|
A Fancy 400 lbs posted:It is absolutely a terrible idea to keep trading with those people. People will do it anyways, because lots of people are idiotic, greedy, short sighted, gullible, sociopathic, or any possible combination of the aforementioned traits. If it can benefit them or screw someone they don't like over in the short term, people will absolutely sacrifice the long term. History is pretty much the study of what stupid loving thing people decided to do this time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:07
|
|
|
|
| # ? Sep 9, 2024 16:51 |
|
|
eXXon posted:Hmmm no I don't think it's charity because anyone selling something to a 100% inhibited customer still gets paid from the TUA. They're not giving it away for free. Right, but the motivation in Strangecoinland isn't to acquire more strangecoin on it's own, so the person's ability to give me a payment of strangecoin in any amount doesn't really matter all that much. What matters more is my income over time, and that one-time dump of coin has relatively little impact on the overall flow of currency, especially of other aspects of my income are taking a hit because you're dumping TUA coin. So a completely selfish actor has an incentive to not take your TUA coin and engage with actors who have a more stable impact on the network. Yes people are stupid and easy to fool. But again, we're just talking about a modifier, and the system is designed to that the modifiers are immediately salient. If someone is trading with no modifiers at all, it means they have absolutely no network of support backing that transaction, and that's shady as gently caress. It's not hard for even an idiot to understand why you'd want to avoid that transaction.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:11
|
|
|
eXXon posted:What is to stop Y from buying everything they possibly can until TUA is depleted?
RealityApologist posted:So if I'm completely inhibited and drawing only from TUA, it's basically a sign that I'm completely destitute; the only people who would engage me would be people deliberately conducting charity. Assumption - "It is assumed that most citizens in the Strangeconomy will successfully leverage the tools at their disposal and will enjoy a consistently high economic modifier (e.g. 50x endorsement factor)." Corollary - "An unendorsed transaction (e.g. any TUA-linked purchase) will be so barren of value, when compared to a typical transaction, that a normal citizen will decline to participate in it even if there are no other customers/counterparties present - the leisure preference applies."
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:11
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Right, but the motivation in Strangecoinland isn't to acquire more strangecoin on it's own, so the person's ability to give me a payment of strangecoin in any amount doesn't really matter all that much. What matters more is my income over time, and that one-time dump of coin has relatively little impact on the overall flow of currency, especially of other aspects of my income are taking a hit because you're dumping TUA coin. So a completely selfish actor has an incentive to not take your TUA coin and engage with actors who have a more stable impact on the network. If Strangecoin users live in Strangecoinland where nothing at all goddamn applies isn't that a really loving important thing to say up front?
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:13
|
|
|
I have a new model that describes how birds fly by scooting around on their butts but it only applies in a world where all birds are dogs with a bad case of worms. It'll revolutionize everything!
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:15
|
|
|
GulMadred posted:For the sake of sanity, let's adopt JawnV6's suggestion and make TUA finite but non-depletable. We can still consider weird/counterintuitive/dangerous scenarios: This is a really good, and formal, articulation of issues. Since Eripsa has already dodged all of these, though not as elegantly phrased, I wouldn't hold your breath on him answering. And your bolded point is something I don't think has been brought up before but it is absolutely core.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:16
|
|
|
A Fancy 400 lbs posted:That's why I asked if he's ever had a job outside of academia. He seems like exactly the kind of yuppie that's never had to meaningfully provide for himself. I think I may have asked him this on the first page actually. E: if being "shady as gently caress" deterred people there are entire industries that should never have even existed but instead absolutely thrive CheesyDog fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Apr 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:17
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Right, but the motivation in Strangecoinland isn't to acquire more strangecoin on it's own, so the person's ability to give me a payment of strangecoin in any amount doesn't really matter all that much. [citation needed] RealityApologist posted:Yes people are stupid and easy to fool. But again, we're just talking about a modifier, and the system is designed to that the modifiers are immediately salient. If someone is trading with no modifiers at all, it means they have absolutely no network of support backing that transaction, and that's shady as gently caress. It's not hard for even an idiot to understand why you'd want to avoid that transaction. Does Walmart give a gently caress who buys their poo poo? Why would they in StrangeCoinLand? They get the money anyways. Oh, I forgot that in StrangeCoinLand, people don't value wealth for some unfathomable reason. Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Apr 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:19
