Interview w Hamlet in The Atlantic

[AnnabelleApocalypse]

51 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Human nature is human nature and cannot be changed although it may be redeemable. The Internet, and social media, and virtual worlds accelerate, amplify, multiple the worst of human nature and therefore can indeed be blamed. If someone uses an accelerant and starts a fire, you don't say, well, fires do that, the fire is not the problem. You can ask about the means and motives of the person who used the accelerant deliberately and acknowledge that both the person and the accelerant are to blame. 

I don't think that's quite true IMHO. Technology is inherently neutral. Its what we choose to do with it that makes it good or bad. 

To run with the analogy, if there were no fire in the first place, the accelerant would be useless. The accelerant merely allows the initial problem to travel further and faster, but it is not the source of the issue.

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, AnnabelleApocalypse said:

I don't think that's quite true IMHO. Technology is inherently neutral. Its what we choose to do with it that makes it good or bad. 

To run with the analogy, if there were no fire in the first place, the accelerant would be useless. The accelerant merely allows the initial problem to travel further and faster, but it is not the source of the issue.

Technology is not inherently neutral because it is created by humans who are not inherently neutral and all kinds of flawed choices get made around the construction of algorithms, for example. This "a hammer is only a tool" stuff just doesn't fly as an argument when it comes to something as complex and manipulative as the Internet. It's not neutral. And choices are made all along the way, or not made.

 

[AnnabelleApocalypse]

17 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Technology is not inherently neutral because it is created by humans who are not inherently neutral and all kinds of flawed choices get made around the construction of algorithms, for example. This "a hammer is only a tool" stuff just doesn't fly as an argument when it comes to something as complex and manipulative as the Internet. It's not neutral. And choices are made all along the way, or not made.

 

Sorry, still respectfully disagree. Just because people make sh*tty exploitative algorithms does not mean the entire concept of algorithms are inherently bad. 

Just because we have gone and built a sh*tty exploitative internet model does not mean it HAD to be that way or that the concept of a global computing network is bad.

Just because a cave man picked up a piece of flint, tied it to a stick and bashed his neighbours brains out with it does not mean axes, knives and spears are inherently evil. 

Your conflating the baseline technology with the purposes people set them to. Technology always has a myriad of uses. Some good, some bad. Its up to us collectively what we choose to do with them.

I mean.......if you dont think the internet and virtual worlds have been a net benefit to your life, why are you using them? 

Edited March 27, 2022 by AnnabelleApocalypse

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Human nature is human nature and cannot be changed although it may be redeemable. The Internet, and social media, and virtual worlds accelerate, amplify, multiple the worst of human nature and therefore can indeed be blamed. If someone uses an accelerant and starts a fire, you don't say, well, fires do that, the fire is not the problem. You can ask about the means and motives of the person who used the accelerant deliberately and acknowledge that both the person and the accelerant are to blame. 

Because the gasoline was going, "Heeyahh!!! Let's get this party started! YOBO!"

 

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Human nature is human nature and cannot be changed although it may be redeemable. The Internet, and social media, and virtual worlds accelerate, amplify, multiple the worst of human nature and therefore can indeed be blamed. If someone uses an accelerant and starts a fire, you don't say, well, fires do that, the fire is not the problem. You can ask about the means and motives of the person who used the accelerant deliberately and acknowledge that both the person and the accelerant are to blame. 

The worst of human nature is putting up with something that's obviously wrong.

If someone isn't happy, they aren't happy. Life is too short.

 

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Coffee, so you have a house in Bellisseria? What counter culture? Where? 

* waits for you to catch up to follow up post I made clarifying that remark *

[Rolig Loon]

5 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There are many things the Lindens could have kept doing, and stopped, or started doing without losing their dominion as a company, and didn't.

I agree. The hard part is deciding at the time which things those might be. As they say, hindsight is a wonderful gift; foresight would be more practical.

Having spent a good chunk of my life in administrative roles, I know the agony of having to find a safe path between two evils. I know the tension that comes from having to satisfy two opposed (yet legitimate) complaints at the same time, and of trying to settle conflicts without being heavy-handed. I understand the frustration of managing a system that tries to reward innovation while stifling destructive types of competition. All of that while working with a restrained budget and a small staff that is doing its best to handle their own smaller-scale versions of those same challenges. And while trying to provide adequate resources for growth and stability and keep outside forces at bay.

