|
Tokamak posted:Ok, so what human behaviours can be utilised to simulate ant organisation? If none exist, then what sort of new behaviours would need to be introduced in order to fulfil your vision of organising people in a similar manner to ants? Just breed ants whose usage patterns resemble the patterns of humans and then use slime mold to generate a rail plan that summarizes the details. You'll thank me later.
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 05:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Oct 10, 2024 15:55 |
|
|
Krotera posted:Just breed ants whose usage patterns resemble the patterns of humans and then use slime mold to generate a rail plan that summarizes the details. But how will you teach them to use Google Glass?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 05:09
|
|
|
Krotera posted:Just breed ants whose usage patterns resemble the patterns of humans and then use slime mold to generate a rail plan that summarizes the details. That actually sounds more practical and easier to test and implement. I'll thank you now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 05:16
|
|
|
Eripsa, you haven't posted an irrelevant graph in a while. This is a serious oversight. I'm not sure I can take you seriously any more.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 08:27
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Eripsa, you haven't posted an irrelevant graph in a while. This is a serious oversight. I'm not sure I can take you seriously any more.  As illustrated by Ants Marching (Matthews et al, 1994), a jam-band-based human model of ant behavior leads to natural self-organization into a ranked hierarchy. Individual nodes can facilitate movement between tiers through the exchange of hemp-fiber totebags, bootlegs, or grilled cheese sandwiches.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 12:52
|
|
|
CheesyDog posted:
 Now this at least demonstrates academic rigour.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 17:19
|
|
|
Tokamak posted:Ok, so what human behaviours can be utilised to simulate ant organisation? If none exist, then what sort of new behaviours would need to be introduced in order to fulfil your vision of organising people in a similar manner to ants? I feel your questions represent a misunderstanding of my post. My project Swarm! is intended to simulate ant organization in a game, and I describe there fairly clearly how trails are laid down and how they can be engaged both actively and passively. The simulation isn't meant to be rigorous or economically interesting in the traditional sense; it's just supposed to be a game (like Ingress) with an ant/nature theme instead of a space/future theme. In the documentation I link to I answer all the questions you pose, although it's just a game so the questions are less challenging and the answers less interesting. I'm happy to talk more about the details of Swarm if you like, but that doesn't seem to be your target. In any case, the key insight from my research into Swarm is that individual ants organize through local transactions that indicate global properties of the colony, and so individual ants can make decisions in light of those global features. To give a very simple example, an individual ant might keep track of the ratio of foragers to midden workers it encounters; if it is encountering an unusually low number of midden workers, it might decide to start working on the midden pile to compensate for the imbalance in the division of labor. Simply put, on the basis of individual transactions the ants are able to construct a model of the overall colony structure, and adjust its behavior in response to those global properties. Strangecoin is inspired by this insight. The goal of Strangecoin is not to recreate ant organization, but instead to introduce a signal in the transactions that indicate features of the network structure that would otherwise be invisible from the price alone. As I've argued in this thread, price and value in economic systems often masks important features of the social and political systems that support its structure. There's lots of good political reasons to be worried about our existing political and economic frameworks, and Strangecoin represents an alternative framework that seems qualitatively different than other proposals on the table. But I'm not drawing the proposal to suggest immediate wholesale revolution, but instead merely to ask "what happens in an economic system that works this way?" I'm asking the question because I don't know the answer, and it seems reasonable to try and build working models of such a system and experiment with them to see what happens. The proposal I've given, and the examples I've used to explain it, demonstrate fairly well how transactions come to reflect network structure through the various modifications, and how the transactions types are meant to cover certain dimensions of control on the network. The political and revolutionary dimensions of this project are certainly necessary to discuss to motivate and contextualize the project, and my discussions in this thread have been at that level. You are acting like I've stormed in waving a revolutionary flag and then settled for just playing a game of cards, as if I've given up my principles or have no committed positions. The analogy to Marx earlier was meant to be structural, to explain the relation between digital philosophy and attention economy, which is roughly the same structural relation as between Marx's dialectical materialism and the theory of value that underlies is work in economics. The point is not to say that I'm doing work as historically important as Marx, but just that there's a structural analogy in how a metaphysics (a philosophy of history and science) can inform a radically new theory of value (in economics and anthropology). For what it's worth, digital philosophy isn't strictly incompatible with dialectical materialism, it just brings new ontological resources (network theory, especially as employed by the digital humanities) to bear on the analysis of a historical dialectic. Attention economy is the result where attention replaces labor as the source of human value. Now, I've only been working on this project for three years, so it's nowhere near the shape to be properly compared to Marx's corpus and the century and a half of analysis, commentary, and application it's had. Again, I'm not comparing the significance of this work to Marx, and I have no desire to be a digital Marx or anything like that. But in the midst of a philosophical discussion about the relation between digital philosophy and attention economy, the analogy is surely helpful in explaining how this is meant to fit together. There's been this strain of criticism in these threads that my ideas are haphazard and plucked without reason