Wrote the first part of my Bernard devlog series. Episode 1 — MVP.
https://combo.cc/posts/bernard-devlog-1-mvp/
#buildinpublic
Image by Maggie Appleton.
They are not very useful as they are only available in some sections of the site, and not others, for some reason.
I have used the "Not interested" option some 200 times and YouTube still keep recommending to me stuff that is trending and I have no interest in.
The modus operandi of these modern AI-based recommendation engines is basically "shut up, we know better".
I do believe that the peak of human organisation and collaboration is achieved by small groups of 5 to 6 people.
After that magic figure, groups quickly devolve into factionalism, politics, bureaucracy and inertia.
It's not a surprise that the sociology of small group is an under-researched topic, and all research is focused on trying to make people fit into unnaturally large hierarchies.
To me, anarchy is absence of rules.
Anarchism is absence of coercion.
The former is chaos, the second is just making sure no one has ultimate power over somebody else. But hierarchy, rules, organization is very compatible with my idea of anarchism, but only iff one is free to leave.
In my view, most normal people interact in this kind of anarchist structure: if you have a shop and I am a customer, no one has ultimate power over the other. You are free to tell me not to shit on the floor, and if I dislike that, I can leave and go somewhere else. But you cannot force me to do anything, nor can I.
This completely breaks down when you introduce government and its executive force (i.e. police) into it.
No quotes from the Bible? My global feed is full of religious nutcases
Fuck your intelligent machines and neural networks, used only to benefit the few.
I wonder if the starry eyed engineers are totally naive and truly believe AI will take us to an utopia where we work 2 hours a day.
Because we have invented incredible technology over the past 150 years, and yet we work harder, for less pay, to be controlled and subdued by plutocrats. AI images and spam flooding any aspect of our digital lives will not be the thing to free us from that yoke.
One day the current, corporate and bland Internet will seem like a vibrant place full of life and freedom, where you knew you were talking to a human, not some kind of retarded machine.
I'm a senior engineer that won't be replaced with AI just yet, but still finding a job has been impossible for the past 4 months.
We're in a deep recession, mostly affecting the tech sector, but no one wants to call it one.
Your computer, your rules.
I would love something like a zap faucet. I have set up Damus and a Lightning address, and I don't know if it works or not, so I'd make use of something like that
What a good place to keep up to date on #Bitcoin tech?
No hype, no HODL, no price circlejerk, I just want the deep dive into the latest work on the technology itself, for builders and software engineers.
Any pointers? Ideally a news site or a forum. I don't do Twitter.
I should make a #nostr client that automatically mutes anyone with laser eyes.
What's a good argument against the old "#Bitcoin is boiling the oceans! It's causing climate change!" retort dishonest idiots keep making?
From a comment of mine on Hacker News:
"While I don't have a Twitter profile with laser eyes just yet, I enjoy seeing what I think is a technological and political game changer just chugging along, uncaring of scams, maxis, haters, governments, volatility.
I am surprised that few can notice how impressive for a currency with limited usability and extreme volatility still is worth something, improving and growing. Because at one point, all the concerns one has about it will have been solved, and, as economists love to say, good money tends to drive out bad money. The Internet is still in need of its digital cash.
So I enjoy seeing all the Ponzi schemers, con artists and grifters get their comeuppance, but would also love to see the crypto-Luddites to be proven wrong eventually. Because #Bitcoin doesn't care, #Bitcoin still goes brrr."
Network effects are a huge component to the success of a new communication protocol, and Nostr being so simple makes it easy for anyone to build something in an afternoon, thus it's easier for it to grow exponentially than more complex protocols.
Greed is a big factor. Communism will be possible one day in the future through technology, but we're not there still IMHO. The "fully automated luxury space communism" meme might not be such a meme a thousand years from now.
That said, communism in small scale societies and communities works. In large scale, money and trading works better.
There's a lot of reading I'm doing on this topic, so don't take my word for gospel 😄 it's been fun chatting with you about this stuff
Anarchism is a rabbit-hole. Many anarchists, especially from that era, are arguing for a communist or socialist world.
I don't, these days I tend more towards free market anarchism, which some have called anarcho-capitalism, but I'm not completely sold on the name. This was previously impossible to achieve because money printing had to be centralised. Then came Bitcoin, and this changes everything.
I do not think the entire world should be ancap. Communism or socialism are utopian IMO, but people should be free to associate in such a community, even though I think the free market has proven to be a great force to maintain fairness, competition and growth, so anarchism based on it could actually flourish.
"But how can you tell ChatGPT isn't conscious?!"
I wonder if people asking this question have the brain power of an amoeba.