Strangecoin: a calvinball economy

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

RealityApologist: Mar 29, 2011; ASK me how NETWORKS algorithms NETWORKS will save humanity. WHY ARE YOU NOT THINKING MY THESIS THROUGH FOR ME HEATHENS did I mention I just unified all sciences because NETWORKS

I was digging through the SomethingAwful archives and found my first essay on the attention economy, written on April 5th, 2011. At the time, Bitcoin had yet to experience it's first bubble and was still trading below a dollar, and Occupy Wall Street was still five months in the future. If you don't have access to the archives, the thread which prompted this first write up was titled "No More Bitchin: Let's actually create solutions to society's problems!" Despite my reputation on this forum, I'm not interested in pop speculative futurism or idle technoidealism. I don't think there's an easy technological fix for our many difficult problems. But I do think that our technological circumstances have a dramatic impact on our social, political, and economic organizations, and that we can design technologies to cultivate human communities that are healthy, stable, and cooperative. The political and economic infrastructure we have for managing collective human action was developed at a time when individual rational agency formed the basis of all political theory, and in a networked digital age we can do much better. An attention economy doesn't solve all the problems, but it provides tools for addressing problems that simply aren't available with the infrastructure we have available today. My discussion of the attention economy was aimed at discussing social organization at this level of abstraction, with the hopes that taking this networked perspective on social action would reveal some of the tools necessary for addressing our problems. .

In the three years and multiple threads since that initial post, I've done research into the dynamics and organization of complex systems and taught myself some of the math and theory necessary for making the idea explicit and communicable. And in that time the field of data science has grown astronomically, making a variety of tools and theoretical resources available for modelling and predicting the dynamics of complex networks. In general, the public discourse has become much more comfortable thinking about attention and network dynamics and its implications. Some of that discussion is gross hype and misrepresentation, but some of it is really giving us unprecedented pictures of our collective behavior at large scales. And for this reason, more people have been articulating proposals that look quite a lot like the attention economy I've been describing. I'm not saying this vindicates my theory, but it suggests a possible convergence in in the direction I've been pointing.

In any case, if I was going to make a new thread I didn't want to just vomit out some more impotent rhetoric. Instead, I wanted to give a specific, proposal of limited scope that can be addressed on is own merits independent of whatever reputation I've developed. So I wrote up a proposal for a new digital currency.

quote:

Strangecoin: the nonlinear currency

In this post I sketch a proposal for a digital currency that works unlike other *coins that have recently become available. I'm calling it Strangecoin, both to highlight its uniqueness as a currency and as a reference to the strange attractor, a special kind of nonlinear system.

What's unique about Strangecoin?

Strangecoin transactions can be nonzero sum. A Strangecoin transaction might result in both parties having more Strangecoin.

Strangecoin transactions can be one-sided and can be conducted entirely by only one party to the transaction.

The rate of change of one's Strangecoin balance is a more important indicator of economic influence than the balance itself.

Optimal investment strategy in Strangecoin aims to stabilize one's balance of Strangecoin.

A universal account provides all users a basic Strangecoin income, effectively unlimited wealth, and direct feedback on the overall prosperity of the network.

I've only started thinking through the idea, and implementing it would take more technical expertise than I have alone. For instance, I'm not sure if Strangecoin can be implemented as an extension of the bitcoin protocol, or if some fundamentally new technology is required. If you know something about the technical details, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you might know how to implement something like this, I'd love to help you try.

But since I don't know of anything else that works like this, this proposal is mostly intended simply to put the idea out there, in the hopes of encouraging others to think in these directions.

Background and Motivation

If I give you a dollar for a burger, then I've lost a dollar and gained a burger, and you've gained a dollar and lost a burger. Assuming this was a fair trade (that dollars and burgers are of approximately equal value), then as a result of the transaction we've simply rearranged who has which good, and no additional value was created in the process. What I've lost you've gained and vice versa, so that the total value between us has not changed after the exchange is over.