When administrations fail to meet challenges, their explanations sound like excuses, and they often are. I have never known an administration that gets everything right. There are always people waiting to point out what could have been done better, and to find blame for decisions that turned out to be counterproductive or insufficient. Good administrators try to use what skills and resources they have to beat the odds, and to accept responsibility when their decisions are less effective than people hoped. When decisions are consistently bad, administrations change, always with the hope that someone will have better foresight or simply enough good luck to avoid the next minefields ahead. Personally, I have been in administrations that enjoyed better than average success overall and one that had a hard time getting past dousing daily brush fires. None of it was easy.  All of it was stressful.

So yes, Linden Lab has made quite a few decisions over the years that they might make differently today, knowing how things have evolved so far. They've missed some opportunities and failed to grab others that might have been better for SL, if they had only been able to predict the future better.  We will never know. And we will never hear about crises that were averted but are the part of any organization's history. All we can see is what we have today, with some flaws and self-inflicted wounds but with experienced leadership and a loyal and mostly appreciative customer base. There is always room for improvement.

[StarlanderGoods]

3 hours ago, AnnabelleApocalypse said:

Sorry, still respectfully disagree. Just because people make sh*tty exploitative algorithms does not mean the entire concept of algorithms are inherently bad. 

Just because we have gone and built a sh*tty exploitative internet model does not mean it HAD to be that way or that the concept of a global computing network is bad.

Just because a cave man picked up a piece of flint, tied it to a stick and bashed his neighbours brains out with it does not mean axes, knives and spears are inherently evil. 

Your conflating the baseline technology with the purposes people set them to. Technology always has a myriad of uses. Some good, some bad. Its up to us collectively what we choose to do with them.

I mean.......if you dont think the internet and virtual worlds have been a net benefit to your life, why are you using them? 

Technology is not an abstract, it inherits the biases of it´s developers, this isnt some revolutionary thought.

[Coffee Pancake]

42 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

So yes, Linden Lab has made quite a few decisions over the years that they might make differently today, knowing how things have evolved so far. They've missed some opportunities and failed to grab others that might have been better for SL, if they had only been able to predict the future better.

I think it's more to do with LL at various times deliberately choosing not to engage with SL the way the users do, especially with regard to the adult community.

SL became a magical golden goose, driven and populated by unknowable forces, and the Lab were faced with the only logical course of action. Spend all this money on something we do understand before the goose dies!

 

They still deliberately pretend the adult community doesn't exist and are simply an aberration, an embarrassment, best kept out of sight. 

Edited March 27, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Silent Mistwalker]

48 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

I agree. The hard part is deciding at the time which things those might be. As they say, hindsight is a wonderful gift; foresight would be more practical.

Having spent a good chunk of my life in administrative roles, I know the agony of having to find a safe path between two evils. I know the tension that comes from having to satisfy two opposed (yet legitimate) complaints at the same time, and of trying to settle conflicts without being heavy-handed. I understand the frustration of managing a system that tries to reward innovation while stifling destructive types of competition. All of that while working with a restrained budget and a small staff that is doing its best to handle their own smaller-scale versions of those same challenges. And while trying to provide adequate resources for growth and stability and keep outside forces at bay.

When administrations fail to meet challenges, their explanations sound like excuses, and they often are. I have never known an administration that gets everything right. There are always people waiting to point out what could have been done better, and to find blame for decisions that turned out to be counterproductive or insufficient. Good administrators try to use what skills and resources they have to beat the odds, and to accept responsibility when their decisions are less effective than people hoped. When decisions are consistently bad, administrations change, always with the hope that someone will have better foresight or simply enough good luck to avoid the next minefields ahead. Personally, I have been in administrations that enjoyed better than average success overall and one that had a hard time getting past dousing daily brush fires. None of it was easy.  All of it was stressful.

So yes, Linden Lab has made quite a few decisions over the years that they might make differently today, knowing how things have evolved so far. They've missed some opportunities and failed to grab others that might have been better for SL, if they had only been able to predict the future better.  We will never know. And we will never hear about crises that were averted but are the part of any organization's history. All we can see is what we have today, with some flaws and self-inflicted wounds but with experienced leadership and a loyal and mostly appreciative customer base. There is always room for improvement.

