0x4d464d48

"The person's qualifications and achievements will be largely taken into consideration, together with their loyalty to the Party, who their parents are, friends in high places who vouched for them, favors that need to be returned, etc... Not that much different from the capitalism."

Bingo.

At a macro level ideology has little to nothing to do with policy decisions compared to protecting the power of those who are already empowered/priveleged.

... which is par for the course given human history really.

If Meta stays true to its history of designing its products to maximize user engagement I find little reason to believe they wouldn't try to design their product to become more and more tightly coupled with the lives of their users. Maybe to the point where they're not able to function in some important way without it.

The main point being that it has the potential to grow to a point where the life of a user becomes inseparable from a 'Metaverse'. Whether you call this 'virtual' or a 'simulation' seems moot.

I'm thinking more about how this seems like a template for people to integrate their personal lives into an actual simulation and give a justification for a 'friendly AI' to determine what's best for us.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k3823vuarnmL5Pqin/quantum-no...

https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coherent-extrapolated-volition

Sounds like a Yudkowskyists wet dream to me.

Anyone know if people there are heavily influenced by his work?

"So it’s a linguistic issue."

Only in the same way that you can dismiss misaligned values as a 'linguistic issue'.

"Does anyone genuinely believe any for profit company gives two shits about its customers?"

Yes. I've worked for them and with people who were very concerned about their customers.

Some of us actually care about value being delivered to a customer and the public. Were not all a bunch of greasy mountebanks gaming people to maximize returns.

"There is nothing unusual about facebook, its just nobody likes them, and its fashionable to not like them."

You forgot to include 'completely understandable to not like them'.

"It also forces a deeper understanding of the innards for basic commands than ought to be necessary."

Glad you found something that works for you but this is definitely not true for all of us.

When it comes to pages that would be served just fine with basic HTML, JavaScript and CSS there's an irritating, crossing into stupid, overemphasis on frameworks and patterns. A lot of times it's gotten to the point of bikeshedding.

But that said there _is_ important progress being made in web tech but very little of it has to do with how you mash your HTML, JavaScript and CSS together.

Take a look at what's being done with tech like WebAssembly and full on 3d grpahics in the browser (if youre using a phone I recommend that you connect to a wifi spot to not use up your data).

https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_animation_keyframes

https://playcanvas.com/

Theres a whole other can of worms to deal with like finding talent (this kind of content is way more labour intensive and requires much stronger domain knowledge). But the point is that there is a path for enhancing online UX and disrupting user expectations. The value add for being able to review 3d models of construction or order previews on demand speaks for itself.

It's subjective of course but most would call that a very far cry from a huge loss which was the original point.

For some of us there's a lot more to life than whether or not the wealth we accumulate squares up with the amount of risk that we take on compared to others. Being able to contribute to something you believe in while being able to avoid Taleb's silent graveyard doing it is enough.

Yep.

Being able to create an honest, profitable business pulling in 'only' 500k$/annum. Must suck to be that guy.

It's real easy to play the 'grass is always greener' game. Everyone has their own aims in life. Some want money, some want to live a life they're proud of and pretty much everyone is some combination of the two. But trying to frame someone establishing a business with 10x-20x growth as a failure, assuming they're able to support themselves and believe in the value of their venture, is absurd.

"It's perfectly fine to start a company that's only going to grow 10x or 20x best-case. VCs won't be interested in you, but that's fine, you don't necessarily need investment."

I'm not saying this is your fault and I get where you're coming from. But saying 'only' 10x-20x growth is 'fine' as if that's something to be embarrassed about... Yeesh, talk about messed up perspective...

By my reckoning, if you're generating value, have a sustainable business and are giving people gainful employment that in and of itself should be reward enough.

Surely you'll forgive us unsophisticated philistines who place more weight on non-scientific Nobel Prizes than you for having profound respect for people who have the balls to risk their own well-being to stand up to thugish, corrupt and oppressive leaders by exposing their corruption.

I also trust your intellect is able to grasp the absurdity of trying to frame Rappler, who risked her own safety to hold a leader with a track record of criminalizing journalism to account for their corruption, as an opponent of free speech.

Zuckerberg mentioned how much pride he and the team at Facebook take in their products.

