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Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

Obdicut posted:

Or, more libertarianesque: "Yes, it's true that Bill was driving a truck because I was paying him (or whatever the gently caress the cognate of paying is in this stupid system) to do it but since liability doesn't transfer he's solely responsible for that accident."
In that case, "sorry, we got out of the steel business to start Break Into Your House and Take Your poo poo LLC."

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woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

RealityApologist posted:

I haven't dismissed or ignored any experts. I'm not sure what you are even referring to.

Economists have told you you don't know anything about economics. Neuroscientists have told you that the parallels you draw between Twitter and the brain are stoner nonsense. Philosophy PhDs have told you that you don't have sufficient grounding in the discipline you purport to represent.

Without fail, every time an expert breaks you down and reveals you are full of poo poo you say that you're not supposed to be an expert, this is just a thought exercise and we're holding you to an unfair standard. And then you go back to posting pages of nonsense that doesn't even meet the standard of internal consistency. You are a loving crank. I feel bad for your students.

Coolness Averted
Feb 20, 2007

oh don't worry, I can't smell asparagus piss, it's in my DNA

GO HOGG WILD!
🐗🐗🐗🐗🐗

SedanChair posted:

He once posted a link to what he claimed was the first part of his dissertation. It was a bunch of word salad without citations. If he is actually in a program his advisor should face consequences for not nipping this poo poo in the bud.

To be fair, it could've just been on the way.
Someone I know in a language department was telling me about some kid who seemed mostly normal and sane until come first review phase for his dissertation, and bam he submits a sci-fi fantasy erotic novel he was working on.
Like instead of research into Latin as used on the edges of the Roman empire, or whatever, bam it's a story about him boffing spies on China's moonbase in the 23rd century, and thousands and thousands of words.

Somehow he survived a BA and got into grad school without the insanity showing through and was at least in his second quarter before that disaster happened. When asked if it was a joke or something he was straight faced and explained in word salad fashion that he'd changed his emphasis, and this new work was going to be his dissertation.

I guess what I'm saying is OP, were you kicked out of UCR sometime around 2004-2006? Also how sexy was the story?

RealityApologist
Mar 29, 2011

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

Adventure Pigeon posted:

I'm really confused and kinda annoyed by the idea of a spontaneous corporate structure to meet a need.

Do you realize how long, even now, it takes to set up a structure to meet even a simple need? To meet complex tasks, such as designing and building a supercomputer or a rocket or a nuclear reactor or design a plane, it can take years to set up a proper organization. There's intense pruning and organizing and training. Even finding people that meet some of the requirements for a given task, whether that's intellectual expertise or leadership or a sufficient understanding of "the big picture" in a particular field that they can take on a leadership role, can be an incredible pain in the rear end. When you do find these people, they will take time to be trained in additional tasks necessary to their position or even to fully integrate into their role in the organization. Further, you need lawyers and HR and every other bit of infrastructure to facilitate communication and ensure legal protection for the people in the organization.

Transactions require both a need and an organization that can meet that need, and the organizations often remain long after a need disappears or is replaced because their expertise and value transcends that need.

I mean "spontaneous" not in the sense of "easy" but in the sense of "you already have a corporation once you've engaged in transactions with its members. There's no additional contractual hurdles to jump through." Engaging in a transaction just is forming a corporation.

The time and effort it takes to build an organization would still exist in a strangecoin world, but that selection process would culminate the the establishing of a transaction of the types I listed.

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

RealityApologist posted:

I mean "spontaneous" not in the sense of "easy" but in the sense of "you already have a corporation once you've engaged in transactions with its members. There's no additional contractual hurdles to jump through." Engaging in a transaction just is forming a corporation.

The time and effort it takes to build an organization would still exist in a strangecoin world, but that selection process would culminate the the establishing of a transaction of the types I listed.

That was not at all what his problem with what you stated was. Like, not ever close.

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012
So wait... every business is now a pyramid scam? Like I buy a candy bar from the corner store, and because I was the first customer everyone else pays me dividends?

Gerund
Sep 12, 2007

He push a man


RealityApologist posted:

I mean "spontaneous" not in the sense of "easy" but in the sense of "you already have a corporation once you've engaged in transactions with its members. There's no additional contractual hurdles to jump through." Engaging in a transaction just is forming a corporation.

The time and effort it takes to build an organization would still exist in a strangecoin world, but that selection process would culminate the the establishing of a transaction of the types I listed.

Can that new, spontaneous (but not that specific type of spontaneous) corporation of transactions shield the investors from liability?

Obdicut
May 15, 2012

"What election?"

Gerund posted:

Can that new, spontaneous (but not that specific type of spontaneous) corporation of transactions shield the investors from liability?

