I would really like to hear more about this topic. I am actually trying something entrepreneur-ish right now (see my post on LifeTracking). I want to help people, but I also want to make money, but not in a way that also damages/hurts people. I was going to put ads in my program, but then I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I personally hate ads and I wouldn’t want to push them onto anyone.
You’d like to hear more? According to all the down votes there aren’t many like you.
Unfortunately you won’t like what I have to say either, I think. I hate your life tracking idea. Too many attempts to maintain my weight by calorie counting and weighing my food. Even when I was successful it destroyed my motivation and killed my intelligence. I believe many overweight people are really eating and eating because there are not enough vitamins and other nutrients in their food, especially vitamin D.
I also hate the fact that I up voted the GP when his “save the world” idea, using money and mathematics is total crap. As stupid as Kaj-Sotala’s career post. How can academia save the world when it is the root of corruption? Any one succeeding in such an environment is at most an idiot savant, not smart or anything, it doesn’t matter how much math they know.
I like the idea that you want to avoid ads because they damage people. But what is worse is they damage your message, by showing you to affiliate with corruption. You still want to make some money even though the money flow and supply is almost totally controlled by evil banks and corporations.
What to do if the fight is so hard? For one thing, everything helps. I almost deleted my post here because of the downvotes. Now I know there is at least a little controversy. So I’ll try and give some ideas.
My main idea is acquiring independence. Just like Wikipedia freed our knowledge from commercial and academic lock in, Wikileaks and other such organizations are now freeing our news and information sources. Next we need to free ourselves from commercial manufacturing, for example by having three D printers in our garden sheds. Another form of independence would be freeing the physical basis of Internet itself by organizing ourselves into wireless mesh networks. Most handhelds are now physically capable of functioning as network nodes that relay signals to other handhelds. If you would write an app for that it would help.
Myself, I am interested in freeing the world from commercial energy providers by trying to get myself off the grid, using solar energy or wind energy or by finding some other small scale energy generating technology. The fact that I haven’t been able to do so yet doesn’t change the path I am planning to take.
What we have to do is nothing less than to rebuild the word from the ground up, using open source and small scale user controlled technology. We even have to invent our own money system. It feels a little like implementing a computer language in itself, like the python pypy project. Except that the new world is not controlled by the corrupt entities of commerce, academia and government that control it now. Luckily, I think it is possible to do this step by step.
So let the downvotes begin. Is there a way to delete this account in case I get fed up again with the downvotes and want to protect myself against further misguided self damaging attempts to help you ungrateful and hostile testosteron driven fools?
By the way, EY has turned into a dictator. Or maybe he always was one.
So let the downvotes begin. Is there a way to delete this account in case I get fed up again with the downvotes and want to protect myself against further misguided self damaging attempts to help you ungrateful and hostile testosteron driven fools?
Why self-damaging? Your brain may be enclined to tell you that losing karma on a website is “bad for you”, but don’t believe it.
Also, your comments are a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy—complaints about how “my comment will be downvoted for failing to comform to groupthink!” are annoying.
(and geez, “testosteron driven fools”? We’re a bunch of nerds! Reading Harry Potter fanfiction! And using gender-neutral pronouns!)
So all my comments (and those of the people replying to me too!) are now beneath a visibility threshold. Contrary to popular opinion I believe this reflects badly on this site, not on me.
Even you don’t react to my content, only to my attitude.
We’re now both invisible because a few people prevent all others from seeing us.
Neither my comment nor Emile’s is below the threshold. Check your settings. If you want to see bad/”controversial” comments (I put those in quotes because I believe LW is actually pretty good an not down-voting controversial statements. I myself have been down-voted many times (given my # of comments) and each time it has been for a good reason) you can adjust your threshold or just not hide those comments altogether.
I think you are being down-voted because you throw out broad statements without any support. I’ve heard that it actually helps people to track exactly how much they eat and that fact alone usually causes them to eat less. Who is right? Neither of us until we show some concrete evidence. I am citing this interview. What are your sources?
Though to be honest, LifeTracking app is a lot more than just a weight tracker and I would hate for people to think about it only in those terms. You can track anything with it.
“Academia is the source of corruption”? “Any one succeeding in such an environment is at most an idiot savant”? “The money flow and supply is almost totally controlled by evil banks and corporations”? Those are all very very heavy statements and, as far as I can tell, not at all obvious. Would do you have to support them?
I understand your want to be self-contained, self-sustaining, and independent, but you will spend most of your life trying to achieve that without accomplishing much else. It’s ok to rely on other people, on tools, even on corporations, you just have to understand and accept the costs. And many times those costs are very reasonable for what you are getting out of it. Starting from scratch is nice to imagine, but if you’ve done programming, you’ll understand that in the end you almost always end up in the same sort of mess you tried leaving. To sustain any kind of technology you need to rely on entities outside yourself and they will always have an option of cheating you. Punish the cheaters, reward the cooperators. Iterated prisoner’s dilemma with tit-for-tat strategy.
