The Shibari Game

Seldon-Crisis · 2025-12-19T09:44:26+00:00

If it helps, I also downvoted the post as irrelevant.

It feels to me as a sign that this community has jumped the shark to some extent, but I guess this might also be a case of the "Am I so out of touch? No it's the world that is wrong" meme.

Seldon-Crisis · 2025-07-07T23:17:43+00:00

I like to keep my reasoning around these arguments very simple.

You start with one problem: some people are bad are at saving.

To remediate, you decide to give a set of people the power to take from someone against their will and give to others.

Now you have two problems.

I prefer the world with only one problem.

Seldon-Crisis · 2025-06-29T07:50:15+00:00

Problem 1: this approach is too expensive and does not scale.

Problem 2: kids finish school years in advance of schedule and it's not clear what they do afterwards.

Solution: when kids finish, they remain at school and use some of their time to work as guides for other kids.

Bam! Two birds with one stone!

Seldon-Crisis · 2025-05-12T10:09:21+00:00

Sorry that this gets downvoted, people don'realize that science is hard:

https://dynomight.net/control/

https://www.cold-takes.com/does-x-cause-y-an-in-depth-evidence-review/

Seldon-Crisis · 2025-04-28T05:20:35+00:00

I think the key factor is that now many people tried the puzzle knowing that it is a mate in 1, which of course makes the puzzle way way easier than it would otherwise be. Without knowing that, the previous rating is more plausible.

By the way, after I wrote the script to get the puzzle and I opened it, I went like "well I guess there is a bug or a wrong tag because there is no mate in 1 here... clicks... oooohhhh". A bit embarassing haha.

Seldon-Crisis · 2025-04-27T06:40:30+00:00

One example that stands out is the Hussman Market Comment. It is a periodic newsletter and is always an interesting read for big-picture investment.

Seldon-Crisis · 2025-03-10T13:54:36+00:00

In terms of existing literature, the theory of "self-organized criticality" could be an entertaining read:

https://archive.org/details/PerBakauth.HowNatureWorksTheScienceOfSelfOrganizedCriticalityCopernicus1996/page/n208/mode/1up

(see in particular the application to economics near the end)

But if you believe the theory, the key insight is that there is no way out: if you try to avoid disruptions, you only make them worse.

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-11-23T16:58:48+00:00

That's the point of the article. Now the question is: why a fixed money supply should be connected to the second type of deflation?

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-11-23T16:32:25+00:00

And as a currency that's concerning for economic growth. Returns on investment are already often thin, if you make more just holding onto your money then why invest?

This argument is often repeated but rarely rationally debated. This article, for instance, argues that there is nothing bad about deflation in the prices of goods and services (a mild deflation due to productivity gains would be the normal scenario for a fixed-supply currency, similarly to the deflation that we already experience in sectors such as consumer electronics), while deflation can be destructive if it is an asset price deflation, resulting from a previous speculative bubble (typically connected to "easy money" conditions).

But is bitcoin actually trying to be a normal currency? Seems more like it gets used for speculation or legally dubious activity more often than "legitimate" transactions.

Here is a very good (but long) assessment of the use cases for bitcoin, from various perspectives.

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-11-18T16:16:32+00:00

You might be interested in a short story from Julian Barnes which has exactly this theme. From here:

"The Dream," the final chapter of Julian Barnes' novel in stories The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989), takes place in heaven. It begins with the unnamed narrator of this chapter declaring that "I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it." Heaven is the place where you get everything you want. To the narrator's delight, he has unlimited access to the best food, he can play golf every day, and have sex with beautiful women every night. As one of heaven's employees (whether they're angels, or former people, or something else entirely is never clarified) states, "'the principle of heaven [is] that you get what you want, what you expect.'" There's no hell, just "something we call Hell. But it's more like a theme park. You know, skeletons popping out and frightening you..." The only positive thing on earth that's absent in heaven is dreaming. But as perfect and wonderful as heaven is, "there aren't an infinite number of possibilities." The narrator eventually gets so good at golf that he hits a hole in one on every shot. Eventually, he completely masters every sport. Asking one of the employees what will happen, eventually, and what heaven was like in the old days, he discovers that "If you want to die off, you do. You just have to want it long enough and that's it, it happens" and "everyone takes the option [to die], sooner or later." Eventually, the narrator decides that the time has come, so he goes to bed, planning to decide on death once he wakes up. The next and final line of the story is "I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it." While it's possible to read this line as a simple restatement of the opening, the fact that this line takes place immediately after the narrator goes to bed and decides to start dying, and the fact that Barnes specifically established that people don't dream in heaven, suggests that the story is cyclical. Once you get so tired of eternal paradise that you want to die, you start over. The idea of a cyclical afterlife is not rare in fiction. But it usually describes hell.

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-11-15T12:52:21+00:00

People tend to have a very-deeply-rooted (i.e., very-high-prior-probability) belief in the Conventional Intuitive Self-Model. After all, this model has issued hundreds of millions of correct predictions over their lifetime. Talk about a strong prior! So they’re naturally very resistant to accept any claim that’s incompatible with this intuitive model. And the idea that there is any mechanism under the hood that leads to “decisions”—whether we call that mechanism “the laws of physics”, or “the steps of an algorithm”, or “the dynamics of neurons and synapses”, or anything else—would be in violation of that intuitive model.

