243400+ entries in 0.088s
mircea_popescu: voldemort jacking off by himself to visions of a destroyed enemy is not unlike harry potter "studying magic really hard".
mircea_popescu: b) agency means growth. you can recast any actual situation into something that's a personal experience, and vice-versa. this is a major power.
mircea_popescu: anyway, some comments in the general, for the aspiring writer : a) the most important weapon in the quiver of the scammer, which is what all fiction is, is misdirection. you were being misdirected into thinking harry potter should have agency by all the insistence on how he doesn't. (look up chekov's gun, while at it). the correct solution of a problem of agency is to attack the agent.
mircea_popescu: i never read the damned books, but the challenge is interesting.
mircea_popescu: for the record, i just started writing a solution to that harry potter thing.
mircea_popescu: approximately the life plan of a sexually worthless, narcissistically superlative 15 yo priss.
mircea_popescu: this is pretty much the entire story of the us : let's pay everyone pretend money so they pretend we're important enough to invent money.
mircea_popescu: ;;later tell gabriel_laddel argentina has a fixation on electing newspaper men. mitre, frondizi, etc.
mircea_popescu: i could scarcely conceive of an experiment to more convincingly verify the "our audience is entirely worthless" theory. it's verified alright.
mircea_popescu: then idiot usians had debates about the true dress and the biological causes of not seeing it right
mircea_popescu: they created permanent sessions for users, showed some a dress like so, others a dress like something else
mircea_popescu: so fucking transparent by now. you seen the buzzfeed "great idea" ?
mircea_popescu: anyway, this is a great convo but bed's better, so! tomorrow.
mircea_popescu: "if you're willing to pay for ten million of these, i can prove to you that in any conceivable situation no less than 3 will be useful to your purpose"
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i think what was being contemplated was more akin to a synthetic amoeba than a mechanical sheep.
mircea_popescu: afaik the woman's idea was "hey, what if we made robots capable of altering their own geometry, that way they won't have to be pre-programmed"
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes btw, daniela rus should be right up your alley.
mircea_popescu: MUCH better than the buffett out. "i leave my money to bil lgates"
mircea_popescu: but now that i did look, it seems clearly that the thing works.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yup. which is why i had a vague positive idea about it. never bothered looking.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform btw, what's the objection to macarthur prizes ?
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes nah merely reference to a discussion in logs a few days ago
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform you didn't end up beaten as a result of this ?
mircea_popescu: gabriel_laddel thgat the adults are not going ot be happy.
mircea_popescu: da fuck are some kids gonna suffer from talking to adults ?
mircea_popescu: omg you buncha antisocial haters. you can't have a mentor or anything ?
mircea_popescu: best way to get a bright kid killed is by giving him ten bricks of benjamins.
mircea_popescu: ah, i a) didn't actually need the money ; b) wasn't really about the money per se anyway
mircea_popescu was a recipient of something vaguely similar at a similar age.
mircea_popescu: "Fifty-eight organizations and startups have been founded by fellows, employing over 200 people, and creating new technologies that are being deployed around the world."