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:Why would anyone agree to being inhibited? That's right. Look, if the guy drawing entirely from the public account actually has a negligible impact on everyone else, then let him take whatever he can get. The goal is not to stop the free riders or prevent free riding; I don't consider that "gaming" the system. The point is to make sure that activity doesn't disrupt the overall balance of the system. Other people only have an incentive to disengage with the person when his excesses disrupt the system. Otherwise no one should give a poo poo what he does. The people who want to be inhibited are the people who who are experiencing excesses that compromise their position in the system; inhibition is meant to bring them into stability. So the wild frat kid who spends to the excessive point of having a noticiable effect impact on the system might be "punished" by imposing an inhibition on expenses. Since any additional expenses beyond the inhibition are drawn from TUA, and those TUA transactions are unmodified, the inhibition disincentivizes others from engaging with the kid until his expenses calm down. Similarly, and probably much more realistically, you might imagine someone becoming suddenly very famous and popular and receiving a huge surge of support, beyond what they can reasonably deal with even when they increase expenses. Instead of encouraging them to act like the wild frat boy to balance things out, they may just agree to some inhibitions on income so their overall impact stays balanced. Since that additional income is deposited into TUA, the result is that the individual has some incentive to pass on their surge of success to TUA, and the general well-being of the system. At least, these are how I imagine these transactions and their motivation. Whether any of this works will depend on the implementation, of course. But hopefully this makes some of the less explicit ideas in the proposal a little more clear.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:21
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Right, but the motivation in Strangecoinland isn't to acquire more strangecoin on it's own, so the person's ability to give me a payment of strangecoin in any amount doesn't really matter all that much. What matters more is my income over time Unless Strangecoinland is also full of immortals you are literally retarded if you believe this.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:22
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:The people who want to be inhibited are the people who who are experiencing excesses that compromise their position in the system; inhibition is meant to bring them into stability. So the wild frat kid who spends to the excessive point of having a noticiable effect impact on the system might be "punished" by imposing an inhibition on expenses. Inhibitions are two-sided so why would he accept the inhibition in the first place?
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:23
|
|
|
Guys it's okay if my system allows me to scam people for a billion strangecoins just once because no one will trade with me and my billion strangecoins ever again. Also the invisible hand of the free market something something
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:23
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:That's right. Look, if the guy drawing entirely from the public account actually has a negligible impact on everyone else, then let him take whatever he can get. The goal is not to stop the free riders or prevent free riding; I don't consider that "gaming" the system. The point is to make sure that activity doesn't disrupt the overall balance of the system. Other people only have an incentive to disengage with the person when his excesses disrupt the system. Otherwise no one should give a poo poo what he does. But he has to agree to it. Are you just chaging your rules again? quote:Since any additional expenses beyond the inhibition are drawn from TUA, and those TUA transactions are unmodified, the inhibition disincentivizes others from engaging with the kid until his expenses calm down. Similarly, and probably much more realistically, you might imagine someone becoming suddenly very famous and popular and receiving a huge surge of support, beyond what they can reasonably deal with even when they increase expenses. Instead of encouraging them to act like the wild frat boy to balance things out, they may just agree to some inhibitions on income so their overall impact stays balanced. We have mechanisms available for this now. Virtually no one does this. Again, your system reproduces something now available, in a shittier way. quote:Since that additional income is deposited into TUA, the result is that the individual has some incentive to pass on their surge of success to TUA, and the general well-being of the system. What incentive is that? The Comedy of the Commons? quote:At least, these are how I imagine these transactions and their motivation. Whether any of this works will depend on the implementation, of course. But hopefully this makes some of the less explicit ideas in the proposal a little more clear. People now can, if they suddenly get a bunch of 'support'--i.e. income--put that money in a trust. They can create rules for that trust to be implemented mechanically by a lawyer, or they can appoint responsible people to help them out. This almost never happens. This is currently possible, and yet it doens't happen. Why the gently caress do you delude yourself in believing it would under your system? Edit: StrangeCoin: Everything Is a Corner Case.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:26
|
|
|
Adar posted:Guys it's okay if my system allows me to scam people for a billion strangecoins just once because no one will trade with me and my billion strangecoins ever again. Also the invisible hand of the free market something something Look, I think its perfectly obvious that humans will naturally respond to a system where any amount of fame inherently causes an exponential increase in economic power with unilateral decisions to reduce that economic power so as to provide a small abstract boost to a fund that apparently barely subsidizes some level of universal welfare. This jives with observed behavior and (even leaving aside all of the exploitable opportunities for collusion) would definitely not provide incentive for socially destructive attention whoring by the worst people imaginable on a heretofore unseen scale.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:29