or thought and assembled willy nilly, or worse, ad hoc in response to criticism. The implication is that I have no consistent views, no focused topic, and that I've spent no time thinking about what any of this means. I'm not sure how this is supposed to square with the claim that I've stubbornly refused to change anything about my views; apparently now the joke is that I've only been consistent about my inconsistency. I feel like I've been consistent in the theoretical commitments of digital philosophy and the interpretation of the attention economy, to the point that I'll bite big bullets like caste systems. Strangecoin is a thought experiment for testing some of these theoretical insights, and represents at least some attempt at technical progress beyond just theory. The fact that it's meant to function as a game or a toy world doesn't represent some inconsistency in my commitments. If the thread accuses me of inconsistency, that's because it's failed to appreciate or comprehend the level of abstraction at which those theoretical commitments lie. Perhaps this is a problem with my ability to communicate, although to be fair I'm not coming to this thread in order to engage in a philosophical discussion with trained philosophers. Instead, you are a general audience with a broad range of competences. I'm coming to you as a philosopher with an idea that bears on interests you probably have as a member of the general audience; my interest and technical skills with respect to this idea are almost purely philosophical, but there are other dimensions of the project (technical, political, economic) that would undoubtedly interest others in ways that would play to their talents and backgrounds too. I'm not offering the idea with the presumption that I have the answers to all those questions or that I should play any coordinating role in their exploration. And while it's true that I have more to learn and more skills to acquire, I have no delusions of ever acquiring the total skills necessary to accomplish this task on my own, much less of sending anyone into revolution wearing my name on their arms. I just think the issues are interesting and worth thinking about, and I'm interested to know what might compel others to think along with me.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 18:31
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:As I've argued in this thread, price and value in economic systems often masks important features of the social and political systems that support its structure. There's lots of good political reasons to be worried about our existing political and economic frameworks, and Strangecoin represents an alternative framework that seems qualitatively different than other proposals on the table. You don't know this, as you haven't run any models or even finished your spec. You have no idea what new information a Strangecoin transaction might carry yet, as that is an emergent property of the system. RealityApologist posted:The proposal I've given, and the examples I've used to explain it, demonstrate fairly well how transactions come to reflect network structure through the various modifications, and how the transactions types are meant to cover certain dimensions of control on the network. The proposal you've given doesn't demonstrate anything yet, because it's not even fully specced yet! There is no network structure yet, and there's no guarantee that transaction types will control the network the way you want it to. Again, that's an emergent property of the system, and the system hasn't been modeled or even finished yet. My point is, anyone can propose a model. The work lies in fully speccing it out and coding it up so that it can be simulated, then discovering what the simulation says. Several goons have mentioned to you in this thread how rarely models work the way they were originally intended to. It would be premature to draw any conclusions about social organization before you finish your spec. So maybe go and do that before you proclaim Strangecoin's importance to us? RealityApologist posted:You are acting like I've stormed in waving a revolutionary flag and then settled for just playing a game of cards, as if I've given up my principles or have no committed positions. That's... exactly what you did. You compared yourself to the alchemist on the eve of chemistry, ie a great revolution that changed everything about alchemy. Then when we called you on your hubris, you retreated into the position you hold now, that Strangecoin's just a model or a game. You've changed fundamental aspects of your spec left and right as soon as someone actually coding it up had a problem. You had an argument on extremism where you simultaneously claimed to be an extremist, claimed to have never been an extremist, and then claimed you were just extreme about some things, like Strangecoin. You have no committed positions, largely because Strangecoin to you is just words and an idea instead of a mathematical or concrete reality. Words are a hell of a lot easier to change, and your idea always remains the same, regardless of criticism. RealityApologist posted:The analogy to Marx earlier was meant to be structural, to explain the relation between digital philosophy and attention economy, which is roughly the same structural relation as between Marx's dialectical materialism and the theory of value that underlies is work in economics. The point is not to say that I'm doing work as historically important as Marx, but just that there's a structural analogy in how a metaphysics (a philosophy of history and science) can inform a radically new theory of value (in economics and anthropology). For what it's worth, digital philosophy isn't strictly incompatible with dialectical materialism, it just brings new ontological resources (network theory, especially as employed by the digital humanities) to bear on the analysis of a historical dialectic. Attention economy is the result where attention replaces labor as the source of human value. Now, I've only been working on this project for three years, so it's nowhere near the shape to be properly compared to Marx's corpus and the century and a half of analysis, commentary, and application it's had. Again, I'm not comparing the significance of this work to Marx, and I have no desire to be a digital Marx or anything like that. But in the midst of a philosophical discussion about the relation between digital philosophy and attention economy, the analogy is surely helpful in explaining how this is meant to fit together. So Strangecoin's gone back from being a game to a "radically new theory of value (in economics and anthropology)." And the attention economy is meant to replace labor as the source of human value. But these aren't radical new ideas and I'm a disingenuous arguer for daring to call them so. They're