In game theory, an exchange that results in all credits and debits balancing out across all players is called a zero sum game. Recording debits and credits works this way with every existing currency, including Dollars and Euros and all the traditional currencies, but also Bitcoin and other kinds of digital cyptocurrencies. If you want a currency to behave nonlinearly you need additional financial tools like debt and interest, or stocks and dividends, to describe how that money grows or shrinks over time as the result of our economic transactions.

Of course, when I give you a dollar for a burger that's not really a zero sum transaction, because otherwise we wouldn't be motivated to enter into the transaction in the first place. I give you a dollar because I want the burger more than I want the dollar, and if you accept the trade it's because you want the dollar more than you want the burger, so in a fair exchange we both feel like we've come out ahead. In other words, there is some additional value in our fair exchange that is not accounted for in the burgers and the dollars alone. But if our bookkeeping method only counts burgers and dollars, then it's not accounting for the value that accrues in our transactions.

In the proposal below, I'll describe Strangecoin as an method for keeping track of a nonzero sum game, where parties can enter into financial transactions that accrue value just by engaging in that transaction. In this way, Strangecoin is a model of the value that our complex economic relationships generate. The trick is to amplify the exchanged value of Strangecoin transactions relative to the interest of other parties who are not themselves involved in the transaction. If this seems counter-intuitive, a nonfinancial example might help: it's not unusual for two minor celebrities to achieve greater celebrity status upon entering into a romantic relationship. Although strictly speaking the romantic relationship is between the two celebrities, the general public interest in the celebrities results in more overall popularity in their union than either had on their own prior to the relationship.

As the example suggests, the dynamics of Strangecoin might be usefully thought of in terms of a "reputation system" rather than a strictly financial tool, even though the basic mechanics involve the regular method of exchanging currency for goods perceived by both parties to be of equal value. Because of the nonlinear relationships among Strangecoin users, each user effectively draws on a network of support in each economic transaction, coupling its activity to the successes (and failures) of the that network of activity. The result is a model of the complex interdependencies within a community of economic agents, and the dynamics by which those networks develop and decay. For this reason, Strangecoin might have implications for quantifying the role of individual choices and responsibility in the context of corporate action, and for resolving other difficult issues in the management and ethics of collective economic action.

I will say more about implications and consequences of Strangecoin at the end of the document. I turn now to a more detailed discussion of the Strangecoin protocol.

The Strangecoin network

The Strangecoin network is a directed graph with users as nodes and some time-dependent transactions as edges between them. Transactions describes how Strangecoin trade between users at each time step. Let S be our unit of Strangecoin, and let t be our basic unit of time.

A Strangecoin user is:

An account balance B in S

Income I in S/t, the sum of all incoming transactions.

Expenses E in S/t, the sum of all outgoing transactions.

So dB/dt = I - E

An account balance cap C in S that represents the upper limit of Strangecoins in a user's balance.

Balance Penalties:

If B = C, then the user receives a penalty where income is forfeit until expenses reduce the balance below C. Income might gradually decay as B approaches C to postpone hitting the limit. Similarly, if B = 0, then the user receives a penalty where expenses are forfeit until income brings the balance above 0. Expenses might gradually decay as B approaches 0 to postpone hitting the limit. To avoid penalties, users must keep their balance 0 < B < C. In other words, users have an incentive to keep dB/dt near zero, so that total income balances with total expenses.

Transactions:

A transaction indicates some trade in Strangecoin over some duration of time between two Strangecoin users with distinct accounts. Transactions come in five types described below. User X can initiate a transaction with user Y by specifying a transaction type and a duration of time, and then fixing the specific parameters of that transaction. If X can initiate the transaction without the approval of Y, the transaction is one-sided. If the transaction type requires Y's approval for initiation, it is a two-sided transaction. Users cannot engage in transactions with themselves.

Payment is a two-sided transaction in unit time, or an immediate transfer of S from one balance to another in a single time step. Payment works exactly as you'd expect it to work from other currencies, and in this sense is the simplest of the five transaction types. If X pays Y a quantity p of S, then X subtracts p from their balance and deposits p in Y's balance. Payments are two-sided and requires approval from both sides, so initiate the transaction X specifies Y and p, and Y must approve.

