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Fake Books

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Re: Fake Books

#261

Post by bluGill »

Aeolun wrote: post #250
jerf wrote: post #223

One of the things that has kept me out of the cryptocurrency space is that when their advocates discuss value, they speak in pure nonsense. A big part of that problem is that value is very difficult to discuss. On the one hand you have the classic goldbug that insists that gold has "intrinsic value", which is some sort of platonic ideal thing that gold simply ambiently has and defies any attempt to nail down what it…

While I fully agree with your point, the next time I see some collective delusion of a pyramid scheme I’ll buy in early. It doesn’t matter that there’s no logic to it, as long as enough people share the same delusion it becomes self-propagating.

How do you know if things are early though? Some go longer than others, so you can see some quack getting attention and buy in - just in time to be the last fool as everyone else realizes it is garbage. Or it can continue to go up - you have no way to know.

Re: Fake Books

#262

Post by root_axis »

garyrob wrote: post #206

I would like to mention the concept of "Soulbound Tokens" as a way of attacking this problem. This is the subject of a paper this year by Vitalik Buterin (founder of Ethereum), E. Glen Weyl (economist/researcher at Microsoft Research) and Puja Ohlhaver. Here's the abstract: """ Web3 today centers around expressing transferable, financialized assets, rather than encoding social relationships of trust. Yet many core ec…

I read the paper and I don't see how this solves anything that couldn't already be solved with basic public key cryptography. IMO this is just more self-aggrandizing cryptocurrency snake oil, dressed up in invented technobabble to make it sound sophisticated.

Re: Fake Books

#263

Post by namaria »

Aeolun wrote: post #250
jerf wrote: post #223

One of the things that has kept me out of the cryptocurrency space is that when their advocates discuss value, they speak in pure nonsense. A big part of that problem is that value is very difficult to discuss. On the one hand you have the classic goldbug that insists that gold has "intrinsic value", which is some sort of platonic ideal thing that gold simply ambiently has and defies any attempt to nail down what it…

While I fully agree with your point, the next time I see some collective delusion of a pyramid scheme I’ll buy in early. It doesn’t matter that there’s no logic to it, as long as enough people share the same delusion it becomes self-propagating.

That's no better then buying all lottery tickets you can get your hands on.

Re: Fake Books

#264

Post by namaria »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #253
jerf wrote: post #223

One of the things that has kept me out of the cryptocurrency space is that when their advocates discuss value, they speak in pure nonsense. A big part of that problem is that value is very difficult to discuss. On the one hand you have the classic goldbug that insists that gold has "intrinsic value", which is some sort of platonic ideal thing that gold simply ambiently has and defies any attempt to nail down what it…

> Value ... grounds out in human desires You wouldn't believe how rare it is for me to meet someone who agrees with this. I'm in leadership at a web3 company and I need to reiterate this point over and over again. NFTs don't have intrinsic value OR arbitrary value. ERC20s don't have intrinsic value OR arbitrary value. If it doesn't tie back into user psychology, it's not worth anything. Interesting historical note is…

'Intrinsic value' is an oxymoron. 'Value' is a social construct.

Re: Fake Books

#265

Post by _5uxp »

marcosdumay wrote: post #213
protontorpedo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure this comment was generated by a language model. If that's the case, congratulations.

At the 20th Century, when we got a book from some philosopher entirely written on this style, we didn't have to wonder that. Those were simpler times.

Yes and getting that or any book was so hard or impossible for the most of the worlds population. So much privilege, but let's compare wrongly that era to AI generated content era

Re: Fake Books

#266

Post by jjkaczor »

bluGill wrote: post #261
Aeolun wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I fully agree with your point, the next time I see some collective delusion of a pyramid scheme I’ll buy in early. It doesn’t matter that there’s no logic to it, as long as enough people share the same delusion it becomes self-propagating.

How do you know if things are early though? Some go longer than others, so you can see some quack getting attention and buy in - just in time to be the last fool as everyone else realizes it is garbage. Or it can continue to go up - you have no way to know.

For myself, personally - that's an easy metric...

By the time I hear about something, it's too late.

