Either you are incredibly naive or you want to help scammers take advantage of the technological ignorance of extremely poor people. I rather doubt you're an actual criminal, however. No sense in trying to rob someone who has nothing or the next closest thing. Like Willie Sutton said when asked why he robs banks: "Because that's where the money is." I think you're just naive.
From the point of view of someone in an extremely impoverished and undeveloped country, the most important thing would be converting some of the essential (but desperate) working time spent struggling to stay alive into investment time for the skills that might lead to a better life. Most of them can't even worry about time for recreation, though they sometimes do get some bits of recreational time when they have are prevented from spending the time on staying alive.
I'm NOT a Luddite, but... Which of course means I'm about to say something that will require a lot of clarification to avoid that accusation, eh?
I'm dubious that there is a legitimate need for cryptocurrency. I am NOT rejecting the broader idea of electronic currency. Apart from the convenience, which has some legitimate (though usually overrated) value, the special (narrow) thing about cryptocurrencies is the extra privacy that some people want. If using cryptocurrency makes you MORE vulnerable to intrusion into your privacy, then mission NOT accomplished. Even a YUGE FAIL, as #FatNixon would say. Of course you think you have a legitimate need for truly anonymous payments, but that's what all the criminals say, even if we stipulate that you, personally, aren't one.
Now for the big rub: Competition, as in there ain't any. There are an infinite number of possible cryptocurrencies that can be created, and no real value to any of them. There's slight prestige (which is supposed to have some value) attached to being the first one with some feature, but no way to prevent the creation of an infinite number of other cryptocurrencies that have that feature and any others you like.
That's the problem with infinity. Whatever value something might have, if you get to divide that value by infinity, you get nothing of real value. No one gets to carry an infinite wallet for the infinite sums you need to play that game.
The speculative value of cryptocurrencies is something completely different. The crucial problem here is actually best described as a Venn diagram. Some of those speculators were legitimate gamblers who just hoped to make a lot of easy money out of nothing, but there is an intersection with some actual criminals (especially tax evaders), and quite probably even including the thieves who ran off with the fake money that started this entire fiasco. Kind of hilarious if this extra bit of greed leads to their arrests, eh?
Now what about the LEGITIMATE use of personal information to build an EPR (Earned Public Reputation) that would help us deal with each other on fairer terms? Don't hold your breath, especially waiting for Slashdot to improve.
Or in ekronomic terms, how can we justify paying people to drive the third part of the time-based economy? I suppose I need to review the three parts again, eh?
Part 1: Essential working time for such things as food, clothing, and shelter. Not much of such advanced economies as Germany, Japan, and the US. (Yeah, I think the FAKE conservatives are lying about wanting to protect the farmers and coal miners.)
Part 2: Investment working time for such things as education, research, and new infrastructure. These things work to further reduce the essential time of the first part. In less advanced economies, this time also determine the competitiveness going forward.
Part 3: Recreation time, which is weird in many ways. For example, most recreational products are not even consumed when we spend time on them. Books, songs, and movies are still there for the next people. Recreational time can also expand without limit, but it has a precious double of creativity that remains highly limited. I would go so far as to say that most people don't even want to create new art, and of the people who think they do, most of them can't, at least not anything that really competes with our existing stockpiles...
In conclusion, I would describe the economists as fools producing extremely low forms of recreation. A few of them seem valuable insofar as they support or try to "justify" the church of corporate cancerism. We need to get back to the important things and realize that the less time we have left, the more important it is to use it well.
Not the jobs, not the profits, but the time that matters most of all. Remarkable how much mental confusion I was able to find in such a small article and short-lived discussion. Where to start? Where to start?
First of all, the technology remains morally neutral. The specific technologies of AI could be used for good purposes like giving us more satisfying and interesting jobs, or they could be used for bad purposes like helping corporate cancers grow bigger. I think we should focus on stopping the cancers first, though AI is NEVER going to be applied to that objective while the cancers are calling the shots.