How would you even invest?

CheesyDog
Jul 4, 2007

by FactsAreUseless

RealityApologist posted:

Right, and Strangecoin provides that kind of shield. Individuals don't assume full responsibility for their transactions; that responsibility is distributed across the network in quantifiable ways.

It doesn't provide immunity from legal responsibility, so in that sense it's different than the existing legal framework for corporations. Are we now defending the corporate legal structure in this thread?

If you can't defend your idea from goons, what will the scores of billionaires who have subverted the corporate legal structure do to it? There are perhaps a dozen exploits already described in this thread.

Precambrian Video Games
Aug 19, 2002



SedanChair posted:

Do you really need that steel though??? Challenge your preconceptions.

Actually now that I think about it, this is a brilliant idea to revolutionize the labour market. Imagine if every corporation needed to hire networks of people just to acquire enough cash flow (income) to cover their daily outlays. McDonalds would have to pay its workers dividends to order pallets of gross fake bread and vats of ground beef slurry. Systematic unemployment would end, and workers would finally own the means of production. Or maybe the economy would collapse. I don't know, there's only one way to find out!

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

R. Mute posted:

Has the OP answered why we'd want this system yet?

Do you even need to ask?

MD2020 posted:

I'm marbling the gently caress out of this iron ore over here, so the first step is taken care of.

You have no idea how hard I'm looking at this rusty bumper someone left over by the dumpster. I'll expect my dividends shortly.

Adventure Pigeon
Nov 8, 2005

I am a master storyteller.

RealityApologist posted:

I mean "spontaneous" not in the sense of "easy" but in the sense of "you already have a corporation once you've engaged in transactions with its members. There's no additional contractual hurdles to jump through." Engaging in a transaction just is forming a corporation.

The time and effort it takes to build an organization would still exist in a strangecoin world, but that selection process would culminate the the establishing of a transaction of the types I listed.

The problem is you're replacing a lot of very important, concrete ideas by saying that these things will somehow emerge from transactions. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by transactions since you said it involves more than payment. I mean, what the hell do you mean by support and coupling? Endorsements? Is that just giving someone money?

I am yet another PhD and I will flat out say your poo poo doesn't fly. You don't define the vast majority of what you say in a meaningful way. And your answer to any criticism of your weird little system is to handwave and say "strangecoin will do it because strangecoin will do it, it's all built in". It's like a five year old telling me he should rule the world because he'd cure all the diseases with medicine and end all the war by taking away the guns and end poverty by giving out cryptocurrency money. It'd be cute coming from a five year old, it's not cute coming from a philosophy graduate student.


Bro do you even publish? Because God help the journal that accepts this poo poo.

Precambrian Video Games
Aug 19, 2002



Babylon Astronaut posted:

So wait... every business is now a pyramid scam? Like I buy a candy bar from the corner store, and because I was the first customer everyone else pays me dividends?

RealityApologist posted:

Right, and Strangecoin provides that kind of shield. Individuals don't assume full responsibility for their transactions; that responsibility is distributed across the network in quantifiable ways.

It doesn't provide immunity from legal responsibility, so in that sense it's different than the existing legal framework for corporations. Are we now defending the corporate legal structure in this thread?

More like, if you buy a candy bar from the corner store, you go to jail for 3 days because the Nestle Corp. network dumped some waste illegally in China, and pay a 50 strangecoin fine because an old lady slipped on a wet floor in the corner store and broke her hip.

Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Mar 31, 2014

Good Citizen
Aug 12, 2008

trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump trump
Moving on from the Accounting/Finance issues, what about the technical? You do know that if someone controls 51% of the processing power in a *coin network then they can force their version of reality on every other user, right? A cartel of rich fuckers could and would seize control of your network and give themselves infinity billion dollars before you could even begin to respond.

Then there's the transaction velocity limits. Bitcoin can handle like 7 transactions a second and needs to store all of those transactions in the block chain, making the thing 10's of gigabytes long (I haven't tracked exact length in a while) and growing every day while still only being a niche thing used by nerds. Every user needs to download that whole file.

I know your solution is 'just make it better' but you have no idea how to address any of these problems or any of most basic accounting/finance problems I brought up earlier.

Basically, this is you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY63FF3Q
Except without any of the ability to be succinct

Babylon Astronaut
Apr 19, 2012

RealityApologist posted:

Right, and Strangecoin provides that kind of shield. Individuals don't assume full responsibility for their transactions; that responsibility is distributed across the network in quantifiable ways.

It doesn't provide immunity from legal responsibility, so in that sense it's different than the existing legal framework for corporations. Are we now defending the corporate legal structure in this thread?
If the liability of every crime in history was spread out evenly, how many years am I getting for using your money?