LL needs to figure out why, in spite of all the bad (along with the good), we're loyal customers of (for example) 10 years or more. Why are we loyal? What is it about Second Life AND Linden Lab that keeps us coming back? The hard part is analyzing the 10 different answers per individual when there are roughly 500 (wild guesstimate) people with those 10 answers. Forget metrics, forget demographics, statistics and all that. "How do you feel?" is what they have to analyze. Not an easy task considering most people have to analyze their own feelings first. Many aren't able to put the why into words. 

LL needs to keep a finger on the pulse of SL. The question is, how do they do that now? They need to re-examine that because whatever it is they are doing (or not doing) hasn't been working very well.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Interesting discussion, and the sort of thing I wish we were seeing happen on New World Notes or elsewhere.

Tools, surely, are not generic things -- they are designed to do things. Sometimes those things -- vaccines, for instance -- are good things. Frequently they are double-edged swords; virtually any information technology, dating back at least as far as the invention of print, falls in that category, although on balance we are better off with them.

And other things are designed to enable evil. The "tools are neutral" argument is rather like the "guns don't kill people" line, but an assault rifle isn't any good for hunting or protecting livestock from wild animals: it is purpose designed to kill people as efficiently and easily as possible.

I think there was probably a lot of genuine utopian thinking about SL at its inception and perhaps for its first few years, but the problem is that it employs a "tool" -- corporate institutional structures designed to generate return on investment for those with money invested in the platform -- that isn't at all utopian. And in the final analysis, most of the big decisions made around SL since at least 2007 have been about that, about making money. And yes, that money is needed to keep the platform afloat, because LL is plugged into a larger economic and political system -- capitalism -- that requires that of it because that goal is inherent in the design of that system.

Most of the newest entries into the metaverse race are explicitly about this. Until the announcement of Facebook's "Horizons" distracted people, the bulk of the discourse I'd seen about the metaverse on Twitter and in blogs focused on it as a marketing tool, as a new way to more efficiently make money. The nascent "worlds" like Decentraland built around blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs may tip their hat to some poorly thought-out libertarian "ideology," but their real focus, and what we actually see happening on them, is upon generating wealth for those clever and cynical enough to be able to fleece the less clever.

Similarly, the real evil of something like Facebook's entry into the "metaverse" isn't that people have no legs, or even the censorship that will undoubtedly be applied across that platform: those are corollaries of the main problem, which is that "Horizons" is designed for one purpose, one purpose only: to make as much money as efficiently as easily as possible. It is the "assault rifle" of metaverse projects.

As I've said here before, I think SL was, initially, very well-served by its adaptation of a laissez-faire approach to economics and governance. But because the systems put in place to enable that are not designed to shepherd the platform out of this virtual version of early-stage capitalism, those same systems are now holding it back, producing inefficiencies, inequalities, and making it increasingly difficult to move to the next stage, that of a civil society that works equally well and justly for all.

To fix that, LL has to put aside, or at least de-emphasize, the production of wealth, the "return on investment," and find new and perhaps even radical ways to transform the platform from a money-making tool, to one which better nurtures the human potential of this kind of virtual world.

[Solar Legion]

Ah yes, in a thread like this it was only a matter of time before someone brought up VRC ...

It is not as much of a threat as some might like to believe - it really isn't. Nothing whatsoever is interconnected beyond a portal system, avatar use/customization is limited in many ways, voice is required for communication (yes, some worlds have a global keyboard and display - it is not as useful as one might like to believe) ... The varied issues and differences are too numerous for me to list/recall.

Suffice to say: SL killer it simply is not and - barring some major changes on their part - never will be.

[Coffee Pancake]

Just now, Solar Legion said:

Ah yes, in a thread like this it was only a matter of time before someone brought up VRC ...

No, it's not comparable to SL. That's the point, an SL killer doesn't have to be.

It is already a more vibrant, colorful and lively place than SL is capable of presenting. 

Who cares that they don't have inventory or systems are simplistic. Fun is what matters.

Their users are active and engaged. Ours are quasi AFK camped out with SL on the side while they do other things.

VRChat users use SL when they can't give the world they are logged into actual focus.

I know several people now who pass the work week in SL and log out to play VRChat on the weekends.