|
|
|
LGD posted:Look, I think its perfectly obvious that humans will naturally respond to a system where any amount of fame inherently causes an exponential increase in economic power with unilateral decisions to reduce that economic power so as to provide a small abstract boost to a fund that apparently barely subsidizes some level of universal welfare. This jives with observed behavior and (even leaving aside all of the exploitable opportunities for collusion) would definitely not provide incentive for socially destructive attention whoring by the worst people imaginable on a heretofore unseen scale. Strangecoin: in the land of the rational actors, the non-linear thinker is king
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:31
|
|
|
eXXon posted:Inhibitions are two-sided so why would he accept the inhibition in the first place? I can imagine lots of reasons. If it was mandated by a legitimate criminal justice system, for instance.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:34
|
|
|
Adar posted:Strangecoin: in the land of the rational actors, the non-linear thinker is king Lets be real here- Homo Economicus is a nearly infinitely better model of human behavior than what is being assumed here. It at least jives a little with some observable behaviors.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:36
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:I can imagine lots of reasons. If it was mandated by a legitimate criminal justice system, for instance. "You know what a legitimate criminal justice system needs that it can't currently do? The power to inhibit people's economic transactions" said absolutely no one, ever
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:37
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:I can imagine lots of reasons. If it was mandated by a legitimate criminal justice system, for instance. So, it's one sided if one side is big enough. E: What happens when one area's criminal justice system legitimately inhibits someone and another does not? CheesyDog fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Apr 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:37
|
|
|
Adar posted:"You know what a legitimate criminal justice system needs that it can't currently do? The power to inhibit people's economic transactions" said absolutely no one, ever I'm sure somebody, somewhere wants to bring back debtor's prison.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:39
|
|
|
LGD posted:Lets be real here- Homo Economicus (as interpreted by someone from the Austrian School) is a nearly infinitely better model of human behavior than what is being assumed here. It at least jives a little with some observable behaviors. Is there actually a model of how people will behave under StrangeCoin? Because that's one of the things that's always seemed odd to me about trying to code the entire system up - you've got a bunch of rules about what sorts of actions an actor can take in the system, but no real way to model how an actor would act in the system. I guess you can try random strategies and see what works/happens, but that feels rather unsatisfying in the sense of determining how actual humans are likely to act in the system.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:40
|
|
|
moebius2778 posted:Is there actually a model of how people will behave under StrangeCoin? Because that's one of the things that's always seemed odd to me about trying to code the entire system up - you've got a bunch of rules about what sorts of actions an actor can take in the system, but no real way to model how an actor would act in the system. I don't know any math but I'm an actual human so I feel qualified to answer this. Step 1: buy a lot of stolen identities Step 2: feedback loop Step 3: use my newfound illgotten wealth to inhibit Eripsa from buying toothpaste, forever
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:42
|
|
|
moebius2778 posted:Is there actually a model of how people will behave under StrangeCoin? Because that's one of the things that's always seemed odd to me about trying to code the entire system up - you've got a bunch of rules about what sorts of actions an actor can take in the system, but no real way to model how an actor would act in the system. "So, I can have more of these coins but actually have less spending power because of that?" *Abandons Strangecoins, starts barter economy, re-enacts the entire history of economy until we end up with government-backed currencies again*
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:42
|
|
|
moebius2778 posted:Is there actually a model of how people will behave under StrangeCoin? Because that's one of the things that's always seemed odd to me about trying to code the entire system up - you've got a bunch of rules about what sorts of actions an actor can take in the system, but no real way to model how an actor would act in the system. Coding the system up can show the massive exploits that are built into it and how it sucks and would fall apart. It might fall apart even under 'normal' behavior, where people were struggling to make it work long-term, but in terms of people gaming it it would explode like a seagull full of mentos and coke.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:42
|
|
|
I guess what I would want to see is two simulations with NormalCoin and StrangeCoin. The NormalCoin simulation would have to run at a level that it was actually a quasi-useful model. Then you could change the economic axioms to Strange and see what happens. I don't see StrangeCoin being better even under this mild circumstance even before you apply stresses.
Bip Roberts fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Apr 3, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:43
|
|
|
I was going to say that you could have various algorithms and have different actors try them in some kind of genetic-style situation, but I have no idea how you would measure fitness under the Strangecoin version, so what should you aim for?
