Reading sexbot discourse makes me wonder if anyone has extended the same arguments (about objectification, creepiness, etc.) to the imaginary people in ordinary sexual fantasies – like the ones in your head – who, after all, we just place into arbitrary situations according to our moment-by-moment whims, much like dolls / action figures except that we don’t have to manipulate them with our physical hands

… like, that popped into my head as an objection to the analogous sexbot argument, but maybe there’s someone for whom that modus tollens is a modus ponens, what do I know

isaacsapphire:

philippesaner:

nostalgebraist:

This paper about Etherium Ponzi schemes is a pretty enjoyable read.  Did you know that ~10% of Etherium smart contracts with verified source code are Ponzi schemes?  (Although they only constitute 0.05% of transactions)

What’s even wilder is the way these schemes are promoted.  The paper links to various actual advertisements, and they don’t try to hide the fact that they’re Ponzi schemes.  There is no purported “real” business activity; the mechanics of a Ponzi scheme are simply and transparently described (and ensured by a smart contract, albeit often a poorly coded one); sometimes the word “Ponzi” is even used in the advertisement!  It seems like they are being presented a form of gambling, although I have no idea why anyone would choose them over the many more exciting, higher-EV (if still negative-EV) forms of gambling out there.

For example, check out this pitch, which promises a first-class experience – you know, for the discriminating Ponzi scheme connoisseur (?!):

Hello everyone! I bring to you THΞ GREEÐ PIT.

Tired of copy paste ponzi games? Me too. This one has gone through weeks of brainstorming and tweaking to provide a solid, enjoyable (and hopefully profitable) experience. There are many unique mechanics that differentiate it from the rest, please check the website for all the details.

[…]

Features:

Original mechanics w/ strategic elements
Fast payouts for easy profits (x1.1~x1.5, up to x2 with tokens)
Random bonuses & rewards (extra multiplier tokens, rescue shares)
Dynamic adjustments to keep things fast
Transparency and statistics
Nickname support
Incentives to play & replay
Designed to last
Verified source code
*Recycle function: If the contract is inactive for close to 3 months (no deposits), the owner may choose to destroy it at any time and start over. As long as people continue to play, the contract isn’t going anywhere, and hopefully, by the time it dies, you’ll have earnt enough ethers to not be at a loss. Don’t let this functionality scare you, it’s still designed to last longer than other similar contracts. I just figured I’d mention this before people start claiming I’m misleading them.

Somehow, it makes me happy to know that scam-themed blockchain casinos are a thing now.

This is actually a fair bit more ethical than the average bank of slot machines, come to think of it.

It sounds like advertising for a game. Eh, some people pull levers, some people buy lottery tickets, some people play bingo, some people play the ponies, some people play poker, some people play Ponzi schemes with crypto currency. There’s different aesthetics for different gamblers, and obviously some people like the aesthetic of crypto currency Ponzi schemes. I can’t fault the Etherium Ponzi scheme guys for anything but bad code and encouraging gambling.

Yeah, I only fully realized after writing this post that these things lack the main thing that normally makes Ponzi and pyramid schemes despicable — the pretense that participants will get returns from some source other than future participants. They still have the unappealing payoff structure (most participants never recover their initial investment), but most gambling activities have unappealing payoff structures. (The paper has a section on whether presenting these as “games” is somehow misleading, but having read it I think the answer is “no”)

The one other piece that makes this potentially exploitative is the possibility of the creator suddenly stopping the game and collecting the pool when participants thought they could count on that not happening (either through a “bug” in the contract or just through unclear description). But from the authors’ spreadsheet it looks like the creators of these things rarely end up with much money on their end (and sometimes lose money), so eh, whatever.

(via isaacsapphire)

“I’m not tuning in the way I used to and something’s wrong with me,” said a woman who took “the chair” on Sunday. “There are larger things going on here, but I don’t have any evidence. I’m just not sure.”

“When you know the truth, you need no evidence,” Mr. de Ruiter replied after a long pause.

“I mean this in a kind way,” the woman said, “but my real self doesn’t have a foggy clue about what’s going on here and will never be able to figure it out.”

“You don’t need to understand what you know for you to believe in what you know,” said Mr. de Ruiter.

There was more cryptic banter and the woman seemed to come around. “All I know is that something’s happening and that’s enough,” she said.

The guru spoke: “If you knew that you were going to die in one minute, you would say that you’re ready now.”

Three minutes passed.

“Yes,” the woman agreed.

Then more silence.

(Apropos of nothing, posting mostly because I like the analogy)

I understand why people use “what peer-reviewed publications do they have?” as a filter to detect crackpots.  But among some crackpot-slayer types, this degenerates into treating “publishing peer reviewed papers” as a gold standard of intellectual quality.

When someone starts saying “peer reviewed” too much, in this intense evaluative tone, I have this reaction to it that’s like … the same reaction I would have if someone talked about fiction “published by mainstream publishing houses” in the same tone.

Like, yes, most self-published (much less vanity-published) fiction is pretty bad.  But if you said you were reading something good, “oh, is it published? by a mainstream publishing house?” would be a bizarre, seemingly irrelevant reaction.  And there would be something faintly ridiculous about people going around proudly declaring that they only read published fiction, or emphasizing that some book was “published by Random House” as if this spoke to its quality.

Peer review is the same sort of standard – at once too forgiving, because it’s almost always true of papers one reads (including some terrible ones), and too stringent, in that one the standard has been articulated, it’s easy to see how it would rule out some things that should be kept in.  (Imagine, e.g., reading all of Andrew Gelman’s journal articles but refusing to read his blog posts, since they aren’t peer reviewed.)  And the over-emphasis on it makes the same inadvertently naive, almost cargo-cult impression that an over-emphasis on “do they write published fiction?” would make.

horny on master branch

horny in main()

horny in production

Oh wait what? I feel like I find the central conceit very clear? There was an alien invasion, things escalated, and now everyone on Earth is in a variety of matrix like virtual reality setups with weird laws of physics that try to accommodate both humans and alien sensibilities (to mixed effect)

Yeah that stuff is more or less clear – I think @russianmurders was talking about the explanations involving spears and hands, and stuff in that general territory

nostalgebraist:

Chapter 9 of Almost Nowhere is up here

Morning reblog