I was digging through the SomethingAwful archives and found my first essay on the attention economy, written on April 5th, 2011. At the time, Bitcoin had yet to experience it's first bubble and was still trading below a dollar, and Occupy Wall Street was still five months in the future. If you don't have access to the archives, the thread which prompted this first write up was titled "No More Bitchin: Let's actually create solutions to society's problems!" Despite my reputation on this forum, I'm not interested in pop speculative futurism or idle technoidealism. I don't think there's an easy technological fix for our many difficult problems. But I do think that our technological circumstances have a dramatic impact on our social, political, and economic organizations, and that we can design technologies to cultivate human communities that are healthy, stable, and cooperative. The political and economic infrastructure we have for managing collective human action was developed at a time when individual rational agency formed the basis of all political theory, and in a networked digital age we can do much better. An attention economy doesn't solve all the problems, but it provides tools for addressing problems that simply aren't available with the infrastructure we have available today. My discussion of the attention economy was aimed at discussing social organization at this level of abstraction, with the hopes that taking this networked perspective on social action would reveal some of the tools necessary for addressing our problems. .

In the three years and multiple threads since that initial post, I've done research into the dynamics and organization of complex systems and taught myself some of the math and theory necessary for making the idea explicit and communicable. And in that time the field of data science has grown astronomically, making a variety of tools and theoretical resources available for modelling and predicting the dynamics of complex networks. In general, the public discourse has become much more comfortable thinking about attention and network dynamics and its implications. Some of that discussion is gross hype and misrepresentation, but some of it is really giving us unprecedented pictures of our collective behavior at large scales. And for this reason, more people have been articulating proposals that look quite a lot like the attention economy I've been describing. I'm not saying this vindicates my theory, but it suggests a possible convergence in in the direction I've been pointing.

In any case, if I was going to make a new thread I didn't want to just vomit out some more impotent rhetoric. Instead, I wanted to give a specific, proposal of limited scope that can be addressed on is own merits independent of whatever reputation I've developed. So I wrote up a proposal for a new digital currency.

Strangecoin: the nonlinear currency

In this post I sketch a proposal for a digital currency that works unlike other *coins that have recently become available. I'm calling it Strangecoin, both to highlight its uniqueness as a currency and as a reference to the strange attractor, a special kind of nonlinear system.

What's unique about Strangecoin?

• Strangecoin transactions can be nonzero sum. A Strangecoin transaction might result in both parties having more Strangecoin.
  
• Strangecoin transactions can be one-sided and can be conducted entirely by only one party to the transaction.
  
• The rate of change of one's Strangecoin balance is a more important indicator of economic influence than the balance itself.
  
• Optimal investment strategy in Strangecoin aims to stabilize one's balance of Strangecoin.
  
• A universal account provides all users a basic Strangecoin income, effectively unlimited wealth, and direct feedback on the overall prosperity of the network.
  

I've only started thinking through the idea, and implementing it would take more technical expertise than I have alone. For instance, I'm not sure if Strangecoin can be implemented as an extension of the bitcoin protocol, or if some fundamentally new technology is required. If you know something about the technical details, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you might know how to implement something like this, I'd love to help you try.

But since I don't know of anything else that works like this, this proposal is mostly intended simply to put the idea out there, in the hopes of encouraging others to think in these directions.


Background and Motivation

If I give you a dollar for a burger, then I've lost a dollar and gained a burger, and you've gained a dollar and lost a burger. Assuming this was a fair trade (that dollars and burgers are of approximately equal value), then as a result of the transaction we've simply rearranged who has which good, and no additional value was created in the process. What I've lost you've gained and vice versa, so that the total value between us has not changed after the exchange is over.

In game theory, an exchange that results in all credits and debits balancing out across all players is called a zero sum game. Recording debits and credits works this way with every existing currency, including Dollars and Euros and all the traditional currencies, but also Bitcoin and other kinds of digital cyptocurrencies. If you want a currency to behave nonlinearly you need additional financial tools like debt and interest, or stocks and dividends, to describe how that money grows or shrinks over time as the result of our economic transactions.

Of course, when I give you a dollar for a burger that's not really a zero sum transaction, because otherwise we wouldn't be motivated to enter into the transaction in the first place. I give you a dollar because I want the burger more than I want the dollar, and if you accept the trade it's because you want the dollar more than you want the burger, so in a fair exchange we both feel like we've come out ahead. In other words, there is some additional value in our fair exchange that is not accounted for in the burgers and the dollars alone. But if our bookkeeping method only counts burgers and dollars, then it's not accounting for the value that accrues in our transactions.