just games! RealityApologist posted:There's been this strain of criticism in these threads that my ideas are haphazard and plucked without reason or thought and assembled willy nilly, or worse, ad hoc in response to criticism. Yes there has been, because your ideas do seem to be haphazard, plucked without reason or thought, and assembled willy nilly, or worse, ad hoc in response to criticism. edit: And what's the deal with using ands to connect all the parts of a list? "My ideas are haphazard and plucked without reason or thought and assembled willy nilly." I've noticed it before, and using ands like that instead of commas makes your writing feel even more haphazard than it already is. Did you take any writing in undergrad? How did you make it to grad school writing like this? RealityApologist posted:The implication is that I have no consistent views, no focused topic, and that I've spent no time thinking about what any of this means. Yes, that is the implication. You've admitted that you haven't actually done the calculations you implied in your OP and that you've only been thinking about this for a week and a half before making the thread. So I think it's fair to say you've spent no time thinking about what any of this means. Your constant change of definition in Strangecoin from currency to model to system to game lacks focus. And if you have views, it's hard to tell what they are beyond "I want to make something important." RealityApologist posted:I'm not sure how this is supposed to square with the claim that I've stubbornly refused to change anything about my views; apparently now the joke is that I've only been consistent about my inconsistency. I feel like I've been consistent in the theoretical commitments of digital philosophy and the interpretation of the attention economy, to the point that I'll bite big bullets like caste systems. You've stubbornly refused to change the content of your original Idea, which is that Strangecoin will be an economic game changer and will make you Important. We keep telling you that Strangecoin is poorly thought out crap, easily gamed, and better off entirely scrapped. Then you counter by offering to change some aspect of it, and maybe it will be good now? Like the "big bullet" of caste systems. Reifying caste systems was merely one bad aspect of an overall Bad Idea. You can take it or leave it, but when the core is poo poo, it makes no difference. So both statements are true. You remain obstinately certain in your conviction that Strangecoin is a Good Idea and Important and will make you Important, and you're willing to change or sacrifice anything else about the system if it means you can stay Important. RealityApologist posted:Strangecoin is a thought experiment for testing some of these theoretical insights, and represents at least some attempt at technical progress beyond just theory. The fact that it's meant to function as a game or a toy world doesn't represent some inconsistency in my commitments. If the thread accuses me of inconsistency, that's because it's failed to appreciate or comprehend the level of abstraction at which those theoretical commitments lie. I'll accuse you of inconsistency because just a few short paragraphs ago Strangecoin was "a radically new theory of value (in economics and anthropology)." That's inconsistent! I believe there are very few game makers out there who would introduce their games as a radically new theory of value in economics and anthropology (unless they're Peter Molyneux. But then they're Peter Molyneux.) RealityApologist posted:Perhaps this is a problem with my ability to communicate, Yes, it is. RealityApologist posted:I'm coming to you as a philosopher with an idea that bears on interests you probably have as a member of the general audience; Yet when I, as a member of the general audience, ask "why should I care about this?" you immediately dismiss me. If I'm not a philosopher (I'm not, I did applied math in undergrad and medicine now), you're going to have to explain to me Strangecoin's significance. And as a scientist/mathematician, that means a simulation or hard data that shows something interesting going on. RealityApologist posted:And while it's true that I have more to learn and more skills to acquire, I have no delusions of ever acquiring the total skills necessary to accomplish this task on my own, much less of sending anyone into revolution wearing my name on their arms. I just think the issues are interesting and worth thinking about, and I'm interested to know what might compel others to think along with me. You could totally gain the skills necessary to finish coding and speccing it out, though. Computer programming is not that hard to learn, especially not at the level required to make a script to move some numbers around. Two different goons did it just over the course of this thread, only stopping when you couldn't finish your original spec! If you're interested to know what might compel (compel? that sounds a little forceful/manipulative) others to think along with you, a finished spec and some simulations showing interesting behavior would go a long loving way. The fact that you're not willing to do any of that while passively aggressively making GBS threads on everyone else criticising you makes everyone really hostile to your idea or wanting to help you. Cantorsdust fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Apr 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 19:22
|
|
|
Can't help but notice you skipped over my post, RA. Here it is again, just for posterity.Wanamingo posted:
You've said before that you've admitted mistakes, but when? All I've ever seen is you saying you've been wrong in the abstract sense.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 19:46
|
|
|
Cantorsdust posted:The fact that you're not willing to do any of that while passively aggressively making GBS threads on everyone else criticising you makes everyone really hostile to your idea or wanting to help you. I've written tens of thousands of words in this thread alone to explain, justify, and defend the ideas going into this project, and I made it very clear up front that I don't have the technical expertise to bring the project to fruition. I came to these threads with the hope of developing the idea beyond its initial stages, with a community that not only has the technical competence but has also demonstrated a history and interest in the topic. I mean, people were asking me in other threads to start this thread. This context is entirely lost in the kind of "why" questions being asked. Again, most of the "why" questions being asked are childish questions to which there can be no satisfying response; attempting to respond to such questions is just feeding trolls. My last few posts have been lengthy elaborations on the background and theoretical justification for my ideas in these threads. The response from a dozen people in the forums is not to engage with any of this material, but instead to accuse me of not answering basic motivational questions for why the project has the shape and scope it does. Again, these accusations come in the midst of thousands of words exactly addressing these issues, none of which is engaged by any of the responses. The thread instead chooses to just exaggerate an earlier caricature even further, further distorting the rhetoric in the thread. From Catordust's posts it would seem as if I've not thought one second about any theoretical issues at stake. This criticism comes without addressing at all any of the substantive motivation I've given, indeed it comes without even the slightest recognition or comprehension that it's been given at all.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:03
