greatwave1

Saquon's no-look hurdle alone produced more practical value than 95% of ZIRP-era startups

Hooke and Newton did spend a considerable amount of time outside and socializing with others lol

Sure, I'm not disputing each social media company has the ability to alter public discourse.

My whole point is that there are literally billions of entities (everyone on Earth with an internet connection) who also have the ability to alter public discourse at scale. Hence why it's a vague boogeyman... the phrase "alter the mindset of a population" could be used to describe anything from a Orwellian propaganda machine to a Mr. Beast video.

In the 1990's, you could've claimed "Tetris is a software product developed by a geopolitical competitor (Russia) that has the capability to alter the mindset of the population" and you would've been right, but it would've been a silly thing to get worked up over.

Yes at scale. There are individuals who run social media accounts that reach hundreds of millions of people every month.

You can amass more reach and influence than many of the biggest TV stations / newspapers of the previous generation with nothing more than an internet connection.

"alter the mindset of the population" is such a vague boogeyman. Literally anyone with an internet connection has the capability to "alter the mindset of the population".

Lol just because everything has risks and rewards doesn't mean that the risk/reward profile is the same for everything, and doesn't change the fact that most crypto trading is closer to gambling than it is to investing

What "managed decline"? The U.S. is arguably as strong as its ever been, and China's economy has been crashing recently.

The implications in this thread that US citizens are soon going to be running for their lives from foreign threats seem incredibly paranoid -- the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a ZeroHedge or InfoWars comment section, not on this forum.

Autotune and pitch correction are not the same thing. The majority of recent pop songs don't have a noticeable electronic vocal control in the way that the parent comment is describing.

The autotuned vocal style generally peaked in popularity a couple decades ago, and is much less common now (with many of the current top pop artists opting for more organic vocals).

Because people want one thing.

The one officially-blessed Taylor Swift album. The one version of Beethoven's Fifth.

Millions of people have bought vinyls/CDs/MP3 replicas of these albums. These are not scarce works. The demand is not for the scarce original (who even knows what that means when it comes to music), it's for a faithful recreation of the artist's work and creative output.

On top of that, nobody who listens to these albums really just wants one album... they want to listen to music that moves them. Taylor Swift fans will listen to other albums that she puts out, and music from other artists that they enjoy. When Beethoven released his 6th symphony, it didn't make his 5th any less valuable to those who enjoyed it.

Because for most people, the value of art comes from its intrinsic beauty, not its "scarcity". Unless if you're someone whose only attachment to art is as a vehicle for financial speculation, which is sad but unfortunately common in NFT circles, etc.

But if that's not true, it should be possible to point to, say, a series of similar paintings or musical compositions that are all famous.

Have you heard the term genre before? It's literally a word for a group of similar musical compositions. Most genres contain plenty of similar compositions that are all famous.

If people enjoy a work of art, there is almost always other popular art made that's similar to it. Turns out, you get bored if you just listen to one album over and over again.

When it comes to art, most people enjoy variety, it doesn't "confuse them" lol. This is clearly reflected in the market, as there are hundreds of unique genres of music, each with thousands of unique artists.

Literally every world-famous work has replicas and recreations, what's your point? Those copies are also part of the work's cultural influence, and in many cases (if the replicas are sold by the original artist) part of the monetary value as well.

This doesn't provide any more credence to the falsity that art's scarcity is the source of its value (when overwhelming evidence proves that the exact opposite is true)

Copies of those works are ubiquitous, but there is a singular, definitive work.

When referring to recorded music, this isn't a distinction that has ever actually mattered in the real world, just a fiction made up to shill NFTs.

Are you going to pretend that anyone actually cares about a "singular, definitive FLAC file" that all of the streaming services' FLAC and MP3 playbacks are based on? This is pure fantasy, the copies are the same thing as the original piece.

The idea that Mona Lisa's (or any other artwork's) cultural influence comes from its scarcity is hilarious. Literally anyone can visit the Louvre and appreciate it for themself. Do you think it would have anywhere near as much influence if it was hidden behind closed doors and only 1 person was able to see it?