Support is a one-sided transaction over some duration t. If X supports Y over t, then X contributes additional S to Y's income from X's balance, expressed as a proportion s of Y's income over t. X's support effectively amplifies Y's income. To initiate this transaction, X specifies Y, t, and the proportion s of Y's income that X will contribute as support. Since support is a one-sided transaction, Y does not need to approve of the support to receive the additional income.

Endorsement is a one-sided transaction over some duration t. If X endorses Y over t, then X contributes additional S to Y's outgoing expenses, expressed as a proportion e of Y's expenses over t. X's endorsement effectively amplifies the payouts of Y's expenses. To initiate the transaction, X specifies Y, t, and the proportion e of Y's expenses that X will contribute as endorsements. Since support is a one-sided transaction, Y does not need to approve of the endorsement or the additional expense, which is drawn entirely from X's account.

Coupling is a two-sided transaction over some duration t. If X and Y couple over t, then changes in the income and expenses of X over t (apart from this coupling) result in proportional changes to the income and expenses of Y, and vice versa. Coupling "binds the fate" of X and Y over t, so that any change in one results in change for both. To initiate the transaction, both X and Y must agree on a duration t, and may specify distinct proportions cx and cy for coupling which must be approved by the other. With approval, coupling can involve both positive and negative correlations between income and expenses of two users. If X and Y are positively coupled, then increases in X's income and expenses results in some proportional increase in Y's income and expenses. This additional income or expense are drawn from or deposited to The Universal Account, as described below.

Inhibition is a two-sided transaction over some duration t. If X inhibits Y over t, then X reduces the income or expenses of Y over t by some proportion i. By inhibiting Y, X effectively reduces the impact that Y has on the Strangecoin network by i over t by forfeiting that proportion of income and expense. To initiate the transaction, X specifies Y, t, and i, which must be approved by Y.

The Universal Account (TUA):

Although individual transactions may be nonzero sum as described above, the overall Strangecoin network is zerosum, and uses The Universal Account to balance the network. TUA is a universal account that is positively coupled with all other users. TUA approves of transactions only in the scenarios described below. All newly mined Strangecoins are deposited directly into TUA, with a coupling bonus to the miner. All users are positively coupled with TUA with cy = 0 so that all users effectively receive a basic income from TUA in proportion to TUA's balance. Users cannot support, endorse, or inhibit TUA.

X can make a payment to TUA at t only in the following situations:

The have hit their account cap. All forfeit income is automatically deposited into TUA.

X is coupled to Y at t, whose expenses have changed. Additional expenses from X (in proportion c_x to Y's expense change) are automatically deposited into TUA.

X is inhibited at t. All forfeit income at t due to inhibition is automatically deposited into TUA.

TUA can make a payment only in the following situations:

X receives income from coupling with TUA.

X's account balance = 0 at t. Any additional transactions outgoing from X at t are drawn from TUA.

X is coupled at t to Y whose income has changed. Additional income to X at t (in proportion cx to Y's income change) is drawn from TUA.

X has income from an inhibited source Y whose balance is empty. The remaining balance of the transaction is drawn from TUA.

All transactions with TUA are bare in the sense that they are stripped of any of the modifiers that might normally amplify transactions with X. Basic income paid from TUA to all other users is in proportion to the total users on the network, and TUA's balance. In this way, the basic user income is also a measure of the general health of the overall network.

Discussion

The set of transactions described in the Strangecoin protocol motivate an incentive structure that is quite different from that of traditional currencies. I'll discuss some of these incentives and their impact below.

Most immediately, Strangecoin transactions are amplified by the network of economic relations employed by each party to the transaction. For this reason, the impact of a transaction isn't simply a matter of what is being traded and for how much. It also matters who you are trading with and their ongoing economic relations, which may have an important impact on the value of the transaction. This is the case even though Strangecoin are entirely fungible and Strangecoin transactions can be conducted pseudonymously.