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:45
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:Remember you'll never need a loan because you'll never be out of cash. And it's my favourite thing about marble software attraction. Anyway, since everyone will always have sufficient cash for their needs, it really doesn't matter if the price for an item is 1 unit_of_money or 53,400 units. In fact, it might as well be free for everyone, to spare the bother of tracking all these moneys floating around pointlessly. (And we're still in post-scarcity, right?) Instead, what's holding up shopping is this whole concept of attraction/endorsing/support, etc. You can stand right there in the store with your fistful of pogs but not be allowed to purchase a sandwich because you lack the necessary network having your back. Is this in any way close to the concept? Because if so, this seems more like a system of discrimination than economics. (Sorry, but I'm a bit dumb with maths and formulas and stuff.)
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:46
|
|
|
Forums Barber posted:I was going to say that you could have various algorithms and have different actors try them in some kind of genetic-style situation, but I have no idea how you would measure fitness so what should you aim for? The lack of any attempt at operationalization is one of the main signs of this being a cranky thing.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:46
|
|
|
Yeah, it's basically a Cory Doctorow novel.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:46
|
|
|
Forums Barber posted:I was going to say that you could have various algorithms and have different actors try them in some kind of genetic-style situation, but I have no idea how you would measure fitness so what should you aim for? If I were to write some code I'd write monte-carlo code where actors make economic decisions to buy goods based on pricing and see how wealth accumulates and transfers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:47
|
|
|
Good point! You don't have to know how many SC it takes to buy your toothpaste because you could just run a bunch of different actors through a bunch of simulations and find out what results. It kind of makes obvious the fact that the actors themselves have no way of knowing if they are making good decisions or not, but people used to load up old mainframes with viruses and let them cockfight it out Game of Life style back in the day, and that was at least fun. (i think it was pretty common for the ones that just copied themselves everywhere at random, forever, beat the ones that painstakingly tried to optimize their returns, which is like the "steal a bunch of identities and cabal them" strategy mentioned earlier.)
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:49
|
|
|
We're talking about an "economic system" that presupposes that large wealth transfers are unimportant because in the long run access to massive amounts of capital does not compensate for difficulty of future transactions. It's like someone literally doesn't understand how econo oh yeah I forgot
|
|
#
?
Apr 3, 2014 23:53
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:Help with what? The problem is that the endorsements are either useless or a shittier form of 'support'. Either. Primarily the latter. Obdicut posted:
You can't fix problems that you can't identify. Identification is at least a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for deliberately fixing a problem. Obdicut posted:
Agreed, as I said. Obdicut posted:
Definitely agree right now. It's a fun idea to play around with, though. Obdicut posted:
Too bad. I'm still not sure why the nascency of the idea makes it less worth discussing. This obviously isn't a serious academic project (at least not as far as I'm concerned). It's structured speculation. Throwing this out there for general commentary strikes me as a very good way to proceed with that. I'd never post a week old draft of a paper I was planning on publishing, but there's a world of difference between sending out my half-organized notes for a journal article to my colleagues and asking for feedback and posting on an Internet forum. A better comparison would be to having a drink with my colleagues and (as you said) shooting the poo poo. Not every idea needs to be fully polished before you run it by other people, and I'd definitely run a half-baked paper idea by friends over a beer. I've done it many times, and if you're also an academic I'm sure you have too. It's how things work. Obdicut posted:
Where do you think you're posting, man? This isn't a peer-reviewed journal or even arxiv. It's a weird Internet community full of weird people saying weird things. I can spout off all kinds of crap on the street corner if I want to. It might make me an rear end in a top hat, but it doesn't make me in violation of academic ethics, because it's not an academic context. Like I said, I think you (and others) have provided good criticisms here that he needs to respond to. The fact that it's all varnished over with such vitriol and hostility strikes me as unhelpful, but maybe that's just because he has a rep here. Obdicut posted:Go ahead and put it on some other thread. Those criticisms are all accurate and basic and I do not think you have anything remotely approaching an adequate answer to any of them, especially the fact that the entire attention economy depends on a magically hand-waved interpretation layer. Some of them I can respond to and some of them I can't. Again, I'm not emotionally committed to the idea; I just think it's fun to speculate. You're free to think that it's a dumb hobby. It has nothing to do with my work. I'm about to start a postdoc in a science department, so I'm hardly even a philosopher anymore. Obdicut posted:
