Great quote from CDs screed:
"Every billionaire is a policy failure, but every billionaire is
also a factory for producing policy failures at scale."
I think this logic held for *millionaires* at the turn of the *previous*
century but I doubt it will take until 2100 to raise the exponent from 6
to 9 to 12 (trillionaire)?
Anyone else read Gibson's "Jackpot" series or at least start watching
"The Peripheral" on Netflix? Their dystopian 2100 feels *almost* Utopian
compared to what I sometimes feel is looming on the horizon.
On Musk/Tesla, I think I now understand better how the died-in-wool
capitalists who love-to-hate Musk choose to make their money on his
coat-tails by *shorting* against the volatility he generates with his
dumb-Tweets (everything from 420 to challenging Putin to resolve Ukraine
through personal combat to suggesting Zelensky give over disputed
territories to the latest Pelosi-conspiracy-talk). Buh!
On 10/31/22 7:50 AM, glen wrote:
Do you get this:
https://theweek.com/speedreads/972170/peter-thiels-largest-disclosed-political-donation-ever-possible-jd-vance-senate-run
Doctorow has an interesting take:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/26/boxed-in/
"The Uihleins are ideologues, but it's a mistake to view their
authoritarianism, antisemitism, racism, and homophobia as the main
force of their ideology. First and foremost is their belief that they
deserve to be rich, and that the rich should be in charge of everyone
else."
I'm not convinced. But it's plausible. What do Musk, Thiel, and the
Uihleins have in common? They *probably* think they're better at
something than the rest of us. What is that something they think
they're better at? If you answer that, then maybe it'll explain why
Musk bought Twitter?
On 10/31/22 06:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:
I don’t get it. It seems undisciplined to put his successful
companies at risk to buy this money loser, while at the same time
getting all this bad press.
On Oct 31, 2022, at 5:11 AM, glen <[email protected]> wrote:
Yeah, I deleted all my Tweets, unfollowed everyone, and removed all
my followers. Musk is an asshole. I know my lack of participation
means nothing. But at least I won't be (as) complicit. There are no
good billionaires
<https://patrioticmillionaires.org/2022/09/21/dont-trust-the-good-billionaires/>.
It's interesting how, in some cases, the existence of the most
horrible of any species (e.g. Uihlein
<https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial>)
can make the others seem "good". It's like a murderer saying "At
least I'm not a rapist." Or a rapist saying "At least I'm not a
pedophile." And a pedophile saying "At least I don't kill 'em."
Honor among thieves.
As SteveS mentioned earlier, I'm almost diametrically opposed to
effective altruism for exactly this reason. The argument is
basically: Hustle! Then Dole. I'm willing to change my mind.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YgbpxJmEdFhFGpqci/winners-of-the-ea-criticism-and-red-teaming-contest
Even when we give Billionaires [ptouie] the benefit of the doubt,
forgive them for their rapacious and exploitative methods, and
say "At least they're doing Good Things, now", the Hustle! Then Dole
lifestyle hones/perfects dystopian Taylorism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor>. It's only
when these old codgers begin to see Death a little more clearly, do
they discover some sort of moral frame, while (metaphorically)
meditating at the edge of their infinity pool built on the ridgeline
of some desert mountain range. And, as we see in Musk, their
lifetime of isolation within the outsized scope of their own
influence (because, well, money is God, omnipresent, omniscient,
etc.), puts them at risk of dimension reducing attractors like most
individualist, right-wing causes. E.g. "free speech" (distinct from
free speech, with no quotes).
On 10/30/22 11:37, Jochen Fromm wrote:
Until now I have used 3 Twitter accounts for scientific,
development and personal stuff. I have used them more frequently
since Google+ was shut down. One main reason why I do not use
Facebook or Instagram is Mark Zuckerberg. As Grady Booch used to
say "Facebook is a profoundly unethical company, and it starts at
the top, with Mark Zuckerberg".
For Twitter it is similar now. I really don't want to support a
platform that belongs to someone who likes to insult others, like
Garry Kasparov or the real Tesla founder Martin Eberhard or many
others, just the way Trump likes to do it.
The note for advertisers was plain marketing. His intention to save
the world? A lie. This town square stuff? Nonsense. He certainly
didn't write this, it was more likely written by Twitter's CCO
Sarah Personette and her team. However, he has created his own hell
by buying the platform he is addicted to.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation
I am using Mastodon instead now, which does not belong to an
egomanic or eccentric billionaire. Yes, it is named after an animal
which died out at the end of the Pleistoscene, but the distributed
and decentralized approach is much better than having one big
centralized system. My new Mastodon accounts are here:
fediscience.org/@cas_group
berlin.social/@JochenFromm
ruby.social/@jofr
-J.
-------- Original message --------
From: Steve Smith <[email protected]>
Date: 10/30/22 6:50 PM (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
<[email protected]>
Subject: [FRIAM] (not) leaving Twitter
https://mashable.com/article/please-stop-tweeting-leaving-twitter
https://mashable.com/article/i-was-going-to-quit-twitter-but-elon-musk-takeover
I have a *very* limited twitter engagement myself. Same with FB
and *zero* with anything else *but* Instagram where I restrict
myself to viewing and posting and liking the equivalent of "family"
snapshots for my family and closer friends.
I tried *mostly* to ignore the implications of a Musk
privatization-takeover of Twitter during all the on-again off-again
period but/and now as it has become a "done deal" I feel more able
to engage in thinking about that (unable to avoid thinking about
that?). I thought I might de-activate/delete my nearly unused
account when I discovered that I had a renewed interest (morbid
fascination) in watching it spin out (decohere) or not from the
front row. I found myself looking for whether Musk's magic pixie
dust would somehow trigger a phase transition (likely there will be
one, but probably not the kind most of us hope for).
Earlier discussions on *this* forum touched on what would make for
a proper *metaverse* (not the one Zuckerberg is trying to create
from whole-cloth). My (very loose) engagement with the
Cardano/Catalyst work and interest in blockchain is motivated by
this as well.
Musk's attempts to characterize Twitter as a "town square" feels
very off-base in many ways:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-twitter-is-unlikely-to-become-the-digital-town-square-elon-musk-envisions/
What do "town squares" look like in "company towns"? And why
does most social media so often feel more like a rolling street-brawl?
I worked *peripherally* on a project at LANL trying to address the
possibilities/implications roughly 30 years ago:
http://library.sciencemadness.org/lanl1_a/lib-www/pubs/00285557.pdf
there were some good insights, but it was all so young and fresh
and raw at the same time...
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