Strangecoin is "backwards compatible" with traditional currencies, in that it supports the normal method of exchanging goods and services for some discrete quantity of coin in the form of a one-time payment. However, the other transaction types allow for much deeper forms of economic dependencies over time, and explicit representations of one's contribution to one's economic community. These provide incentives to engage in transactions other than payment, for instance by some duration of support or coupling. Securing large payments in a single time step may have very little impact on one's overall income over time, and therefore may be less desirable to users than securing time-extended transactions of other types. Large payments also threaten to bring users close to their balance penalties, providing more incentive to manage economic relationship through other types of transaction.

The most important incentive in the network is the incentive to balance one's account, so that dB/dt is close to 0, and overall income matches overall expenses. If dB/dt is far from zero, then balance penalties start to become an issue. If X is at the account maximum, any additional income over that balance is forfeit to TUA. In this case, user Y has no incentive to give additional support to X, since that additional support is simply forfeit to TUA. Similarly, if X is at the account minimum, any additional expenses are drawn from TUA free of any modifiers. In this situation, user Y has no incentive to endorse X, since that endorsement is again forfeit. In these cases, the transfer of Strangecoin is below its potential, so users are less likely to engage in these transactions; in other words, balance penalties shrink the amplification of one's support network. Users nearing a penalty cannot acquire or dump their balance through TUA, so must arrange transactions with other users to manage their account. There may be income penalties on large balance transfers to prevent users authorizing large payments in order to avoid balance penalties.

Because of these balance constraints, the optimal strategy for all users (including TUA) is to keep income and expenses near a 1:1 ratio. This might be handled in the traditional ways, through careful budgeting and account management. But this can also be handled by managing one's economic support network through transactions other than payment that will keep one's account balanced. If X has sufficiently large income, they must take on equally sizable expenses to avoid balance penalties. These expenses can come in the form of support and endorsements for other members of the network X wishes to support and endorse, effectively growing the network on the basis of their prosperity. The converse holds for users with large expenses. For this reason, prosperity in Strangecoin is measured by a user's throughput of Strangecoins over time, and not their raw quantity at any given time. Users with large throughput also occupy central hubs in the network, and their role and influence in the economic activity of the network is given quantifiable significance with Strangecoin, which can be used for making high-level policy decisions concerning the management and ethics of collective economic action.

Finally, balancing one's account requires, among other things, a consistent regular income from TUA. This gives all users an interest in the general health of TUA and of each user to maintain a relatively balanced account. In general, Strangecoin users seek out semi-persistent networks of support and coupling-- similar in some ways to investment, but investment in people-- and the overall stability of these networks account for the economic well-being of both users and the network as a whole. The incentive towards cooperative, stable, interdependent economic relationships takes place through an interface that bears an intuitive relation to traditional currencies, especially as it pertains to marketplaces of competition.

There's more work required to put flesh on the bones of this idea. There are many conversations to have about the dynamics of the network and the particular constraints it should operate within, both as a matter of practical operation and as a matter of sensible public policy.

I'd like to have those conversations with you.

I posted this on my blog yesterday, and it's received a fair bit of attention since then, largely driven by a fantastic discussion on Hacker News that gets a lot of the up-front reaction and criticism out of the way. There is also a less active thread on /r/BasicIncome that has a few interesting comments, and several comments on my blog. There's also been at least one scammer attempting to profit off the idea already.

The idea isn't complete and there are obvious problems that need to be worked out. But given the reaction I've been seeing, the idea seems to be genuinely novel (something that surprised me, given the insane activity in the bitcoin world), and seems to be stimulating people's thinking in some interesting directions. The proposal is already more successful than I would have anticipated. So I'm pretty interested to see what this thread might do with it.

# ? Mar 30, 2014 23:42

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 05:43

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

RealityApologist posted:

...I'm not interested in pop speculative futurism or idle technoidealism....

*spits out drink in laughter, falls to floor convulsing*

# ? Mar 30, 2014 23:48

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

I skimmed parts of your post and I kept thinking 'Why?'

Why would we want an alternative currency? Why would we want a digital currency? Why should I read the rest of that blathering? Why did I even read the parts that I did read?

Why?

Why?

Why?