Re: Fake Books

#267

Post by garyrob »

root_axis wrote: post #262
garyrob wrote: post #206

I would like to mention the concept of "Soulbound Tokens" as a way of attacking this problem. This is the subject of a paper this year by Vitalik Buterin (founder of Ethereum), E. Glen Weyl (economist/researcher at Microsoft Research) and Puja Ohlhaver. Here's the abstract: """ Web3 today centers around expressing transferable, financialized assets, rather than encoding social relationships of trust. Yet many core ec…

I read the paper and I don't see how this solves anything that couldn't already be solved with basic public key cryptography. IMO this is just more self-aggrandizing cryptocurrency snake oil, dressed up in invented technobabble to make it sound sophisticated.

Couldn't disagree more. I'm not going to argue about it here though. I do suggest that anyone interested in the subject read the paper and judge for themselves. (I have zero connection to the Ethereum project other than running a node and having bought some Ether.)

Re: Fake Books

#268

Post by guerrilla »

jcynix wrote: post #260
guerrilla wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "energy crisis" and the upcoming winter, Why do you put that in quotes? > I've seen videos advertising magical electric heaters, which will "recycle" 85% of the energy used for heating and thus will save you lots of money. It's simple physics that warm air coming out at the front of such a device will be sucked in at its back again, but there's nothing to "recycle" here, to somehow save energy. You sure they couldn…

> Why do you put that in quotes? Because the "energy crisis" is actually a political crisis, i.e. the failure of governments to build enough alternate generators, like solar and wind power during the last decade or two. > You sure they couldn't be talking about a heat pump [...] I'm really sure, because the videos show people unpacking a small electrical heater after telling you that "a student" or "an engineer" deve…

> Because the "energy crisis" is actually a political crisis, i.e. the failure of governments to build enough alternate generators, like solar and wind power during the last decade or two.

Aha, I see. A bit late for that now though, so now it's an energy crisis. I wish it were seen as a political crisis but pretty much everyone here just blames Russia and there aren't many (if any in some countries) consequences...

> I'm really sure, because the videos show people unpacking a small electrical heater after telling you that "a student" or "an engineer" developed this glorious device in their spare time, ...

Amazing that this shit is legal...

Re: Fake Books

#269

Post by silvestrov »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #169
f311a wrote: post #63

Amazon is full of fake/generated/auto translated books in every category. Just search for any programming language and sort it by release date. I don't understand why they don't fix this problem. It's pretty easy to fix and all those sales don't generate a significant amount of revenue for Amazon considering the negative experience for clients. Such books are pretty easy to spot since the majority of reviews are writ…

Amazon is full of low-effort products in every category. If you search for certain consumer goods you'll get several different brand names for the same white-label product, for instance. And lots of people buy them! It's not just an easily-ignored spam problem… I really hope Amazon's sea of garbage devours Amazon before it destroys the remaining un-Amazon-ified online retailers through unfair competition.

It is the same problem with Facebook: does Mark Zuckerberg leave FB before it crashes (or accepts that The Metaverse is a complete failure).

Does Jeff Bezos change direction and drop the "everything store" strategy by realizing that most of everything is trash and he is destroying the Amazon brand?

To misquote him: your garbage is my opportunity.

He enables competition to use brands as a strategy: we make sure everything we sell is the best. If you shop at our place, you will not be wasting your time.

Re: Fake Books

#270

Post by TaylorAlexander »

glenstein wrote: post #152
coldtea wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article literally says Yes, and the parent literally generalizes this one-off observation, puts it in context, and gives examples and even a source with a deep dive on the issue.

I don't understand how you think this is responsive to the issue of fabrication. The article already considered the possibility of the human content farm and concluded it was unlikely on the basis of information that was completely fabricated. The fact that the commenter proceeded to generalize, show a link, etc is not responsive to that. A responsive answer would be along the lines of "well, a content farm might fab…

My rationale was that, before I had seen this very well produced video, I was not familiar with the way that content farms operated. The idea that words being fabricated means it must be GPT-3 seems spurious to me. A person in a huge hurry, with a poor grasp of the English language, could easily generate fabricated words.

The video I linked is extraordinary in its level of research and quality, and interesting on its own merits. If someone is not fully aware of the extent to which content farms squeeze out content, it’s easy to assume some weird prose is GPT-3. I felt the articles dismissal of the idea of a content farm was too quick, and perhaps they or the readers might not be familiar with how they operate. And so I provided a summary as well as a link to this very high quality investigative source.

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