46 karma · joined September 2, 2024
As normal consumers with common sense, we should never naively assume others care for the world out of the goodness of their hearts. Maybe they do, but we should never rely on that.
We can only get good, affordable deals when there is enough competition on the other side.
True words are not fine-sounding; Fine-sounding words are not true.
The good man does not prove by argument; The he who proves by argument is not good.
The classical Dayan method is based on human participation through division and transformation. It is the only divination method recorded in the Book of Changes. Through repeated divisions, six yin or yang lines are formed, together forming one gua. To me, this feels closer to life: we make choices, exchange one thing for another, and move from one situation into the next.
Maybe the gua is simply a manifestation that helps us see the situation more clearly. Some people believe in it, and others do not. To me, its wisdom is a bit like a zero-knowledge proof: it reveals a pattern without fully exposing the mystery behind it.
It’s great to see people discussing this. I’m a huge fan of the I Ching and built a few websites around it, including https://knowunknowable.love and https://ichingdao.love, where I explore the I Ching, Daoism, and Mozi.
Timeless, be it human or machine
On the licensing point, here's my wildest imagination: what if those permissive licenses had one small condition — companies profiting from the project must contribute a tiny fraction toward social good? No profit, no obligation.
I think this actually matches what most maintainers originally wanted. They go open-source for influence and respect, trying to make the world better, making their work freely usable by anyone, even competitors. Given that, it's quite reasonable to ask those who profit from it to share a tiny fraction back with the world.
Open source projects may die, but the love and spirit behind them doesn't — and a profit-sharing clause like this could make that spirit more explicit and more undeniable.
Couldn't agree more. The more we know, the more susceptible we are to bias and division.
That's literally what the I Ching calls "good fortune."
Competition, when no single dragon monopolizes the sky, brings fortune for all.
Great point. It all comes down to trust.
Some are masters at setting attention traps. They manipulate all these cheap metrics that normal people naturally pay attention to, confusing potential deal parties, serving self-interest while increasing risk and causing harm to the other side.
> It would apply to a lot more than "just" GitHub star for VCs
Yes. It would apply to a lot more than "just" GitHub stars for VCs — even more so if the 'interactions' are naturally deal-based.
Imagine a metric for proof of work named DUKI-ALM. If you give away $100 to the world, you gain 100 DUKI-ALM — absolutely equal to the cost.
Think of it as tips contributed jointly by the taker and maker of a deal, paid out to the world. The DUKI-ALM signal is the sum of all tips. They tipped $10? The metric value is 10.
Products that have the ability to make more deals and generate more surplus will naturally contribute more — and gain more signal of trust. Sybil attacks are prevented by design, since what's the point of attacking if you still need to tip the world 100 USDT to gain 100?
I'd love to hear if you see a hole in this — the cost of the signal matches exactly what it claims to represent.
I've been thinking about this a lot. These metrics are all just marketing signals to draw people's attention, trying to make some kind of deals. So the fix should be: make the cost of the signal match what it claims to represent. I'm obsessed with something called DUKI /djuːki/ (Decentralized Universal Kindness Income, a form of UBI) — the idea is that instead of stars or reviews, trust comes from deals pledging real money to the world for all as the deal happens. You can't fake that cheaply.
So the metric becomes the money itself — if you fake X amount, it costs you X, and the world will thank you by paying attention...
Imagine if GitHub let you back a star with real money — the more you put in, the more credible the star. And that money goes out as UBI for everyone. For attention makers, star anything you want, as much as you want. For attention takers, just follow the money to filter through all the noise that's so easy to manipulate...
Feeling sad I am 'the reason'. But that's ok.
> asking for a policy
It is always the same sad story. Someone learns a new name, gets trapped inside, and tries to escalate conflict. I will not call that 'open mind'.
The deeper reason is that there is no kindness — many really don't care about others who seem alien to them. They just hide that behind all kinds of names.
Same here. And sometimes, I got downvoted and treated as an LLM — in the name of valuing the human.
To me, what matters is the will behind the words. Ideas and words themselves are cheap (this becomes clearer every day in the AI age) — they're almost nothing until they're executed and actually help someone.
> "The Dao can be told, but what is told is not the eternal Dao. The Name can be named, but what is named is not the true Name." — Laozi, Dao De Jing
Like code we write — it's dead text on a screen until it's running. And what we really care about is the running effect — and that is exactly the reason, the will, behind why we write the code in the first place.
And without that comment, we wouldn't have talked this much. LLM is the friend.
I like HN, and I'm not a native speaker.
I do use LLMs to refine my wording, but I am not an LLM.
Kind of. And as a guy with a solid science background, I just don't buy into that kind of interpretation.
