jackstraw14

the conclusion after many ifs is:

"Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"

> You're not exploring anything, you're not celebrating life, not producing any meaning. You just sit there, like a robot, pissing it all away.

Part of the journey is finding the path. Have fun :)

This sounds nice, but if the man filled 2500 sq feet with books and magazines and didn't read them, it sounds a bit more like an episode of Hoarders and it's certainly not healthy.

You should check out UO Outlands. It's a completely redesigned world with new cities and dungeons, and multiple new progression systems for every type of player class now. Around 2100 players online during peak hours. It's really amazing and something that any fan of UO past or present should experience.

why not both :)

No offense, but your comment reads like it came from a script. Thing happened -> unexpected result -> wonder why -> learn more about yourself. And the moral of the story is that working in the office is not that bad, because we're human beings not... robots?

Surely you're not so surprised to get these responses :)

> How refreshing to see a mention of generative art that isn't followed by the mention of "NFTs".

Well, thanks for kicking things off for us!

I think post-Trump it's tougher for anyone in the US to believe totally in the institutions that got us here, despite the different reasons on each side of the aisle.

BlockPrimes: https://opensea.io/collection/blockprimes

Also, Bible verses: https://opensea.io/collection/biblenft

OP could be coming up with such better rubbish than ordinary poop :)

Amazing how almost all the commenters in every HN post about NFTs completely miss this aspect of art collecting and complain that "it's not art" or "it's pointless". With these NFTs, it's all about flipping them for a profit which will buy them whatever status they want.

Just take a look at the transaction history of any NFT going around on OpenSea. Here's an example of an NFT selling for 30ETH (~$50,000) just three days after it was bought for 1ETH (~$1690). Not affiliated with CyberKongz.

https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200...

They've tried so many times to "fix" it. At this point, I think UO Outlands is probably the best UO experience you can get.

There is IOTA, which is technically proof-of-work, but there are no "miners" validating large blocks of transactions like with Bitcoin. Each person creating a new transaction in the Tangle validates two existing transactions and does a small bit of PoW, and by doing it this way, there are no fees.

Early in the project there was even an effort to create a different kind of specialized processor like you mention, something low-power that could be used in the wild in sensors and whatnot.

I think this is a fairly common reaction (maybe overreaction) when people first notice an addiction, or that something toxic is in their routine. It's like an attempt to regain control, I think.

Corporations like Exxon aren't rational, they only exist to make more money, so that's what they did.

This doesn't work for me. It seems depressing as hell that we have to put in earplugs and pipe distracting media into our brains just to make work tolerable. How is cutting off one of our senses from our environment a solution?

In my experience the issue isn't so much cutting off the supply but what to do to fill the time. It's not as easy as taking up a new hobby, for me at least. I think information addiction is really tricky because it's compromising a key part of what humans are, information processors. We are always processing some kind of information, all the time.

I can go straight from video gaming to reading a book, but my mind takes a few minutes to adjust, and then once I'm synced up I'll tend to get restless after 15-20 minutes and look for something else to do. If I don't have anything else planned I just go back to gaming. It's pretty tough to escape this loop.

Are you saying you think their angle was to reach a conclusion that sugary information is addictive? It sounded like that was the starting point. What's the issue?

No humans, no US military. We're not all responsible for their actions, but I'm pretty sure the human species is to blame for the existence of destructive military forces.

> You are not paying to get a product, you are investing into something that could or could not work out.

Yes, but Kickstarter's angle is that it will work out. That's the underlying assumption. People don't usually give away their money for nothing, they need some idea that they'll get something in return. I think Kickstarter is actually more harmful to the cognitive processes involved in creating these illusions, since the future product is usually fairly well-defined from the beginning... so the illusions designed to attract your money happens in the beginning, and then the developer just needs to manage the backers' expectations until the product is released. At which point everyone will be busy comparing the actual product with their expectations, and hopefully enjoying the game too, and no one is getting their money back.

I'm not saying RoR2 wasn't worth your money. That 2-for-1 deal was a good way to balance taking your money before giving you anything (I think that deal was pre-release). Early Access releases are another good balance I think (I feel the same way about Slay the Spire as you do RoR2 -- best $20 game I've ever bought and 1 year before release). But you alone didn't decide they deserve your money, they gave you the option to recognize that feeling, by sending some cash their way.

If you imagine the same thing happening in a face-to-face exchange, it's pretty weird, and that makes me feel uneasy about this whole trend. If it wouldn't happen face-to-face, but it happens when we're all forming opinions about it separately, it seems like something else is going on besides just selling video games.

This is also why I stopped preordering games that are available from an online store. I understand the anticipation for when you can finally play a game you've been waiting on, but that experience doesn't change whether you pre-order it or not. If you simply must be separated from your money, there are places where you can put that money for the same period of time and they will pay you for it. The only difference is the story you're told about what you've just done with your money, and working with a bank isn't nearly as fun as buying a game on Steam (though the promise by the bank is approximately the same kind of game).

Kickstarter is sort of like a more up-front version of this, in that it's easier to figure out what you're actually paying for than standard pre-ordering of a product that does exist. Of course there's the default story that you're supporting the independent developers. But I haven't joined a Kickstarter without the expectation of some product at the end of it... so in these cases, I'm paying money now in an attempt to create a future where this thing that does not exist now, does actually exist.

What a time to be alive. All of my grandparents watched every dollar of their cash flows, and here I am throwing money at people I'll never meet, working with hundreds or thousands of people doing the same thing: trying to conjure up some new reality we'll experience for a very brief period of time through a 24" screen.

It would be nice if there was somewhere to find high quality news reporting that avoided toxic stuff like tweets. I'm not sure what that embedded tweet adds to this BBC story besides getting people worked up over something that's totally unrelated. You'd think Notre Dame burning down would be enough.

Wow. He’s not trying to give anyone advice. He only wants people to talk about him while they’re talking about this news piece.

> Retail is my universe, and Amazon is my obsession.

> It is the most successful social welfare system ever implemented, saving billions and billions of dollars for everyday Americans without costing taxpayers a dime.

And people try to say the American Dream is dead. This article shows we're still very much dreaming.

> Isn't that everything in the world, always?

If you're saying advertising is a thing in the world, that's correct.

We have the ability to adjust this particular aspect of our landscape but your questions illustrate it pretty well. Most people don't seem to get very upset about advertising, and therefore it continues to surround us. I don't think there's anything that any one of us can do at this point, we're collectively shaping this world into the one with all the cereal and car emblems and have been for a while.

I'd say the ads are still deceptive even if they weren't created with that intention. It doesn't need to be sneaky, but if it's unsolicited then the consumer didn't opt for their attention to be steered toward it.

edit: removed example as it distracts from the point.

Not the author, but I think there's a difference between claiming there is no meaning and claiming that the different narratives of meaning are an illusion. Saying it as the author did shows that there is a process happening but maybe the "meaning" we come up with isn't the useful piece. Simply saying "there's no meaning" can either end the discussion or take you in a thousand different philosophical directions. Taoism's 10,000 things could be rephrased as 10,000 narratives of meaning.

Maybe the value/meaning of our cognition lies in this process, but not in the narratives we associate with it.

All that stuff is the product of human systems, but what about the systems that produce the human?

Not everyone is ready for a philosophical smack in the head. I'm glad it was preserved beyond the commencement speech, because I can't imagine sitting there listening to this on graduation day and taking much away from it besides "don't forget to think." This is the kind of stuff that you have to find at the right time in your life.

Could also be 'at length'

Yes, pick this one up. The Mind Illuminated is also a good one.