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:I've written tens of thousands of words in this thread alone to explain, justify, and defend the ideas going into this project, and I made it very clear up front that I don't have the technical expertise to bring the project to fruition. I came to these threads with the hope of developing the idea beyond its initial stages, with a community that not only has the technical competence but has also demonstrated a history and interest in the topic. I mean, people were asking me in other threads to start this thread. This context is entirely lost in the kind of "why" questions being asked. Again, most of the "why" questions being asked are childish questions to which there can be no satisfying response; attempting to respond to such questions is just feeding trolls. Okay, but I'm not trolling you. I'm not dodging your questions or mischaracterizing your points (willfully! I may make mistakes in understanding). I just went through an entire point by point analysis of your last post. It bothers me a little that I did all that, and you only respond to the last line of my entire lengthy post. It's fine if you don't have the technical competence to implement your idea. But if you don't, you probably shouldn't be nearly so convinced of its importance. You have in essence proposed a system and listed its cool emergent features without ever designing the system and seeing what features emerge. Furthermore, the features you have listed as emergent properties, like nepotism reduction or class reification, at best don't seem to be valuable enough to justify the disruption your system would cause and at worst, seem actually horrifying, like the class reification feature. But when we point these problems out, you dismiss us. And it's not just that you dismiss us, but you act so hostile and so condescending, as if the reason we point out the problems is because we just don't understand what you're proposing. We do, and we're horrified. I remember reading your OP. It immediately launched into the transaction types with only a few paragraphs of explanation as to why, and the only explanation given was that dollar-burger trades were insufficient for describing burger value. But you've yet to explain how the transaction types add more value/information to the dollar-burger trade. And I would still like to know, incidentally, how one goes about buying a burger in Strangecoin land. Like from beginning to end, in complete detail, the balances before and after for both individuals and the transactions that would occur. I think it would be very illustrative. So I guess I have a few (legitimate!) questions for you. I think answering them as completely as possible would really help clarify your thoughts to us. 1) What advantages would a Strangecoin network have over a future network where the flow of every dollar was precisely tracked and publicly available? 2) How, exactly, does purchasing a burger work in Strangecoinland? 3) When you describe how Strangecoin will operate in your OP, how did you determine how the network would work? That is, when you said: quote: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. How did you determine, for example, that Strangecoin users would seek out semi-persistent networks of support and coupling?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:25
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Strangecoin is a thought experiment for testing some of these theoretical insights, and represents at least some attempt at technical progress beyond just theory. Thought experiments do not test theories. "There is nothing as useful as a good theory," the adage goes, and we have principled ways of developing good theories. When you do not apply these principles consistently, you get consistent inconsistency. I'll post one here:
You started with step two. This is what I've been telling you every fifteen or so pages: you don't have a theory in any meaningful sense of the word, so all attempts to go beyond the theoretical stage are bound to end in inconsistent nonsense! Heck, not only do you not have a theory, but you don't have a field or even literature for that theory to exist in. I mean, you don't have to interpret that as you being stupid--you bit off about the biggest piece of the soft sciences you possibly could and then choked. So what? It means you need to go back and start from the bottom, probably with step 0 or at least step 1, before you can reasonably expect to be consistent or even coherent. Stop wasting any more time trying to nail down a theory until you can clearly explain and justify the principles you're working with, as well as what phenomena, exactly, you're trying to generate a theory for. And stop posting in this thread already, good grief. You liked yourself to chemists among alchemists, there's no coming back from that. If you take nothing else away, take away that presentation and reputation matters a great deal in framing your argument, and read that Effective Communication thing that was posted so you won't have to write "I'm being clear, people are just misunderstanding me" equivalents over and over. Zodium fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Apr 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:38
|
|
|
I don't know why everyone is continuing to engage with someone who is being so disingenuous.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:50
|
|
|