Second, what matters is our time and how we get to spend it. If you consider advanced societies from the perspective of how the essential work gets done, we don't need to spend a lot of time farming, making clothing, or even building new houses. On average that's only a tiny part of the economic activity in leading countries like Germany, Japan, and (maybe) the US.
The real question is what we're going to do with the rest of our (humans') time. I think it's best considered in terms of investment time versus recreational time. There's a competitive advantage to investing more time in making the future better, but there are also good things about recreational time and most of us want more of it. I would go one step farther and say that some of our greatest human creations are actually produced to support the consumption side of recreation time WITHOUT focusing on the profits. We need to focus less on the money and more on the time.
Much more could be said, but this is Slashdot and this story is already half-dead (= halfway down the front page) and there weren't any good jokes to be found among the funny-moderated comments. Sad.
Yesterday's conclusion: The less time you have left, the more important it is to use it well.
Gee, I wonder if any of those AC comments raised any questions worth considering? Guess we'll never know, will we?
I guess I have a question for the ACs. Why? Your identity could scarcely be weaker than having an account on Slashdot, but why the whipped cream anonymity sauce on top?
As usual, I think about problems in terms of solutions these days. ACs should get a preface on their comments that will never be seen. First a warning, and then if they insist in commenting when they'll never be seen, the Slashdot server would preface their comment with something along the lines of "The AC was informed that the OP would not see this comment, so the following comment is not part of any sincere attempt at dialog."
Crypto-currency is just a gambling scam. I certainly regard it as a good reason to avoid any website, and they didn't need the bad press.
So let me focus on the solution I keep advocating: SELL ME THE SOLUTIONS. I'm sick and tired of all the problems. I want to do something to help SOLVE the problems.
The articles or videos about various problems should be followed by links to projects related to solutions for those problems. The journalism part could be supported directly with internal projects, or via tithes on the external projects.
I think you should have said more to earn the click-through, but he's a sharp cookie (and even answers his email in helpful and constructive ways), so you got my click. But you wouldn't have gotten my mod point, if'n I ever got one to give.
In his ever insightful way, he implicitly hit on all three of the applications in my initial (and longer) comment on this story.
Insofar as the google understands that knowledge is power, I'm only surprised that they decided to show their hand. Maybe Wikipedia is less naive and less harmless than I thought? The google perceives an actual threat to their Gawd Profit?
I've actually been considering this branch of technology in terms of specific applications, such as (1) Writing assistance to help people tell their hidden stories (in interesting ways, of course), (2) Email analysis for asymmetric celebrity email systems (as a dual of the spam problem), or (3) Aggregation of EPR (Earned Public Reputation) for such places as Wikipedia (and Slashdot), just to focus on the three that I keep banging my head on. Automatic digesting of knowledge for such purposes as Wikipedia articles is actually a more pragmatic branch with high relevance to the corporate cancers as they seek the elimination of their most serious cost: Paying the salaries of all those pesky human beings. Much better to harvest their knowledge and flush them away.
I better confess that yes, I do have a personal axe to grind, having been flushed by one of those large cancers. I still think I have some mental capacity to work, and even a desire to do so, but they can always spot my age with one glance at my resume. Won't even give me a chance to underbid the young whippersnappers. If it ain't the question of how well I've kept up with the technologies, then it's the belief the youngsters have fewer bad habits to unlearn plus the life expectation thing...
Ha ha! Last laugh's on them. The google can't harvest my abundant mistakes to learn anything from them. They were all erased before I turned in my last corporate computer. (Actually, most of my corporate career was fixing OTHER people's mistakes. With my terrible attitude, I was a natural for the work.)
Almost forgot one more laugh. The problem faced by the corporate cancers is fundamentally unsolvable. There is NO largest profit that will solve their desperate need for the infinitely large profit number. There's only the threat of slumping next quarter.