In the proposal below, I'll describe Strangecoin as an method for keeping track of a nonzero sum game, where parties can enter into financial transactions that accrue value just by engaging in that transaction. In this way, Strangecoin is a model of the value that our complex economic relationships generate. The trick is to amplify the exchanged value of Strangecoin transactions relative to the interest of other parties who are not themselves involved in the transaction. If this seems counter-intuitive, a nonfinancial example might help: it's not unusual for two minor celebrities to achieve greater celebrity status upon entering into a romantic relationship. Although strictly speaking the romantic relationship is between the two celebrities, the general public interest in the celebrities results in more overall popularity in their union than either had on their own prior to the relationship.

As the example suggests, the dynamics of Strangecoin might be usefully thought of in terms of a "reputation system" rather than a strictly financial tool, even though the basic mechanics involve the regular method of exchanging currency for goods perceived by both parties to be of equal value. Because of the nonlinear relationships among Strangecoin users, each user effectively draws on a network of support in each economic transaction, coupling its activity to the successes (and failures) of the that network of activity. The result is a model of the complex interdependencies within a community of economic agents, and the dynamics by which those networks develop and decay. For this reason, Strangecoin might have implications for quantifying the role of individual choices and responsibility in the context of corporate action, and for resolving other difficult issues in the management and ethics of collective economic action.

I will say more about implications and consequences of Strangecoin at the end of the document. I turn now to a more detailed discussion of the Strangecoin protocol.

The Strangecoin network

The Strangecoin network is a directed graph with users as nodes and some time-dependent transactions as edges between them. Transactions describes how Strangecoin trade between users at each time step. Let S be our unit of Strangecoin, and let t be our basic unit of time.

A Strangecoin user is:

• An account balance B in S
  
• Income I in S/t, the sum of all incoming transactions.
  
• Expenses E in S/t, the sum of all outgoing transactions.
  
• So dB/dt = I - E
  
• An account balance cap C in S that represents the upper limit of Strangecoins in a user's balance.
  

Balance Penalties:

If B = C, then the user receives a penalty where income is forfeit until expenses reduce the balance below C. Income might gradually decay as B approaches C to postpone hitting the limit. Similarly, if B = 0, then the user receives a penalty where expenses are forfeit until income brings the balance above 0. Expenses might gradually decay as B approaches 0 to postpone hitting the limit. To avoid penalties, users must keep their balance 0 < B < C. In other words, users have an incentive to keep dB/dt near zero, so that total income balances with total expenses.

Transactions:

A transaction indicates some trade in Strangecoin over some duration of time between two Strangecoin users with distinct accounts. Transactions come in five types described below. User X can initiate a transaction with user Y by specifying a transaction type and a duration of time, and then fixing the specific parameters of that transaction. If X can initiate the transaction without the approval of Y, the transaction is one-sided. If the transaction type requires Y's approval for initiation, it is a two-sided transaction. Users cannot engage in transactions with themselves.

Payment is a two-sided transaction in unit time, or an immediate transfer of S from one balance to another in a single time step. Payment works exactly as you'd expect it to work from other currencies, and in this sense is the simplest of the five transaction types. If X pays Y a quantity p of S, then X subtracts p from their balance and deposits p in Y's balance. Payments are two-sided and requires approval from both sides, so initiate the transaction X specifies Y and p, and Y must approve.

Support is a one-sided transaction over some duration t. If X supports Y over t, then X contributes additional S to Y's income from X's balance, expressed as a proportion s of Y's income over t. X's support effectively amplifies Y's income. To initiate this transaction, X specifies Y, t, and the proportion s of Y's income that X will contribute as support. Since support is a one-sided transaction, Y does not need to approve of the support to receive the additional income.

Endorsement is a one-sided transaction over some duration t. If X endorses Y over t, then X contributes additional S to Y's outgoing expenses, expressed as a proportion e of Y's expenses over t. X's endorsement effectively amplifies the payouts of Y's expenses. To initiate the transaction, X specifies Y, t, and the proportion e of Y's expenses that X will contribute as endorsements. Since support is a one-sided transaction, Y does not need to approve of the endorsement or the additional expense, which is drawn entirely from X's account.