The reason that I and others keep hammering away at the foundations of this concept is that there are no foundations. You CLAIM that people would care about the "health" of TUA, or prefer highly-endorsed individuals over unendorsed ones, or even that people would endorse one another at all. But you make all of these claims WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION, including value judgements like "health." But you also don't just not understand the incentives or impacts of your system: you fundamentally do not even understand what you yourself are trying to do with it. If you are trying to create a system where relationships, and not currency, are what is important and measured, then WHY ARE YOU CREATING A CURRENCY? Every time you say that it's not actual wealth that's important, but impact on the network, you miss that the only positive effects of impact on the network are... generation of wealth. There are a number of these zero-level contradictions that completely hamstring the system, and make it work against what you are apparently hoping it will achieve. The fact that a couple of shmucks in the Dungeons and Dragons forum can point out a dozen ways in which everything you've written is broken is not necessarily bad: all ideas start off incomplete. But the fact that the very purpose of support and endorsement have been in question since page one, and that you have written hundreds of thousands of self-pitying, whiny, condescending words without addressing these concerns is worrying indeed. Pesmerga posted:I don't know why everyone is continuing to engage with someone who is being so disingenuous. Not everything in life needs to have a purpose. Arguing with Eripsa is like trying to fight a puddle: it just slips right around your attempts and goes back to the way it was before. There's something infuriatingly beautiful in his density.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:I feel your questions represent a misunderstanding of my post. My project Swarm! is intended to simulate ant organization in a game, and I describe there fairly clearly how trails are laid down and how they can be engaged both actively and passively. The simulation isn't meant to be rigorous or economically interesting in the traditional sense; it's just supposed to be a game (like Ingress) with an ant/nature theme instead of a space/future theme. In the documentation I link to I answer all the questions you pose, although it's just a game so the questions are less challenging and the answers less interesting. I'm happy to talk more about the details of Swarm if you like, but that doesn't seem to be your target. Have you done any significant research on ants? I understand that they're just a vehicle to try an explain whatever concept you're pushing so these ants do not accurately reflect the actual actions and motivations of any actual species of ant or ant colony (or any other hive based organism). However, to scale this up to humans is a fantastic leap because most humans give 0 fucks, even when it's paraded in front of them, to efficiency or net benefit/loss or how it largely affects others.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:53
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:The implication is that I have no consistent views, no focused topic, and that I've spent no time thinking about what any of this means. Jesus Eripsa. I knew you were dense but I'm glad you've finally picked up on the "implication" that you're inconsistent, unfocused and incapable of productive thought or meaning.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:54
|
|
|
Guys, don't run him off. This makes great coffee break reading and I anticipate greater and greater instability in Eripsa's model of human emotion as his dissertation defense approaches.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:58
|
|
|
Pesmerga posted:I don't know why everyone is continuing to engage with someone who is being so disingenuous. I admire his purity. A survivor... unclouded by coherence, consistency, or delusions of literacy. EDIT: love the thread title-change. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Apr 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 20:59
|
|
|
Muscle Tracer posted:The reason that I and others keep hammering away at the foundations of this concept is that there are no foundations. You CLAIM that people would care about the "health" of TUA, or prefer highly-endorsed individuals over unendorsed ones, or even that people would endorse one another at all. But you make all of these claims WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION, including value judgements like "health." This is what I'm trying to get at when I say that he's creating a system and claiming emergent properties before ever simulating it. Without simulating it, you don't have justification for those claims.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:01
|
|
|
Pesmerga posted:I don't know why everyone is continuing to engage with someone who is being so disingenuous. RealityApologist isn't really disingenuous, but he is unprincipled. (And arguably inconsiderately pushing a grossly underdeveloped idea.) When people are just wrong, it's usually easy to articulate why, given enough knowledge. When they're not even wrong, it's often harder to articulate why. He is like Freud: wrong at best, but consistently not even that. Both their writings are treasure troves of intellectual practice problems of the "explain why this is nonsense" kind, fun for all ages 8-99. For instance, JawnV6 wrote the coding thing as an exercise in dealing with unreasonable and whimsical clients. I want to see whether I can convince someone who (I'm fairly sure) does not apply any consistent set of principles in their thinking to do so, or even explain to them what that means. Others like to poke holes in his proposals. He's great, but in a tragic kind of way. Zodium fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Apr 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
Oh my god please don't compare him to Freud. CheesyDog posted:Guys, don't run him off. This makes great coffee break reading and I anticipate greater and greater instability in Eripsa's model of human emotion as his dissertation defense approaches. After all these years I can't even begin to imagine what would chase him off for good. Other than meds. woke wedding drone fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Apr 30, 2014 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:07
|
|
|
SedanChair posted:Oh my god please don't compare him to Freud. Seriously. He came back on another account to have another go with a different idea. I doubt that he'll ever leave for good any time soon.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:13
|
|
|
