lukifer

6 ms·

31.
by lukifer 7mo ago
Examples abound; but for good and ill, the language-using ape seems to be a religious animal, having co-evolved with mythological memeplexes. There's the old salt from DFW, "one can't choose whether to worship, only what to w
32.
by lukifer 7mo ago
This is (tragically) the reason why I remain a tab hoarder: the UI carries an implicit nudge (a costly signal of visual real estate), for my future self to engage with it. In a similar spirit to OP: it did help mitigate the hoarding, when I
33.
by lukifer 8mo ago
The emails are bizarrely sloppy with spelling and punctuation, perhaps many usages of "don't" ended up being typed as "don t", triggering an automated find-and-replace.
34.
by lukifer 10mo ago
I don't like "Wrappeds" (low-key social hack to manufacture normalization of surveillance capitalism?), but with HN being public, I succumbed to temptation. Very fun, 10/10 no notes, surprisingly good for a small sample
35.
by lukifer 10mo ago
"I'm not a capitalist, I am a creativist... Capitalists make things to make money, I like to make money to make things." - Eddie Izzard It's more about the viability of making any kind of living from one's creative
36.
by lukifer 10mo ago
I feel like it says a lot, when intelligent amorality seems genuinely preferable to blundering incompetence. Many such cases. One wonders how much "enshittification" is intrinsic to networked software and our late-stage-whatever p
37.
by lukifer 11mo ago
They're inherently different: creative work (especially in a digital, trivially replicated format) is non-rivalrous, and at least partially non-excludable. "You wouldn't download a car." [0] Property rights are a social
38.
by lukifer 11mo ago
If it is the case that consciousness can emerge from inert matter, I do wonder if the way it pays for itself evolutionarily, is by creating viral social signals. A simpler animal could have a purely physiological, non-subjective experience
39.
by lukifer 11mo ago
The dilemma is, the one thing we can be sure of, is our subjectivity. There is no looking through a microscope to observe matter empirically, without a subjective consciousness to do the looking. So if we're eschewing the inelegance
40.
by lukifer 1y ago
I, Pencil (Revisited): https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kevin-carson-i-penci...
41.
by lukifer 1y ago
It’s a problem with representation generally. The political theorist Benjamin Studebaker uses an analogy of getting into a hot air balloon: there are ways you can be of service to those below, giving them an overhead view, maybe warning the
42.
by lukifer 2y ago
Unless I’m missing something, that’s quintiles of absolute wealth. I’d be curious how the data shakes out for the lowest quintile calculated relative to costs of living.
43.
by lukifer 2y ago
Fair points, I can't say I disagree, and I'm aware of the trade-offs I'm making. (I was actually tempted to use the word "bribe" when describing the Apple Tax!) There are a couple meaningful points of divergence in
44.
by lukifer 2y ago
The better analogy might be, "when the morality police call the restaurant, they divulge which table you sit at every day during lunch". And it's also not clear that it would be noticed: national security letters, gag orders,
45.
by lukifer 2y ago
I use 4K Blu Rays when I can, for the best possible quality. And I continue to be staggered at just how bad the UI/UX is, compared to DVDs (which was arguably somewhat worse on average than VHS). If I didn’t know better, I’d think the
46.
by lukifer 2y ago
I tried years ago, I don't think I got it working, ended up using Rhasspy/voice2json instead (TIL: the creator of both is now the Voice Eng Lead for Home Assistant). Looks like the GitHub is still somewhat active, although their r
47.
by lukifer 2y ago
This is one advantage of a system with a constrained set of commands/grammars, as opposed to the Alexa/Siri model of trying to process all arbitrary text while in active mode. It can simply ignore/discard any invocations whic
48.
by lukifer 2y ago
You might already be referencing this, but linking it anyway: Cory Doctorow's "I, Rowboat", where Asimov's Laws are a religion which some AIs adopt voluntarily to give their existence meaning. https://craphoun
49.
by lukifer 2y ago
What's the problem? Just do a Vickrey auction with your insurer, where you bid how much you're willing to spend to stay alive, and they make a counter-bid. If you win, they spend their bid to keep you alive; if they win, they pay
50.
by lukifer 2y ago
> Cash now is worth more than cash later. This is accurate, regarding preferences for optionality, and how our economy currently works. But I think it's worth questioning the expectation that giving up that optionality deserves comp
51.
by lukifer 2y ago
I support your general thrust in spirit, but I think "monopoly" isn't a helpful frame here. Consumers have a glut of options in streaming services: Prime, Max, AppleTV, Hulu, even YouTube (contrast with one of the classic mon
52.
by lukifer 2y ago
Arrow’s Theorem is often invoked as a criticism of alternative voting systems (RCV, etc). And not while not wrong exactly, it seems textbook “perfect being the enemy of the good”. (It’s also one reason I prefer Approval Voting, which in add
53.
by lukifer 3y ago
I think Apple just wanted their own Game of Thrones flagship, and on paper, Foundation seems like it should be that (epic scale, big ideas). But honestly, it needs a more subdued treatment: mostly talking heads in rooms, and an anthology th
54.
by lukifer 3y ago
I enjoyed Peripheral, having not read the book. I'd be curious to hear (spoiler-free) criticisms. (The concept was compelling enough, I definitely intend to read the series, especially given its cancellation.)
55.
by lukifer 3y ago
An individual can sometimes strike out on their own and succeed, and that's all to the good. But it simply does not scale across every sector of the economy, let alone being a viable strategy for most hand-to-mouth laborers (IIRC, some
56.
by lukifer 3y ago
This is exactly why the conflation of "capitalism" with "markets" has been such an effective propaganda coup for the neoliberal rentiers: while there is often non-zero-sum value creation and growth in the short term, it&
57.
by lukifer 3y ago
While if didn’t hook me as quickly as Antimemetics or Ra, I also thoroughly enjoyed Fine Structure: https://qntm.org/structure
58.
by lukifer 3y ago
I'd certainly entertain it as possibility. From a purely physical perspective, I think the Gaia Hypothesis [0] has some validity to it, even if the analogy to DNA organisms is deeply imperfect. Where I stumble, though, is identifying a
59.
by lukifer 3y ago
I certainly don't rule that out. But even the Hofstadter "strange loop" model explains awareness, moreso than the qualia of experience. (Show me an "ouch", and I'll show a way to accomplish identical behavior v
60.
by lukifer 3y ago
There isn’t the same kind of ontological boundary in a rock, as there is an organism. My hunch is: there’s a low-grade subjectivity/qualia to all of the universe, which would include the particles of the rock, but the rock would not ex

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