Again I want to express basic concurrence with this branch of the thread, but again I feel that witty brevity is missing too much of the insight. More verbosity at https://slashdot.org/comments...., but for this context I'll just say (1) If I did have a giveable mod point I probably wouldn't invest it here, (2) I wish there were more comments about solutions (and even though I only postscripted one possible solution), and (3) I wish Slashdot made it easier to find the people worth reading (where my now parenthesized solution suggestion is EPR (Earned Public Reputation as an enhanced version of karma).
P.S. The (3) is really about the poster with the sig about the Bill of Rights leaving the bill behind... I think the theme of human cannon fodder would be especially amusing in such contexts.
I feel like I've been first-posted, but I also feel you managed to hit most of the important points in your brief response. If I EVER saw a giveable mod point I'd probably give it to you?
Anyway, I think I mostly said the same stuff at more length in the comment I was composing as you more quickly hit the high points. I think (or hope?) I included a couple of other wrinkles worth considering: https://slashdot.org/comments....
I actually think this story is hilarious. Bill Gates basically has one claim to fame. He created one of the greatest of the corporate cancers. Made him rich, too.
Now the leading corporate cancers "are engaged in a great civil war" to see which corporate cancer shall swallow all of the others. Each of them seeks to create an AI sufficiently powerful to maximize profit to infinity and buy out and absorb all of the other corporate cancers. There is also a minor question as to whether the host (AKA human society) will die first. (My apologies to the ghost of Honest Abe.)
Bill Gates has one major claim to innovation. I think that Microsoft perfected the EULA. If you read it carefully, you will discover that you just signed up as cannon fodder. Nowadays you click past such contracts all the time for every sort of product. I think the key bit is the limitation of liability. Whatever goes wrong, whether its destruction of your personal information and identity due a software bug or a fatal self-driving car accident caused by the corporation's AI, you can't do anything about it. You already agreed you won't do anything to harm the profits of the corporation (AKA gigantic corporate cancer) whose license terms you accepted. Unread and with a click or a tear. (That's "tear" as in tearing open the shrinkwrap, not "tears" as in what you should be crying.)
Remember: "There is no gawd but Profit, and [put your favorite joke here]."
Why in gawd's name would ANY corporation's AI be a friend of ANY of the human cannon fodder?
(Answer: The AI might fake "friendship" as long as the calculations indicate profit will be increased.)
P.S. Sure would be nice if there were an honest governmental referee with a consumer protection agency of some sort and no concern about the unsolvable problem of maximizing profits to infinity. Eh?
P.P.S. I actually think there is a solution: A progressive tax on corporate profits based on market share. I also think there is almost no chance we can get there from here.
There is no asshole dimension in any version of EPR (Earned Public Reputation) that I can imagine. I can think of several dimensions where asshole-like behavior would be manifested. Most obvious is negative politeness. Probably negative on a "supportive" or "agreeable" dimension, too. Perhaps positive for "clarity" and "provocative" dimensions?
Of course the deeper problem that is only touched by the OP is that we'll never get agreement about what it means. However, I think that's fine within a well considered set of dimensions. You can set your filtering one way to block (AKA render invisible) the people who offend you too much, and I'd probably set mine differently.
One level deeper is how to provide the constructive feedback to the people whose rudeness has rendered them invisible. Something like a reminder along the lines of "Your current EPR is so negative that fewer than 10% of the readers of Slashdot will even see your comment. Perhaps you can tone down the rudeness a bit, since that's the largest contribution to your EPR?"
One more thing. I think the data should age over time. If you've become a nicer person, then it should start showing.
I think I agree with you about the randomness component of the success part, but not so much as regards innovation. The long-term average is for things to get better (though paid for in entropy dollars and time). It's just that from our short-term perspectives things do look rather random. To paraphrase MLK, the arc of progress is long, but it bends toward reality. (However I might be wrong believe that there is such a thing as reality?)
Changing paradigms is easy enough to do if you have the business experience to know better.
And that's why it happens all the time. Not.
Most people can't see the boxes they are trapped in and are therefore unlikely to get outside of it. Even worse, most of the businesses that try anything even slightly different fail. Serial wannabe innovators are actually surprisingly common, notwithstanding both those constraints. Successful serial innovators? Not so much.