# ? Mar 30, 2014 23:51

Enjoy: Apr 18, 2009

That doesn't seem like a good idea. Attention and exchange in themselves aren't coterminous with utility.

# ? Mar 30, 2014 23:54

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Our prayers, they have been answered! Eripsa thread 4.0, On Stranger Currencies.

:munch:

# ? Mar 30, 2014 23:57

RealityApologist: Mar 29, 2011; ASK me how NETWORKS algorithms NETWORKS will save humanity. WHY ARE YOU NOT THINKING MY THESIS THROUGH FOR ME HEATHENS did I mention I just unified all sciences because NETWORKS

R. Mute posted:

Why?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

It's a basic principle of interpretation that you seem to have abandoned.

Enjoy posted:

That doesn't seem like a good idea. Attention and exchange in themselves aren't coterminous with utility.

Nothing I've said commits me to thinking that they are. I respond to a similar question in the Hacker News thread as follows:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496699

quote:

While it's not necessarily true that our exchanges need to account for value in this nonlinear way, I think it's an interesting thought experiment to discuss ways in which our currency can express different aspects of the value of our transactions. I'm not claiming that Strangecoin represents the "true value" of our transactions; I'm simply saying that it's another way to model our economic relations, and looking at the network in this way might reveal salient aspects of the network that are hidden from view with other currencies. So I think Strangecoin really is describing some aspect of our economic relations, and it's a perspective that money often doesn't give you. If you trade me money, I don't know where it came from or what ties it has to the rest of the economy. But if you trade me Strangecoin, the trade itself gives me a picture of your importance and influence on the rest of the economy, and I can use that information to judge the value of the trade we're engaged in.

# ? Mar 30, 2014 23:58

StarMagician: Jan 2, 2013; Query: Are you saying that one coon calling for the hanging of another coon is racist?

Check and mate D&D.

RealityApologist posted:

If I give you a dollar for a burger, then I've lost a dollar and gained a burger, and you've gained a dollar and lost a burger. Assuming this was a fair trade (that dollars and burgers are of approximately equal value), then as a result of the transaction we've simply rearranged who has which good, and no additional value was created in the process. What I've lost you've gained and vice versa, so that the total value between us has not changed after the exchange is over.

You already lose, right here.

If I trade my dollar for your burger, the only possible reason I would do that is because that burger is, for whatever reason, of more value to me than a dollar. Likewise, the only reason you would trade your burger for my dollar is because you feel that my dollar is, for whatever reason, of more value to you than your burger.

Both of us come into the trade with certain assets, and we walk away with assets that are, to us, more valuable than what we came in with. Otherwise it makes no sense for us to trade. This is why we want people to trade as much as possible.

# ? Mar 30, 2014 23:59

RealityApologist: Mar 29, 2011; ASK me how NETWORKS algorithms NETWORKS will save humanity. WHY ARE YOU NOT THINKING MY THESIS THROUGH FOR ME HEATHENS did I mention I just unified all sciences because NETWORKS

StarMagician posted:

You already lose, right here.

If I trade my dollar for your burger, the only possible reason I would do that is because that burger is, for whatever reason, of more value to me than a dollar. Likewise, the only reason you would trade your burger for my dollar is because you feel that my dollar is, for whatever reason, of more value to you than your burger.

Both of us come into the trade with certain assets, and we walk away with assets that are, to us, more valuable than what we came in with. Otherwise it makes no sense for us to trade. This is why we want people to trade as much as possible.

Read two paragraphs down, jumpy.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:04

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

RealityApologist posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

It's a basic principle of interpretation that you seem to have abandoned.

Please don't reply to me with Wikipedia links. They're extremely triggering to me.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:07

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Yes, Virginia, it is possible to stay in grad school too long.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:07

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

Eripsa why don't you actually respond to the question of 'why is this necessary or beneficial in any way' instead of using rhetorical tricks to dodge it?

And as general advice you should probably answer that question to yourself every time you come up with a hare-brained techno-fetishist utopian pipe dream.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:12

Republican Vampire: Jun 2, 2007

So, basically what you're saying is that you think Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was a cool book?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:12

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

icantfindaname posted:

Eripsa why don't you actually respond to the question of 'why is this necessary or beneficial in any way' instead of using rhetorical tricks to dodge it?

