[FRIAM] (not) leaving Twitter

[Steve Smith]

Great quote from CDs screed:

    "Every billionaire is a policy failure, but every billionaire is
    also a factory for producing policy failures at scale."

I think this logic held for *millionaires* at the turn of the *previous* 
century but I doubt it will take until 2100 to raise the exponent from 6 
to 9 to 12 (trillionaire)?

Anyone else read Gibson's "Jackpot" series or at least start watching 
"The Peripheral" on Netflix? Their dystopian 2100 feels *almost* Utopian 
compared to what I sometimes feel is looming on the horizon.

On Musk/Tesla, I think I now understand better how the died-in-wool 
capitalists who love-to-hate Musk choose to make their money on his 
coat-tails by *shorting* against the volatility he generates with his 
dumb-Tweets (everything from 420 to challenging Putin to resolve Ukraine 
through personal combat to suggesting Zelensky give over disputed 
territories to the latest Pelosi-conspiracy-talk).  Buh!

On 10/31/22 7:50 AM, glen wrote:
> Do you get this:
>
> https://theweek.com/speedreads/972170/peter-thiels-largest-disclosed-political-donation-ever-possible-jd-vance-senate-run 
>
>
> Doctorow has an interesting take:
>
> https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/26/boxed-in/
> "The Uihleins are ideologues, but it's a mistake to view their 
> authoritarianism, antisemitism, racism, and homophobia as the main 
> force of their ideology. First and foremost is their belief that they 
> deserve to be rich, and that the rich should be in charge of everyone 
> else."
>
> I'm not convinced. But it's plausible. What do Musk, Thiel, and the 
> Uihleins have in common? They *probably* think they're better at 
> something than the rest of us. What is that something they think 
> they're better at? If you answer that, then maybe it'll explain why 
> Musk bought Twitter?
>
> On 10/31/22 06:42, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> I don’t get it.  It seems undisciplined to put his successful 
>> companies at risk to buy this money loser, while at the same time 
>> getting all this bad press.
>>
>>> On Oct 31, 2022, at 5:11 AM, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Yeah, I deleted all my Tweets, unfollowed everyone, and removed all 
>>> my followers. Musk is an asshole. I know my lack of participation 
>>> means nothing. But at least I won't be (as) complicit. There are no 
>>> good billionaires 
>>> <https://patrioticmillionaires.org/2022/09/21/dont-trust-the-good-billionaires/>.
>>>
>>> It's interesting how, in some cases, the existence of the most 
>>> horrible of any species (e.g. Uihlein 
>>> <https://www.propublica.org/article/uline-uihlein-election-denial>) 
>>> can make the others seem "good". It's like a murderer saying "At 
>>> least I'm not a rapist." Or a rapist saying "At least I'm not a 
>>> pedophile." And a pedophile saying "At least I don't kill 'em." 
>>> Honor among thieves.
>>>
>>> As SteveS mentioned earlier, I'm almost diametrically opposed to 
>>> effective altruism for exactly this reason. The argument is 
>>> basically: Hustle! Then Dole. I'm willing to change my mind. 
>>> https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YgbpxJmEdFhFGpqci/winners-of-the-ea-criticism-and-red-teaming-contest
>>>
>>> Even when we give Billionaires [ptouie] the benefit of the doubt, 
>>> forgive them for their rapacious and exploitative methods, and
>>> say "At least they're doing Good Things, now", the Hustle! Then Dole 
>>> lifestyle hones/perfects dystopian Taylorism 
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor>. It's only 
>>> when these old codgers begin to see Death a little more clearly, do 
>>> they discover some sort of moral frame, while (metaphorically) 
>>> meditating at the edge of their infinity pool built on the ridgeline 
>>> of some desert mountain range. And, as we see in Musk, their 
>>> lifetime of isolation within the outsized scope of their own 
>>> influence (because, well, money is God, omnipresent, omniscient, 
>>> etc.), puts them at risk of dimension reducing attractors like most 
>>> individualist, right-wing causes. E.g. "free speech" (distinct from 
>>> free speech, with no quotes).
>>>
>>>> On 10/30/22 11:37, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>>>> Until now I have used 3 Twitter accounts for scientific, 
>>>> development and personal stuff. I have used them more frequently 
>>>> since Google+ was shut down. One main reason why I do not use 
>>>> Facebook or Instagram is Mark Zuckerberg. As Grady Booch used to 
>>>> say "Facebook is a profoundly unethical company, and it starts at 
>>>> the top, with Mark Zuckerberg".
>>>> For Twitter it is similar now. I really don't want to support a 
>>>> platform that belongs to someone who likes to insult others, like 
>>>> Garry Kasparov or the real Tesla founder Martin Eberhard or many 
>>>> others, just the way Trump likes to do it.
>>>> The note for advertisers was plain marketing. His intention to save 
>>>> the world? A lie. This town square stuff? Nonsense. He certainly 
>>>> didn't write this, it was more likely written by Twitter's CCO 
>>>> Sarah Personette and her team. However, he has created his own hell 
>>>> by buying the platform he is addicted to.
>>>> https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation 
>>>>
>>>> I am using Mastodon instead now, which does not belong to an 
>>>> egomanic or eccentric billionaire. Yes, it is named after an animal 
>>>> which died out at the end of the Pleistoscene, but the distributed 
>>>> and decentralized approach is much better than having one big 
>>>> centralized system. My new Mastodon accounts are here:
>>>> fediscience.org/@cas_group
>>>> berlin.social/@JochenFromm
>>>> ruby.social/@jofr
>>>> -J.
>>>> -------- Original message --------
>>>> From: Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
>>>> Date: 10/30/22 6:50 PM (GMT+01:00)
>>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
>>>> <friam at redfish.com>
>>>> Subject: [FRIAM] (not) leaving Twitter
>>>> https://mashable.com/article/please-stop-tweeting-leaving-twitter
>>>> https://mashable.com/article/i-was-going-to-quit-twitter-but-elon-musk-takeover 
>>>>
>>>> I have a *very* limited twitter engagement myself.  Same with FB 
>>>> and *zero* with anything else *but* Instagram where I restrict 
>>>> myself to viewing and posting and liking the equivalent of "family" 
>>>> snapshots for my family and closer friends.
>>>> I tried *mostly* to ignore the implications of a Musk 
>>>> privatization-takeover of Twitter during all the on-again off-again 
>>>> period but/and now as it has become a "done deal" I feel more able 
>>>> to engage in thinking about that (unable to avoid thinking about 
>>>> that?).  I thought I might de-activate/delete my nearly unused 
>>>> account when I discovered that I had a renewed interest (morbid 
>>>> fascination) in watching it spin out (decohere) or not from the 
>>>> front row.   I found myself looking for whether Musk's magic pixie 
>>>> dust would somehow trigger a phase transition (likely there will be 
>>>> one, but probably not the kind most of us hope for).
>>>> Earlier discussions on *this* forum touched on what would make for 
>>>> a proper *metaverse* (not the one Zuckerberg is trying to create 
>>>> from whole-cloth).   My (very loose) engagement with the 
>>>> Cardano/Catalyst work and interest in blockchain is motivated by 
>>>> this as well.
>>>> Musk's attempts to characterize Twitter as a "town square" feels 
>>>> very off-base in many ways:
>>>> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-twitter-is-unlikely-to-become-the-digital-town-square-elon-musk-envisions/
>>>> What do "town squares" look like in "company towns"?    And why 
>>>> does most social media so often feel more like a rolling street-brawl?
>>>> I worked *peripherally* on a project at LANL trying to address the 
>>>> possibilities/implications roughly 30 years ago:
>>>> http://library.sciencemadness.org/lanl1_a/lib-www/pubs/00285557.pdf
>>>> there were some good insights, but it was all so young and fresh 
>>>> and raw at the same time...
>
>
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