In 4X games, the high science civ is always portrayed as being like super smart, but in real life it seems like innovation is downstream of a bunch of mundane policy minutiae that aligns incentives (California ban on non compete, easy capital markets, etc) Master of Orion, Lars edition:

- Psilons: +10 to research papers that don’t reproduce

- Smelly humans who learned not to make real estate a speculative asset so investors are forced to seek returns in actual productive ventures: banned in online play for being absurdly OP

RE: Celebrity private jet discourse --

Which is actually more dangerous, celebrities exposing themselves to the public on commercial flights, or flying on a private aircraft, which are notorious for higher crash rates and a long list of celebrity casualties? Another thought -- all flights are tracked, which has been brought to light by high profile celebrity private jet trackers.

But if you can quietly do a discrete private boarding on a commercial flight in first class (buy out the whole section?) that seems harder to track?

I am an effective incrementalist. This is my manifesto.

#ImproveSocietySomewhat

https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1751855275118665732

I will bore you to death with my reasonable, modest, achievable goals and blow your mind as I achieve them, and if I don’t achieve them I will try again until I do and then I will set slightly higher goals

Everybody wants to start a revolution one day.

Nobody wants to improve society somewhat today.

In the long run compound effects of improving society somewhat will absolutely swamp the effects of mere revolutions (which are often net negative).

Improve society somewhat! Even if we grant revolutions are always good (they aren’t), waiting for revolutions becomes WORSE than the “cowardly incrementalism” they’re supposed to be superior to - they’re an excuse to do nothing today because perfection is not yet possible.

I wrote a book!

Land Is A Big Deal: Why rent is too high, wages too low, and what we can do about it.

Forward by @slatestarcodex and @Noahpinion

Coming out October 15, 2022, available for pre-order right now:

landisabigdeal.com Here's a quick thread with all the book's endorsements:

"Inspiring a renewal of interest in Georgist ideas whose full ramifications are yet to be determined." -@slatestarcodex

Last November we at @naavik_co called the top of Axie Infinity, poster child for blockchain games and web3 utility, pointing out some serious flaws in its economy. Since then it has steadily lost a quarter million Daily Active Users every month. Current DAU stands at ~500,000 🧵 Our full report went out to subscribers a few weeks ago, but my employers have made the FULL report free for anyone who wants it: naavik.co/deep-dives/axi…

Sources are in the report, but many of our figures come direct from Sky Mavis

Let's start from the top, how did we get here?

Open secret about consulting is that some "scammier" parts of consulting are entered into by mutual consent -- ie, the client KNOWS the consultant is selling overpriced BS, but this is what they actually want -- a fancy rubber stamp approving the plan they already want

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1538250409441079296

Obviously not all consulting is like this (I would say that of course, I'm a consultant!).

Sometimes consultants are brought in to do good solid work and the client is open to being told something they might not want to hear. Those are the projects I gravitate towards personally

Okay, the day has finally come.

I am forced to grudgingly admit that I have found a blockchain game that legitimately does something with Blockchain that is genuinely new, innovative, and that you can't do with a centralized service.

That game is Dark Forest. Now, the money side of crypto seems *completely* uninterested in this game for the most part, which is pretty telling.

This is basically a weird tech demo made by some MIT students. I have no idea if it has the potential to be like, actually popular, but it's interesting.

So @beatmastermatt just put out this great video on #Georgism and #LandValueTax. If this was your first introduction to the theory, you might have some questions. I have answers.

Q. Can someone summarize Progress & Poverty for me so I don't have to read the whole thing?
A: YES --> gameofrent.com/content/progre…

I've been looking into the on-chain game Dark Forest with my business partner @Ant_Pecorella and it is genuinely fascinating and way more interesting than any other blockchain game I've investigated so far @Ant_Pecorella Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has attracted very little interest from the money side of blockchain as its focused way more on interesting tech experiments than it is on financialization

So Breaking Points by @esaagar & @krystalball had a good monologue on Wall Street's incursions into the Housing Market. I'd like to supplement it with some facts about how big a deal real estate speculation really is. @PointsCommunity

Real Estate has massively taken over as a total share of bank loans over the last century. It was 68% in the USA in 2007, and has been steadily increasing for both the USA and most developed countries worldwide.

astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgis…

The Sandbox is a UGC blockchain game that is the leading light of "Virtual Real Estate Games." It has > $100M in investment, and as of last week, tokens valued at $14 billion. It also has barely any users. Investors are effectively valuing monthly active users at > $470,000 each The Sandbox (TSB) says they had only 30,000 MAU's in November. Decentraland has 10 times that many (probably because Decentraland runs in a browser and doesn't require a crypto wallet to play as a guest).