But if we're talking about single work valuation, the Wu Tang album costs $2M. Taylor's album costs $15.

Last time I checked, the sum of revenue from their discography is how artists and labels get paid, not based on the maximum amount that 1 person is willing to pay.

Speak Now is a single work, and it generated like 100x as much monetary value as Shaolin (with like 10,000x as much cultural impact). And those estimates are extremely conservative, when you consider that you can tour and sell merch off an album that people can actually listen to lol.

I'd take a step back, and ask what makes art (music, visual, etc) valuable.

To that, I'd respond "scarcity."

What is your definition of valuable here?

If you're referring to value to culture/society, I think you're very far off-base. The most culturally valuable artistic works are ubiquitous, the opposite of scarce. Art isn't really able to have any culture influence if it only impacts a small number of people.

If you're referring to monetary value, you're also dead wrong lmao. Look at the top 100 most-paid artists of the last decade, and tell me how hard it is to find and appreciate their entire artistic catalogue for yourself.

The argument that scarcity = artistic value doesn't have any basis in fact, and is the sort of thing that would only be shilled by someone trying to con you into buying an NFT.

It's hard to imagine highly valued art (either culturally or monetarily) without scarcity.

hahahaha what? Compare the monetary and cultural impact of that one "ultra-scarce" Wu-Tang album (monetary: $2m, cultural: none) to the impact of Taylor Swift's last album, which is available on every streaming service (monetary: $200m+, cultural: very high)

I don't think this is accurate -- overt autotune in pop music peaked in the 00's, and has really not been as influential in the pop trends of the last decade or two.

Many of the most popular artists today lean away from heavy electronic control, and go for a more acoustic/natural sound.

I think that the AI vocals becoming indistinguishable from the real thing has more to do with the quality of the AI, and less to do with modern pop music sounding robotic.

look at the answer I gave you

You literally didn't give me one, what on earth are you talking about.

You seem to make up an image in your mind that I'm disregarding the child's own personality

I don't know where you're getting that I've 'made an image up in my mind'.... I asked you a question about how you weighted your child's input / freedom when it comes to technology, and you've done nothing but deflect lmao. I'm not "fighting a battle"... I asked a straightforward question that has still received no answer.

I can't tell if I'm talking to a human or a chatbot at this point.

I think my point is pretty clear: you listed a whole hierarchy of people who you think should have control over your child's behavior (with you at position #1), and haven't given any answer for where you think a child's own decision-making should fit in

Did you miss my original question?

Do they get any input in what technology they derive value/enjoyment from, or is that entirely dictated by adults in their community who grew up 20+ years ago?

Yes they can, people can (and should) have some influence over their own life.

I don't think that the incentive to "provide as little value as possible for as much money as possible" is in any way unique to the SAAS pricing model. Theoretically, every optimized pricing model will attempt to maximize revenue at a given value level.

And in practice, what does "get you hooked, take your data hostage" mean? I can't think of many SAAS subscriptions in my personal life where this is a real issue.

Where does the child fall on this hierarchy... do they get any input in what technology they derive value/enjoyment from, or is that entirely dictated by adults in their community who grew up 20+ years ago?

I think a more compelling argument against technical analysis can be found by considering the outcome of a semi-efficient market, and how unlikely it is that simple, purely momentum-based signals haven't already been arbitraged away by the other participants in the market (who have significantly more sophistication and speed-of-execution than anyone publishing technical analysis strategies online)

Was it a good school in a wealthy area?

If not, what makes you confident that your peers were falling behind due to some sort of innate inability, instead of as a result of compounding poor teaching or other environmental factors?

Do you think I really am in the ~50% of the population in terms of mathematical ability?

I don't know nearly enough about your personal background to make any sort of judgement on to what extent your success up through university came from innate "mathematical ability" versus other factors.

But I do know that making it through a Masters-level program makes you a very capable mathematician, even if were unable to start a career in pure mathematics.