Why do you think worker owned cooperatives are indefensible?

RealityApologist
Mar 29, 2011

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

SedanChair posted:

Economists have told you you don't know anything about economics. Neuroscientists have told you that the parallels you draw between Twitter and the brain are stoner nonsense. Philosophy PhDs have told you that you don't have sufficient grounding in the discipline you purport to represent.

Apparently I'm blind, because I didn't see any of that. I engaged and responded to the accountant and the neuroscientist directly and in a noncritical way. I didn't dismiss their objections, I was particularly sympathetic to the neuroscientist's worries, and I attempted to describe how I'd taken those worries into consideration. I didn't see anything dismissive about my response.

I don't see where I've dismissed anyone with a specific criticism of the proposal. I've been responding as best I can to objections as they are raised.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe
You seem to think saying "I'm sympathetic to your criticism" means that you get to just keep typing. Does your sympathy mean "never mind"? Somehow it doesn't, it means that even though your ideas have no value HAVE SOME MORE OF THEM! *backs up dump truck full of marbles*

Yes, you are blind. Cranks are blind.

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

RealityApologist posted:

Apparently I'm blind, because I didn't see any of that. I engaged and responded to the accountant and the neuroscientist directly and in a noncritical way. I didn't dismiss their objections, I was particularly sympathetic to the neuroscientist's worries, and I attempted to describe how I'd taken those worries into consideration. I didn't see anything dismissive about my response.

I don't see where I've dismissed anyone with a specific criticism of the proposal. I've been responding as best I can to objections as they are raised.

I literally linked you to a post where you ignored the most thought out and pressing problems with your ideas that were in that post. That's not blindness, that's willful ignorance.

RealityApologist
Mar 29, 2011

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

Who What Now posted:

I literally linked you to a post where you ignored the most thought out and pressing problems with your ideas that were in that post. That's not blindness, that's willful ignorance.

You linked to obdicut's post, which has such insightful criticisms as

quote:

It's a rather small idea, actually, not a big one, and that's part of why it really sucks.

Is this the expert criticism that I casually tossed aside? What claims did he make in that post that you think I failed to treat adequately?

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment that I'm alive, I pray for death!

RealityApologist posted:

You linked to obdicut's post, which has such insightful criticisms as


Is this the expert criticism that I casually tossed aside? What claims did he make in that post that you think I failed to treat adequately?

I dunno, you might actually give us something concrete to support your assertion that this actually is a big idea, rather than just continuing to assert that it is. Or were you using "big" to refer to the amount of brain swelling your suffered prior to having the idea?

Adventure Pigeon
Nov 8, 2005

I am a master storyteller.
I'd like to ask a much simpler question. Have you ever solved a real problem? Like, maybe even design an algorithm that could be computationally implemented that would generate the currency, balance the books, or any part of what you want to do.

I imagine most of the folks with some expertise who've been poking holes in your idea have. Real problems, even small ones, can require a lot of effort to solve. You need to go through a lot of effort to make sure the proposed solution solves what it claims to solve, have a clear explanation of how it solves it, and finally have enough data backing the solution to respond to criticism.

What you're putting out here seems like more of what an "idea guy" would generate. Now, there are professional idea guys, but most of them have solved a lot of problems on their way to becoming idea guys so they're able to figure out how feasible what they propose is before they just throw it out there. I've never met one who unironically suggested a new cryptocurrency that would simultaneously solve our legal, economic, and political systems.

Edit: I kinda think this thread should just be fed to GBS.

Adventure Pigeon fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Mar 31, 2014

Obdicut
May 15, 2012

"What election?"

RealityApologist posted:

You linked to obdicut's post, which has such insightful criticisms as


Is this the expert criticism that I casually tossed aside? What claims did he make in that post that you think I failed to treat adequately?

Forget about me, dude. The idea that you think you actually dealt with the criticisms from the accountant dude and the neuro guy is baffling. You didn't. You just handwaved them aside, like you do with everything, because you can't actually come up with a solution to save your life. Any time you do make up something on the spur of the moment, like "Oh corporations will be formed organically through transactions BTW" you just make poo poo worse for yourself.

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

R. Mute posted:

Has the OP answered why we'd want this system yet?

Yes. But it was a non-linear answer.

RealityApologist
Mar 29, 2011

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

SedanChair posted:

You seem to think saying "I'm sympathetic to your criticism" means that you get to just keep typing. Does your sympathy mean "never mind"? Somehow it doesn't, it means that even though your ideas have no value HAVE SOME MORE OF THEM! *backs up dump truck full of marbles*

Yes, you are blind. Cranks are blind.