Coupling is a two-sided transaction over some duration t. If X and Y couple over t, then changes in the income and expenses of X over t (apart from this coupling) result in proportional changes to the income and expenses of Y, and vice versa. Coupling "binds the fate" of X and Y over t, so that any change in one results in change for both. To initiate the transaction, both X and Y must agree on a duration t, and may specify distinct proportions cx and cy for coupling which must be approved by the other. With approval, coupling can involve both positive and negative correlations between income and expenses of two users. If X and Y are positively coupled, then increases in X's income and expenses results in some proportional increase in Y's income and expenses. This additional income or expense are drawn from or deposited to The Universal Account, as described below.

Inhibition is a two-sided transaction over some duration t. If X inhibits Y over t, then X reduces the income or expenses of Y over t by some proportion i. By inhibiting Y, X effectively reduces the impact that Y has on the Strangecoin network by i over t by forfeiting that proportion of income and expense. To initiate the transaction, X specifies Y, t, and i, which must be approved by Y.

The Universal Account (TUA):

Although individual transactions may be nonzero sum as described above, the overall Strangecoin network is zerosum, and uses The Universal Account to balance the network. TUA is a universal account that is positively coupled with all other users. TUA approves of transactions only in the scenarios described below. All newly mined Strangecoins are deposited directly into TUA, with a coupling bonus to the miner. All users are positively coupled with TUA with cy = 0 so that all users effectively receive a basic income from TUA in proportion to TUA's balance. Users cannot support, endorse, or inhibit TUA.

X can make a payment to TUA at t only in the following situations:

• The have hit their account cap. All forfeit income is automatically deposited into TUA.
  
• X is coupled to Y at t, whose expenses have changed. Additional expenses from X (in proportion c_x to Y's expense change) are automatically deposited into TUA.
  
• X is inhibited at t. All forfeit income at t due to inhibition is automatically deposited into TUA.
  

TUA can make a payment only in the following situations:

• X receives income from coupling with TUA.
  
• X's account balance = 0 at t. Any additional transactions outgoing from X at t are drawn from TUA.
  
• X is coupled at t to Y whose income has changed. Additional income to X at t (in proportion cx to Y's income change) is drawn from TUA.
  
• X has income from an inhibited source Y whose balance is empty. The remaining balance of the transaction is drawn from TUA.
  

All transactions with TUA are bare in the sense that they are stripped of any of the modifiers that might normally amplify transactions with X. Basic income paid from TUA to all other users is in proportion to the total users on the network, and TUA's balance. In this way, the basic user income is also a measure of the general health of the overall network.

Discussion

The set of transactions described in the Strangecoin protocol motivate an incentive structure that is quite different from that of traditional currencies. I'll discuss some of these incentives and their impact below.

Most immediately, Strangecoin transactions are amplified by the network of economic relations employed by each party to the transaction. For this reason, the impact of a transaction isn't simply a matter of what is being traded and for how much. It also matters who you are trading with and their ongoing economic relations, which may have an important impact on the value of the transaction. This is the case even though Strangecoin are entirely fungible and Strangecoin transactions can be conducted pseudonymously.

Strangecoin is "backwards compatible" with traditional currencies, in that it supports the normal method of exchanging goods and services for some discrete quantity of coin in the form of a one-time payment. However, the other transaction types allow for much deeper forms of economic dependencies over time, and explicit representations of one's contribution to one's economic community. These provide incentives to engage in transactions other than payment, for instance by some duration of support or coupling. Securing large payments in a single time step may have very little impact on one's overall income over time, and therefore may be less desirable to users than securing time-extended transactions of other types. Large payments also threaten to bring users close to their balance penalties, providing more incentive to manage economic relationship through other types of transaction.

The most important incentive in the network is the incentive to balance one's account, so that dB/dt is close to 0, and overall income matches overall expenses. If dB/dt is far from zero, then balance penalties start to become an issue. If X is at the account maximum, any additional income over that balance is forfeit to TUA. In this case, user Y has no incentive to give additional support to X, since that additional support is simply forfeit to TUA. Similarly, if X is at the account minimum, any additional expenses are drawn from TUA free of any modifiers. In this situation, user Y has no incentive to endorse X, since that endorsement is again forfeit. In these cases, the transfer of Strangecoin is below its potential, so users are less likely to engage in these transactions; in other words, balance penalties shrink the amplification of one's support network. Users nearing a penalty cannot acquire or dump their balance through TUA, so must arrange transactions with other users to manage their account. There may be income penalties on large balance transfers to prevent users authorizing large payments in order to avoid balance penalties.

