Recent submissions

Comment · 8 months ago
I'll admit the connection is loose, personally found it amusing because:

Mike is the archetypal nihilist (Sociopath or Loser), the other two would potentially be engaging in a Clueless interaction if Mike wasn't there, according to the Scott/Rao theory of jokes, you need 3 for a Loser joke.

The preceding banter seems to be more of a Loser Gametalk: no social status is at stake; it's irrelevant to their white-collar role. Mike's Straighttalk intervention is typical of a sociopath; the wall breaking joke is that these Losers don't know what his real job is. If they did, the pointless but playful debate would have died a violent death-- because it'd get too real

If these were Clueless middle managers debating their value to their company, it might even be out of character for Mike to notice them..

Comment · 8 months ago
Used to think that Epstein was a Posturetalker but turns out he is a native Gametalker
Comment · 8 months ago
Comment · 8 months ago
Liked this comment:

"If we could convince [any] Sociopath that we were all Losers, we might be able to entice them into spilling their secrets as 'Straighttalk'. (Arguably that's what this book is..)"

On one hand Rao doesn't say much about Gametalk (he basically defers to Eric Berne) which is the Loser's sociolect and should well be our default.

On the other, Rao much more optimistic than Orwell, who declared doublespeak the lingua franca?

Comment · 8 months ago
Yeah I think GP might now prefer his statement(s) to have been about "quantum _advantage_". Which is the modish term after all.
Comment · 8 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Stanley#:~:text=lead%2...

What would you say the %time that "research science managers" spend looking in/for the "dirt" should be? 100? 50? 20? 37?

Comment · 8 months ago
Imagine 2 or more Taoist priests raised in different cultures each trying to get the others riled up while cooperating to solve a deep technical problem. How do they keep this game fun _and_ productive? Disregarding for the moment the tradeoffs---eg patience-impatience, learn-earn, purpose-technik &c--- that should replace morality-quality questions.

(Iirc there was a (nihilist) electric shock Zen meditation game that uses HRV, but the above framing may take that to another (positivist) level. Getting LLMs in the loop is one other kind of level)

Some call this the Glass-bead-game

Comment · 8 months ago
Submitter = author so it should be fine?

Please don't report me lol.. I'm tired of starting over and over again for reasons I don't really understand (tho I have a guess)

Comment · 8 months ago
Comment · 8 months ago
Related:

Why they (managers/Outer Party) would rather see you sweat than have fun, whether on their (masters') dime or not

It's procrastination, yes, but who are we procrastinating for?

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