My problem appears to be that I can't figure out what is supposed to be the box. I seem to have suffered some sort of zen breakdown or collapse, and everything is on top of everything else, but none of it matters much to me. The world will continue changing as it wishes and I don't even feel much reaction when my predictions or suggestions are "resolved" in either direction.
I think you [Wizardess] are talking to me, but I can't figure out where you think what you wrote is supposed to be related to what I wrote, especially when you introduced the word "fair" in some relationship to "best". It also seems that you may have changed your context and are making a different reference to the original article at the end of your comment, in which case your criticism or attack is going in some other direction.
You didn't ask for any clarification, but I will. Do you know what a "paradigm" is? Or perhaps you could clarify what you think I was talking about with "Real innovation"? Or perhaps you have an alternative definition for "best people" that is not related to mastery of any paradigm?
Real innovation involves changing paradigms, and every definition of "best people" is based on the mastery of those people based on existing paradigms. There is only a partial exemption for people who become famous for creating new paradigms to solve important problems, but they were NOT recognized as "best" until AFTERWARDS. More often, they spend most of their lives fighting against the old paradigms. (Any better sources than The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn? It's a classic, but old.)
Anecdotal evidence, but I spent many years supporting a highly prestigious research lab, and I didn't see much that I would regard as real innovation. Mostly a stream of minor refinements hammered into patents with the support of skilled lawyers and even though most of them should have failed on the obviousness test. I do NOT think it was a cultural thing, though I should acknowledge (and disclaim?) that the lab I supported was located in a country with a reputation for copying and improving rather than innovating...
Trivial example of a useful innovation that no one has apparently thought of yet: Why isn't there any Android app to turn off the sound for a period of time or on a regular schedule? At least I haven't been able to find one. I already know the answer as regards that research lab: Not likely to generate a patent.
I think it's too relativistic. Everyone draws the line differently, but in contrast I think it would be much easier to understand and agree on what a dimension like "polite" is and get meaningful ratings on that dimension. You might feel rudeness (AKA negative politeness) is really a major annoyance and want to weigh that dimension heavily, whereas I might prefer to grant more slack on that dimension (perhaps because I lack social grace).
Maybe another example would be more helpful. What does "off topic" mean? I think it could be broken down and divided into dimensions of "novel" (versus "redundant") and "relevant" (versus "irrelevant"). I might favor novel more than you do, but we might feel the same about the relevancy aspect. The irrelevant rating is actually one of the ones where I think the person who is being criticized should get a chance to explain the relevance. Sometimes the relevance of the most thought-provoking comments is not clear.
I think you have some confusion about the dimensional topic. The dimensions should represent orthogonal aspects of the comments and the sentiments towards them. Also the dimensions should be symmetric with the people who made the comments.
You raised another aspect with the scoring. I think it should be logarithmic with special handling for zero. I actually imagine it as a radar diagram with an axis for each dimension, but the axes are actually folded for positive and negative on each axis. Not sure if that's the best way to do it, but it's a starting point.
Read what I wrote. I'm sort of agreeing with you, but offering a constructive suggestion. Or at least a starting point for the search for a solution.
I do disagree with you new point, "This won't end well." I would say in response that the average trend has been up and things have gotten better, but there are fluctuations and we are in a jeopardy situation now. The oscillations may be too serious...
Is there a kernel of insight there? Hard to tell on so few words, but it doesn't matter since I never see a mod point of any sort.
You [postbigbang and the similar authors whose comments I've seen so far] didn't offer anything like a constructive suggestion. My basic suggestion (explained at more length below in my initial reactive comment on the story) is that the negative side should call for more effort. The negative sentiment should be less freely expressed than the positive to tilt the scales in favor of positive interactions. (Ditto earned public reputations.)
Slashdot Mirror
Either you are incredibly naive or you want to help scammers take advantage of the technological ignorance of extremely poor people. I rather doubt you're an actual criminal, however. No sense in trying to rob someone who has nothing or the next closest thing. Like Willie Sutton said when asked why he robs banks: "Because that's where the money is." I think you're just naive.