I've provided sources to legitimate studies, I've not dismissed any expert analysis or any facts of the matter. I'm not pushing any pseudoscience bullshit, I'm not selling anything, I'm not appealing to any claim about "the experts are wrong" or "this is what science wont tell you" or anything like that. I'm responding to criticism as it arises as best I can, I'm admitting where I'm not competent, and I'm trying my best to correct and clarify misunderstandings.

The only criticisms that have been raised that actually stick are that I can't write, and that I'm out of my depth. I've admitted several times to both these facts. Neither of them make me a crank.

I didn't see the philosophy phd speak up, but I'm incredibly confident in my philosophical abilities. I'm defending my phd in June and I'm quite prepared to do so. My dissertation doesn't deal with any of these issues except the abstract character of organization and network theory. The attention economy blogging is a project of passion and interest; it is informed by, but does not constitute, my academic work. I present it in a academic vocabulary because again that's all I know how to do.

Xelkelvos
Dec 19, 2012

RealityApologist posted:

You linked to obdicut's post, which has such insightful criticisms as


Is this the expert criticism that I casually tossed aside? What claims did he make in that post that you think I failed to treat adequately?

Well linking to the wrong post doesn't help. He was referring to this one.

As for points that should be addressed in the posts you link to:

quote:

No, your framework of your attention economy is not analogous to either of those....You hand-wave in all sorts of explanations for how, once attention is achieved, something will actually be done with it.

quote:

No, a political system that develops from social networks doesn't have historical significance. It's [an]...idea with obvious massive flaws that would simply reify existince structural problems; you just ignore all this, and pretend everyone is or is going to be using social networks or using them in the same way.

Part of arguing in good faith is being able to reference your claims (which you have actually failed to do here) and to read the entirety of the opposing side's argument and parse out any actual points from anything that might be insulting without getting offended.

RealityApologist posted:

I've provided sources to legitimate studies, I've not dismissed any expert analysis or any facts of the matter. I'm not pushing any pseudoscience bullshit, I'm not selling anything, I'm not appealing to any claim about "the experts are wrong" or "this is what science wont tell you" or anything like that. I'm responding to criticism as it arises as best I can, I'm admitting where I'm not competent, and I'm trying my best to correct and clarify misunderstandings.

The only criticisms that have been raised that actually stick are that I can't write, and that I'm out of my depth. I've admitted several times to both these facts. Neither of them make me a crank.
If you're not trying to push something, then why make this thread? To show off?
And fwiw, the ideas you're trying to present require more requisite knowledge than you currently have, yet you seem to be doubling down on them as the thread goes on. If you know you are out of your depth, why not shelve the whole mess and come back to it when you've actually got the head for it?

Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Mar 31, 2014

RealityApologist
Mar 29, 2011

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

Obdicut posted:

Forget about me, dude. The idea that you think you actually dealt with the criticisms from the accountant dude and the neuro guy is baffling. You didn't. You just handwaved them aside, like you do with everything, because you can't actually come up with a solution to save your life. Any time you do make up something on the spur of the moment, like "Oh corporations will be formed organically through transactions BTW" you just make poo poo worse for yourself.

The criticism from the neuroguy was "hey if you aren't able to communicate your idea you probably need to work on that bro", and my response was "you're right man writing is hard and I'm doing my best." That's a sympathetic response that acknowledges the criticism. There was nothing the neuroguy said that was a critique of the project, it was entirely a critique of the presentation.

I'm not sure what else I could have said that would have been a more appropriate response.

edit: the corporations thing wasn't "spur of the moment", it's a note I've repeated multiple times.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496949

quote:

And I can enter into less serious relationships of varying degrees with other parties. The effect is a way of managing not just financial transactions, but also reputation, investment, and other dynamics social constraints on the economy via the currency itself. Money is memory (http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr218.pdf), but our existing currencies only represent some aspects of our economic activity, and therefore put limits on the memory stored in the economy. A nonlinear coin like Strangecoin can embed that social knowledge in the currency itself, providing a more robust memory framework on which we can conduct our economic transactions.

I only hint at this in the proposal, but I suspect a system like this is required to resolve the twisted legal artifice the corporate veil, because it quantifies explicitly the role individuals have in collective economic activity, and thereby gives a method for explicitly holding persons proportionally responsible (in both credit and blame) for their contributions to that activity.

But I think that's a much more radical proposal than the one I've offered for Strangecoin, and I should probably only be defending that here. =)

RealityApologist fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Mar 31, 2014

Dogstoyevsky
Oct 9, 2012

If there is no Dog, everything is permitted

RealityApologist posted:

I'm not denying that the communication problems are largely my fault. I'm trying to explain that I struggle with writing. That's partly because I'm not good with language, and it's partly because the subject matter is difficult and draws from a wide variety of traditions with no settled vocabulary of discussion, and it's partly because my knowledge is incomplete over these range of topics.

