leafygreene

That a very significant part of the human population could, at any point (!), decide to switch to crypto as its currency. A currency that gives 1 million coin to each living human and says go and prosper. Could this happen? Maybe when is the better question.

I apologize, but it's clear to me from your pointed responses that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Yes. These are called common law marriages. 7 states have them.

https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/common-law-marr...

Get married. Doesn't work out? Divorced. Buried in debt for a decade or more, house gone, credit ruined, alimony indefinitely, child support forever, visitation up to a court. As a function of bad credit, impossible to ever get decent job, home loan, etc. ever again. All your insurance premiums get jacked. I could go on, and on and on.

They speak of advantages? At 50% failure rate in the US, with seemingly three disadvantages for every advantage, only the insane need apply.

Welcome to America.

* Student loans might almost be worse. You can dissolve a marriage.

We compete when we should cooperate.

This is at least partially biological. We are competitive because our survival depends on it, and deception is of utmost value in a competitive environment. See all of Capitalism, for example.

I spent three months in the Deschutes National Forest this summer, drought conditions throughout. I watched everyday as honeybees and yellow jackets happily shared a pan of water I'd leave out for them. The third guest was an interloper assassin wasp called the bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata), and it loved drowning honeybees. If this hornet was around, I'd return to a pan full of dead honeybees.

At first I asked myself, "Can honeybees really be such poor swimmers?" Then I noticed the hornet essentially pushing them into the water (shocking them? zapping them, disabiling them?) and later eating them.

I don't know if this hornet is an invasive species or if the predator-prey relationship is already known, but a single hornet can wipe out tens of bees a day. A contributor to honeybee collapse? Maybe.

It's that I can see the future for a few seconds that bothers me most. Not the “I've been here before” but the “I've been here before and I know what happens next” and that exact thing happens. It's that few seconds of clairvoyance I find superitchy.

I'm fairly rational, however. I'm sure there's an explanation that's not magical.

The major concern is what if government-funded industry such as this succeeds, thereby encouraging more of it, the slippery slope to state capitalism and then Marx. The term escapes me, but it's some sort of neoliberal woo woo I can't quite remember. It does look rather iffy when you're whaa whaa'ing China for its state-funded industry when you're state funding industry, in other words. Socialism bad. Cooties! Everybody run! All that jazz.

And there's a lot to being an Everyman. It's not a life lived unwell, or it doesn't have to be. One could well argue that unwellness is a function of doing. Read I. Berlin’s In Defense of Idleness.

It takes me a couple hours to watch a movie, a couple days to read a book. I can re-watch the movie or re-read the book, and enjoy them again even though I already have. The plots won't change; they are predetermined; nonetheless, I am entertained on repeat consumption.

A suitably advanced entity could do the same: consume the entirety of my life (for whatever purpose, entertainment), its trials and tribulations, as easily as I do a book or a movie. A century of time would be a small nothing to an entity who could intake 100 quadrillion fps to my 35 fps. It could "play" my life for its amusement as easily as I play a DVD.

That said, the experience of déja vu, re: predetermination, will never stop giving me the creeps.

You don't have to do anything. You don't have to be anyone. You don't have to go anywhere. Life is not going to stop because you don't do something with your life. What are the 100 trillion lifeforms on earth, 8 billion of them human, doing that's so essential?

Nadda.

And once you become accustomed to your imperfect pillow, no other will do!

That's when you bill them $500/hr for your services out of retirement.

re: survival in 50s.

Only if you are by then successful. If not, your career will stall late 30s when you realize tech is age-bound, however immoral or illegal.

They absolutely will hire 2 inexperienced college grads over paying for your 25 years of experience everytime.

The thing with small businesses is that it's all-consuming. If you think you can squeeze work-life balance out of a business, then you are borderline delusional.

The (false) freedom, (unstable flow of) money, and (faux) independence of being a business owner can seem great, but the 24/7/365 grind isn't worth it for so many who try. I didn't have a weekend off for 9 years!

If your business fails, take the lessons and run, particularly with regard to whether you want to be owned again by your livelyhood in future endeavors.

Maybe failure is the door you've been looking for. Don't be afraid of it.

Or some country has started a war.

Wouldn't a poison pill to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry deter mainland China indefinitely?

You invade us, we'll torch every fab on our island.

Simple and borderline stupid and illustrative of my own ignorance, no doubt, yet it seems like the ultimate strategy.

You may not want creativity. You can't turn it off.

Also, the world needs people like you far more than people like me. I might move the world forward tomorrow because I create x or b or zx or d, we shall see, won't we? But you will make the world better today for being able to obey, unincumbered by all the shiny things that bounce and trounce your head askant.

Creativity is a bit bunk, basically; just don't dare take it from me.

I did. Too much bud threw my grammar aside. Corrected.

Those “Congratulations to Drugs for Winning the War on Drugs” bumper stickers must really bite if you're a DEA agent.