From the point of view of someone in an extremely impoverished and undeveloped country, the most important thing would be converting some of the essential (but desperate) working time spent struggling to stay alive into investment time for the skills that might lead to a better life. Most of them can't even worry about time for recreation, though they sometimes do get some bits of recreational time when they have are prevented from spending the time on staying alive.
I'm NOT a Luddite, but... Which of course means I'm about to say something that will require a lot of clarification to avoid that accusation, eh?
I'm dubious that there is a legitimate need for cryptocurrency. I am NOT rejecting the broader idea of electronic currency. Apart from the convenience, which has some legitimate (though usually overrated) value, the special (narrow) thing about cryptocurrencies is the extra privacy that some people want. If using cryptocurrency makes you MORE vulnerable to intrusion into your privacy, then mission NOT accomplished. Even a YUGE FAIL, as #FatNixon would say. Of course you think you have a legitimate need for truly anonymous payments, but that's what all the criminals say, even if we stipulate that you, personally, aren't one.
Now for the big rub: Competition, as in there ain't any. There are an infinite number of possible cryptocurrencies that can be created, and no real value to any of them. There's slight prestige (which is supposed to have some value) attached to being the first one with some feature, but no way to prevent the creation of an infinite number of other cryptocurrencies that have that feature and any others you like.
That's the problem with infinity. Whatever value something might have, if you get to divide that value by infinity, you get nothing of real value. No one gets to carry an infinite wallet for the infinite sums you need to play that game.
The speculative value of cryptocurrencies is something completely different. The crucial problem here is actually best described as a Venn diagram. Some of those speculators were legitimate gamblers who just hoped to make a lot of easy money out of nothing, but there is an intersection with some actual criminals (especially tax evaders), and quite probably even including the thieves who ran off with the fake money that started this entire fiasco. Kind of hilarious if this extra bit of greed leads to their arrests, eh?
Now what about the LEGITIMATE use of personal information to build an EPR (Earned Public Reputation) that would help us deal with each other on fairer terms? Don't hold your breath, especially waiting for Slashdot to improve.
Or in ekronomic terms, how can we justify paying people to drive the third part of the time-based economy? I suppose I need to review the three parts again, eh?
Part 1: Essential working time for such things as food, clothing, and shelter. Not much of such advanced economies as Germany, Japan, and the US. (Yeah, I think the FAKE conservatives are lying about wanting to protect the farmers and coal miners.)
Part 2: Investment working time for such things as education, research, and new infrastructure. These things work to further reduce the essential time of the first part. In less advanced economies, this time also determine the competitiveness going forward.
Part 3: Recreation time, which is weird in many ways. For example, most recreational products are not even consumed when we spend time on them. Books, songs, and movies are still there for the next people. Recreational time can also expand without limit, but it has a precious double of creativity that remains highly limited. I would go so far as to say that most people don't even want to create new art, and of the people who think they do, most of them can't, at least not anything that really competes with our existing stockpiles...
In conclusion, I would describe the economists as fools producing extremely low forms of recreation. A few of them seem valuable insofar as they support or try to "justify" the church of corporate cancerism. We need to get back to the important things and realize that the less time we have left, the more important it is to use it well.
Not the jobs, not the profits, but the time that matters most of all. Remarkable how much mental confusion I was able to find in such a small article and short-lived discussion. Where to start? Where to start?
First of all, the technology remains morally neutral. The specific technologies of AI could be used for good purposes like giving us more satisfying and interesting jobs, or they could be used for bad purposes like helping corporate cancers grow bigger. I think we should focus on stopping the cancers first, though AI is NEVER going to be applied to that objective while the cancers are calling the shots.
Second, what matters is our time and how we get to spend it. If you consider advanced societies from the perspective of how the essential work gets done, we don't need to spend a lot of time farming, making clothing, or even building new houses. On average that's only a tiny part of the economic activity in leading countries like Germany, Japan, and (maybe) the US.