These are problems every academic faces. I don't want you to make excuses. Everyone in academia works on some esoteric bullshit that they understand better than everyone else. It's literally, literally your job to think big and translate that poo poo into a form that people without your level of training can understand, appreciate, benefit from, and act upon. How will you obtain grant funding if this is how you talk? How will you attract software engineers to work on your project, and students to take your classes, and policymakers to adopt your ideas? How will you effect the changes you seek? If you can't do these things, aren't you just masturbating in public?

RealityApologist posted:

The Strangecoin proposal was written for bitcoin nerds on HN and not the goons. I'm sharing here because they explicitly requested another thread, because they find ridiculing me for being a tryhard and struggling with difficult problems entertaining. I find the practice of writing for a hostile audience useful for improving my writing and making my ideas more comprehensible. As I said, I'm okay with this dynamic.

You're sharing it here now. Why wouldn't you make it amenable to this audience? Where is Dickbutt?

RealityApologist posted:

So I'm not blaming the audience for their reaction. Nevertheless, the hostile reception does cause a number of frustrating problems with interpretation and our basic ability to have a discussion about the topic, quite independent of my ability as a writer, and its reasonable for me to object to this hostility. I'm trying to deflate the hostility by pointing it out where it occurs and refusing to engage it, while responding as best I can to the comments that are earnest. It's the best I can do in the face of such hostility. It's not easy, even if I were more competent.

This is you making excuses. You are blaming the audience. You just are. I don't know what else to say. You're getting a bad reception. You want to think that you're above the requirements of a performance because you're an academic but you're not, nobody is.

RealityApologist posted:

The hostility in this forum has reached a point to where I'm excluded from commenting on any subject on which I'm not an expert. Unless I've obtained a phd in systems engineering I can't say anything on the organization of technical systems, and unless I have a degree in economics or accounting I can't say anything about currency, and if I'm not a expert in math then I can't talk about network diagrams. I think this is an unreasonable demand on anyone, especially in a public informal setting like the SA forums.

This is you making excuses. Everyone has limited expertise. When that's the case, one treads carefully.

RealityApologist posted:

I write in an academic style because that's my training and it's all I know how to do, but that doesn't mean that every word out of my mouth must be up to academic standards. I have more than enough knowledge in these areas to talk about something like strangecoin in a public forum, and for that discussion to be interesting and productive without having to lay out my credentials and motivations in every post. Again, these are just unreasonable demands on the conversation; no one could ever live up to them, especially me.

This is you making excuses. When I write or present for other academics, I try to write or speak in terms they'll understand. When I write for people who don't know what the gently caress I'm talking about, I try to write or speak in terms that they will understand. Because I care that my ideas get understood more than anything. That's what successful advocacy looks like.

RealityApologist posted:

But more generally, my training is in philosophy in the philosophy of science, which is historically a discipline which looks at the practices of sciences across many disciplines, and derives abstract frameworks that can help coordinate and unify those domains as a coherent epistemological network. In the 80's and 90's this happened with the cognitive science, which was motivated by philosophical discussions in the 60s and 70s that brought together linguists, psychologists, computer scientists, and neuroscientists under a unified framework. Something similar is happening today, with the economists, and social psychologists, and data analysts. This is fueled partly by philosophical discussions in the 90's and 00's about the extended mind and collective action, but is really rocketed forward by the developments of social networking, and the huge quantities of information about social activity they've made available. This is a kind of disciplinary reorientation around network-theoretic tools. I consider my work as contributing to the philosophical background in which this transition happens; my public writing on G+ is mostly about organization and digital politics, and Strangecoin is a product of my thinking in this direction.

This is jargon for the sake of jargon. If you're not being understood, you're failing. Generally speaking, if you're not being understood, you may as well not be talking.

EDIT: You're right in that I'm not criticizing the particulars of your proposal because I don't pretend to understand anything about economics, cryptocurrency, computer programming, social networks, philosophy, or drat near anything outside of teleost peripheral neurogenesis, which is why I read your proposal and then lurked until you started whining about how it's hard out here for a bitch grad student.

Dogstoyevsky fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Mar 31, 2014

Too Shy Guy
Jun 14, 2003


I have destroyed more of your kind than I can count.



Yeah, you really need to be shooting for something around Grade 8-10 readability if you want the masses to digest your message. I plugged your last quote above into Hemingway just for kicks and it rated it Grade 21. I know you're not trying to write Harry Potter here, but c'mon.

Malmesbury Monster
Nov 5, 2011

R. Mute posted:

Has the OP answered why we'd want this system yet?

No.