If a answer to a question isn't ten paragraphs of needless academic fluff, is it really an answer? You can't make a TA's eyes glaze over with brevity.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:13

RealityApologist: Mar 29, 2011; ASK me how NETWORKS algorithms NETWORKS will save humanity. WHY ARE YOU NOT THINKING MY THESIS THROUGH FOR ME HEATHENS did I mention I just unified all sciences because NETWORKS

icantfindaname posted:

Eripsa why don't you actually respond to the question of 'why is this necessary or beneficial in any way' instead of using rhetorical tricks to dodge it?

And as general advice you should probably answer that question to yourself every time you come up with a hare-brained techno-fetishist utopian pipe dream.

I'm happy to answer serious questions about this work. It's really important to me, and I've been fielding questions all over the internet about it almost continuously since I posted the proposal.

But the why question from R. Mute wasn't a sincere question. It was a troll, a knee jerk reaction like so many others have in this forum in response to me. It wasn't asked with an interest in a response, it was asked only to provoke a response. It's the why question of a child, and these questions have no satisfying answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE

I'm happy to respond to genuine questions, but I'm not going to feed trolls.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:17

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

You might as well close the thread then, because I doubt anyone who posts here sincerely wants to wade into whatever goofy idea you're selling this time.

Personally I just don't see the point, the only purpose of this idea is to serve as an intellectual exercise which is nice and all but you've got a bad track record of dealing with any sort of criticism so these threads always just end up hounding you for being too wedded to your niche ideas to actually follow through with the discussion you ostensibly desire.

I think you're just looking to get your intellect stroked.

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:17

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

RealityApologist posted:

I'm happy to answer serious questions about this work. It's really important to me, and I've been fielding questions all over the internet about it almost continuously since I posted the proposal.

But the why question from R. Mute wasn't a sincere question. It was a troll, a knee jerk reaction like so many others have in this forum in response to me. It wasn't asked with an interest in a response, it was asked only to provoke a response. It's the why question of a child, and these questions have no satisfying answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE

I'm happy to respond to genuine questions, but I'm not going to feed trolls.

I don't know, I think "what pressing real world problem does this incredibly convoluted idea lifted straight out of a speculative sci-fi novel solve" is a reasonable question, but that's just me...

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:21

R. Mute: Jul 27, 2011

Could someone else ask him why for me. I'd do it myself, but alas, I'm a troll.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:23

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

It's also kind of goofy that you would lead off the thread by invoking your bad reputation and then getting hissy when you immediately get softball trolls.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:24

illrepute: Dec 30, 2009; by XyloJW

happening status: its

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:24

RealityApologist: Mar 29, 2011; ASK me how NETWORKS algorithms NETWORKS will save humanity. WHY ARE YOU NOT THINKING MY THESIS THROUGH FOR ME HEATHENS did I mention I just unified all sciences because NETWORKS

icantfindaname posted:

Does someone have the backstory for Eripsa's AV? I'm mildly curious

In the Erik Schmidt Obama's CEO thread Eripsa lamented how people had accepted Lanier's techno cynicism in place of his own borderline singularian ideals.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:29

RealityApologist: Mar 29, 2011; ASK me how NETWORKS algorithms NETWORKS will save humanity. WHY ARE YOU NOT THINKING MY THESIS THROUGH FOR ME HEATHENS did I mention I just unified all sciences because NETWORKS

Obdicut posted:

Again, the problems with your nutso plan is:

Attention doesn't measure anything useful: People pay attention to distracting but unimportant things.
Attention doesn't imply solutions. People might pay a lot of attention to a downed electrical wire. To interpret that attention would still take a human intelligence.
Attention is fakeable: We can fake paying attention to stuff easily.
Attention is buyable: You can offer people money to pay attention to stuff.

There is hardly a worse idea of how to structure our economy than attention. If you were trying to make a horrible system, you couldn't do better than attention.