Because of these balance constraints, the optimal strategy for all users (including TUA) is to keep income and expenses near a 1:1 ratio. This might be handled in the traditional ways, through careful budgeting and account management. But this can also be handled by managing one's economic support network through transactions other than payment that will keep one's account balanced. If X has sufficiently large income, they must take on equally sizable expenses to avoid balance penalties. These expenses can come in the form of support and endorsements for other members of the network X wishes to support and endorse, effectively growing the network on the basis of their prosperity. The converse holds for users with large expenses. For this reason, prosperity in Strangecoin is measured by a user's throughput of Strangecoins over time, and not their raw quantity at any given time. Users with large throughput also occupy central hubs in the network, and their role and influence in the economic activity of the network is given quantifiable significance with Strangecoin, which can be used for making high-level policy decisions concerning the management and ethics of collective economic action.

Finally, balancing one's account requires, among other things, a consistent regular income from TUA. This gives all users an interest in the general health of TUA and of each user to maintain a relatively balanced account. In general, Strangecoin users seek out semi-persistent networks of support and coupling-- similar in some ways to investment, but investment in people-- and the overall stability of these networks account for the economic well-being of both users and the network as a whole. The incentive towards cooperative, stable, interdependent economic relationships takes place through an interface that bears an intuitive relation to traditional currencies, especially as it pertains to marketplaces of competition.

There's more work required to put flesh on the bones of this idea. There are many conversations to have about the dynamics of the network and the particular constraints it should operate within, both as a matter of practical operation and as a matter of sensible public policy.

I'd like to have those conversations with you.

I posted this on my blog yesterday, and it's received a fair bit of attention since then, largely driven by a fantastic discussion on Hacker News that gets a lot of the up-front reaction and criticism out of the way. There is also a less active thread on /r/BasicIncome that has a few interesting comments, and several comments on my blog. There's also been at least one scammer attempting to profit off the idea already.

The idea isn't complete and there are obvious problems that need to be worked out. But given the reaction I've been seeing, the idea seems to be genuinely novel (something that surprised me, given the insane activity in the bitcoin world), and seems to be stimulating people's thinking in some interesting directions. The proposal is already more successful than I would have anticipated. So I'm pretty interested to see what this thread might do with it.

dank_xiaopeng posted:

internet-driven commodification of images and ideas , media as amorphous solid: an ethereal quantity whose value can only be subjectively inferred by the eyeballs attracted or clicks stimulated. what was once a concrete essay or video or how-to or call to action is now transmogrified to formless Content. buzzfeed, upworthy and their ilk have little regard for what they publish, as long as they keep bringing in unique visitors.

those who piss and moan about the banality of clickbait miss the point entirely: provoking thought or engaging an audience were never the point. Content, to the Content-Packagers, is a phlogiston, not particularly valuable in and of itself but useful for the reactions it causes. ad clicks are the main goal here, but let’s not forget upworthy’s much-trumpeted ‘activist’ ethos: they claim to want to change the world with viral media.

dont be fooled: Content isnt ethereal, its a hideous rotting putrescence. Content is a saprophyte, a quivering slime radiating reeking tendrils in a billion directions, and it is starving. its cousin Ophiocordyceps unilateralis turns its ant hosts to automata, compelling the hapless victims to climb to strategically-located leaves before sending its fruiting bodies bursting from carapaces. Content is nowhere as crude. Content leaps, trailing mucus, from screen and speaker to opportunistically and aggressively parasitize the ear and eyeball. worming mycelia slither down cranial nerves to bathe the cortex in a glutinous colostrum of digested meaning.

like all fungi, Content is indiscriminate. Cat videos, protest, lists n lulz, cute babies, violent breaks with the order of things, all are engulfed, dissolved, lysed, enzymatically deconstructed, stripped of context and fed drippingly to the host, the milky exudates it secretes calculated to provoke a quantifiable response. bursts of fungoid dopamine-analogues and hormonal slime stimulate the host: temporary relief from ennui, fawning affection-responses when presented with images of kittens, smug sensations of liberal superiority. all the while Content slurping, compelling us to return and return to our screens, to click, to see, to watch, to share. And theres the key: Content doesn’t feed on the media it absorbs, Content consumes minds and shits profit. its musky toadstools, gravid with ad revenues and patterns of viewership, are carefully tended and harvested by corporations in musty, humid datacenters. horror, slime, and filth. the only cure is to smash your screens.