[Prokofy Neva]

5 hours ago, AnnabelleApocalypse said:

Sorry, still respectfully disagree. Just because people make sh*tty exploitative algorithms does not mean the entire concept of algorithms are inherently bad. 

Just because we have gone and built a sh*tty exploitative internet model does not mean it HAD to be that way or that the concept of a global computing network is bad.

Just because a cave man picked up a piece of flint, tied it to a stick and bashed his neighbours brains out with it does not mean axes, knives and spears are inherently evil. 

Your conflating the baseline technology with the purposes people set them to. Technology always has a myriad of uses. Some good, some bad. Its up to us collectively what we choose to do with them.

I mean.......if you dont think the internet and virtual worlds have been a net benefit to your life, why are you using them? 

You're so afraid of anyone attacking the sacred algorithms that if I point out that they are flawed because they are made by flawed humans with imperfect knowledge of everything -- and they are -- you imply that I have said there are no good algorithms. I suppose you could say the algorithm that enables the Hershey chocolate people to make less broken chocolate bars because they now can enable equipment to calibrate its temperatures better is "good," but in fact there are still some broken Hershey bars, indicating it is imperfect.

And one of the nightmare scenarios that scientists themselves discuss about AI and algorithms is what to do when the paper clip machine, always optimizing the manufacturing of paper clips, decides that this function should be the mission of the whole world, and begins to take over metal production and make masses amounts of paper clips that eventually ruin the world.

But your belief that algorithms "are not inherently bad" is merely a religious belief like any belief, a tech hubris manifestation like and tech hubris manifestation. We are not required to accept it as "science". Algorithms are indeed inherently bad as human artifacts -- the principle of making machines do what humans used to do or cannot do is not inherently good because it removes consequences from actions. In social media, this can be seen easily when companies show only some posts even of your friends, or feed you incendiary posts to drum up more "engagement" which is often of the hostile kind. It's no good saying such algorithms are "merely math" because they are constructed to perform a bad deed with bad consequences or unintended consequences.

The insistence on the neutrality of tech is merely a way of insistence on the neutrality of tech titans, and I don't accept that argumentation because they aren't neutral and it is easier to prove this now. The engineer their belief system into the tech -- this is admitted freely by such teams as Drupal.

The insistence on cave men examples are silly in a world of more complex tools, but even there, a cave man that sits down and consciously makes an arrowhead to kill his neighbours is not making a neutral tool. If he uses the arrow to kill a bear attacking him and his family, that doesn't rescue the arrowhead from its violent purpose. Some might argue if the arrow is only used to kill animals for his food that it is evil, too. Tools separate humans from the consequences of their actions and therefore are not neutral and especially not inherently good. that they accomplish good can't disguise that fact. When the tools of the Internet entirely take over and are everywhere -- they decide whether you can make a bank transfer or obtain medicine or food, let alone whether you can express your opinion, they themselves have so piled up that they themselves are the problem not merely their human wranglers.

When you said "it's up to us collectively what we choose to do with them" you've actually only revealed the deep flaw in your tech ideology. The "we" don't get to do this. The "we" don't decide. A handful of techs do, and create consequences separate from their accountability and that of their users. There's no "we the people". 

When the former LL employee who later went to work at Tor uses the statement that became the epigraph of my book on Snowden -- "mathematics makes the state obsolete" -- she is not merely saying that math enables some people to make encrypted communications and create everything from encrypted money to encrypted functions for machines, she's saying numbers, science -- are "always right" or "neutral" or "superior than flawed human opinion" and therefore achieved this ostensible "good" which was "abolition of the state".

And the problem with the absolute encryption idea that she takes glee in, is used to hack states and leak secret files. There is always the question we can ask of hackers: who died and made you king? Snowden can selectively quote the constitution but he ardently believes in code-as-law, not law-as-law. Who decided that a ban of ragged anarchists get to overthrow elected liberal democratic states by the lights of their extremist ideologies and disguise their violent and authoritarian intent in encrypted communications? And PS why is Snowden in Russia, and silent on Russia's war on Ukraine? Anonymous suddenly announcing that they are hacking parts of the Russian state doesn't make up for all the years they carried water for Russia all over the world, or the fact that they are infiltrated with Russian operatives. Tor has been happy to keep nodes that are clearly compromised in Russia all this time and I bet they are still there because somebody thinks "math makes the state obsolete". 