Muscle Tracer posted:Not everything in life needs to have a purpose. Arguing with Eripsa is like trying to fight a puddle: it just slips right around your attempts and goes back to the way it was before. There's something infuriatingly beautiful in his density. Again, the density isn't just mine, it's all of ours. I've just had four different demands for foundation theories, for different conceptions of "fundamental". Some people are still asking why I'm proposing a currency, which I assume only means they've not read anything for the last 40 pages. Some people are asking for foundations from the perspective of scientific methodology, and others from the perspectives of the particular special sciences: the justifications from economic theory, or sociology, or political theory, or game theory. Still others are talking about fundamentals of communication, motivation, and audience targeting. These are all distinct demands, and responding to one will leave the others with the impression that they've been ignored. I'm doing the best I can. I'm not pretending that it's enough. The theoretical background for Strangecoin has to do with digital theory and attention economy, which I haven't really elaborated in these threads beyond some basic outlines. I've clearly established some theoretical commitments (to philosophical naturalism and mainstream science), and I've cited infleunces (like Quine, Turing, and Dennett) that place me fairly clearly within a certain theoretical purview and literature. I've proposed dropping Strangecoin entirely and just talking about the digital philosophy as a theory, but since no one actually bothers to engage my substantive claims in an effort to attack my character and style, the suggestion was entirely over looked. My point in treating the Strangecoin example is in order to work out aspects of the theory; I've not tried to bring the project beyond this level of basic theory (steps 0-2 of Zodium's list). Nor have I assumed any particular emergent behavior will result from Strangecoin. The proposal defines certain constraints on behaviors (like balance caps and TUA penalties), and I've only talked about these in terms of how they might make some transactions more attractive than others. The proposal also defies certain network structures that are salient in the transactions. I've explained, theoretically, how this corresponds to issues of the organization of complex systems, but that's something quite different than saying "I predict the system will work in this or that way." At most, I've said that existing problems with our economic and political systems generate at least some reason to seek alternatives, and I've explained how the modifications in Strangecoin are qualitatively different from the kinds of alternatives being proposed in the altcurrency community. Again, I'm asking the question "what happens in an economic system if transactions are modified by the network structure?" That seems like an eminently reasonable question to ask, and it's one that I've not found an available answer to, and talking about Strangecoin casually on an internet forum is a completely reasonable way to pursue the project as a hobby as a layperson.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:13
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Again, the density isn't just mine, it's all of ours. I've just had four different demands for foundation theories, for different conceptions of "fundamental". Some people are still asking why I'm proposing a currency, which I assume only means they've not read anything for the last 40 pages. Some people are asking for foundations from the perspective of scientific methodology, and others from the perspectives of the particular special sciences: the justifications from economic theory, or sociology, or political theory, or game theory. That's because you vacillate fluidly between all of these disciplines. quote:Still others are talking about fundamentals of communication, motivation, and audience targeting. These are all distinct demands, and responding to one will leave the others with the impression that they've been ignored. I'm doing the best I can. I'm not pretending that it's enough. And yet, the magnitude of your incorrectness and the dramatic incompleteness of your own conception of your idea does not dissuade you from failing to improve it in any way. quote:The theoretical background for Strangecoin has to do with digital theory and attention economy, which I haven't really elaborated in these threads beyond some basic outlines. I've clearly established some theoretical commitments (to philosophical naturalism and mainstream science), and I've cited infleunces (like Quine, Turing, and Dennett) that place me fairly clearly within a certain theoretical purview and literature. I've proposed dropping Strangecoin entirely and just talking about the digital philosophy as a theory, but since no one actually bothers to engage my substantive claims in an effort to attack my character and style, the suggestion was entirely over looked. You yourself did not act on this. Can't blame the passengers for the driver's misdirection. quote:My point in treating the Strangecoin example is in order to work out aspects of the theory; I've not tried to bring the project beyond this level of basic theory (steps 0-2 of Zodium's list). Nor have I assumed any particular emergent behavior will result from Strangecoin. The proposal defines certain constraints on behaviors (like balance caps and TUA penalties), and I've only talked about these in terms of how they might make some transactions more attractive than others. The proposal also defies certain network structures that are salient in the transactions. I've explained, theoretically, how this corresponds to issues of the organization of complex systems, but that's something quite different than saying "I predict the system will work in this or that way." In what way is a value judgement like "the health of TUA," and the implication that anyone would care about that "health," not a descriptor of assumed emergent behavior? quote:At most, I've said that existing problems with our economic and political systems generate at least some reason to seek alternatives, and I've explained how the modifications in Strangecoin are qualitatively different from the kinds of alternatives being proposed in the altcurrency community. Again, I'm asking the question "what happens in an economic system if transactions are modified by the network structure?" That seems like an eminently reasonable question to ask, and it's one that I've not found an available answer to, and talking about Strangecoin casually on an internet forum is a completely reasonable way to pursue the project as a hobby as a layperson. No, you're asking "what happens in THIS SPECIFIC economic system in which THESE SPECIFIC MODIFICATIONS are applied to transactions." That is not a comparable question at all, in the same way that "How do you build a house?" and "Is this pile of brambles and broken glass a suitable house, I think it's a great house" are not comparable.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:21
|
|
|
Sheesh, you are trying to drat hard to be a martyr. Get over yourself. And you still skipped over my question. Wanamingo posted:
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:23