gyrofry posted:

8 Things You May Not Know About Queen Elizabeth II

1. She doesn’t have a passport.

Despite being history’s most widely traveled head of state—she has reportedly visited 116 countries during her 60-year reign—Elizabeth does not hold a passport. Since all British passports are issued in the queen’s name, she herself doesn’t need one. She also doesn’t require a driver’s license, though she has been known to take joyrides around her various estates in her Range Rover.
Queen Elizabeth II

2. She has two different birthdays.

The reigning British monarch was born Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of York on April 21, 1926. However, each Commonwealth country traditionally celebrates her birthday on a designated day in May or June. In the United Kingdom, for instance, it falls on the first, second or third Saturday in June. Britain has officially marked its sovereign’s birthday since 1748, when the event was merged with the annual “Trooping the Colour” ceremony and parade. Elizabeth spends her real birthday enjoying private festivities with her family.

3. She drove a truck during World War II.

After months of begging her father to let his heir pitch in, Elizabeth—then an 18-year-old princess—joined the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War II. Known as Second Subaltern Elizabeth Windsor, she donned a pair of coveralls and trained in London as a mechanic and military truck driver. The queen remains the only female member of the royal family to have entered the armed forces and is the only living head of state who served in World War II.

4. She paid for her wedding dress with ration coupons.

Princess Elizabeth married her third cousin Philip Mountbatten, formerly prince of Greece and Denmark, on November 20, 1947. Held during the postwar recovery years, their wedding was a relatively understated affair, at least compared to the lavish union of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in July 1981. With austerity measures still in effect, Elizabeth had to save up ration coupons to purchase the material for her wedding dress, an ivory satin gown designed by Norman Hartnell and encrusted with 10,000 white pearls.

5. She didn’t take her husband’s name.

Elizabeth’s father, George VI, was born into the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, but during World War I the family name was changed to Windsor amid anti-German sentiment. Similarly, her husband Prince Philip dropped his father’s Germanic surname, Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, and adopted that of his maternal grandparents, Mountbatten, during their engagement. But when Elizabeth ascended the throne, her mother and Prime Minister Winston Churchill did everything in their power to prevent the queen and her line from becoming the House of Mountbatten. They succeeded, but several years later Elizabeth proclaimed that some of her descendants would carry the name Mountbatten-Windsor—probably in an attempt to placate her fuming husband.

6. She sent an email in 1976.

On March 26, 1976, Queen Elizabeth sent her first email while taking part in a network technology demonstration at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, a research facility in Malvern, England. The message was transmitted over ARPANET, the forerunner of the modern Internet. She is considered the first head of state to have used electronic mail.

7. She was shot at by a teenager.

During her birthday celebration on June 13, 1981, shots rang out as Elizabeth rode her horse in a parade near Buckingham Palace. Marcus Sarjeant, a 17-year-old who idolized the assassins of John F. Kennedy and John Lennon, had fired six blank shots in the queen’s direction. Swiftly subdued by police, the teen would spend three years in a psychiatric prison. Elizabeth, meanwhile, merely calmed her startled horse and resumed her procession.

8. She once woke up to find a stalker in her bedroom.

On July 9, 1982, a 31-year-old psychiatric patient named Michael Fagan scaled a Buckingham Palace drainpipe and sauntered into Elizabeth’s chambers. The sleeping monarch awoke to find a strange man perched on the edge of her bed, dripping blood from where he had cut his hand while wandering the palace’s dark corridors. Initially unable to reach the police, Elizabeth engaged Fagan in conversation for at least 10 minutes, listening to him chat about his personal problems and relationship with his four children. Finally, a footman roused from his slumber seized the loquacious intruder. It turned out that Fagan, who was ordered to spend six months in a mental hospital, had also crept into the royal residence weeks earlier, making off with a bottle of Prince Charles’ white wine.

wow, one of the best posts I've read in a while, thanks for this. I know what I'm going to be talking about with my colleagues come Monday. I spent all last week chatting about the return of the Knights and Dames of the Order of Australia (thank you PM Abbott), and these top factoids are going to really pull me through the new week with a big smile on my face; long live the Queen, so many people have grown up and passed on under her noble and dignified reign.