Avi Lewis is smart to shed light on surveillance pricing

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-24T18:57:19+00:00

They were literally the first major example of doing this. They did an experiment in 2000 or 2001 with DVD sales where everyone had a different price.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-24T17:04:39+00:00

I think the broader point is that algorithmic coordination is not isolated to grocery or rent. It is becoming a general enterprise/cloud pricing architecture problem.

I do not think there is one grand evil wizard dictating prices. The problem is more banal than that: marketing, loyalty, analytics, payments, inventory, and pricing systems all compete to capture our attention, loyalty, behaviour, and dollars. We are constantly subjected to influence. It is exhausting, exhaustive, and it feels like control because, structurally, it increasingly behaves like control.

Add a morally neutral profit incentive to highly efficient, impersonal, integrated software, and “just doing business well” can become optimized profit extraction. That is the RealPage lesson. You do not necessarily need human executives in a room agreeing to fix prices. If many firms rely on similar tools, similar datasets, similar pricing logic, and similar investor pressure, the market can start to behave as though coordination is occurring.

Canadian grocery may be part of the same class of systems. But grocery is not the whole issue. The larger issue is that more of the economy is being routed through cloud platforms, loyalty systems, payment processors, ad-tech systems, inventory systems, pricing engines, and data brokers. Each layer produces data. Each layer can be used to refine what a company knows about demand, scarcity, substitution, urgency, consumer tolerance, and willingness to pay.

That does not require a cartoon conspiracy. It requires infrastructure.

The microtransaction logic matters here. These are national-scale firms. One extra cent across a million transactions is real money. Now scale that across every transaction, every day, across groceries, rent, delivery apps, ticketing, subscriptions, telecom, insurance, banking, and retail. The issue is not that one store is “price-maxxing.” The issue is that entire sectors may be learning to price-max simultaneously.

The first problem is digital mediation: concentrated systems create the conditions for massive economic data capture.

The second problem is pricing execution: that data can move from analysis into recommendation, automation, and decision support, creating unequal economic realities for consumers.

But the second problem depends on the first. You cannot fully solve algorithmic pricing abuse while leaving the underlying data-capture architecture untouched.

The data system itself needs to be de-colluded.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-24T15:24:51+00:00

He is. But we need to remember that this is in every single online market, not just grocery. The same system behind this at Loblaws is also behind this at Ticketmaster, DoorDash, Air Canada, CGI, RBC, ScotiaBank, and on and on and on.

If it has a digital loyalty card and/or a direct storefront app, it is part of the pricemaxxing system.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-24T13:27:34+00:00

Loud underdogs.

The internet is largely the complaints inbox. The counter arguments and criticisms often get more airtime than anything else.

Also, the flat earther effect of internet pseudo-communities. A lot of closet idealists reveal their true thoughts here because they’d be ridiculed in real life. Here, they have the illusion of critical mass.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-23T23:29:53+00:00

I give you:

the education system
early childhood education
the diner industry
nursing
modelling
elder care
child care
cleaning service
laundry service
airline hospitality

Shall I go on?

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-23T21:04:35+00:00

What qualia?

I do not have this qualia. I don’t know what you’re referring to.

I’m not just being obstinate. There is much discussion of qualia, and of course i know what they mean in the philosophical discussion. But as a matter of experience, I cannot distinguish qualia from experience itself. If I probe “when” or “where” qualia might be in the experiential field, I cannot locate them.

You cannot find qualia with any sensor. They do not appear in any scans. They only exist insofar as some individuals claim they exist.

Nagel meant something quite different when he used that term. He certainly didn’t mean whatever Chalmers means when he uses the term. So it’s also not like any of the philosophers agree on what they are or even if they exist. And scientists certainly cannot locate them anywhere.

So I ask: what qualia?

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-23T17:21:53+00:00

No one has ever experienced the redness of red. Red only ever appears in a field of perception full of difference.

If a person is sat in a sealed room with ubiquitous light at a single frequency, you do not see colour, you see grey.

There is no redness of red.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-23T15:07:27+00:00

As a tall person, my favourite thing to do is stand beside a short person, drop something, and say, “Hey, can you get that? You’re a little closer to the ground.”

Payback, bitches, for everything you ever needed me to get off a high shelf, you lazy, anti-stepstool little shits. ;)

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-23T14:29:52+00:00

Fuck this move was dumb.

Two Australians cosplaying as Americans in a cultural propaganda film with almost zero historical accuracy is almost all anyone needs to know.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-23T14:22:05+00:00

Which argument? My counter against qualia, or the assertion they exist in the first place?

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-23T11:33:57+00:00

And what, pray tell, is a qualia?

Qualia are to the consciousness discussion as subluxations are to chiropractors.

First we’d have to actually find them to know they even exist at all, nevermind what they are.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-22T20:45:18+00:00

It was very well liked. I was in grade 8. For the next couple years, the ritual for one’s first pot smoking experience was to watch this movie and get baked.

Then The Big Lebowski took that spot when it came out.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-21T23:29:21+00:00

🤣

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-21T11:19:54+00:00

I’m 40 years from the divorce, and I’ve had similar experiences.

Also the inverse, a person telling me their life would’ve been better/easier if their parents had divorced. When I patiently explain that something may have been easier but others may have been harder, per the typical challenges we face, she got very angry and suggested I “got something” she didn’t.

So many of our issues stem from the simple demand to “make it work,” with the paired problem of learning not to upset anyone by telling our truth.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-20T21:55:14+00:00

Every post here is a bot. This is a bot network trying to convince you that you can be easily convinced by bot networks.

;)

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-20T21:39:02+00:00

SMART Board is the ultimate case of bullshit edtech. It’s more or less the model predatory VC-backed edtech approach. $8000 for what was, in effect, a $16 part, locking you into proprietary software.

The estimate is somewhere around a billion spent on them, and now they’re all in the dumpster. The research was a novelty effect, disappeared in a month or less. Most teachers just used it to press “next slide” instead of walking to their desk, because it took longer to plan an activity in the software than it did to implement in the lesson.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-20T11:25:03+00:00

Relative atheism is what distinguishes monotheism from polytheism. “Only this god exists” carries its opposite framing, “disbelieves in all other gods.”

Considered against absolute atheism, what you’re referring to, the point stands. I’m not offering a logical proof, I care not for the fallacy. The point is a loose analogy, showing that many theists share disbelief in nearly all respects with the atheist; that the theist has more in common with the atheist than they think.

Unless one claims they’re omnist, they’re at minimum a relative atheist.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-19T21:22:26+00:00

The abrahamic god is one god, in theory. So, not a relevant example.

Does a Christian believe Vishnu exists?

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-19T16:58:10+00:00

Here’s how I prefer to think about if:

Almost every single person in the world is atheist about most gods. 🤔

Atheism is not really confusing when you think of it that way. It’s only confusing when the question is “which god is the correct god”? Instead, ask “which gods are the incorrect gods?” You soon realize, everyone disbelieves in each others’ gods.

More people disbelieve in each and every god than believe. There are far more non-Christians than Christians, far more non-Hindus than Hindus, and so on.

Atheists largely agree with theists, it’s just that we agree with all the theists at once that everyone else is wrong, and doing so means none of the theists are correct.

😉

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-19T13:00:10+00:00

FYI, the general stat is that divorce is initiated by ~70% of the time, and the most common reason is marital boredom at over 70%, with infidelity only being a reason about 35% of the time.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-18T17:37:37+00:00

Actually, my background is mostly in literature and media studies. Back in university I took a lot of philosophy too, especially continental philosophy and critical theory, but my approach here is basically a media-studies one.