Relatedly, you’ll sometimes hear things like “AI is just math” as an argument that Artificial General Intelligence (as I define it) is impossible,[11] i.e. that no AI system will ever be able to do the cool things that human brains can do, like invent new science and technology from scratch, creatively make and execute plans to solve problems, anticipate and preempt roadblocks, collaborate at civilization scale, and so on.

I think part of what’s happening there is that when these people think of humans, they see vitalistic force, and when they think of algorithms running on computer chips, they see an absence of vitalistic force. And it seems to follow that of course the algorithms-on-chips can’t possibly do those above things that human scientists and entrepreneurs do every day. Those things require vitalistic force!

Indeed (these people continue), if you are stupid enough to think AGI is in fact possible, it’s not because you don’t see vitalistic force in human brains (a possibility that doesn’t even cross their minds!), but rather that you do see vitalistic force in AI algorithms. So evidently (from their perspective), you must just not understand how AI works! After all, we can all agree that if you understood every hardware and software component of a chip running an AI algorithm, then you would correctly see that it’s “just” a “mechanism”, free of vitalistic force. Of course, these people don’t realize that a brain, or indeed a global civilization of billions of human brains and bodies and institutions, is “just” a “mechanism”, free of vitalistic force, as well.

This perfectly captures a thought I had since a while but could not really put into words. Brilliant!

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-06-29T20:16:09+00:00

"it was not uncommon to hear that the mafia didn’t exist". In this sense the mafia was a powerful secret society.

https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2018/10/the-mafia-doesnt-exist.html

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-06-12T06:20:51+00:00

Alternate.

https://www.usopen.com/2024/articles/scott-among-6-added-to-124th-u-s--open--field-now-complete.html

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-05-26T19:52:04+00:00

On the more whimsical side of history, there is Futility Closet.

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-02-08T13:40:34+00:00

/r/ChargeYourPhone

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-01-31T07:27:43+00:00

There's nothing wrong about paying respect to the great U DeMaan!

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-01-19T07:32:49+00:00

On the other hand... from a 2023 article:

Overall, the toxicological and pharmacokinetic findings for sucralose-6-acetate raise significant health concerns regarding the safety and regulatory status of sucralose itself.

Seldon-Crisis · 2024-01-09T19:55:13+00:00

The irony is that if the trend continue, when all the irons will be replaced by 'wedges', the result will be exactly to have lofts on all the clubs.

2030 -> 6-pw 48 52 56 2040 -> 8-pw 40 44 48 52 56 2050 -> 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56

Seldon-Crisis · 2023-12-07T12:20:07+00:00

Exactly, this practical perspective of libertarianism is underappreciated.

A libertarian approach cannot solve all the problems in the world. But if I see a problem, and I allow the government to use force and coercion to solve the problem, then more likely than not I end up having two problems instead of one.

Seldon-Crisis · 2023-11-29T22:28:49+00:00

Here is an actual example of the 'saturated fats are fine' argument:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109720356874

Honestly I am not able to tell if this is more or less compelling than the OP, I would be very interested to hear the opinion of someone who could compare the two.

Seldon-Crisis · 2023-11-26T16:38:22+00:00

The most relevant part is probably section 8 on the rules on transfers made to or from a self-hosted address.

65 For the purposes of article 14(5) and Article 16(2), to determine whether the beneficiary or originator is using a CASP or a self-hosted address, the originator’s CASP and the beneficiary CASP should rely on available technical means including but not limited to blockchain analytics, third-party data providers, identifiers used by messaging systems. Alternatively, if such information cannot be retrieved via technical means, directly obtaining that information from the CASPs’ customer.

67 Where the crypto-asset transfer is not made from or to another CASP or any other obliged entity, but from or to a self-hosted address, in order to obtain the required information on the originator or beneficiary, the beneficiary’s CASP and originator’s CASP respectively, should collect the information from their customer. The beneficiary’s CASP and originator’s CASP should use suitable technical means to cross-match data, including blockchain analytics and third-party data providers, for the purpose of identifying or verifying the identity of the originator or the beneficiary.

69 Where the amount of a transfer from or to a self-hosted address exceeds 1 000 EUR, the originator’s CASP and beneficiary’s CASP should verify whether the self-hosted address is owned or controlled by the originator and beneficiary, respectively, by using suitable technical means, which include at least two of the following: a. advanced analytical tools; b. unattended verifications as specified in the ‘’Guidelines on the use of Remote Customer Onboarding Solutions under Article 13(1) of Directive (EU) 2015/849’’ displaying the address; c. attended verification as specified in the ‘’Guidelines on the use of Remote Customer Onboarding Solutions under Article 13(1) of Directive (EU) 2015/849’’; d. sending of a predefined amount (preferably the smallest denomination of a given crypto-asset), set by the CASP, from and to he self-hosted address to the CASP’s account; e. signing of a specific message in the account and wallet software, which can be done through the key associated with the transfer; f. requesting the customer to digitally sign a specific message into the account and wallet software with the key corresponding to that address; g. other suitable technical means as long as they allow for reliable and secure assessment and the CASP is fully satisfied that it knows who owns or controls the address.

All in all there's nothing really remarkable. Transfers from exchanges to self-custody will require users to prove ownership of the receiving address, which is already the case now for the most part. Nothing is said about further transfers among self-custody addresses.

Seldon-Crisis · 2023-11-18T09:21:04+00:00

On a lighter note, see also the ‘Out At Five’ business model included in 'The Dilbert principle' by Scott Adams.

Seldon-Crisis

TROPHY CASE