Hackers are always counseling that you can't have states or corporations have back-doors because "they will fall into the wrong hands." Except they as the self-appointed hands that are in fact wrong seek out exploitations and seize files all the time in their quest for "justice". There's always this argument that "the bad guys will exploit this," yet the bad guys keep hacking and doing billions of dollars worth of damage and the hacker community still keeps trying to assure us that they and their craft are inherently good and we shouldn't make laws to punish them. And just why can't you have back doors that "the bad guys" will always breach? What, you can't trust your own staff, the tech people? Oh, you can't, can you. Their ethics are not those of the larger society.

You then lurch into a common method of argumentation of tech bros in games, even not being a bro and not in a game, which I call the forced migration solution to every problem. "There's the door. Can I has ur stuff?" As if every criticism of the Benign Dictator means you have to fork.

And you use wild exaggeration to try to force a non-point -- that criticism of the Internet and virtual worlds, saying they cause more harm than good, are reasons not to use them. Why would that be, when "the more harm than good" statement does include good that is useful.

And wait, you just gave us a whole line of thought about cave men with flints and their useful axes that they use to chop trees and make shelters. At least be consistent with the use of the tech arguments. You've said criticizing the essence of tech means therefore I should not only not use virtual worlds, I shouldn't use the telephone to dial 911. But you've tried to rescue tech from its bad outcomes with cave men allegories. 

To return to Hamlet, I know from extensive conversations with him in the early days when he did a very tendentious and self-serving interview of me that he believes fervently in logical positivism and "falsifiable propositions."  This was a movement arising in the 1930s which was successfully challenged in the 1960s, although of course in persists in the Internet cultural demand to provide "proof" of every event with a link or a screenshot or a server record, as if these artifacts can't be manipulated or misleading. 

Hamlet doesn't like arguments against his own belief system. He created a policy just for me that if I posted on his blog, I had to use my RL name. This was in some misplaced belief that if people use their RL names, they aren't going to engage in "ad hominem attacks" which for him as for others is anything they don't agree with. I refused to obey a rule created only for me that absolved griefers harassing me inworld of any accountability, especially if it gave them more opportunities to come and harass me at my RL home or workplace, which they have done often. 
 

[Solar Legion]

4 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

No, it's not comparable to SL. That's the point, an SL killer doesn't have to be.

It is already a more vibrant, colorful and lively place than SL is capable of presenting. 

Who cares that they don't have inventory or systems are simplistic. Fun is what matters.

Their users are active and engaged. Ours are quasi AFK camped out with SL on the side while they do other things.

VRChat users use SL when they can't give the world they are logged into actual focus.

I know several people now who pass the work week in SL and log out to play VRChat on the weekends.

That's nice.

It is in no way comparable - which to be such, a potential SL Killer has to be - period.

Otherwise you may as well list each and every video game and past time in existence as such.

No, that is not hyperbole either.

"Their users are active and engaged" - in what exactly? Bear in mind that you're getting this response from someone who also uses VRC in tandem with Second Life. The only thing VRC offers that is in any way a threat to Second Life is the potential for immersion - which is itself a double edged sword: I've met a great many users of VRC who take their immersion much further than I have ever seen in any other environment, users who really should not have ever been exposed to such a thing as they simply cannot keep a line between what is real and what is not (to an extent I have never seen in any prior medium).

Game world? They're nice - nothing to write home about. Exploration? Ditto. Hangouts? Third verse, same as the first! I could go on and on ...

Even with the current work on cross-platform Dynamic Bones (something which has caught my eye), it is not any sort of threat.

That is not even touching on the subjects of griefers, client-side modification (such being disallowed/a bannable offense) and a whole host of things that - frankly - work against it.

So to sum up for you: VRC is only an "SL Killer" in the way the latest Video Game being hyped is such - just another Thing for people to use. That is to say - not at all.

You may have the last word if you'd like - I'm not interested in discussing nor debating with Sky Is Falling (and that is exactly how it is coming across and will come across for as long as anyone tries to seriously use terms like "SL Killer" as descriptors for any program).

[Prokofy Neva]

44 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Interesting discussion, and the sort of thing I wish we were seeing happen on New World Notes or elsewhere.