RealityApologist posted:

I've described a network of nodes and relations, and although my description is in prose it was written to be precise enough to formalize straightforwardly (I identify all relevant parameters of the model explicitly in the proposal). I'm claiming that populating this model with data from the real world will provide us with a picture of the economic network that is explanatory and predictive of emergent phenomena in our economic organization. I'm also claiming that this model will give insight into certain patterns in our economic activity that is obscured by traditional economic tools. And finally, I'm claiming that giving people access to this kind of data as feedback informing their activity might help them perform better as economic agents and improve the economy as a whole.

Been a couple pages since I asked this, but again. If you could take a break from fundamentally misunderstanding the basics of the modern economy, what insights do you expect this model to provide and how will it make us better economic actors? You claim it will do both of these things. What is your reasoning, because it sure as poo poo isn't a self-evident principle.

Precambrian Video Games
Aug 19, 2002



RealityApologist posted:

edit: the corporations thing wasn't "spur of the moment", it's a note I've repeated multiple times.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496949

Maybe you should have repeated it in the OP, and possibly translated all of this gobbledygook:

quote:

And I can enter into less serious relationships of varying degrees with other parties. The effect is a way of managing not just financial transactions, but also reputation, investment, and other dynamics social constraints on the economy via the currency itself. Money is memory (http://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr218.pdf), but our existing currencies only represent some aspects of our economic activity, and therefore put limits on the memory stored in the economy. A nonlinear coin like Strangecoin can embed that social knowledge in the currency itself, providing a more robust memory framework on which we can conduct our economic transactions.

I only hint at this in the proposal, but I suspect a system like this is required to resolve the twisted legal artifice the corporate veil, because it quantifies explicitly the role individuals have in collective economic activity, and thereby gives a method for explicitly holding persons proportionally responsible (in both credit and blame) for their contributions to that activity.

... into English. Here, let me help:

quote:

A nonlinear coin like Strangecoin can embed that social knowledge in the currency itself, providing a more robust memory framework on which we can conduct our economic transactions.

Provide just one workable example.

quote:

I only hint at this in the proposal, but I suspect a system like this is required to resolve the twisted legal artifice the corporate veil, because it quantifies explicitly the role individuals have in collective economic activity, and thereby gives a method for explicitly holding persons proportionally responsible (in both credit and blame) for their contributions to that activity.

Mhhmmm, yes, quite, so give me an example of how one applies this completely non-specific method to explicitly hold persons proportionally responsible.

By the way, did you notice that the paper you linked provides a number of simple descriptions of the memory theory? Also did you notice that you haven't sufficiently answered a single question starting with 'Why' in this entire thread?

Precambrian Video Games fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Mar 31, 2014

Slanderer
May 6, 2007

RealityApologist posted:

The only criticisms that have been raised that actually stick are that I can't write, and that I'm out of my depth. I've admitted several times to both these facts. Neither of them make me a crank.

Hey, remember that time I thought about this dumb thing for literally 5 minutes and broke your entire system?

Slanderer posted:

Let's say, for instance, that I have 4 users: A, B, C, and D. A couples with B, B couples with C, C couples with A. All coupling is 100%. D transfers to any one of them, and it is reflected in the other two...and then to the ones they are coupled to...and it keeps going. Now you have an infinitely expanding number of transactions created that create an infinite amount of money. If you say that the coupling is capped at a certain proportion, then it may or may not converge on a value (i don't want to do the math on that), but in any case, then A, B, C decouple, transfer some amount back to D, couple, and start again.

Precambrian Video Games
Aug 19, 2002



Wait does this mean that if I buy some socks at Victoria's Secret with strangecoins I can find out what brand of panties my neighbour buys and from which store and how often and which colour?

Slanderer
May 6, 2007
Also, to ask yet again, why the gently caress is it nonlinear? That's not what nonlinear means. Stop using technical words you don't loving understand.

RealityApologist
Mar 29, 2011

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

Xelkelvos posted:

without getting offended.

I'm not offended. I'm just trying to sort out the actual discussion from the deliberate misinterpretation, and to stress again how hard it is to conduct a discussion in the face of hostility. There are a half-dozen conversations going on in this thread, I might miss things that are important, and it's difficult to keep track of everything. Again, I'm doing my best.

quote:

No, your framework of your attention economy is not analogous to either of those....You hand-wave in all sorts of explanations for how, once attention is achieved, something will actually be done with it.

I mean, the first part is obdicut just not knowing what an architectonic philosophical project is.