The real question is what we're going to do with the rest of our (humans') time. I think it's best considered in terms of investment time versus recreational time. There's a competitive advantage to investing more time in making the future better, but there are also good things about recreational time and most of us want more of it. I would go one step farther and say that some of our greatest human creations are actually produced to support the consumption side of recreation time WITHOUT focusing on the profits. We need to focus less on the money and more on the time.
Much more could be said, but this is Slashdot and this story is already half-dead (= halfway down the front page) and there weren't any good jokes to be found among the funny-moderated comments. Sad.
Yesterday's conclusion: The less time you have left, the more important it is to use it well.
Gee, I wonder if any of those AC comments raised any questions worth considering? Guess we'll never know, will we?
I guess I have a question for the ACs. Why? Your identity could scarcely be weaker than having an account on Slashdot, but why the whipped cream anonymity sauce on top?
As usual, I think about problems in terms of solutions these days. ACs should get a preface on their comments that will never be seen. First a warning, and then if they insist in commenting when they'll never be seen, the Slashdot server would preface their comment with something along the lines of "The AC was informed that the OP would not see this comment, so the following comment is not part of any sincere attempt at dialog."
Crypto-currency is just a gambling scam. I certainly regard it as a good reason to avoid any website, and they didn't need the bad press.
So let me focus on the solution I keep advocating: SELL ME THE SOLUTIONS. I'm sick and tired of all the problems. I want to do something to help SOLVE the problems.
The articles or videos about various problems should be followed by links to projects related to solutions for those problems. The journalism part could be supported directly with internal projects, or via tithes on the external projects.
AtAJG, DAUPR.
I think you should have said more to earn the click-through, but he's a sharp cookie (and even answers his email in helpful and constructive ways), so you got my click. But you wouldn't have gotten my mod point, if'n I ever got one to give.
In his ever insightful way, he implicitly hit on all three of the applications in my initial (and longer) comment on this story.
Insofar as the google understands that knowledge is power, I'm only surprised that they decided to show their hand. Maybe Wikipedia is less naive and less harmless than I thought? The google perceives an actual threat to their Gawd Profit?
I've actually been considering this branch of technology in terms of specific applications, such as (1) Writing assistance to help people tell their hidden stories (in interesting ways, of course), (2) Email analysis for asymmetric celebrity email systems (as a dual of the spam problem), or (3) Aggregation of EPR (Earned Public Reputation) for such places as Wikipedia (and Slashdot), just to focus on the three that I keep banging my head on. Automatic digesting of knowledge for such purposes as Wikipedia articles is actually a more pragmatic branch with high relevance to the corporate cancers as they seek the elimination of their most serious cost: Paying the salaries of all those pesky human beings. Much better to harvest their knowledge and flush them away.
I better confess that yes, I do have a personal axe to grind, having been flushed by one of those large cancers. I still think I have some mental capacity to work, and even a desire to do so, but they can always spot my age with one glance at my resume. Won't even give me a chance to underbid the young whippersnappers. If it ain't the question of how well I've kept up with the technologies, then it's the belief the youngsters have fewer bad habits to unlearn plus the life expectation thing...
Ha ha! Last laugh's on them. The google can't harvest my abundant mistakes to learn anything from them. They were all erased before I turned in my last corporate computer. (Actually, most of my corporate career was fixing OTHER people's mistakes. With my terrible attitude, I was a natural for the work.)
Almost forgot one more laugh. The problem faced by the corporate cancers is fundamentally unsolvable. There is NO largest profit that will solve their desperate need for the infinitely large profit number. There's only the threat of slumping next quarter.
Again I want to express basic concurrence with this branch of the thread, but again I feel that witty brevity is missing too much of the insight. More verbosity at https://slashdot.org/comments...., but for this context I'll just say (1) If I did have a giveable mod point I probably wouldn't invest it here, (2) I wish there were more comments about solutions (and even though I only postscripted one possible solution), and (3) I wish Slashdot made it easier to find the people worth reading (where my now parenthesized solution suggestion is EPR (Earned Public Reputation as an enhanced version of karma).