There is not a word about attention in the proposal for Strangecoin.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:31

FADEtoBLACK: Jan 26, 2007

You can't design a currency that forces people to be more responsible. This is something that would be effective in a world with significantly less income inequality and significantly more education and access to information. Whether or not it is successfully implemented exactly how you see it, there will be people who will find a way to exploit it or adjust it in such a way to benefit a minority.

FADEtoBLACK fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 31, 2014

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:33

Zachack: Jun 1, 2000

I read that thing and I don't understand why I'd want to use marblecoins. It seems like a huge amount of my time and energy as a regular dude for no other seeming benefit besides having a maximum income policy in place.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:34

RealityApologist: Mar 29, 2011; ASK me how NETWORKS algorithms NETWORKS will save humanity. WHY ARE YOU NOT THINKING MY THESIS THROUGH FOR ME HEATHENS did I mention I just unified all sciences because NETWORKS

Zachack posted:

I read that thing and I don't understand why I'd want to use marblecoins. It seems like a huge amount of my time and energy as a regular dude for no other seeming benefit besides having a maximum income policy in place.

There is no maximum income for Strangecoins. There is a balance cap, but no income (or wealth, or influence) cap.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:39

Bip Roberts: Mar 29, 2005

So the optimum Strangecoin strategy is to subdivide your personhood and create multiple poor identities instead of one rich one (I.E. using kids, spouses, dead relatives)?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:39

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

How do you make this the standard? The biggest problems with cryptocurrency is that any idiot off the street can make their own currency. I'm going start making ToxCoins, they'll be worth thousands of BitCoins once I convince several major third world governments to adopt them, I swear!

All this talk about alternative currencies and "hey let's make our own money, it will fix all problems, honest!" is that it fails to understand that you need a certain level of control at a systematic level to prevent problems that come about from currency manipulation, speculation, and the financial fuckery that banks get up to. A completely deregulated currency market where people can just make up whatever they want as a new currency is a profoundly stupid idea on so many levels.

I don't care what you call it or what sorts of weird gimmicks you cram into a cyrptocurrency the whole idea is fundamentally flawed at its core. You see this in the fact that every new cyrptocurrency that comes out has its creators granting themselves a massive seed block of coins while trying to rope people into THEIR currency. Before long you're going to see more pyramid scheme bullshit cropping up with things like "hey if you adopt OUR currency early we'll give you some! It's literally free money!" which leads to rampant inflation.

BitCoin, as we've seen time and time again, was a terrible idea and every "well it's like BitCoin but different" currency that comes out is just as dumb.

Cryptocurrency is not the future. Let it die.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:40

CheesyDog: Jul 4, 2007; by FactsAreUseless

2 questions:

1. Have you ever had a job?
2. Have you ever bought anything with money you didn't get from your parents?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:47

BUSH 2112: Sep 17, 2012; I lie awake, staring out at the bleakness of Megadon.

Allow me to give you a succinct critcism of your proposal and cryptocurrencies in general: they're more hosed than Caligula's horse. That'll be $20k in consulting fees, send it to my accountant in Bitcoins.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:52

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

RealityApologist posted:

You are all complete assholes who refuse to extend to me even the most basic courtesies required for a civil conversation

Dude, it's only the first page. Why do you keep doing this to yourself if you hate it so much?

I don't see any example comparable to tracking the increase in utility by tracking burgers and dollars exchanging. Can you give a worked example?

quote:

As the example suggests, the dynamics of Strangecoin might be usefully thought of in terms of a "reputation system" rather than a strictly financial tool, even though the basic mechanics involve the regular method of exchanging currency for goods perceived by both parties to be of equal value. Because of the nonlinear relationships among Strangecoin users, each user effectively draws on a network of support in each economic transaction, coupling its activity to the successes (and failures) of the that network of activity. The result is a model of the complex interdependencies within a community of economic agents, and the dynamics by which those networks develop and decay. For this reason, Strangecoin might have implications for quantifying the role of individual choices and responsibility in the context of corporate action, and for resolving other difficult issues in the management and ethics of collective economic action.