You made it further along in your mathematical education than 99.9%+ of students, and I have a very hard time believing that "biological predisposition" is what's stopping many people from making it past high-school level math.

What evidence do you have that the biological limitations for mathematical ability meets people early in the spectrum?

I can think of several anecdotal counter-examples... students who seemed to have been falling behind, but with the right teacher were able to make significant improvements and become a top performer.

You can also take a look at many of the studies done on the educational gap, to see that better schooling can have a massive impact on secondary and post-secondary educational outcomes. Surely this wouldn't be the case if poor performers had some "biological limit" that prevented them from succeeding in high school math.

There's a big difference between edge cases like Usain Bolt and Von Neumann, and the barriers that most people actually run into.

The vast majority of people are not biologically incapable of making it through high-school level math, or even becoming a very capable mathematician with enough high-quality teaching and dedication.

Did you actually read the tweet that you replied to?

"I'm certain I scroll at least 100 tweets/minute."

Many Twitter users, including literally the person you are in conversation with, scroll through dozens/hundreds of tweets a minute.

Not sure if you're actually used Twitter before, but many tweets are only a line or two of text, and it doesn't take more than a second to process them.

Additionally, if you're quickly scrolling through replies or someone's history to try to find something, it can render hundreds of tweets in a matter of seconds.

16 hours? If you're scrolling 100 tweets/min, you'd hit the unverified user limit within 6 minutes, and the verified user limit within an hour

Well if you want to ignore things like advertising and other administrative expenses (which are necessary when running a global beverage company), you will still find that their Costs of Goods Sold is 40% of their revenue: https://investors.coca-colacompany.com/filings-reports/all-s...

Again, materially different from asking for money in exchange for nothing.

CocaCola net profit margin as of March 31, 2023 is 22.69%.

Which means that it costs them $1 to produce every $1.23 of soda that you purchase. This is a long-shot from being "nearly free" as you claimed earlier, and materially different from "asking for money in exchange for nothing".

List one area where Walmart has a monopoly and the only grocer in town.

I'd recommend you do some reading to understand the definition of a monopoly, as it pertains to pricing power: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

A business doesn't need to be the literal only option for it to have monopolistic power over a market.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act uses 50% market share as a general criteria for when a business could have monopoly power in a market. Based on that definition, here's an answer for your

List one area where Walmart has a monopoly

Check out the table in the back of the source I linked, and you'll find 203 of them!

"In 43 metropolitan areas and 160 smaller markets, Walmart captures 50 percent or more of grocery sales. In 38 of these regions, Walmart’s share of the grocery market is 70 percent or more."

https://ilsr.org/walmarts-monopolization-of-local-grocery-ma...

I could list off every one of these areas, but would probably run into the character count limit

What a ridiculous analogy. Add statistics to the pile of topics that you're overconfident yet completely naive about.

What you're describing is a scenario where you take a sample, and use its measure of central distribution to make inferences about SAME METRIC in the population. This is perfectly valid!

But the obvious flaw with your argument isn't "this paper says that 75% of X volume is speculation, but it's excluding some data", it's that the paper presents literally no claims or evidence about the % of volume that is speculation lmao.

You have been conflating 2 entirely unrelated metrics this whole time. I said this before, but I guess it needs repeating: the % of volume that happens on-exchange is not a proxy for the % of volume that is speculation. These are completely different things!

If you want an accurate analogy, this would be like if you said "this paper shows that the average human lifespan is 4 years", but what the paper actually said was that the Olympics are held every 4 years. It's a completely unrelated data point, irrelevant to the topic at hand, and you'd have to either be ignorant or intentionally deceitful to pretend that they are the same thing.

Just bush league stuff... and as I said earlier, if you can't grasp this concept then I don't know what you're doing on a crypto thread.

I actually do think that you have serious underlying confusion about the nature of what speculation even is, because you keep pretending like it's something which can be objectively measured by using on-chain data. Data is obviously a useful tool when it's available, but making up bullshit statistics to support your argument is malignant.