But we do have quite a bit of a clue about what these systems are going to look like. All of the things you mentioned are indeed possibilities, but it seems really clear to me that having a clear idea of what does and doesn't count as "autonomous" or "emergent" (which is even harder) is really important here. You might disagree, but I think you're on the wrong side of history there. Questions that were investigated as a result of conceptual analysis have led to real concrete advances in lots of different hard sciences: the revival of the "interpretations" debate in quantum mechanics in the mid-20th century is probably the clearest case. Such conceptual thinking needs to be rigorous and grounded in a good understanding of the practical issues in the science being discussed, but it's definitely possible to do that well. You're allowed to criticize Eripsa on the basis of not understanding the underlying science or mathematics--that's something that he has a burden to demonstrate--but I think you're flatly wrong if you think that conceptual analysis has no role to play in paving the way for scientific advancements. Obdicut posted:Then you don't unerstand what I mean by theoretical framework, since it doesn't involve philosophy at all. There's no philosophical underpinning or thought necessary or possible in developing an AI. I disagree strongly with this, and I suspect most AI researchers do as well. Again, philosophy--properly pursued--isn't navel-gazing. It involves direct engagement (and close collaboration) with science. There are absolutely conceptual issues that AI research raises, and many AI researchers that I've read or spoken to seem to be aware of that. Again, I think the analogy with physics is relevant. While some physicists think that the Feynman-era dismissal of conceptual questions is still appropriate (and that physicists' job is to "shut up and calculate"), most good physicists these days have respect for and sensitivity to the fact that their work raises interesting foundational questions that are worth exploring, and that interpretation/conceptual analysis are important jobs. Obdicut posted:
I'm just arguing back at you. I think the debate is reasonable to have, but I think your position is incorrect. Obdicut posted:
Of course it does. Nothing that I've said suggests otherwise. I'm not saying that we can invent AI from the armchair, only that there are relevant contributions to be made that go beyond small-scale engineering challenges. Understanding what it is about other natural systems that makes us inclined to call them autonomous, for instance, or how emergence actually happens in the natural world for another. These are problems that transcend particular attempts to engineer AI, but are relevant to all attempts. To be clear, I'm not discounting the importance of bit-by-bit (so to speak) progress in AI or any scientific field; I'm just saying that there's a lot of work to be done, and that there's room for many different contributions. Obdicut posted:
That's a little hyperbolic. I'm no fan of the history of philosophy (as Eripsa can tell you), and you'll notice that I've said several times now that philosophers would do well to focus on the practical problems of their day. The Ancient Greeks could (and did) make meaningful contributions to political theory and ethics that are quite influential today, even outside philosophy. AI is hardly as outside the realm of our knowledge now as neuroscience was to the Greeks, though. You'd agree I'm sure that Turing's famous paper made an important contribution to the debate, and that was a piece of philosophy (done 60 years ago, no less). The work is difficult and requires very careful planning, but it's absolutely possible. Obdicut posted:
There are a few different angles to take on this. First, I'll argue that design doesn't play a relevant role in this part of the discussion. Second, I'll argue that even if I grant you the point about our inability to think fruitfully about how actual AI will look means that we can't do ground-clearing for the future, the discussion that we can have now has practical relevance to other immediate problems. If I were to create a "designer cat" in a lab (think Ozymandius' pet in Watchmen), surely the fact that it was designed by an autonomous being wouldn't figure into our moral obligations to it: I'd have the same obligations (or lack there of) to treat it well as I would to any other cat. In most cases, it seems like autonomy (rather than how that autonomy came about) is the important feature when we're thinking about whether or not something is a moral agent. Whatever AI eventually ends up looking like and however it comes about, this is something we'll have to consider. In either case, this is precisely the discussion that needs to be had here, and the fact that we're having a (relatively) civil conversation about it, with both of us making intelligent points, is at least initial evidence that there's material worth exploring. This isn't navel-gazing, especially when it comes to the animal welfare angle, and there are a lot of parallels between the literature there and the literature on machine autonomy, which is my second point. Self-directedness, the ability to set and commit to goals, the ability to cooperate with other agents, and similar features all figure into debates about animal ethics, because we think those characteristics are at least partially sufficient for ethical consideration. When making decisions about how to treat particular agents (or species), we balance all of these considerations, and others. Exploring novel possible cases even if they're somewhat contrived is a very good way of figuring out how we prioritize various factors, and of noticing where we might have gone off track in other cases. Again, I'd reference Batterman's work about "asymptotic reasoning" here (The Devil in the Details is seriously one of the best books on rigorous philosophy of science to come out in a very long time). Discovering that there are structural similarities between theories and discussions in different fields can sometimes lead to better understanding of both fields. If thinking about the conditions for machine autonomy doesn't seem relevant to you for its own sake (a position that I think warrants further discussions), perhaps you can at least get behind the discussion from that angle. Just as sketchy example of how this might be relevant, consider this case. Some ethicists think that sentience--the ability to feel pleasure and pain--is a necessary and sufficient condition for being an ethical agent. If that's true, then AI that's built on a physical substrate that differs significantly from our own might not be a candidate for ethical agency no matter what, while very simple biological organisms (with less sophisticated information processing capabilities) would be candidates. You might think that that's odd. Either way, though, thinking about it helps us refine our criteria. Obdicut posted:The only way that machine AI would be the same is if you believe in emergent AI, which I'm assuming you don't because it's a terrible theory and it's the most impossible to 'lay the groundwork for' as well as the least needing of it. This might be opening an entirely new can of worms, but my answer would depend on what exactly you'd be willing to call "emergent" AI. I think it's unlikely in the extreme that AI's appearance will surprise us. When it happens, it'll happen because we were trying to make it happen. I think that Turing's old insight about designing an infant is the most likely route in at this point. That is, I think that when AI appears, it'll be as a result of having designed a learning machine with some very basic behavior, and then letting it "train itself up" to a more robust intelligence. That might still count as "emergent AI," though, depending on how it ends up working out. Our own intelligence is surely an emergent feature of our brains, after all. Obdicut, just out of curiosity, what's your own background? You've hinted that you're an academic also. What's your field?
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 00:11
|
|
|
Adar posted:We're talking about an "economic system" that presupposes that large wealth transfers are unimportant because in the long run access to massive amounts of capital does not compensate for difficulty of future transactions. Honestly at this point the complete lack of any knowledge relating to economic theory isn't bothering me as much as the thoroughly disturbing lack of insight into how humans actually behave in day to day life, especially from someone who has ostensibly dedicated much of his life to the humanities.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 00:12
|
|
|
So what's the over/under that by the end of the night Eprisa will remember that he "doesn't intent for strangecoin to be used as an economic theory"?
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 00:17
|
|
|
I haven't 'hinted', i've said that I'm a sociologist. I'm going to become a social worker. And yeah, you might be a perfectly nice person but your dilettantish approach is just so tiring to me. It may be because I'm older--I dropped out of college, worked in tech for a long time, then decided to go back so that I could do something actually meaningful. I don't think just coming up with wild speculative ideas and asking other people to share in them is a good idea. There's so many lovely ideas out there, piling another one on is just flagrantly assholish, especially when you have the education and training to do better. And the reason Eripsa has a 'rep' is that he lies--he lied about what I said, for example--and he lies about what he said. And now you're verging close to it too: quote:but I think you're flatly wrong if you think that conceptual analysis has no role to play in paving the way for scientific advancements. Philosophy and conceptual analysis are not cognates. I don't find anything you said about AI to be useful, at all, for the reasons I already said. We are not anywhere close to AI. The only 'purpose' of dreaming up these scenarios with different forms of AI is thought-experiment in an area that doesn't need it, or rather, that would much more benefit from the practitioners of it paying attention to actual human beings, the existing things we already have instead of dicking around with the million and one non-existent things. I have no hope of anything from this hangout being useful, and I'd just be mocking you and Erpisa for what seems to me like contempt for your audience. I also think you shouldn't encourage Erpisa in embarrassing himself like this. It's not nice.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 00:19
|
|
|
I've mostly skimmed this thread so this has probably already been covered. If nobody ever runs out of cash in strangeland I've just given the entire population of the planet a billion buttcoins each in order to endorse me. They've just done the same. Now everyone has the maximum possible endorsements and more buttcoins than can possibly exist, even though there's plenty more (where? not important). This google hangout is just going to be 6 hours of shimmering dickbutt, yeah?