Also, if you are interested in “currency from ground up” check out BitCoin.
I would really like to hear more about this topic. I am actually trying something entrepreneur-ish right now (see my post on LifeTracking). I want to help people, but I also want to make money, but not in a way that also damages/hurts people. I was going to put ads in my program, but then I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I personally hate ads and I wouldn’t want to push them onto anyone.
You’d like to hear more? According to all the down votes there aren’t many like you.
Unfortunately you won’t like what I have to say either, I think. I hate your life tracking idea. Too many attempts to maintain my weight by calorie counting and weighing my food. Even when I was successful it destroyed my motivation and killed my intelligence. I believe many overweight people are really eating and eating because there are not enough vitamins and other nutrients in their food, especially vitamin D.
I also hate the fact that I up voted the GP when his “save the world” idea, using money and mathematics is total crap. As stupid as Kaj-Sotala’s career post. How can academia save the world when it is the root of corruption? Any one succeeding in such an environment is at most an idiot savant, not smart or anything, it doesn’t matter how much math they know.
I like the idea that you want to avoid ads because they damage people. But what is worse is they damage your message, by showing you to affiliate with corruption. You still want to make some money even though the money flow and supply is almost totally controlled by evil banks and corporations.
What to do if the fight is so hard? For one thing, everything helps. I almost deleted my post here because of the downvotes. Now I know there is at least a little controversy. So I’ll try and give some ideas.
My main idea is acquiring independence. Just like Wikipedia freed our knowledge from commercial and academic lock in, Wikileaks and other such organizations are now freeing our news and information sources. Next we need to free ourselves from commercial manufacturing, for example by having three D printers in our garden sheds. Another form of independence would be freeing the physical basis of Internet itself by organizing ourselves into wireless mesh networks. Most handhelds are now physically capable of functioning as network nodes that relay signals to other handhelds. If you would write an app for that it would help.
Myself, I am interested in freeing the world from commercial energy providers by trying to get myself off the grid, using solar energy or wind energy or by finding some other small scale energy generating technology. The fact that I haven’t been able to do so yet doesn’t change the path I am planning to take.
What we have to do is nothing less than to rebuild the word from the ground up, using open source and small scale user controlled technology. We even have to invent our own money system. It feels a little like implementing a computer language in itself, like the python pypy project. Except that the new world is not controlled by the corrupt entities of commerce, academia and government that control it now. Luckily, I think it is possible to do this step by step.
So let the downvotes begin. Is there a way to delete this account in case I get fed up again with the downvotes and want to protect myself against further misguided self damaging attempts to help you ungrateful and hostile testosteron driven fools?
By the way, EY has turned into a dictator. Or maybe he always was one.
Why self-damaging? Your brain may be enclined to tell you that losing karma on a website is “bad for you”, but don’t believe it.
Also, your comments are a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy—complaints about how “my comment will be downvoted for failing to comform to groupthink!” are annoying.
(and geez, “testosteron driven fools”? We’re a bunch of nerds! Reading Harry Potter fanfiction! And using gender-neutral pronouns!)
So all my comments (and those of the people replying to me too!) are now beneath a visibility threshold. Contrary to popular opinion I believe this reflects badly on this site, not on me.
Even you don’t react to my content, only to my attitude.
We’re now both invisible because a few people prevent all others from seeing us.
“testosteron driven fools”?
QED.
Neither my comment nor Emile’s is below the threshold. Check your settings. If you want to see bad/”controversial” comments (I put those in quotes because I believe LW is actually pretty good an not down-voting controversial statements. I myself have been down-voted many times (given my # of comments) and each time it has been for a good reason) you can adjust your threshold or just not hide those comments altogether.
I think you are being down-voted because you throw out broad statements without any support. I’ve heard that it actually helps people to track exactly how much they eat and that fact alone usually causes them to eat less. Who is right? Neither of us until we show some concrete evidence. I am citing this interview. What are your sources? Though to be honest, LifeTracking app is a lot more than just a weight tracker and I would hate for people to think about it only in those terms. You can track anything with it.
“Academia is the source of corruption”? “Any one succeeding in such an environment is at most an idiot savant”? “The money flow and supply is almost totally controlled by evil banks and corporations”? Those are all very very heavy statements and, as far as I can tell, not at all obvious. Would do you have to support them?
I understand your want to be self-contained, self-sustaining, and independent, but you will spend most of your life trying to achieve that without accomplishing much else. It’s ok to rely on other people, on tools, even on corporations, you just have to understand and accept the costs. And many times those costs are very reasonable for what you are getting out of it. Starting from scratch is nice to imagine, but if you’ve done programming, you’ll understand that in the end you almost always end up in the same sort of mess you tried leaving. To sustain any kind of technology you need to rely on entities outside yourself and they will always have an option of cheating you. Punish the cheaters, reward the cooperators. Iterated prisoner’s dilemma with tit-for-tat strategy.
Also, if you are interested in “currency from ground up” check out BitCoin.