Category: think
I used Blueprint serum on half my face for 6 months. Can you tell which side?
How the Mayor can quickly and unilaterally close the looming budget gap while making NYC a better city – without raising taxes
No new wealth tax, no massive property tax hike, no dependency on Albany or the Feds or even City Council. We can do it- and in the process we can make NYC more livable and efficient. All with a single the stroke of the new Mayor’s pen.
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The Hard Problem (of bitcoin)
All of the complexity around bitcoin makes it easy to lose sight of the singular question on which everything else about bitcoin depends: Where does bitcoin’s value come from?
Continue readingA pill that makes you sad and happy
Imagine a drug that makes you horribly nauseous and miserable for the first 59 minutes after you take it, but then makes you feel hedonistic bliss for a final 1 minute. The other effect of this drug is that during the those first 59 minutes, it blocks the transcription of long-term memories so that by the next day you only remember the final 1 minute.
- Assuming you did not know the full effect profile of this drug until after taking it the first time, would you expect yourself to take it a second time?
- Assuming you would decide not to take it a second time during the 12 hours while you still remember how horrible the first 59 minutes were, how would you prevent your future self who only remembers the bliss phase from taking the drug again?
- If you were King in the world where this drug existed, what policy measures (if any) would you enact to improve the welfare of your subjects’ interactions with this drug?
- If you were trapped on a deserted island with an inexhaustible supply of the drug and no way to prevent your future self from taking it each new day, would your subjective life be one of ecstasy or misery?
WTF Sonos?On the evil companies do and good people coming together to stand up to them
Sonos just announced that they are fucking their most loyal customers and forcing them to buy the newest models by bricking their existing equipment. According to Twitter.
Here is the real story about what Sonos-gate means for the future of technology and the human race…
A world without pain?
You can train yourself to not feel pain. Anyone can learn to do it in about 15 minutes. There are youtube videos. Continue reading
Porno for Pedophiles?
Thought experiment:
Assume someday the VR sex-machine experience gets so good that pedophiles would prefer to have a virtual encounter with a child than a real one.
Should the software that generates these experiences be illegal to create? Own? Use?
Thoughtful answers requested in the comments section.
FAQ
Q: Children are still harmed even with a VR only encounter.
A: Assume that all the characters in the VR simulation are completely computer generated and synthetic. If this is the case, then who is hurt- and how?
Q: Having access to VR porn would stoke pedophiles to action and create more victims.
A: In this thought experiment we are stipulating that the VR porn is preferable to real life and would supplant it for some people. This is not a necessarily hypothetical conceit.
Q: Why would the software be illegal? It is just 1’s and 0’s.
A: Things can get legally non-intuitive around this issue.
Q: You sick fuck.
A: I am not a pedophile. Instead, I am interested in thinking and talking about ways to potentially reduce or eliminate the harm that they do.
Stranded on a Deserted Isle with NitCoin
You and Nakimoto are stranded on a deserted island with nothing but your notebooks and pencils. Luckily you each have dual PhD’s in cryptography and macroeconomics, so everything is going to be OK – you will survive by your wits alone.
“A man walks into a bank….” (A Bitcoin parable)
A man walks to a bank with a $1 million check.
M: I’d like to cash this check, please!
Idea Dump 2018
As each year passes and my to-do lists get longer, I have to accept that I will die long before I will get to make and do everything I want to.
Here are some things that I probably will never get to, but maybe you will? Don’t let the crackpot-stream-of-consciousness-style throw you, I believe most of these ideas could actually be successful and profitable… with some work.
Let me know if you are truly interested and I will try to share any effort I’ve already invested to give you a head start….