Tools, surely, are not generic things -- they are designed to do things. Sometimes those things -- vaccines, for instance -- are good things. Frequently they are double-edged swords; virtually any information technology, dating back at least as far as the invention of print, falls in that category, although on balance we are better off with them.

And other things are designed to enable evil. The "tools are neutral" argument is rather like the "guns don't kill people" line, but an assault rifle isn't any good for hunting or protecting livestock from wild animals: it is purpose designed to kill people as efficiently and easily as possible.

I think there was probably a lot of genuine utopian thinking about SL at its inception and perhaps for its first few years, but the problem is that it employs a "tool" -- corporate institutional structures designed to generate return on investment for those with money invested in the platform -- that isn't at all utopian. And in the final analysis, most of the big decisions made around SL since at least 2007 have been about that, about making money. And yes, that money is needed to keep the platform afloat, because LL is plugged into a larger economic and political system -- capitalism -- that requires that of it because that goal is inherent in the design of that system.

Most of the newest entries into the metaverse race are explicitly about this. Until the announcement of Facebook's "Horizons" distracted people, the bulk of the discourse I'd seen about the metaverse on Twitter and in blogs focused on it as a marketing tool, as a new way to more efficiently make money. The nascent "worlds" like Decentraland built around blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs may tip their hat to some poorly thought-out libertarian "ideology," but their real focus, and what we actually see happening on them, is upon generating wealth for those clever and cynical enough to be able to fleece the less clever.

Similarly, the real evil of something like Facebook's entry into the "metaverse" isn't that people have no legs, or even the censorship that will undoubtedly be applied across that platform: those are corollaries of the main problem, which is that "Horizons" is designed for one purpose, one purpose only: to make as much money as efficiently as easily as possible. It is the "assault rifle" of metaverse projects.

As I've said here before, I think SL was, initially, very well-served by its adaptation of a laissez-faire approach to economics and governance. But because the systems put in place to enable that are not designed to shepherd the platform out of this virtual version of early-stage capitalism, those same systems are now holding it back, producing inefficiencies, inequalities, and making it increasingly difficult to move to the next stage, that of a civil society that works equally well and justly for all.

To fix that, LL has to put aside, or at least de-emphasize, the production of wealth, the "return on investment," and find new and perhaps even radical ways to transform the platform from a money-making tool, to one which better nurtures the human potential of this kind of virtual world.

Your statements are only true within the circular reasoning of the socialist ideology. And as you know I don't share that belief system. I don't have an antagonism toward capitalism, which I believe should exist under the rule of law and be regulated -- and guess what, it is, and the exaggerated notions of blood-thirsty capitalists with tentacles sitting on top of the world taken from Soviet propaganda posters is a caricature.

My problem with LL's ideologies, which have changed over the years, is not that they are reluctantly or robustly tied to the capitalism system. It's that they are selective about the rule of law in any form. They don't accept First Amendment jurisprudence on their servers and pre-anticipate anti-gambling actions by prosecutions that didn't exist and for which there was no valid grounds to believe they exist. Of course as a group, as a business, they enjoy the protections of the First Amendment and can do what they want. They can decide who can be in their club "for any reason or no reasons". This argumentation isn't one that people want to accept to let the Boy Scouts of America off the hook from barring gays from their ranks, but that's just the problem, people do not want to live under the rule of law, they want a unicorn realm.

I don't know where you get this laissez faire stuff. First SL had no convertible currency. Then they allowed it to be converted outside by third parties, which is generally a good thing, by Gaming Open Market and Anshe Chung and others. This helped SL to grow. Then they decided they had to have absolute control over their currency and banned all conversion operations. They could do this in the name of fraud, but really, they were driven by other compelling factors: if the value of the Linden floated, it became expensive -- it easily went above US $4.00 per 1,000. Then the 1,000 spacebux didn't seem as fun. For years the exchange rate was far below $4.00, which is why all this jazz about "absorbing sales tax" needs some correctives. Today, it is in theory US $4.00 and is kept that way artificially, but it slips below that most days now so that unless you want to wait weeks for an exchange, you have to go below that value. To be sure, they enable direct purchases on the MP with credit cards and prices denominated in US dollars. Eventually this might be the norm inworld, but there are problems with that. 