I read this a few times but it still makes no sense to me. At the end of the day, what do you get out of the system? A way of monitoring how networks of trade increase overall utility? How?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 00:52

moebius2778: May 3, 2013

So, I'm going to start off by admitting that I didn't read the whole thing, that's mostly because structurally, I found the entire thing to be a mess.

Section 1 (What's unique about StrangeCoin?) - State your problem first. Otherwise, you're just going to give me a bunch of features of StrangeCoin, maybe describe how it works, and I'll have no idea what those features are intended to accomplish. And in the mean time, I'll be trying to keep a bunch of features/facts in mind, with no actual framework to place them in. So, I pretty much skipped this section after getting to about the third bullet point.

The reason to describe the thing you're constructing first is if you think it's neatness and the way it works is far more interesting than the problem it solves. Also, either way, try to establish some sort of framework/structure so that the reader isn't getting into details/features immediately. Remember the reader is not you - at any point in the write up, you should be able to answer: "What does the reader know at this point?" and "What does the reader need to know about next in order to understand what I'm describing?"

Section 2 (Background and Motivation) - This section should be first.

First paragraph basically only works if you ignore marginal utility. (You'll point this out in the third paragraph, but it's kinda too late. Simplify, but note that you're simplifying - otherwise it looks like you don't know what you're talking about.)

Second paragraph - that's not what nonlinear means. You're describing non-zero sum (which is pretty clear, since you're contrasting StrangeCoin with zero sum games, but then you go and call it nonlinear. It may or may not be, but that's got nothing to do with it being non-zero sum).

Third paragraph - you point out that your first paragraph is wrong. This is a problem - your first paragraph should introduce the problem/motivate the rest of the write up - you've just said that the reader could've skipped reading it, and not missed anything. Also a problem if section 2 is moved to be your first section. The first thing that your reader reads? A couple paragraphs down, you're going to say that it's wrong, and they could've skipped reading it in the first place. Not a promising start.

Fourth paragraph - again, I still don't know what problem you're trying to solve. Based on the fourth paragraph, you're describing a model to track increases in utility that occur as the result of economic transactions. Okay, that's an interesting thing to do mathematically, may be helpful in economic modelling, but why would I want my currency to use this model? You need to state the problem you're trying to solve.

Fifth paragraph - "as the example suggests" - what example? The only one I remember at this point is the first paragraph, and you spent the third paragraph telling me that it's wrong. Also, all the criticism mentioned for the fourth paragraph still apply. At this point, I have no idea what you're trying to do, why you want what you're trying to do to replace existing currencies, and I'm beginning to think that what you're presenting would work far better as part of economic model than anything anyone would want to use as a currency.

At this point I stopped reading because I had no idea why I would want to continue. I may go back and read the later half just out of curiosity as to what the mathematics are/see if I can understand what you're trying to model, but other than mathematical curiosity, there's no real reason to continue.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 01:00

Zachack: Jun 1, 2000

RealityApologist posted:

There is no maximum income for Strangecoins. There is a balance cap, but no income (or wealth, or influence) cap.

The balance cap may as well be an income cap, otherwise when I approach the balance cap I'll start cashing out into other forms of currency like bitcoins or gold bars or actual dollars. The only real difference is that the income cap can be avoided by constant spending/consuming, which seems like a drawback.

# ? Mar 31, 2014 01:03

Boxman: Sep 27, 2004; Big fan of

Republican Vampire posted:

So, basically what you're saying is that you think Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was a cool book?

It won't be real until he develops the Google Glass app, allowing us to constantly check our ~~Whuffie~~ Strangecoin

# ? Mar 31, 2014 01:12

T-1000: Mar 28, 2010

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

# ? Mar 31, 2014 01:12

Cowman: Feb 14, 2006; Beware the Cow

I'm ADHD and can't pay attention very well, does this mean I'm rich or poor in an attention economy?

# ? Mar 31, 2014 01:14

TURN IT OFF!: Dec 26, 2012

Guys, guys, I suddenly found myself with a surplus of burgers. Do any of you have a surplus of single dollars? TIA.

EDIT: It's a subscription to burgers, so we can have an ongoing economic relation :wink: