faceh
26d ago
The eternal question is 'compared to WHAT?'
Feudalism 'works.'
Slavery 'works.' We had it in place for eons of human history. Rome was built on slavery, and Rome outlasted the USSR in pure duration.
And perhaps the oldest 'economic' system of all: invading the neighboring tribe, killing them, and taking their shit 'works.' It still gets some use in the current age.
But if there's a system that is completely outperformed along all the metrics that actually matter, and the alternative system survives over the long term, 'working' is not a sufficiently convincing qualifier.
Capitalism (admitting that the definition is somewhat ambiguous) solves virtually any economic 'problem' you throw at it, and it does so more effectively than any other system we've devised or evolved so far. I don't think there's ever been ANY country that collapses due to being "Too capitalistic."
So I don't hold my breath than any of the current contenders are going to replace it.
Guess I can understand WHY China, Iran, Russia and such would not want to be plugged in as part of the U.S. extended financial network, since that's basically giving them root level control of your citizens' finances, let alone your government's.
And with the implementation of the Corporate Transparency Act, it is also way harder to hide behind corporate structures.
Pretty crazy how while constant culture warring was going down during Trump's term, the Fedgov just quietly picked up all the tools it needs to surveil every aspect of the financial system from top to bottom without any alarm whatsoever.
I do sometimes wonder how a military determines the appropriate size of a strike to launch in order to send a sufficiently stern message but with minimal risk of actually crossing a line that isn't easily uncrossed.
Requires accurate estimates of your opponent's defensive capabilities and expect that they'll be able to intercept enough that the damage is limited.
I suppose the selection of targets is more important overall, if you can mitigate loss of life AND not strike something that the other side finds particularly valuable then there's less risk of some miscalculation causing worse consequences.
One memorable scene from the SciFi Series The Expanse sees the forces of the Earth Military blow up one of Mars' Moons which was itself the response to the Martian Military destroying one of Saturn's moons which housed an earth-controlled research station. The argument being "a barely populated rock in exchange for a barely-populated rock" was a fair tit-for-tat to discourage further aggression.
BUT, (light spoilers) the actual underlying intention of certain players on Earth was to trigger an all-out war and they were hoping that blowing up a moon that close to the home planet would actually lead to immediate retaliation/escalation. (/light spoilers)
I thought it was a good illustration of how these sorts of calls end up being made, AND the delicate dance that it can entail when you risk misapprehending your opponent and what you think is a slap on the wrist could be an unforgivable offense to them.
faceh
10d ago
I had noticed that under the current regulatory regime, the U.S. government in theory should have information pertaining to literally every large monetary transaction that takes place with any regulated bank attached to it.
So almost all of them.
Also can't help but feel like this will eventually enable an end-run around the need to actually investigate crimes and make arrests to enforce the law. Instead they can just haul you in to ask why you made that strange $5000 transaction on July 23, 2026 when you happened to be visiting a known purveyor of badthink?
Frustrating, but inevitable because there's no way that government would CHOOSE to turn blind eyes to the wealth of transaction data that is now electronically accessible.
faceh
11d ago
Well, when you put it like that…what’s the alternative?
I think in the hypothetical ideal in my mind, the payment processors/financial system are 'forced' to be agnostic as to the source of funds they receive, even if they themselves will decline to send money out to certain uses or to take certain types of people or businesses as customers. Money is money when it comes in, as long as all else is legal and fraud protections are cleared.
I suppose it should in theory be 'impossible' to have your funds locked away from you, and your funds should always be withdrawable to some base physical currency or transferable to a different bank, so you will never have to forfeit money sitting in your account because the bank determines it came from some sketchy source.
Government doesn't like this because people will evade taxes and launder money and pay for activities the government dislikes.
Society at large might dislike this because various vices are enabled by an open payment process.
But the point is that if you are operating in sketchy-but-legal industries and you have a contract with a payment processor to help you receive money from your customers, you should not be getting 'debanked' completely without warning and should be able to know you can get those funds out of the bank without too much hassle, even if they ultimately decide to stop processing your payments.
faceh
12d ago
Got some of those in the 'leadership' positions independently wealthy.
I could perhaps imagine a rule that provides that no payment processor can deny a customer the right to engage in any 'legal' transaction that is <$500 in a single day with a $10,000.00 total limit on a rolling 30 day basis, which is cumulative for the customer in question across any processors they use.
In exchange, the banks/processors get some kind of 'chargeback insurance' up to that $10,000.00 limit, analogous to FDIC insurance on deposits.
So "basic guaranteed processing" is a fundamental 'right' which any regulated bank has to provide.
I'm certain there would be abuses of this system, and second order effects.
But yeah, the idea is to HOPEFULLY prevent average citizens from being 'debanked,' and allow certain 'sketchy but legal' companies to eke out an existence if they have enough customers and not have to worry about an arbitrary policy change from one of like three major companies putting them out of business.
faceh
21d ago
I don't think you can confidently rely on an adverse party's word when judging whether their actions, even negotiated in advance, don't conceal alternate intentions which will only be revealed when they are taken.
Why would you think "Iran says that was it" is good evidence when Iran can say whatever they want but do something else entirely?
That's not even an uncommon tactic.
Russia was of course claiming the troops along Ukraine's border were a training exercise or what-have-you right up until they crossed over.
Famously, many Russian troops themselves didn't know the plan was an actual invasion.
So I'm not inclined to be CONFIDENT that any given action is what the adverse party is saying just because they say it.
faceh
6d ago
Indeed, I read the exact arguments on lesswrong and elsewhere that humans would dive headlong into AGI because the military incentives to build one, and to build it before the other guys, was irresistible.
Countries throwing billions of dollars at reckless research because they don't want to be conquered is EXACTLY what doomerists warn of.
Does anyone still 'collect' music (i.e. keep locally stored copies in some kind of organized database, regardless of format) in the current age of ubiquitous streaming?
I assume that Spotify (and the rest) has all but killed the idea of 'keeping' music on your local computer or phone amongst the youth.
As someone who has a music collection going back to when I first started obsessively ripping CDs to my PC in my teens, I find that I mostly keep doing it through force of habit, and the slight fear that things I like might disappear. Some of the older files in my collection are hard or impossible to find online these days. But with so many different streaming options and, now, an AI that can produce radio-quality music in seconds it seems like there's really no point to keeping a large local music collection unless its related to your career in some way.
So if you DO still store music locally, what are your reasons and methods?
faceh
27d ago
I don't know of any app or tech that lets you play your own local music collection but intersperses songs from a given streaming service for better variety and to emulate a more radio-esque experience. That'd be a pretty neat use case.
Last.FM scrobbling can track your music preferences across different players, that much I know.
I like using streaming services for discovering new music, and I would like to implement one-click way to download a good song and rip it to my library. I probably use youtube music more than youtube itself these days.
But I'm increasingly questioning the goal of having such a library. Pass it on to my kids? A backup in case the internet goes down? Am I the equivalent of a boomer hoarding 8 tracks or something?
Not even joking, the main goal of having such a library might be for the Friendly AGI overlord to find my hard drive and divine my music tastes so it can produce ideal songs for me to enjoy for eternity.
If I, as a male, want to be a bit cheeky, I can actually agree that a random bear is less dangerous to an American woman than a random male.
Statistically speaking, if the male is chosen COMPLETELY at random from all living males, then the odds are more likely you're getting a middle aged guy from Asia (esp. China), India, or Africa. I really have no direct frame of reference for what I expect such males to do in this situation, but the stereotypes are concerning.
Cursory Google search shows there are about 200,000 brown bears in the world, and around 800,000 black bears. Then presumably negligible numbers of Pandas, Koalas, and Polar bears, along with more exotic types.
So odds are that the randomly chosen bear is a relatively less dangerous black bear vs. the "will attack you instantly" brown bear.
So playing the odds, I might say yeah, a given woman is better off with a randomly selected bear in most cases, vs. a randomly selected male human.
But if we restrict the question to American males, and we specify that the bear WILL be one of the more dangerous varieties, I think the answer is clear.
faceh
2d ago
Yes, there's certainly an argument that a well-fed and generally fit European female has less to fear from many of the individual males of certain populations on a sheer physical prowess angle, compared to most grown bears. If she can run faster and further that's all she really needs.
I can understand why that argument ("those men can't rape you, they're too small/weak") wouldn't be comforting in this context, though.
faceh
10d ago
That would be for the government to investigate, ultimately.
But point being if a person isn't breaking the law, then they should not be getting debanked.
faceh
26d ago
I've been willing to pay a couple bucks to rent a film for a movie night, but I do feel utterly betrayed when something I've bookmarked for later consumption is pulled when I actually go to watch it.
My habit now is if there's a series or something I'm watching with friends, I'll download local copies just in case.
faceh
26d ago
Yeah and probably best practices to not do that.
faceh
2d ago
No, but it was a good example of people not being aware of how human perception works, and thus jumping right to "these people have to be lying to me" rather than "there's something weird about that dress."
I still remember the blue/gold dress discourse.
Plenty of women go abroad alone to dangerous countries like India. Sure there are some examples of women getting raped/killed there, but plenty more aren't.
If the questions specifies that they're in the woods, this presents a situation where the male in question can reasonably expect not to be observed by a third party.
THAT much, I will grant, is reason for concern for the woman.
I would not say 20% of men across the world would choose to assault/rape/attack a lone female. And even actual criminals don't commit crimes all the time.
I'm not quite willing to say 20% of men would not, purely on the evolutionary argument that assault and rape were a common element of our ancestral environment.
Really, my concern is that I don't know to what extent all men, everywhere on the planet, are actually socially trained against any sort of violence against women... and have enough to lose that they care about that social training. I could see it being higher than 20% who would in theory be dangerous to an unaccompanied female. But the error bars on that estimate are large.
But I can say for damn sure that a tiny handful of bears is trained not to be violent towards humans in general, but some are more naturally inclined towards it than others.
A lot of markets become mainly bets on how the creator will decide to resolve it rather than on what the question is purportedly about.
Yes. I've seen problems arise even with fairly 'objective' markets because even if you can measure a given phenomenon with precision, people might still mistrust the sensor doing the measuring. The market asks "what will be the high temperature in Miami on [date]" and we have to consider whose thermometer? Is it calibrated correctly? Are there any conditions that might throw it into an unexpected/error state?
So now the question is somewhat less about climate conditions and more about the quirks of the measurement system.
In theory you could solve this by attaching a reputation market to the system, so that a given resolution source can have their 'trustworthiness' rating impacted if enough people suspect they're fudging numbers or intentionally writing ambiguous questions/resolution criteria.
But that's just yet another system that is susceptible to gaming.
Augur had a seemingly solid system for avoiding this, but probably couldn't handle the volume, being dependent on Ethereum.
I am literally a practicing attorney and I have had my mind blown at some of the rules-lawyering/munchkin behavior that has come out of the space.
Ironically this perhaps goes to show why sports betting is so popular, because sports rules are uniformly understood, well-defined, and the bets are set on easily determinable outcomes like "Who won" and "what was the score", outcomes which are rarely ever walked back after the fact.
I speculate that we'll see some kind of AI-based solution arise and different markets will become popular with different segments of the population based on the quirks of how, say, Kalshi's AI resolves questions vs. Polymarket's vs. Manifold's.
In this case prediction markets might not actually 'solve' the issue of people having different reality bubbles, but at least there'll be some competition.
faceh
5d ago
The final issue is that if it is common and good then it will alter the very things it is trying to predict. Does predicting it make it true when we trust predictions at a 99.9% confidence ratio? Is there then a rebound effect where they become worthless and you need a meta meta meta meta meta prediction market to determine the accuracy of the prediction market you're trusting to verify the accuracy of prediction market that you're using to make the initial prediction?
Nah, I think the issue that precedes and largely supercedes this is the oracle question. Do people trust that whatever entity is reporting the final results is doing so accurately and isn't fudging numbers to give an edge to its allies or to cover up some other outcome that TBTB are trying to disguise?
Do we trust that ambiguous results will be resolved in good faith and correctly more often than not?
Who do we actually rely on to be the final arbiter of 'truth' such that these markets can continue to settle reliably where there's incentive to capture such institutions to divert them from the purpose of accurate reporting.
In other words I personally doubt we'll ever reach 99.9% confidence in prediction markets if only because we can't reach that confidence in the platforming hosting the markets or the entities producing the results which are deemed as 'truth,' and I don't believe these are easily tractable issues.
faceh
26d ago
Summarizing dense, relatively inscrutable material when I don't have the time to read it for myself.
Quick diagnosis of issues with minor appliances or mechanical issues. I don't trust them for medical purposes. Describe the year make and model of your car and any weird noises or behavior it is making.
Song recommendations (i.e. here's a list of songs I like, give me more on this theme)
Nigh instantaneous proofreading and editing of professional letters, documents, or similar.
Quick feedback loop for brainstorming ideas or quickly 'prototyping' concepts you have had difficulty envisioning or expressing.
Right now they don't have much 'agentic' uses (I'd really like one that can e.g. order pharmacy refills or schedule oil changes for me) but I think the basic capabilities are there.
faceh
26d ago
It is funny, but I know people like you EXIST who live mostly 'unplugged,' but it is still pretty surprising to find one in the wild, happily outside of the angry egregore that most of us inhabit.
faceh
26d ago
I do so because I think the idea of renting access to your media is insane, and it baffles me that so many people seem to be ok with it.
Seems like there's just SO MUCH media out there that people accept that there's no way they can actually keep up with it all.
Imagine what it might be like owning 100 different cars when you can only drive one per day. It would make more sense to rent/lease than to just have most of them sitting unused all day.
Yes, I know storage costs round to zero for digital music. I'm mostly referring to the mentality. "I will watch this movie maybe twice this year, why bother keeping it around any longer?
I buy a digital download or I rip the CDs I own. Tag them, and then put them in Plex media server.
I'm so devoted to not relying on centralized services I went with Jellyfin instead.
It definitely annoys me that "access to the financial system writ large" has become so utterly critical to doing anything useful that it immediately has a totalizing effect on what anybody can do, anywhere in the world, even on the internet.
Maybe there's one bank/payment processor that holds out and willingly acts to handle the 'controversial' transactions, but that just removes things one layer back, as other banks and processors will eventually blacklist that bank. And thus rendering that bank mostly useless for any other purpose. If it doesn't shut down it'll struggle to remain solvent.
Lets say that some pornography company was wealthy enough it could 'become its own bank' and processes payments on behalf of users and extends credit and otherwise runs all its own transactions and only has to interface with the financial system to purchase the services it needs to operate. Once it is known as the 'porn bank' it'll probably be impossible to find any other financial services willing to interface with them unless they comply with all the sames restrictions the other banks are working under... which defeats the purpose of 'self banking' to begin with.
It comes down to the fact that the financial system is a tightly connected web, and the main value any bank or payment process can provide is access to the network, so maintaining that access is their primary concern.
From the moral standpoint, it bugs me when there's very little evidence(indeed, I've seen none) that digital artwork depicting heinous, illegal, or otherwise disgusting acts is actually causing harm to nonconsenting parties. The reasons we find CSAM objectionable and worthy of legally crushing are generally not present when it comes to digital art. One party or group wants some art, the artist produces it and gets paid, nobody else even need be aware of what it contains!
It'd be nice to think of our financial system as mostly as set of dumb tubes that transmit the data representing our money around without caring much about the start and endpoint... with a lot of protections in place to mitigate fraud, theft, and user error. But ultimately a financial company is operated by humans who are subject to legal jurisdiction of some country or other, and have to maintain access to the global finance system if they want to take that money to any other jurisdiction, so in reality the 'rules' are set based on what all participants are willing to tolerate.
Anyhow, this is ultimately the impetus for the protagonists in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon to create a private, heavily anonymized bank/data haven in a location outside of the U.S.' sphere of influence. And in order for them to pull it off it required a chain of events that seems even more fantastical now than it did then, such as finding an island nation that is independently wealthy yet also politically stable enough to act as a headquarters for such an endeavor.
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