But if it is numerology, I believe I CHING divination is more like a commit-and-reveal scheme — you can't infer the future from the proof alone. You might only get to verify it once the future actually plays out. Kind of like a zero-knowledge proof — it gives you a proof/advice based on a possible future, but you gain nothing from it since the underlying computation is NP-hard. So better to treat it as a kind of thinking framework — like SWOT or scenario planning, but from a different cultural tradition.
100% agree with geohot's point on creating value for others and playing the positive-sum game. It is the way. Just a small reminder that sometimes we could worry about the return a tiny bit, as we need returns to verify positive-sum value creation and to scale it.
Fair point — updated to "most of the time."
> the opposite is the literal definition of rent-seeking behavior, which produces gobs of money, but provides no (or very little, at best) new value to others.
Rent-seeking is real, and you're right that it can be very profitable — while creating very little value for others. But even so, it remains the best available option when nobody else steps up to offer something better in free markets.
There are always two sides to any deal — the deal maker and the taker. The more competition on the maker side, the more value the taker can get. And the more takers demand real value, the less room rent-seeking behavior has to survive.
Sorry, I don't know the full story behind Hyperloop. But I really doubt he is trying to play a zero-sum or negative-sum game as the article hinted.
Setting aside all the disputes — the deals he made with people are positive-sum. Nobody is forced to buy a Tesla, or invest in, or work for SpaceX.
And in my personal view, all the article brings is deconstructive criticism — which does not fit my tastes. Maybe because I believe the world doesn't owe anyone anything. In fact, to make money, most of the time you have to play a positive-sum game and bring value to others. There is no shame in seeking profit — there is glory in it, if it comes through a positive-sum game.
Those who complain — they can always reject the deal and choose something else. And even better, go offer or support better products in the market and help the best one win.
Wille-Driven Development — I prefer the word from Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation).
What we will begins to matter more. The gap between desire and existence is collapsing. In Genesis, creation is a pure speech-act: fiat lux, and it was so — no implementation details, no build step, will and result simultaneous. We're not there yet. But I find the distance is measurable and shrinking.
The Representation — code, syntax, toolchains — is receding. The Will asserts itself more directly. Welcome to the future.
I wish I figured this out years ago. I spent significant time learning and building with Flutter, iOS native — chasing that "native feel" — only to realize that for most of what I was building, a well-crafted web app would have been not just good enough, but actually better.
That's the reason I like the idea of DUKI/dju:ki/ — Decentralized Universal Kindness Income, similar to UBI but driven by voluntary kindness and sincere marketing rather than taxation. If AI makes creation trivially easy and IP loses its justification, the question becomes: how do we ensure a tiny part of the wealth generated flows back to everyone?
Those who benefit others deserve to be benefited in return — and if we could, we should help make them more fit.
You're right, nobody should be forced to connect a wallet just to try the app. I'll work on changing this — the plan is to let users explore and watch freely, and only prompt for a wallet when they want to save words.
For now and for better security, anyone interested can create a throwaway MetaMask wallet to try it — no gas needed, it's just wallet connect + SIWE sign-in for identity. (No other transactions will ever be issued.)
If a DUKI-licensed project (similar to MIT, but requiring a business using it freely to “donate 1% of its net profits to a global fund”), how does this conflict with the Open Source Definition and prevent it from being called open source?
It’s simple: you only need the wille to rig and the power to freely manifest that will. No matter how elegant the design of a democratic system, or how many procedural safeguards exist, nothing can stop you.
Sad but true—if there isn’t enough power to balance that wille.
May all who value freedom also have the power to defend it.
After reviewing the definition and interacting with an AI, I see that it does indeed exclude this type of use. However, I feel these definitions create unnecessary divisions and discrimination.
It seems unfair to projects with open source code under non-standard licenses, as they are prevented from using the term that aligns with how most people worldwide perceive it. The definition has also effectively made an enemy of money, which may be the root reason the author advocates for funding open source like public infrastructure.
Personally, I wish “Open Source” could simply reflect its literal meaning—the one that most people perceive: that the source is open for any purpose, provided the specified rules are met. In my view, as long as the rules set by the maintainers apply to everyone equally, they do not constitute discrimination. You just have to follow the rules of the game if you want to play.
Simple: you just need the wille to rig and the power to manifest your will freely. No fancy technology, counting systems, or statistical anomalies can stop you. Quantum cryptography is useless in such a case.
Sad but true—if there isn’t enough power to balance that wille.
Still, most of these genius engineers likely don’t care much about such a small sum. They earn the honor and move on, while the charitable benefits flow to those who can monetize the software.