maybe—but the aesthetic message I read here is “ponzi schemes are good”. While the aesthetic message is not the same as the algorithmic message, I’d like to see edits that make this clearly aesthetically and algorithmically a guide to scam resistance, rather than a guide that can aid either scammers or scam-preventers approximately equally. Aesthetics are not as important, but I do think it’s ideal for the presented aesthetic of a post to clearly communicate the same thing as the algorithmic form.
I agree that they should be explicit. Can you clarify what you mean by “cooked”? aesthetic flavoring certainly is only labeling, and the thing that actually matters is what recommendation the overall network of humanity can come to partial consensus about.
Alignment with a particular worldview. If every cake recipe needs to be anti-switcherland to be “proper” there are spurious connections in addition to the core content. So an arrangement where you can write a cake recipe without taking a pro or con stance on switcherland has information in more modular form.
So I would like them in separate bits. This is a cake recipe and cake recipes are important because that is how we make sugar demand exceed fat demand so our local farmers have a livelihood instead of the neighbouring state. This is a cake recipe and cakes make people fat and unhealthy.
The contexting information might be more significant than the nominal content but I don’t want to guess at implicit meanings.
Isn’t that pretty obvious at this point, though? Like how saying that mixing amphetamine with chocolate is a very effective way of boosting the endurance of soldiers isn’t an endorsement of actually doing it? I suppose this is yet another instance of Poe’s law. Also a matter of taste—I personally value this kind of juxtaposition of aesthetic and algorithmic forms.
The following bit seems to be quite explicitly negative:
Like many old-school Ponzi schemes, Bitcoin does not produce any surplus; it is a fundamentally unproductive asset (in fact, Bitcoin produces negative value because proof of work consumes substantial hardware and energy). Like Sarah Howe’s Ladies’ Deposit Company, Bitcoin can only make some people rich at the expense of others.
hmm. perhaps. I think I disagree that the algorithmic content in this post even casts judgement; I would be looking for a guide to human netcode that may improve scam resistance. perhaps that simply needs to be another post.
It’s a concerning aesthetic assertion, indeed. One could imagine if it said “You can make a lot of money with ponzi schemes! Here’s how” and then proceeded to describe how people can make money by ensuring that nobody can pull off a ponzi scheme, for example, which would be a subversion of aesthetic by describing algorithmic resistance to the scam, by describing human network behavior that, if implemented, reduces the possibility of scam success. This post does not appear to me to do that either.
edit: there are some warnings that should, in principle, warn a scammer that they should always expect to fail, but I suspect would not:
Some event causes a sufficiently large group of depositors to withdraw their money all at the same time. The longer the Ponzi lasts and the higher the interest rate, the easier it is for such a run to cause insolvency.
The Ponzi runs out of money and is forced to halt withdrawals. The fraud is revealed for all to see.
maybe—but the aesthetic message I read here is “ponzi schemes are good”. While the aesthetic message is not the same as the algorithmic message, I’d like to see edits that make this clearly aesthetically and algorithmically a guide to scam resistance, rather than a guide that can aid either scammers or scam-preventers approximately equally. Aesthetics are not as important, but I do think it’s ideal for the presented aesthetic of a post to clearly communicate the same thing as the algorithmic form.
I would encourage such attitudes to be expicit and separate rather than content being “cooked the right way”
I agree that they should be explicit. Can you clarify what you mean by “cooked”? aesthetic flavoring certainly is only labeling, and the thing that actually matters is what recommendation the overall network of humanity can come to partial consensus about.
Alignment with a particular worldview. If every cake recipe needs to be anti-switcherland to be “proper” there are spurious connections in addition to the core content. So an arrangement where you can write a cake recipe without taking a pro or con stance on switcherland has information in more modular form.
So I would like them in separate bits. This is a cake recipe and cake recipes are important because that is how we make sugar demand exceed fat demand so our local farmers have a livelihood instead of the neighbouring state. This is a cake recipe and cakes make people fat and unhealthy.
The contexting information might be more significant than the nominal content but I don’t want to guess at implicit meanings.
Isn’t that pretty obvious at this point, though? Like how saying that mixing amphetamine with chocolate is a very effective way of boosting the endurance of soldiers isn’t an endorsement of actually doing it? I suppose this is yet another instance of Poe’s law. Also a matter of taste—I personally value this kind of juxtaposition of aesthetic and algorithmic forms.
The following bit seems to be quite explicitly negative:
hmm. perhaps. I think I disagree that the algorithmic content in this post even casts judgement; I would be looking for a guide to human netcode that may improve scam resistance. perhaps that simply needs to be another post.
My hope is to make this the first in a series on crypto. So yes, I will write about “scam resistance” in the future.
I mean, it’s not just subtext. The title of the post implies the goodness of Ponzi schemes (for those with good timing).
It’s a concerning aesthetic assertion, indeed. One could imagine if it said “You can make a lot of money with ponzi schemes! Here’s how” and then proceeded to describe how people can make money by ensuring that nobody can pull off a ponzi scheme, for example, which would be a subversion of aesthetic by describing algorithmic resistance to the scam, by describing human network behavior that, if implemented, reduces the possibility of scam success. This post does not appear to me to do that either.
edit: there are some warnings that should, in principle, warn a scammer that they should always expect to fail, but I suspect would not: