I’m a climate scientist by trade. Interested in interesting things. Ecology, complexity, politics, social change, music.
Right, but I mean, the platform was originally designed without them in mind, and there’s no real reason why every piece of software needs to have every piece of functionality… I’m can see why they wouldn’t be prioritising it
I suspect I would love it if groups were in mastodon, but I’m not entirely sure it won’t backfire in some horrendous way (this is social media after all)
Mastodon doesn’t have groups?
“This kind of thing” being big picture dynamics of how to run a social media project.
I’ve also had a mastodon PR stall, but I think they get so many, many with competing demands, and have so few staff, that it’s not really surprising that it’s a bit mess on that front…
That first post is very good. I really appreciate the way he’s handled the first 10 years, and I hope he has fun doing whatever he does next.
Eugen has always seemed pretty clear-eyed about this kind of thing.
Sounds fascinating. Definitely interested to explore!
Very cool, thanks!
Complexity science has a broadly similar take on complex problems - that there are no true solutions, but there may be ways to manage a problem that make it less of a problem (or a different type of problem, I guess). Makes a lot of sense to me.
Yes! I have a copy, but haven’t had a chance to try it yet. it’s on my short list
Right, 'cause it’s like a second-order effect? Like, your PC’s grievance has to make coherent sense with/against the values/cultures that make up the setting?
Yeah, cool, thanks. I can see how throwing in catch-22s, wicked problems, moral dilemmas, etc. would lead to some interesting games/narratives.
Ah, I immediately interpreted it as PCs with grievances. NPCs with legitimate grievances makes a lot more sense, thank you!
Oooh, I love point 4. Could you expand a bit on that? I’d love to know some tips for pulling that into a game.
I’m not sure that I understand how point 2 would happen in a TTRPG
Yeah, I think AI optimising commercial music genres is just effectively doing what the corporate music industry has been doing for years anyway. It’s like gamification of the auditory processing system.
It is possible for genAI to be creative in that sense (e.g. move 37), but it’s not possible for it to know whether that new thing is good/valuable/true/whatever. So it can’t challenge an idea in any sense more meaningful than a monkey throwing darts. A human could use it to generate challenges, and then evaluate them, but that’s a different proposition.
On your first point, I think it’s not so much about reputation as about trust. Long-standing accounts at least have the simple trust that’s based on consistency and familiarity. If you meet a new person IRL, you at least get something to go off based on visuals and behavioural cues. A new account online has absolutely nothing to base any trust on.
Emotions (and hence also a lot of thinking) have a lot of physical and chemical processes involved too, it’s not just neural signalling.
The outputs becoming indistinguishable does not imply that the generative processes are the same.
It’s true! It’s a relatively minor complaint really. Let me pivot: fuck social norms around early starts 😅