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 00:53
|
|
|
Obdicut posted:I haven't 'hinted', i've said that I'm a sociologist. I'm going to become a social worker. I must have missed that, apologies; I didn't read through this whole thread, as Eripsa didn't convince me to join in the discussion until it was already about 20 pages long. That's really great. Seriously man. Props. The world needs more intelligent people doing that. Obdicut posted:
I'm actually nicer on the Internet than I am in real life. Obdicut posted:
Like I've said, this is just fun and games for me (though I get that you don't see it that way). In my "real" work I'm at least somewhat less dilettantish; the name was a deliberate personal deprecation. As I mentioned before, I work in the foundations of climate modeling (especially with regard to analyzing geoengineering proposals and looking for mathematical signs of impending tipping points). I'm in the process of transitioning from primarily doing philosophy (my PhD) to doing sustainability and earth science stuff more rigorously (my impending postdoc). Obdicut posted:It may be because I'm older--I dropped out of college, worked in tech for a long time, then decided to go back so that I could do something actually meaningful. Again, so respect much props wow. Of all the students I've ever worked with, the adult returners to college have always been the most focused, dedicated, and committed. I have nothing but respect for that decision (especially having experienced the siren song of IT-sector salaries myself). If you don't mind me asking, what's your specific interest? What kind of groups are you hoping to work with? Obdicut posted:
I understand your point, and you're surely right that there are enough bad ideas out there (why do you think I'm so desperate to get out of professional philosophy?). However, I think there's a difference between throwing something out there in an informal context and working through the implications and giving a serious proposal (either in the sense of a peer-reviewed paper or in the sense of something you're hoping to take to market). This is SA. People say dumb things here like it's their job. As long as he doesn't whine about people jumping down his throat and being assholes to him (which he hasn't), who cares? As a peer-reviewer for journals and professional conferences, I see much, much, much crazier stuff all the time. One of my grad school concentrations was on the philosophy of quantum mechanics for gently caress's sake; that's like a craziness magnet. It's very inappropriate in those contexts, and it annoys me that I waste my time on it. When I sign on to an Internet forum, though, my expectations are very different. Obdicut posted:And the reason Eripsa has a 'rep' is that he lies--he lied about what I said, for example--and he lies about what he said. Not my fight. He can defend himself, and I'm not gonna speak to that. Obdicut posted:
OK, this is a meaty point. I've repeated the role that I think philosophy should play in the broader academic project several times here. Eripsa called it the "handmaiden view," and I said that my advisor called it the "midwifery" view. I think (and would be quite happy to argue that) philosophy and conceptual analysis really are just the same thing, at least insofar as philosophy is doing something useful. I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, Obdicut, and I apologize if that's how it looked. I tend to use them interchangeably because I think that philosophers should limit themselves to that, at least when it comes to philosophy of science. You're right that I was being sloppy. Can I take that to mean that you think that rigorous conceptual analysis can relevantly contribute to science? Obdicut posted:I don't find anything you said about AI to be useful, at all, for the reasons I already said. We are not anywhere close to AI. I think it's at least a little bit odd that you're castigating me for speaking outside my area of expertise, and then saying things like this. Were you working on AI when you were doing tech? If so, let's have a more detailed conversation about this stuff in a new thread. If not, then let's continue to engage with this idea here like what we both are: intelligent and somewhat informed laypeople with diverse backgrounds who disagree about something. I provided at least a sketch of an argument against what you said before. Why do you not think what I said was sufficient? Obdicut posted:
I provided an argument to the contrary, as well as examples. Like I said, I'm not suggesting that one of these things has priority over the other, or even that they're equal. I'm just arguing that they're both useful and important. The idea that one is happening at the exclusion of the other is fallacious, too: it's not like I (or virtually anyone else) was deciding between doing philosophy or AI research as a career. We all make the contributions we can based on our interests, talents, backgrounds, and skill-sets. The only blameworthy people are those who are spending their talents working on clear non-issues, rather than trying to make some small contribution to something important. I feel this blame is appropriately laid on vast swaths of professional philosophy, as well as other humanities disciplines. Maybe you think it applies to Eripsa too; you can fight that out. I vehemently reject the argument that it applies to people investigating this cluster of issues, though. Obdicut posted:
Speaking personally, I'm just hoping for a fun discussion of issues surrounding this idea. It's 8:00 here, and I'm already drunk. I'm either doing this hangout for an hour, or I'm playing Neverwinter Nights 2. I'm not sure what Eripsa's intentions are, but based on knowing him, I'd lean toward thinking that he's also just having fun with ideas and their implications. Obdicut posted:
Watching other people tell him he's wrong is so satisfying. I've been telling him that for the better part of a decade. In contrast to most of the posters here, though, I can separate my belief that he's wrong from my engagement with the idea. I like to play with ideas. It's my job. e: ozmunkeh posted:
The word I'd use is "diaphanous." Diaphanous dickbutt.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 01:13
|
|
|
GulMadred posted:For the sake of sanity, let's adopt JawnV6's suggestion and make TUA finite but non-depletable. We can still consider weird/counterintuitive/dangerous scenarios:
It is possible for you to outbid someone else, by racking up endorsements. If more people endorse you than the other guy, then your bid is more attractive than the other guy's, even if you are both capable of paying the same amount of coin.