P.S. The (3) is really about the poster with the sig about the Bill of Rights leaving the bill behind... I think the theme of human cannon fodder would be especially amusing in such contexts.
I feel like I've been first-posted, but I also feel you managed to hit most of the important points in your brief response. If I EVER saw a giveable mod point I'd probably give it to you?
Anyway, I think I mostly said the same stuff at more length in the comment I was composing as you more quickly hit the high points. I think (or hope?) I included a couple of other wrinkles worth considering: https://slashdot.org/comments....
I actually think this story is hilarious. Bill Gates basically has one claim to fame. He created one of the greatest of the corporate cancers. Made him rich, too.
Now the leading corporate cancers "are engaged in a great civil war" to see which corporate cancer shall swallow all of the others. Each of them seeks to create an AI sufficiently powerful to maximize profit to infinity and buy out and absorb all of the other corporate cancers. There is also a minor question as to whether the host (AKA human society) will die first. (My apologies to the ghost of Honest Abe.)
Bill Gates has one major claim to innovation. I think that Microsoft perfected the EULA. If you read it carefully, you will discover that you just signed up as cannon fodder. Nowadays you click past such contracts all the time for every sort of product. I think the key bit is the limitation of liability. Whatever goes wrong, whether its destruction of your personal information and identity due a software bug or a fatal self-driving car accident caused by the corporation's AI, you can't do anything about it. You already agreed you won't do anything to harm the profits of the corporation (AKA gigantic corporate cancer) whose license terms you accepted. Unread and with a click or a tear. (That's "tear" as in tearing open the shrinkwrap, not "tears" as in what you should be crying.)
Remember: "There is no gawd but Profit, and [put your favorite joke here]."
Why in gawd's name would ANY corporation's AI be a friend of ANY of the human cannon fodder?
(Answer: The AI might fake "friendship" as long as the calculations indicate profit will be increased.)
P.S. Sure would be nice if there were an honest governmental referee with a consumer protection agency of some sort and no concern about the unsolvable problem of maximizing profits to infinity. Eh?
P.P.S. I actually think there is a solution: A progressive tax on corporate profits based on market share. I also think there is almost no chance we can get there from here.
There is no asshole dimension in any version of EPR (Earned Public Reputation) that I can imagine. I can think of several dimensions where asshole-like behavior would be manifested. Most obvious is negative politeness. Probably negative on a "supportive" or "agreeable" dimension, too. Perhaps positive for "clarity" and "provocative" dimensions?
Of course the deeper problem that is only touched by the OP is that we'll never get agreement about what it means. However, I think that's fine within a well considered set of dimensions. You can set your filtering one way to block (AKA render invisible) the people who offend you too much, and I'd probably set mine differently.
One level deeper is how to provide the constructive feedback to the people whose rudeness has rendered them invisible. Something like a reminder along the lines of "Your current EPR is so negative that fewer than 10% of the readers of Slashdot will even see your comment. Perhaps you can tone down the rudeness a bit, since that's the largest contribution to your EPR?"
One more thing. I think the data should age over time. If you've become a nicer person, then it should start showing.
Z^-4
If you have something to say, then say it and I'll consider whether or not a link is worth following.
If you have nothing to say, then perhaps you should say nothing.
For now, I'm dismissing you as a probable troll who wants to be fed. Not worth an actual click.
Z^-3
Z^-2
I think I agree with you about the randomness component of the success part, but not so much as regards innovation. The long-term average is for things to get better (though paid for in entropy dollars and time). It's just that from our short-term perspectives things do look rather random. To paraphrase MLK, the arc of progress is long, but it bends toward reality. (However I might be wrong believe that there is such a thing as reality?)
Changing paradigms is easy enough to do if you have the business experience to know better.
And that's why it happens all the time. Not.