Get this: **Second Life** has more *simultaneous* users than TSB has MAU's

Predictions for blockchain gaming in 2022:

1) Pure P2E widely discredited, defenders of the idea evolve it to "Play AND Earn" (already happening)

2) Land-grab UGC games start to show cracks and play out according to Ricardo's Law of Rent

1/X Specifically -- virtual landlords hoarding assets used to gatekeep publishing rights for user generated content and even charging rent for the right to access users will choke out incentives to build, hampering user growth and creative energy put into submissions

I have some incoherent thoughts that aren't gelled yet in response to the crypto-gaming enthusiast question, "Well why WOULDN'T gamers want to own their assets and be able to resell them, as opposed to the status quo where it's just lost money?"

Humor me a bit... It started to click (but hasn't fully cohered yet) when I read this article, "The Gift of It's Your Problem Now" about tying Open Source to the social act of gift giving, and how it resists and even disintegrates sometimes if you try to formalize it

apenwarr.ca/log/20211229

In my day job I analyze blockchain games, and the only ones so far I've found that deal in real money and are plausibly "sustainable" are the kind where most players should expect to regularly lose money

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1477119032771821570

It's not possible to set up a system where every player should expect a net payout, and also have a sustainable ecosystem long term. You're just paying out current players from new players, and it breaks when growth stops.

I really liked this take by @cgpgrey on New Year's Resolutions. "Give your year a theme" instead.



My theme for this year is: "Finishing." @cgpgrey The whole point is to give yourself a direction that's flexible and open to reinterpretation.

Current interpretation:
I need to do less long term things that drag on forever, and focus on finishing what I started. And end things that are dragging me down.

Tired: Make everyone stand up during the meetings to ensure they are short

Wired: Make everyone drink three cups of liquid before the meeting so everyone has to pee to ensure they are short Maybe just make the person who called the meeting do it (especially if male)

Question: there's lots of youtube/twitch crypto channels where an analyst just looks at candle graphs and obsesses over patterns:

"We're seeing some resistance here, but we can expect a breakthrough and then a pump because <reasons>"

Any of you take these seriously? If so why? I'm biased against this kind of analysis because it strikes me as reading tea leaves in noise and I knew people deeply into day trading when I was younger who did exactly this kind of stuff and lost tons of money

I cannot stop thinking about the fact that Kazakhstan and Alexandra Elkabyan exist in a sufficient state to put them beyond the reach of established IP enforcers is responsible for a greater contribution to the advancement of human knowledge than billions of dollars in funding The deadweight loss that has been lifted by the existence of Sci-Hub is so large as to literally be uncalculable, there is so much extremely necessary research that simply could not be done without it and it all depends on Central Asia thumbing its nose at IP treaties

Based on feedback, there are 3 general objections to Georgism that I feel are worth rigorously researching and addressing.

1. Georgism encourages paving the earth in the name of profit
2. The transition to Georgism is too costly
3. Georgism is politically unviable I'd like to register for the record that I don't have fully formed opinions on these just yet! For instance, I was first introduced to Georgism by a friend and mentor of mine, and 1. is actually his chief concern with it (for which he makes various modifications).

"What do you think of the studies?"
"They're wrong, here, look at my thought experiment."
"I'm willing to believe they might be flawed. What was flawed about their methodologies that made you distrust their conclusions?"
"They're wrong, here, look at my thought experiment." "Your first study is flawed because reasons."
"I disagree but let's grant you that anyways. I included multiple studies for this reason. What do you think of the other dozen studies?"
"Your first study is flawed because reasons."