How is it trivialized? I've mentioned putting limits on the extent of these transactions so the model stays stable, but I'm not sure how it takes decision making out of the process. The point is to give the user a few degrees of control in managing their impact on the economy. Inhibition is one of those measures of control. I've contemplated the possibility that users might adopt strangecoin in a pattern that is so stable its functionally as if coins aren't trading at all, at which point users can stop thinking about it too and the whole system can be set aside. If we transition to a truely moneyless startrek economy, it will be via some economic tool that stabilizes economic behavior in this way. But that's not really the transition that matters for evaluating Strangecoin, and it might work perfectly well without engineering such a transition.
That's right. So functionally, what you'd see is these sorts of reciprocal relationships developing in order to amass the resources for conducting some major project (building a bridge or whatever), where the funds could be effectively generated from nothing by a group of people working in concert, and the bigger the cooperative enterprise and the more influential people that are involved, the more resources that get harnessed. But remember, this is all constrained by everyone acting in their own interest, and their incentives are aimed at balancing the system. So a project of any scale is really only going to get going if it has the support comparable to its scale. So the constraining factor on motivating projects isn't getting the money to do it, its motivating the human communities that will sustain it. And the communities only have an incentive to get involved if it contributes to the stability of both their own economic impact and the global economic condition. So right, let people form reciprocal relationships. Put restrictions on the types and intensity of the relationships to make sure the system can find a balance and doesn't explode in most cases, and then let them form whatever competitive, scheming groups they want, and let the system come to a consensus about what it is in their interest to do. In this way you could reproduce a lot of the competitive hierarchical structures of traditional corporations, but with an entirely different legal and financial system regulating is growth and development. In other words: feature.
Great question. Wonderful question. What you are asking is how do you discover the relevant community structure of the Strangecoin network. Notice that we're trying to define all the parts and how it works, but that hasn't told us much about how the agents will actually group up under particular labor and resource demands. In Strangecoinland, no one really cares about how much money you make or have. All the economists and financial experts spend their time studying and making fine distinctions between communities of different type and significance, and the impact those communities have on the network. Information about the network structure of those communities is what is broadcast on 24 hour news shows. The financial news of the day is not about transfers of strangecoin or TUA (which cause very little friction in the system), but instead about the dynamics of community structures, who divide and replicate and reproduce like cells undergoing mitosis. quote:Assumption - "It is assumed that most citizens in the Strangeconomy will successfully leverage the tools at their disposal and will enjoy a consistently high economic modifier (e.g. 50x endorsement factor)." Nope. I'm just telling you the incentives built into the system. Whether they behave optimally doesn't matter as long as they are responding to those incentives. quote:Corollary - "An unendorsed transaction (e.g. any TUA-linked purchase) will be so barren of value, when compared to a typical transaction, that a normal citizen will decline to participate in it even if there are no other customers/counterparties present - the leisure preference applies." Well, I've described some ways in which transactions might pull partly from TUA, and so be worth less than others. Sellers have incentive to set a range of acceptable customer whose transactions they will accept, and that might include people who draw in various ways from TUA. The incentive to avoid pure-TUA transactions is an incentive to keep the books balanced, and that doesn't mean zero-tolerance discrimination. But yeah, the preference is to engage with networks, not disjoint users. There will of course be non-Strangecoin incentives to transaction with disjoint users, like my new born child who hasn't yet developed a network, so I'm by no means arguing that the strangecoin incentives would be the only incentives operating on a community of strangecoin users.
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 01:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? Sep 9, 2024 16:51 |
|
|
If the coin is not important but the endorsements are you'll just have people buying things with the endorsements, which I somehow think you'll say is a feature but really you've not encapsulated social influence, you've just swapped dollars for something else with no real features added besides obfustication
|
|
#
?
Apr 4, 2014 01:30
|
|