I wonder how much pride they take in users saying the experience is enhanced by orders of magntiude when they unsubscribe from their feeds...

What's wrong with the idea of treating gaslighting as a certain kind of manipulation?

Not necessarilly.

I don't subscribe to it myself. But when you have a system that's state is dependant on the descisions and therefore actions of its participants anything that influences those decisions, i.e. signals, influences its state. Even the actions of individual actors in a market can be treated as signal.

I think of it a bit like Chaos Theory. An investor saw a butterfly flap its wings in Fiji which triggered a chain of events culminating in the DOW dropping 800 points on a day.

I'm more of a 'shit on Facebook' man myself but I'm not above hate.

I find it hard to find fault with people expressing disgust with how knowingly predatory and exploitative the company's leadership have proven themselves to be.

Exhibit A: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58678332

I think it's mix of signalling respect for the people impacted by this, the people who work there and are just trying to be decent and of course the fan boys.

The first place my mind went to after I read this was "dumb fucks" (Google this with Zuckerberg for context) but as good as the schadenfreude feels it doesn't change the very real and negative impacts from all of this.

Hedge funds and HFT shops definitely do.

They invest pretty heavily to make sure their edge is kept a secret.

The problem is as soon as new predictions are made it causes the people participating in an economy to change their behavior.

Thats why people working at central banks like the Federal Reserve will try to downplay risks like inflation to prevent signalling that theyll raise interest rates causing a market correction or businesses from raising prices to deal with it.

I think the cats out of the bag now but they sure would love to stuff it back in the bag.

"Realism will increase (perhaps to hyperrealism) and our ability to perceive and interact with simulated objects and settings will be indistinguishable to our senses."

Hard pass from me.

Gaming addiction was only officially recognized within roughly the past decade. The idea of developing some sort of dependance on virtual reality fills me with absolute dread. Whats worse is that companies promoting virtual offices like this have every incentive imaginable to promote this (hi Facebook!).

I don't have anything against VR and think it has a lot of potential as a medium for gaming and the arts but theres a lot of danger in assuming there is no risk or minimizing the risks. Ignore the addictive power of the things which tune out the inconveniences of life at your own peril.

Fuck zodiac signs.

Tell me what kind of car you plan to buy next!

The only problem I have with a lot of these duscussions is how often "voluntary" includes things done under duress.

You dont "have" to go to college nor get a job nor even have money to stay alive neither.

You dont "have" to be a top performer if it would mean sacrificing your time and well being but God in heaven help you if youre not.

You dont "have" to take out loans to go to med school but if you werent born into money well... tough titty.

Functionally, sure. Im totally on board with that and think its both practical and noble.

What Im saying is that although taxation and dividend distribution are both wealth redistribution from an individual/entity with capital they are different in wthe underlying reasons for why they are done and who the intended beneficiaries are.

We agree that its wealth redistribution by anyother name. Certainly.

The difference is that taxing is done in the name of public/government interest whereas profit sharing is done in the name of private/individual interest.

"Is it just me, but isn't an Income Share Agreement ... taxes?"

No. Its profit sharing akin to how companies do so by issuing dividend paying shares.

So far as the government is concerned theyre just looking out for their most important stake holders, wealthy individuals and monied interests, by keeping taxes extremelly low. Universities being underfunded to the point they need to raise tuition to the point where students need to take on crushing debt is a byproduct of that.

"You're essentially offering a loan that can never be paid back, yet requires payments forever."

A better analogy would be taking part ownership of a man's livelihood and expecting him to pay dividends like a stock.

If he tied his career to an LLC this would make sense oterwise he's literally selling himself.

Still somewhat hard working but getting lazier by the day.

I work as hard as I can to be as lazy as I can.

"Ironically, in my experience, just bouncing off ideas of one another is not the way this works well. What you can end up with is people throwing their ideas into the ring just for others to find faults in it. In the worst case, this can turn into a competition who knows most and who is smartest."

This right here is exactly why I learned to say nothing in brainstorming sessions and try to dodge then outright if I can.

My experience is these are typically for someone higher up in the pecking order needing their own ideas validated.

My usual work around is if something needs to be done, quietly work on a POC on your own and solicit feedback or even bring in stakeholders.

Not sure if you're trying to minimize the impact or draw attention to its severity but that is a colossal number.