Most people can't see the boxes they are trapped in and are therefore unlikely to get outside of it. Even worse, most of the businesses that try anything even slightly different fail. Serial wannabe innovators are actually surprisingly common, notwithstanding both those constraints. Successful serial innovators? Not so much.
My problem appears to be that I can't figure out what is supposed to be the box. I seem to have suffered some sort of zen breakdown or collapse, and everything is on top of everything else, but none of it matters much to me. The world will continue changing as it wishes and I don't even feel much reaction when my predictions or suggestions are "resolved" in either direction.
I think you [Wizardess] are talking to me, but I can't figure out where you think what you wrote is supposed to be related to what I wrote, especially when you introduced the word "fair" in some relationship to "best". It also seems that you may have changed your context and are making a different reference to the original article at the end of your comment, in which case your criticism or attack is going in some other direction.
You didn't ask for any clarification, but I will. Do you know what a "paradigm" is? Or perhaps you could clarify what you think I was talking about with "Real innovation"? Or perhaps you have an alternative definition for "best people" that is not related to mastery of any paradigm?
Real innovation involves changing paradigms, and every definition of "best people" is based on the mastery of those people based on existing paradigms. There is only a partial exemption for people who become famous for creating new paradigms to solve important problems, but they were NOT recognized as "best" until AFTERWARDS. More often, they spend most of their lives fighting against the old paradigms. (Any better sources than The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn? It's a classic, but old.)
Anecdotal evidence, but I spent many years supporting a highly prestigious research lab, and I didn't see much that I would regard as real innovation. Mostly a stream of minor refinements hammered into patents with the support of skilled lawyers and even though most of them should have failed on the obviousness test. I do NOT think it was a cultural thing, though I should acknowledge (and disclaim?) that the lab I supported was located in a country with a reputation for copying and improving rather than innovating...
Trivial example of a useful innovation that no one has apparently thought of yet: Why isn't there any Android app to turn off the sound for a period of time or on a regular schedule? At least I haven't been able to find one. I already know the answer as regards that research lab: Not likely to generate a patent.
Z^-1
I think it's too relativistic. Everyone draws the line differently, but in contrast I think it would be much easier to understand and agree on what a dimension like "polite" is and get meaningful ratings on that dimension. You might feel rudeness (AKA negative politeness) is really a major annoyance and want to weigh that dimension heavily, whereas I might prefer to grant more slack on that dimension (perhaps because I lack social grace).
Maybe another example would be more helpful. What does "off topic" mean? I think it could be broken down and divided into dimensions of "novel" (versus "redundant") and "relevant" (versus "irrelevant"). I might favor novel more than you do, but we might feel the same about the relevancy aspect. The irrelevant rating is actually one of the ones where I think the person who is being criticized should get a chance to explain the relevance. Sometimes the relevance of the most thought-provoking comments is not clear.
I think you have some confusion about the dimensional topic. The dimensions should represent orthogonal aspects of the comments and the sentiments towards them. Also the dimensions should be symmetric with the people who made the comments.
You raised another aspect with the scoring. I think it should be logarithmic with special handling for zero. I actually imagine it as a radar diagram with an axis for each dimension, but the axes are actually folded for positive and negative on each axis. Not sure if that's the best way to do it, but it's a starting point.
Read what I wrote. I'm sort of agreeing with you, but offering a constructive suggestion. Or at least a starting point for the search for a solution.
I do disagree with you new point, "This won't end well." I would say in response that the average trend has been up and things have gotten better, but there are fluctuations and we are in a jeopardy situation now. The oscillations may be too serious...
Is there a kernel of insight there? Hard to tell on so few words, but it doesn't matter since I never see a mod point of any sort.
You [postbigbang and the similar authors whose comments I've seen so far] didn't offer anything like a constructive suggestion. My basic suggestion (explained at more length below in my initial reactive comment on the story) is that the negative side should call for more effort. The negative sentiment should be less freely expressed than the positive to tilt the scales in favor of positive interactions. (Ditto earned public reputations.)