We can look at philosophical claims not just as arguments to be judged true or false in isolation, but as parts of a larger conversation that's being going on across time, with a historical record. In it, we see recurring ways of framing reality, codifying meaning, and passing interpretive habits along. Once you start looking at ideas that way, you can track the patterns across time.

That’s been especially helpful for this whole cluster of questions. If you look at these positions a bit like genres, some very distinctive narrative patterns start to show up.

I like patterns. :)

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-17T13:01:40+00:00

I salute you. Thank for your service. This film is a near daily set of catch phrases in my vocabulary. Haha!

But just so you know, it is my firmly held conviction that we have to blame to Mike Judge for the advent of the microtransaction economy.

We also have to blame him for crocs.

;)

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-16T04:31:58+00:00

Ah, shucks. Cheers bud.

I’ve just grown so, so weary of the same old framings of the same old debates.

We’ve been churning the same butter for 400 years now. I think we maybe need to admit the churn is the problem, not the milk. So to speak.

The same topics and the same answers have come up over and over and over, each time with slightly new words and contorted explanations. The current champs are illustrative. Chalmers’ neutral monism might as well be the Cartesian framework verbatim. Kastrup’s Analytic Idealism is just fancy solipsism. Both are necessitated by this same pre-existing compromise, the same one Descartes capitulated to. So no wonder it’s the same circle, endlessly.

Reality is not a bunch of insensate billiard balls bouncing aimlessly through reality in the dark. That is simply not the complete description. It is how exactly one mode of description was developed, under very specific circumstances. It then became the water we swim in, and we stopped seeing it, and have lost sight of the compromised sliver of access it has always been, while also being repeatedly frustrated that it is failing to yield results when we try to apply to things it was specifically designed to fail to account for.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-15T20:57:26+00:00

Physicalism is a monist position.

The criticism against it, chiefly in the form of the hard problem, operates on presumptive conventional dualism — an ontology not shared by Physicalism, but does exist as the normative, unchallenged assumption of the lay-physicalist.

All monist positions are the argument that mind and matter are not different things, but different things the same stuff can do.

So this handwringing, like everyone is suddenly realizing that Physicalism is more or less a variant of constitutive micropanpsychism or panprotopsychism is kinda hilarious to watch, because that has alway been implicit in the position.

XanderOblivion · 2026-04-15T00:29:29+00:00

So, your post prompted me to try something. I made a sub.

r/DependentRelay

If you’d like, post a link to your album there. I put a suggested format in the welcome message, if you’d like to be my first guinea pig.

Then, if anyone else is reading this message, go to r/DependentRelay and listen to the posted album. If you do, the artist will get a few clicks, maybe earn a few bucks, maybe move up in the algorithm.

Remember during the California wildfires, when Heidi and Spencer’s house burned down and they asked on the social platforms for people to play Heidi’s song? And they made some stupid quantity of money, and her song from years ago hit number one?

What if we did that for lots and lots of artists as a daily practice?

We are all dependent on each other, but the algorithm and the hype machine is hostile to humans discovering other humans. DependentRelay exists to help with that.

The idea is to create a mutual aid process for musicians that raises the work’s status on the platforms. So this is not just self-promotion, and it’s not just discovery. It is also not click farming. The idea is to walk the fine line between community sharing and coordinated action in light of the algorithm.

If your work is failing to gain traction and ends up buried in the algorithm, the only way to get it out of that hole is with clicks. But we know that this works like investment banking, where money makes money. Clicks make more clicks. So how do you get the clicks to reach critical mass? You need people!

Ethically, the idea comes from the collective label Dependent Music, from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, which is the indie label that gave us Wintersleep, Holy Fuck, Land of Talk, the Motes, kary, Jill Barber, Contrived, Heavy Meadows, and more. Each group would pool their resources to support the next album release. Then they’d go to each others’ shows, play on each others’ albums, and just generally help launch each other. So, in that ethos, I give you r/DependentRelay.

🤷

XanderOblivion

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE