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Comment by coffeemug | Hacker News Reader

To [mis]quote the Heart Sutra, "form is emptiness and emptiness is form." I've played with this a huge deal, and as far as I can tell the "true" reality really has no rules (and I've searched a lot). What we're really hacking is our own, and other people's minds. So the "perceived" rules are how everyone thinks everyone else's mind thinks, and the "real" rules is how everyone else's mind actually thinks.

What is wealth generation, but hacking people's minds to perceive something as valuable? Do Facebook, or Oracle, or even the internal combustion engine really have any "intrinsic" value?

There is no objective reality, I don't think. Just the inter-subjective. I still haven't figured out how to apply this knowledge to gain anything I perceive to be valuable, though...

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Seems to me that value is just a perception, like any other perception. You can choose to perceive value or not. I think the startup phase titled, "Educating the Market" is a euphemism for, "Persuading other people to agree with you."

In the end when dealing person to person, (or business to consumer, b2b, its the same thing) its all just persuasion. Just persuading someone to give you money for something you've persuaded them gives them value. And if you're persuasive enough, they'll agree that it is valuable, convince themselves accordingly and be happy.

Its much more apparent when you convince yourself that you really need very few things in life to get by, and that most of what it takes comes from inside yourself (except for food, water & shelter).

It is easiest to convince others of the value of your product or service when they profit from your creation. Saving folks time and effort with efficiency is a driving force behind entrepreneurship.

As we pair down our own necessities we discover the core of our needs, and this discovery can help us share great value with others. Inspiring others has been a driving concern of mine, but I realized this only after quieting down the buzz of my own selfish needs.

Wonderful shared experiences and memories have become much more valuable to me.

pair -> pare

I've found that many folks are very uncomfortable with the idea that there are no hard and fixed rules. Their must be an order, because their belief dictates it. I suppose I'm biased by a fascination in freedom, and infinite system complexity.

Sometimes we sink up and share a moment with others. This is true engagement. At other times we do our best to dissect the essence of something, whether it's code or a philosophical problem from each of our own perspectives.

When we discover an opening or opportunity, and share our perception with others we unlock value.

Jump up from a large mass and don't fall back towards it then come and tell us again about there being "no hard and fixed rules".

It is not that Their(sic) must be an order but that there _is_ an order.

Perhaps there is blind value, in other words, "value" that drives a particular system in a direction which would be "considered" "positive" by the system if the system could postulate/predict/had awareness.

I would argue that is why humans have such a strong sense of good/bad (value judgements): because we postulate, predict, assess, think into the future.

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