I think there is no race. The internet is actually running laps around legacy institutions, and has been for years.
It’s just not obvious to everyone because measurements are bad.
It’s not about who makes the fewest errors, but who is learning fastest.
It’s not about who is biggest, but who is growing fastest.
It’s not about who is the most powerful, but who is most flexible.
Bitcoin beats banks. Twitter beats universities. Youtube beats school. I think this will only get broad recognition after the fact, when people start sifting through the debree of collapsed fiat institutions.
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And the fact that economics IS just another social science among all the others in modern universities - and a disparaged one at that - indicates that money is not truly a concept in neoclassical economics.
I believe Mises made this point over 70 years ago. Abstracting away money prices makes economics meaningless.
Free speech is a value, a project to maximize the ability of people to form networks and exchange information.
It’s not about the state, but people coming together to learn.
There is nothing I hate more than having to deal with the condescending advice of academic supervisors, whose depthless confidense comes from a much honed ability to dissemble and confuse on basic questions of scientific inquiry.
In reality, they’re merely enforcing faux rigour in a cargo cult that has nothing to do with truth seeking or genuine original argumentation. Being right, doing something new, or even just contributing to solving a problem, is frowned upon. You’re supposed to just do the thing, with no ambition at all, and prove that you’re a good boy - willing to spend endless hours doing something that’s pointless, boring and technical.
Because that’s what employers like to see. Everyone knows that ideas can cause trouble.
Challenge:
Go to r/phd, read some posts and discussions, come back here and tell me these people are in it for the learning and their love of knowledge.
Or even that it’s not all just a status game.
You can’t do it, because academia is utterly corrupted, root and stem.
What are the advantages of centralization?
We see centralization naturally in times of crisis. Animals have group behaviour protocols for fight/flight situations, as do humans. The defining feature of such situations is that any coordinated action is better than no action, and there are often very few options to choose from.
Centralization is wasteful, and often dangerous, in all other situations. When options are many, when inaction may be wisest, when creativity and more knowledge is needed to make good choices. Then you want a proliferation of guessing, testing, criticizing, creation.
Now ask yourself: is it a coincidence that everything is constantly framed as a crisis?
Had a 4 hour visit from Norway’s biggest newspaper today, to talk about my work/activism, unschooling and «following the dopamine».
My mom wondered if we felt safe that they wouldn’t do a kind of hit piece, and it occurred to me that we’re privileged, even when compared to real celebrities, in that there is nothing they can do to hurt us.
See, we both earn our money from our followers on social media, and they generally don’t care what the newspaper says. Indeed, if they do care, I don’t want them as clients, so a hit piece would be a useful filter for me.
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate the absolute power that comes from owning a paying audience of actual fans. You become impervious to legacy institution fuckery. Think about it: Does Mr. Beast need youtube as much as youtube needs Mr. Beast?
This flower has barely started budding. In 10 years, most legacy institutions will be obviously and ubiquitously seen as second rate. The cheap version. We’re already winning.
In Spain, kids start school the year they turn 3.
In Norway, the year they turn 6.
From the point of view of Spaniards, all Norwegians practice unschooling from 3-6.
Unschooling involves rejecting the idea that there is a set of skills and knowledge that every human is required to learn within a certain timeframe.
So I don’t care if my children learn how to calculate percentages, the names of dead kings or how to spell. All I care about is that they learn *something*, enjoy the process, and through this learning acquire marketable skills and the ability to connect with other people.
The basic idea is that while children are not adults, and should not be treated as such, they are nevertheless *people*, and have certain unaliable rights. Foremost among these is the right to spend their attention on what they deem interesting. And yes: so long as it doesn’t negatively impact the rest of the family, that includes the right to spend all day playing computer games and eatching youtube.
It’s an educational philosophy centered on the benefits of self-directed learning and the harms of coercion (see for instance John Holdt, Mobtezzori or Reggio Emilia).
I’ve met several parents of illiterate children as old as 11-12 years. There’s bo research here, but anectdotally they will learn to read, quickly, when they need it (which they will). The principal of Sudbury Valley claims they’ve not seen a single case of dyslexia, which he blames on coercive reading instruction.
So, maybe I’m misunderstanding your second paragraph, but it doesn’t make sense to me. They come out of the womb well prepared for self directed learning, and how do you, as an external observer, distinguish cheap dopamine hits from learning? (I don’t think it’s possible).
That said, all kids are different, as are parents, and I don’t mean any of this in a judgemental way. I generally assume parents know best what works for them.
I have some do’s and dont’s, but mostly fail to adhere to’em. I just try to avoid coercive measures, be open to them being right and me being wrong, enforce (my) boundaries and be honest.
Our #1 rule is «pick your battles». Stuff generally work out, and relaxed parents are a resource worth protecting.
PoS, while useless for securing a currency, will do for this network. The advantages with PoW become disadvantages here: we actually want maximum speed, not "security" (in this case minimal bad actors). A small fee for relays would probably do nicely. Eg. a massive spam attack would require an equally massive transfer of BTC to the relay operator, which they can then use to fight the bots with a profit.
I’ve been wondering what happened to the old internet (if it ever went away). Any good sources on the story here?
How did the internet become so centralized? Was it just the ads model and winner-takes-all dynamics, or were government involved?
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