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

Kant, Aristotle, and Hegel are typical examples of such a project, but Quine, Rawls, and Heidegger are also examples. I'm not comparing the quality of my work to these figures, but only their style: they are engaged in comprehensive systematizations of human activity. The attention economy is also a systematization. It is rigorous in the sense that it is formal. I'm not sure what else to say about this. Its not obdicut's fault he doesn't know the term, but that doesn't make my use of it illegitimate. This is not a devastating criticism of my view.

I don't handwave anything about what will be done. I'm just describing a network of economic relations and a set of constraints that motivate some incentive structure for those agents to act in the network. This isn't crazy wingnut paranoid theory, this is common practice in the modeling of complex social processes. A very close analogy would be Kleinberg's model of the incentive structure of badges on StackOverflow.



https://plus.google.com/+DanielEstrada/posts/L18BhwEfusT

quote:

A badge is any reward offered as an incentive for acting in a particular way. Badges are a familiar form of gamification found on websites like Coursera and StackOverflow, but the same model might apply to military badges, tenure, and other socially recognized achievements. Badges can produce complex and interesting behavior, and although they are becoming more common, the use of badges for motivating users is not well understood.

The graph below represents a simple badge scenario, where there are two possible actions the user might perform, and two possible badges the user might achieve. The model assumes that each badge has a fixed value. The resulting shape represents the full space of actions that might be elicited from users in this situation.

Each action is represented as one axis in this graph. The red bits on the left of the graph represent the use of both badges to motivate action A2, and the blue bits on the right are when both badges award actions of type A1. As you'd expect, these situations see relatively little actions of the other type. The large gold area in the center represent all the actions that could be motivated by using one badge for each type of action. The darker the graph, the more possible ways to motivate that particular action profile.

So, for instance, (40%, 40%) is right where the two lobes of the heart meet, and is particularly opaque. That means there are lots of ways you can place badges that will generate 40% of each action type. On the other hand, there are relatively fewer ways of generating (30%, 15%) actions, at the pale center of the left lobe.

The interesting result of this graph is that there are some action profiles that can't be motivated no matter where you place the badges. For instance, there's a large concavity around (15%, 55%). Although you can motivate (10%, 60%) and (20%, 50%), you can't motivate the midpoint between the two.

Put simply, badges (of this sort) wont always work to get the behaviors you want. This seems like a really important result for understanding the ways in which work is motivated.

So here's a model very much like the Strangecoin model, that describes the incentive structures around certain constraints, and the changes in behavior of the agents on the basis of those constraints. It's not necessary to ask of the model "but what do people do with the badges", because the model simply describes their incentive structures within those constraints. Strangecoin has a different set of constraints and so will behave differently, but I'm describing the same sort of model.

The other comment I've apparently ignored:

quote:

No, a political system that develops from social networks doesn't have historical significance. It's [an]...idea with obvious massive flaws that would simply reify existince structural problems; you just ignore all this, and pretend everyone is or is going to be using social networks or using them in the same way.

Obdicut is arguing that social networks have no impact of significance with respect to our recent political history and our near political future. There's always some reaction in these threads that attempts to exaggerate in exactly the opposite direction of my claims: that technology is socially or politically irrelevant, that technology changes nothing about our condition, and so on. This is simply a fundamental disagreement; I'm not sure how it would be productive to address this.

I think the internet has been one of the most profound influences on human social and political organization, and it's sparked a revolution across the sciences and the economy to reorient around networked theoretic views. I don't see any reasonable way one could dismiss the impact that social networks have had on social, economic, and political organization. So since I couldn't give the claim any reasonable interpretation I ignored it.

Again, this is not a devastating criticism of the view, and doesn't address any technical aspects of my proposal.

About the reification of social problems: I've not claimed that this structure would make the problems go away, but would only make their impact salient. I gave the example of nepotism. Strangecoin would straightforwardly apply to familial relations, and so would make salient the degree of nepotism informing our economic networks. That doesn't fix the problem; I'm really not even sure it is a problem. But if it is, then Strangecoin gives us some tools for dealing with it precisely because it reifies those structures and makes them salient. A threshold of allowable support might result in fewer nepotistic ties in the economy by providing a disincentive to pool collective support among a small population of people, and in incentive to broaden one's network of support. If we think nepotism is a problem, then this tool provides a means for addressing that problem.

I think this example pretty clearly responds to the criticism, without merely dismissing it or handwaving the details. I'm not sure why my original response to this effect was considered dismissive or unresponsive.

Obdicut
May 15, 2012

"What election?"

RealityApologist posted:



I mean, the first part is obdicut just not knowing what an architectonic philosophical project is.

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


I know what it is, you pretentious douchebag. Your system is not it. You're throwing it in there to self-aggrandize, but your system, at best, is weird way of doing economics. It is not architectonic.


quote:

A very close analogy would be Kleinberg's model of the incentive structure of badges on StackOverflow.