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Again, I'm asking the question "what happens in an economic system if transactions are modified by the network structure?" That seems like an eminently reasonable question to ask, and it's one that I've not found an available answer to, and talking about Strangecoin casually on an internet forum is a completely reasonable way to pursue the project as a hobby as a layperson. I'll answer this question for you. "I don't loving know, depends on the network structure!" Seriously, that question is far too generic to have a meaningful answer. In a sense, our economic system already has transactions modified by the network structure. It's called tax, and a whole area of economic research looks into the effects of taxes on the system. Again, you can't answer questions like this that rely on emergent properties of the system until you define the system. Also, I'd still really like the answers to: Cantorsdust posted:So I guess I have a few (legitimate!) questions for you. I think answering them as completely as possible would really help clarify your thoughts to us.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:30
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:I've proposed dropping Strangecoin entirely and just talking about the digital philosophy as a theory, but since no one actually bothers to engage my substantive claims in an effort to attack my character and style, the suggestion was entirely over looked. You know, it is kind of entirely up to you as to whether you want to drop Strangecoin entirely (please do, it's a bad idea). RealityApologist posted:Nor have I assumed any particular emergent behavior will result from Strangecoin. That is pretty much the only thing you've done, actually. Xelkelvos posted:Have you done any significant research on ants? I understand that they're just a vehicle to try an explain whatever concept you're pushing so these ants do not accurately reflect the actual actions and motivations of any actual species of ant or ant colony (or any other hive based organism). However, to scale this up to humans is a fantastic leap because most humans give 0 fucks, even when it's paraded in front of them, to efficiency or net benefit/loss or how it largely affects others. He didn't do any research on ants. He was motivated by a fellow grad student (now postdoc?) at his university, who also didn't do any research into ants himself, but reviewed some existing research and drew some vague and self-admittedly speculative links between ant behaviour and human computation. This was published in the Handbook of Human Computation, which: quote:-Provides a comprehensive, current, and interdisciplinary treatment of the field of Human Computation ... and looks like a compendium of musings by fellow cranks. If it seems familiar, that's because it also contains Eripsa's only publication (not peer-reviewed, mind you). It's about this bit of possibly existent software Swarm!: RealityApologist posted:I feel your questions represent a misunderstanding of my post. My project Swarm! is intended to simulate ant organization in a game, and I describe there fairly clearly how trails are laid down and how they can be engaged both actively and passively. The simulation isn't meant to be rigorous or economically interesting in the traditional sense; it's just supposed to be a game (like Ingress) with an ant/nature theme instead of a space/future theme. In the documentation I link to I answer all the questions you pose, although it's just a game so the questions are less challenging and the answers less interesting. I'm happy to talk more about the details of Swarm if you like, but that doesn't seem to be your target. Uh, last time I checked, from the link you provided, Swarm! does not actually exist yet, so how could you have done any research with it? In your own words: quote:please be aware that this app is not yet finished and only exists as a concept in the following paper and will most certainly change over time. Since you're not developing it, is your buddy Dr. Fancyhat doing it? Or are you only begging for cash to pay someone to do your work for you?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:31
|
|
|
Cantorsdust posted:I'll answer this question for you. I don't think you understand. Imagine Strangecoin is a top hat. ~~Network Theory~~ is a magic wand and you wave it over it or whatever and then you get a whole loving warren of emergent property bunnies. At least I think that's what RA is trying to say. You don't even have to think too hard or be careful about anything ever. It just loving happens because ~~Network Theory~~.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
Take this field that people have developed for like 100 years. Just loving throw some network theory at it and y'all are obsolete.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:37
|
|
|
"But listen—what if people KNEW you were a capitalist overlord, not because of the clothes you wear, car you drive, or plastic surgery you can afford, but because there were some sort of, I don't know, signifiers of some kind that could tell them that! Can you imagine if people knew that Nikes were made in sweat shops??? They'd go out of business immediately!!" -posted from my child labor-free, environmentally friendly iPhone
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:41
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Again, I'm asking the question "what happens in an economic system if transactions are modified by the network structure?" In terms of communication, this has not been made clear throughout the thread. In terms of science, this question doesn't strike me as very reasonable. "Transactions are modified by network structure" as it is in the current economy, just not with the particular structure or in the particular way you proposed in the OP. We can extend the question to "What happens in an economic system if transactions are modified by this particular network structure in this particular way?" As I recall, the answer to that is that it either implodes, nobody has any reason to use it and/or it predictably generates wildly undesirable outcomes for those who do and the network at large. More importantly, why should we modify transactions, let alone in this particular way? Why is your proposed network structure desirable? Again, don't actually answer these questions here, I'm only making the point that you do not have a clearly identifiable coherent and justified set of principles. Given the nature of your project, you obviously can't just fall back on those employed in any one of the fields you want to unify, so there is a lot of philosophical work to do before theoretical commitments even begin to rear their heads. Maybe a thread on digital philosophy would be a good idea. On the one hand, I'm doubtful that there exists a set of principles that could carry a unified field encompassing all the topics you've covered so far. Network theory alone certainly can't. On the other hand, if they were developed within the last fifty years, it's entirely conceivable that no one in the scientific community noticed yet. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:44
