, conventionally. Ironically, your current (last couple) pages of using the word "consensus," despite your claims that you are using your own use of it, you appear to be more or less using it as per the dictionary definition.