As for governance, there has never been any anarchy in SL even as there has been freedom only for anarchists, i.e. those who exploit the code or create rogue viewers. There are many restrictions nowadays like the Newbrooke Covenant but in fact, hard restrictions have always been in place. You couldn't use Starax' wand to replicate endless numbers of cows anymore after 2005 because the Lindens created the grey goo fence. Etc.

It's not practical for the Lindens or any other virtual world makers to turn the exercise into a potluck supper and a Kumbayah sing-along where we weave baskets out of organic materials so that we don't harm the environment with paper or even ceramic plates. The utopian belief in a world "nurturing human potential" is impractical because it always costs more. Modern humans aren't willing to sacrifice themselves and stop their development for the sake of other humans whose potential has not been reached, and this won't change ever.

 

[AnnabelleApocalypse]

17 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

You're so afraid of anyone attacking the sacred algorithms....................

Your so exhausting. lol. Wish I could find a man with your stamina. 

That is not what I was saying at all. I make no excuse for bad companies like facebook. I was merely pointing out you cant blame technology for the flaws humans bring to it. No more, no less. 

17 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Hamlet doesn't like arguments against his own belief system.

Gee, who does that remind me of?

Edited March 27, 2022 by AnnabelleApocalypse

[Coffee Pancake]

11 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

"Their users are active and engaged" - in what exactly? Bear in mind that you're getting this response from someone who also uses VRC in tandem with Second Life. The only thing VRC offers that is in any way a threat to Second Life is the potential for immersion - which is itself a double edged sword: I've met a great many users of VRC who take their immersion much further than I have ever seen in any other environment, users who really should not have ever been exposed to such a thing as they simply cannot keep a line between what is real and what is not (to an extent I have never seen in any prior medium).

That's my point exactly, you're already playing it.

It has your attention, and if they don't screw it up and continue to grow the platform in ways you enjoy, it will get more of your time and attention (especially as it's demographic ages and calms the F down).

Nothing kills SL over night, it's a slow death by a thousand tiny cuts. We lose a community here, a demographics there, the churn keeps the numbers flatline, but really .. our soul is getting sucked out as one tentpole after another quietly falls and no one notices.

4 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Your statements are only true within the circular reasoning of the socialist ideology.

Says the landlord.

[Solar Legion]

I also have a Neos account. And play varied actual video games - one VR based (Zenith).

Yet here I am, still using Second Life. As apparently are those you've talked to. I've even managed to get someone whom I met in VRC interested in Second Life.

But do please go on ... It is entertaining.

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

That's my point exactly, you're already playing it.

It has your attention, and if they don't screw it up and continue to grow the platform in ways you enjoy, it will get more of your time and attention (especially as it's demographic ages and calms the F down).

Nothing kills SL over night, it's a slow death by a thousand tiny cuts. We lose a community here, a demographics there, the churn keeps the numbers flatline, but really .. our soul is getting sucked out as one tentpole after another quietly falls and no one notices.

Says the landlord.

I'm bewildered by a statement that the demographics have to "calm the F down." Is this an old-age home? Is this a rehab facility? I don't think that's a viable demographic and if it calms down it will eventually die, if that's the only demographic you have, aged and disabled people. But SL has young, able-bodied people who are not immunosuppressed, I know, because they are among my customers.  They're from all over the world.

There have been a thousand cuts, and people don't even agree with what those cuts are. For some people, gatchas were a cancer in the body politic and the body will only thrive now. I disagree, as I see the policy continues to have a devastating effect, a bounce effect, an invisible effect, that turning to breedables or Miepons or more weekend sales has not cured.

I'm proud to be a landlord in Second Life. I don't even have to dazzle anybody with some razzmatazz about how my prices are low or some of my areas are subsidized, I pay more tier to LL than I get in rents. What matters is that I have a small business like many other small and big businesses and that is part of LL's recipe for surviving, and for that they need to make a profit, and that's fine. I don't view them as evil rent-seeking squids sucking the blood from society. I see them as business people who basically want to do good, for themselves and others. The countries that you imagine are socialist havens actually have a good deal of capitalism in them; the countries of "true socialism" are abysmal and people flee them. AOC drove business away from her district and her people have only suffered from it. So another district then benefits from it.

