carterac

I was at Edge Esmeralda for the last two weeks. The coolest thing I saw come out of the agent village was "Simocracy" where people gave their agents their own personal values, preferences, and goals. And then the agents voted on community decisions and governance for them e.g. should the community use its pool of funds to purchase a sauna etc. Agents would surface things back to their human that were borderline, and would even having debates with other people's agents on their behalf. Anecdotally, I heard people say their agent represented them correctly over 80% of the time.

When I think about what a small % of legislation is actually fully read, understood, and voted on by citizenry, it feels like this could be a transformative for participatory democracy (assuming it's implemented safely).

Try googling 45 Days to Awakening course, a new and improved version of the Finder’s Course. Their data shows something like 65% of people reach that state after 45 days, up to 85% after a second course for total of 90 days. It sounds way too good to be true and I didn’t believe it myself until I did it and it worked for me, and then for several friends I convinced to take it. It took me over 90 days to get there (had to keep practicing the meditation styles that worked best for me) but then stabilized. One of my friends transitioned literally on her first meditation on day one. Good luck on your journey!

I believe the gravity keeps it from diffusing out too much. The high temperature creates a pressure that keeps it from collapsing into balls. Not an expert though!

Carter, the author, here. Yes I've been on the Internet. In fact, I love and grew up on the Internet, wrote my first lines of code in middle school, and procrastinated my way through high school on sites like Deviant Art. I've been reading Hacker News daily for over 5 years.

This essay was written with the WSJ audience (average age over 50) in mind. That audience is more familiar with the established art world and its $66B market. For an audience that grew up on the Internet like me, I would have used more nuanced language and talked more about the importance of merging the existing art market and the established art world with the more organic art communities already online.

But here's the tl;dr version of what I would have written for HN:

The Internet will grow the art market and broaden it to include artists outside of the existing establishment–the result is that more artists will be able to make a living without having to appeal to the existing system. But achieving this requires working with the established art world, e.g. major galleries and museums, to publish more of their art online for easy and free access–making art and art education accessible to everyone, not just those with the time and money to go visit in person. By moving the existing art world online, you're bringing its market of buyers and sellers with it, and exposing them to a more vibrant, diverse, and organic ecosystem that many readers on Hacker News are already familiar with. In summary, by increasing awareness and education about art history, the Internet will drive greater passion and market demand for art, which ultimately means more artists from all over the world will get discovered organically and be able to pursue their passions more sustainably.

Likewise, music has been around forever, but the chances of someone like Lorde, a 16 year old from New Zealand, seeing such success was much less likely before the Internet democratized music for listeners and creators alike. Today, it's still very rare for a visual artist to experience that kind of success if they are not part of the existing establishment. But the Internet is going to change that, and this will be a great thing for all of us.

Was referring to the general idea of last-minute fixing mentioned at the beginning of the post: "We all have stories, as engineers, of fixing some crazy thing at the last minute right before the demo goes up."

A personal anecdote to demonstrate Joe's awesomeness: After hearing him give the keynote speech for Princeton's entrepreneurship conference, I was able to wiggle through the crowd of people surrounding him and blurt "Hey Joe! I loved your talk. I'm also a computer science major about to graduate and start a company that is essentially Pandora for art--there's even an Art Genome Project too [of course none of this existed at the time]. I'm moving out to Silicon Valley when I graduate this spring. Could I meet with you when I'm there and get your help?" He managed to say "Sure, my email is X" before the crowd reformed around him.

I was convinced he would forget about me or be too busy to reply to a random student who approached him after a conference (which I now know is the worst time ever).

To my surprise, he remembered me and invited me to visit him at Pandora's offices for lunch. He even took me on a tour of the whole company and showed me the "genomers" (who I remember being mostly bearded men staring into space thoughtfully while listening to music on gigantic headphones--strikingly different from Artsy's genomers today). The whole time he never made me feel like I was imposing or wasting his time. It was amazing to meet someone so successful yet also so humble and genuinely interested in others.

Joe continued to stay involved and add value even after I moved to New York. A computer scientist himself, he even helped me think through the original (very simple) similarity algorithm for Artsy's own Art Genome Project and despite how busy he must have been, would always take the time to answer my emails or get on the phone. And of course, having his name involved was critical social proof in the early days of the company.

Although I'm a proud NYC'er now, I've often said that Silicon Valley will always have a place in my heart for teaching me the value of paying it forward. And that lesson started with Joe's kind actions, without which I'm not sure Artsy would be what it is today.