mountainriver

joined 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

If you mean swapped for a worker in a low wage country cosplaying as AI for minimum wage for a billion dollar company, then you have a point. Though using Bostrom's positive reinforcement bullshit is the opposite of treating someone fairly.

But I see elsewhere that you didn't mean that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

The famous story about a man using a drug that sets free the a-hole version of himself?

Oh, that was the drug! It was cocaine all along!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

I think Viktor in "Viktor builds a bridge" can serve as a role model. A cliff, a shack and a sea bird as companion.

Just learn from Viktor's mistake. Don't build a bridge.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

The kid herself mostly wants stories “about magic” and with protagonists of about her age.

The horror! What if she grows up reading books she actually likes? She might be developing her mind in ways not approved by her parents!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Even if no one can use the wealth, wouldn't it be placed in some kind of trust in order to keep accruing wealth rather than be decimated by inflation?

And then, as the frozen rich wouldn't use any of their wealth, it would just keep accruing wealth. They would be perfect, frozen, capitalists. The control of that wealth would give power, and controllers of the trusts can gain even wealth and thus power more by coordinating. The power would only keep growing as more rich freeze themselves to keep up with and join the growing trust of trusts.

Living in a society where the frozen owners would own all the means of production, these frozen owners would naturally be hailed as sleeping kings in order to motivate me system. They may even be seen as something godlike.

Then one day, if one wakes up, it would cause immediate power struggles, as well as give a flash point for the discontent of the billions of impoverished serfs slaving away for the controllers. But the controllers would mobilise violence, and....

Oh, HG Wells already wrote this story. Typical!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Gerard -> Assange -> creates Wikileaks -> Wikileaks receives and publishes hacked or leaked DNC emails -> DNC emails shows Clinton cheating Sanders in the primary -> depresses turnout among potential democratic voters in the general election -> Trump wins.

On can question each step on how influential it's for the next, but if one doesn't Trump was all his fault.

 

This isn't a sneer, more of a meta take. Written because I sit in a waiting room and is a bit bored, so I'm writing from memory, no exact quotes will be had.

A recent thread mentioning "No Logo" in combination with a comment in one of the mega-threads that pleaded for us to be more positive about AI got me thinking. I think that in our late stage capitalism it's the consumer's duty to be relentlessly negative, until proven otherwise.

"No Logo" contained a history of capitalism and how we got from a goods based industrial capitalism to a brand based one. I would argue that "No Logo" was written in the end of a longer period that contained both of these, the period of profit driven capital allocation. Profit, as everyone remembers from basic marxism, is the surplus value the capitalist acquire through paying less for labour and resources then the goods (or services, but Marx focused on goods) are sold for. Profits build capital, allowing the capitalist to accrue more and more capital and power.

Even in Marx times, it was not only profits that built capital, but new capital could be had from banks, jump-starting the business in exchange for future profits. Thus capital was still allocated in the 1990s when "No Logo" was written, even if the profits had shifted from the good to the brand. In this model, one could argue about ethical consumption, but that is no longer the world we live in, so I am just gonna leave it there.

In the 1990s there was also a tech bubble were capital allocation was following a different logic. The bubble logic is that capital formation is founded on hype, were capital is allocated to increase hype in hopes of selling to a bigger fool before it all collapses. The bigger the bubble grows, the more institutions are dragged in (by the greed and FOMO of their managers), like banks and pension funds. The bigger the bubble, the more it distorts the surrounding businesses and legislation. Notice how now that the crypto bubble has burst, the obvious crimes of the perpetrators can be prosecuted.

In short, the bigger the bubble, the bigger the damage.

If in a profit driven capital allocation, the consumer can deny corporations profit, in the hype driven capital allocation, the consumer can deny corporations hype. To point and laugh is damage minimisation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Just curious, now that crypto seems to be nearing the end of its destructive bubble life, is their any good ideas on who or what (if group, not suggesting aliens) Satoshi Nakamoto is or were?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Yeah, his name comes up in the Folding Ideas video. Don't remember his name though, but if I remember correctly, he was a stock trainer who realised that large investors had large bets on game stop stock going down, and if it instead went up there was a lot of money to be made by betting on it going up. So he made such bets, spread the word, stock went up, he got rich and exited stage left without getting prosecuted for market manipulation.

But by then the whole memestock thing was of to the races.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Even if you got one, depositing it would raise some questions.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Reading this extract I was surprised, figuring the desperate search for investment money must mean that Kickstarter wasn't turning a profit despite a seemingly sound business model.

Reading the article I found out it was even stupider. Kickstarter wasn't lacking a path to profit, it was lacking a path to growth. And being a profitable company with a clear market nisch isn't cool enough. Everything has to grow, grow, grow. So Kickstarter created a bunch of problems for itself, destroying much of its brand. It's that stupid.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I did jiu-jitsu In middle school. We had two guys who were perhaps about 20 years old as assistant coaches. Pretty impressive belt colours and to us kids really cool and good at jiu-jitsu. I don't remember their names, lets call them Jim and Peter.

So nearing the end of a class Jim and Peter gathers us for a bit of pep talk. Jim: Good work everybody! Peter: We will soon end class, but first one thing... Jim: No? No, that was the last thing? Peter: Everyone, get Jim! Jim: What? No!

And I can tell you Jim was no match for two dozen ten year olds with white belts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I have next to no idea how ETFs work. I just assumed it wouldn't send people into a deflating bubble.

Care to share how it's actually deflating the bubble faster?

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