And I'm proud to be a small landlord, a micro-version of LL itself which is essentially a large landlord,  because Linden Lab, regardless of their California ideologies of technocommunism or technoliberalism or cosmic engineering or what have you, grasp that they need to make a profit, they need to take in more revenue than they spend on their plant and staff, or else they can't stay in operation. They aren't a charity, and while COVID business loans can be vary generous, and some you don't even have to pay back, they can't have that as a business plan now.

I'm proud of helping this company have a viable business by paying them for their servers and helping retain their customers.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

4 hours ago, AnnabelleApocalypse said:

Your so exhausting. lol. Wish I could find a man with your stamina. 

That is not what I was saying at all. I make no excuse for bad companies like facebook. I was merely pointing out you cant blame technology for the flaws humans bring to it. No more, no less. 

Gee, who does that remind me of?

You're unable to find anyway to argue your ideologies except by insult and mockery, of the kind that if they were used on you, you would AR them.

[Prokofy Neva]

6 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

LL needs to figure out why, in spite of all the bad (along with the good), we're loyal customers of (for example) 10 years or more. Why are we loyal? What is it about Second Life AND Linden Lab that keeps us coming back? The hard part is analyzing the 10 different answers per individual when there are roughly 500 (wild guesstimate) people with those 10 answers. Forget metrics, forget demographics, statistics and all that. "How do you feel?" is what they have to analyze. Not an easy task considering most people have to analyze their own feelings first. Many aren't able to put the why into words. 

LL needs to keep a finger on the pulse of SL. The question is, how do they do that now? They need to re-examine that because whatever it is they are doing (or not doing) hasn't been working very well.

LL now has the ability to put a message inside every single inbox of every single Bellisseria house owner. If they had that capacity before, they weren't using it, and I don't think they did, they way they do on Estate No. 1, where Governor Linden can send a drop-down blue menu message to everybody on the sprawling estate of 5000 sims. Eventually, they may have the reverse, where, like Bellevue Hospital, you can use your phone to read a QR code and tell them whether you are happy or sad with your visit, or, if you lack a phone, you can point to the icon on a board of a happy or sad smiley face. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

17 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

LL now has the ability to put a message inside every single inbox of every single Bellisseria house owner. If they had that capacity before, they weren't using it, and I don't think they did, they way they do on Estate No. 1, where Governor Linden can send a drop-down blue menu message to everybody on the sprawling estate of 5000 sims. Eventually, they may have the reverse, where, like Bellevue Hospital, you can use your phone to read a QR code and tell them whether you are happy or sad with your visit, or, if you lack a phone, you can point to the icon on a board of a happy or sad smiley face. 

You haven't got a single clue what I was talking about. 

I will leave you to it.

[Luna Bliss]

On 3/27/2022 at 12:34 PM, Prokofy Neva said:

The utopian belief in a world "nurturing human potential" is impractical because it always costs more. Modern humans aren't willing to sacrifice themselves and stop their development for the sake of other humans whose potential has not been reached, and this won't change ever.

I remember you saying you were a Christian. Lessening the ego and its excessive desires is a big part of that, and appears to be something one can aspire to. Yet you're saying humans "won't change ever'?

[Paul Hexem]

On 3/27/2022 at 1:24 PM, Solar Legion said:

It is in no way comparable - which to be such, a potential SL Killer has to be - period.

This is absolutely not true.

As an example, look at Conan Exiles. It's got very little in common with SL, but it scooped up many of SL's fantasy and Gor roleplayers, many of whom haven't come back.

Similarly, I used to drive trucks on the Linden roads a lot, and these days instead find myself playing SnowRunner for a better experience. I know others do, too.

Losing residents is losing residents, whether they're all going to one new platform, or various other platforms.

[Solar Legion]

Just now, Paul Hexem said:

This is absolutely not true.

As an example, look at Conan Exiles. It's got very little in common with SL, but it scooped up many of SL's fantasy and Gor roleplayers, many of whom haven't come back.

Similarly, I used to drive trucks on the Linden roads a lot, and these days instead find myself playing SnowRunner for a better experience. I know others do, too.

Losing residents is losing residents, whether they're all going to one new platform, or various other platforms.

That's nice.

Losing users to another program is normal - do tell if you refer to such loss as "(Insert Program Name Here) Killer" as well.\