When you claim it's a close analogy show how it's a close analogy. Show how the components are the same, the mechanism of action. Show it, don't just plop down a pretty graph and smile to yourself. Don't just say "this is like the Strangecoin model", show how it is like the Strangecoin model.

quote:

Obdicut is arguing that social networks have no impact of significance with respect to our recent political history and our near political future.

I never said that, no. I said: "No, a political system that develops from social networks doesn't have historical significance. It's a dumb libertarian dudebro idea with obvious massive flaws that would simply reify existince structural problems; you just ignore all this, and pretend everyone is or is going to be using social networks or using them in the same way."

Saying that a political system won't develop from social networks is not saying that social networks have no impacts of significance. This is either you flat-out lying, or you really are so skewed in your thinking you think those two sentences are congruent.

Can you explain why those two sentences, which don't mean at all the same thing, mean the same thing in your crazy world?

Obdicut fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Mar 31, 2014

a neurotic ai
Mar 22, 2012

RealityApologist posted:



I didn't see the philosophy phd speak up, but I'm incredibly confident in my philosophical abilities. I'm defending my phd in June and I'm quite prepared to do so. My dissertation doesn't deal with any of these issues except the abstract character of organization and network theory. The attention economy blogging is a project of passion and interest; it is informed by, but does not constitute, my academic work. I present it in a academic vocabulary because again that's all I know how to do.


Yes hi there. I believe he is referring to me. He was mistaken because I'm not actually a philosophy PHD. Infact I'm merely an undergrad in Politics, Philosophy and Economics who has but an amateur interest in programming and design in general.

It absolutely staggers me that you could have quite possibly been one of the people who turned out to mark my philosophy essay. If that was the case and I found out you were a loon, I'd probably take steps to register my discontent and attempt to get you dismissed.

Your arguments are shoddily constructed and poorly signposted. You make things longer and more complex rather than shorter and more concise.

Here is a tip from your supposed academic inferior; big words are largely useless in constructing your own theory. Using a single sentence to explain each term as you use it is the best course of action if you want people to understand you. Only use big words in the context of another persons theory as they use it. Then if people want to learn more about that argument they can look at your reference to that argument to get a broader understanding of that perspective which hopefully leads to a better understanding of your perspective.


Here is the post that you ignored and that I would like a response to.

Ocrassus posted:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RealityApologist
Mar 29, 2011

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

Slanderer posted:

Also, to ask yet again, why the gently caress is it nonlinear? That's not what nonlinear means. Stop using technical words you don't loving understand.

I don't know why you keep saying this because it's a totally legitimate use of the term. With dollars, if I give you 1 dollar then you get 1 dollar. In strangecoin, if I give you 1 strangecoin you might get a different number of strangecoin, depending on the overall network of transactions. That's a nonlinear relation.

Nowhere do I say that nonlinearity is the same as nonzero sum. There are deep and interesting relationships between linearity and zero sum games, but that's not relevant here.

I'm not using these terms incorrectly.

woke wedding drone
Jun 1, 2003

by exmarx
Fun Shoe

Obdicut
May 15, 2012

"What election?"

RealityApologist posted:

I don't know why you keep saying this because it's a totally legitimate use of the term. With dollars, if I give you 1 dollar then you get 1 dollar. In strangecoin, if I give you 1 strangecoin you might get a different number of strangecoin, depending on the overall network of transactions. That's a nonlinear relation.


I hate to break it to you, but if you give me one dollar I don't actually get one dollar, a portion of that goes to taxes, either paid by me or you. Depending on the system you use, a portion of the dollar goes to the system. So either you're using nonlinear wrong or our current system is also nonlinear.

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Shame Boy
Mar 2, 2010

I have a question RealityApologist, once you have all the world's uncompressed social economic network technodata that you can assemble into a cool graph like that guy did with StackOverflow or whatever, what happens then? We have cool graphs that show social interaction and economic effects and all that right now and nobody (well, no average person) really pays any attention to them. I don't really see how this would make any of this data or greater economic trends/effects more apparent to the average person unless they spent a bunch of time specifically going out to look for it, and they can do that right now with existing systems and the help of some good statisticians or economists. I mean I have a degree in Computational Mathematics with a minor in Philosophy and I don't really get why applying network theory to economics is desirable or will really do anything besides completely break the world economy during the transition period. You said something like it would be a tool used to bypass or change the world in ways we can't do in our current political climate, but how would the information make itself apparent in a way that would lead to change? I just see this as being useful to slick bastards who can exploit it, confusing to Joe Everyman, and otherwise just academically neato.

I am not going to be conversationally charitable and help you with any of these ideas because I am Ideas Hitler and want all the ideas to myself.

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