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:Again, these accusations come in the midst of thousands of words exactly addressing these issues, none of which is engaged by any of the responses. Just speaking for myself, but I preface things with "Again," and "Basically," when I'm trying to make the audience feel inferior or take them down a peg. Helps reign in MBA's who are trying to tell me they've defied physics and can pull a few thousand watts out of a wall socket or do wifi for a year on 4 AA's. If you're actually stymied why people aren't reading your thousands upon thousands of words before engaging, it might help to revisit the concept of an elevator pitch. If you want to be an evangelist, at least be a good one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 21:59
|
|
|
RealityApologist posted:The theoretical background for Strangecoin has to do with digital theory and attention economy, which I haven't really elaborated in these threads beyond some basic outlines. I've clearly established some theoretical commitments (to philosophical naturalism and mainstream science), and I've cited infleunces (like Quine, Turing, and Dennett) that place me fairly clearly within a certain theoretical purview and literature. I've proposed dropping Strangecoin entirely and just talking about the digital philosophy as a theory, but since no one actually bothers to engage my substantive claims in an effort to attack my character and style, the suggestion was entirely over looked. I haven't seen anything in your definitions that explains why you feel you can generalize from ant social structures to human ones. Why is it that you feel you can take a fact, shorn of context, and use it to justify assumptions in spite of ample evidence that those assumptions do not hold? No matter your influences, you seem to lack a consistent or coherent methodology for the assumptions you draw and the inferences you make. All of Strangecoin is based on the, erroneous in my and many other's opinion, assumption that network impact and coin throughput provide meaningful incentives to people in the economic network. The only justification you've given from this is the observation about ants. Given that humans do not operate in a eusocial manner of organization (like ants, bees, or naked mole rats do), why should the assumption be made that any observation is generalizable? Why should information on the composition of the network induce a change in behaviour in the individual? What would a Strangecoin model with even simple logic built into the actors (rather than random transaction selection) look like, in your opinion?
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:06
|
|
|
Little Blackfly posted:I haven't seen anything in your definitions that explains why you feel you can generalize from ant social structures to human ones. Why is it that you feel you can take a fact, shorn of context, and use it to justify assumptions in spite of ample evidence that those assumptions do not hold? No matter your influences, you seem to lack a consistent or coherent methodology for the assumptions you draw and the inferences you make. All of Strangecoin is based on the, erroneous in my and many other's opinion, assumption that network impact and coin throughput provide meaningful incentives to people in the economic network. The only justification you've given from this is the observation about ants. Given that humans do not operate in a eusocial manner of organization (like ants, bees, or naked mole rats do), why should the assumption be made that any observation is generalizable? Why should information on the composition of the network induce a change in behaviour in the individual? What would a Strangecoin model with even simple logic built into the actors (rather than random transaction selection) look like, in your opinion? Eripsa, please read and focus on this post. It very clearly communicates many of the problems posters in this thread have had with you. It is a Good Post.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2014 22:28
|
|
|
Cantorsdust posted:Eripsa, please read and focus on this post. It very clearly communicates many of the problems posters in this thread have had with you. It is a Good Post.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 01:11
|
|
|
This thread has provided some good entertainment, but good lord the OP has a strong habit of cherry picking posts to reply to that feed into some sort of weird victim complex while any number of legitimate, good faith questions or criticisms are straight up ignored or waved away as "You just don't get it!" RealityApologist there have been numerous good, straightforward questions put to you in the past (Cantorsdust was even kind enough to number his 1-2-3!) and you chose the one offhand comment by Muscle Tracer to reply to that let you put yourself up on a cross, throw up your hands and cry "My theories  " Keep it up guy, great work.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 01:26
|
|
|
This thread is "I've fallen in a well" steps 25 through 5000. Guys, Eripsa is not capable of changing, so arguing with him functions as nothing other than an over-verbose turing test.
Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 02:04 on May 1, 2014 |
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 02:01
|
|
|
Well it is pretty entertaining watching him spin his wheels in the sand and get nowhere while claiming he's actually going super fast. That's gotta be worth something.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 02:27
|
|
|
Is this related to his thesis that he is defending soon? That might explain why he is so dead set to make something come out of this, no matter how much he needs to squirm and shift it. If so, how likely do you think he is to skate through it by vomiting his typical word salad?
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 02:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? Oct 10, 2024 15:55 |
|
|
Wee Tinkle Wand posted:Is this related to his thesis that he is defending soon? That might explain why he is so dead set to make something come out of this, no matter how much he needs to squirm and shift it. If so, how likely do you think he is to skate through it by vomiting his typical word salad? No it has nothing to do with that rigorous-rear end poo poo. How insulting for you to imply that his thesis is anything like this silly, simple game. His academic colleagues look at this thread and say "
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2014 02:55
|
|