Been noodling on this topic for a bit (some recent discussions here and here and this great one), and here are what seem to me to be the most important questions to ask with regard to the SN rewards system:
- what do users like and want
- what user behavior helps the SN community to flourish
- what behavior can support the viability of SN as a business
- how can we identify that behavior using available data
- could we make new data available that would reveal it better
- are there features that would encourage users to exhibit more of this useful behavior, or perhaps, decrease counter-productive behavior
- how do we design incentives in accordance with the previous answers
All of these issues are more complicated than they appear at first. For instance, a ton is buried in the first one -- what does it mean to flourish, anyway? You could define that in a bunch of ways:
- total volume of zapping
- some measure of surface area of numbers of users x total zaps
- number of daily posts
- diversity of daily posts
- summation of the relevance of posts over time, e.g., evergreen-ness
- complexity of created content according to semantic analysis or link structure
- stacker activity over time
and many of these have their own measurement problems, in turn. A minimum circularity is probably inescapable, e.g., part of the definition of flourishing has to do with supporting SN as a going business concern, but not all of it; and part certainly has to do with users getting what they want, but not all of that, either, and anyway, which users? And what about potential users who are not here, but could be, as a kind of natalist utilitarianist argument?
It will be interesting to consider March Madness in terms of questions like these. I don't have instincts about it, partly bc I'm not following the leaderboard or other stats, but at a minimum it seems the reward distribution should look different? Although perhaps it won't look as different as we think it will? What if the top X zappers earned exactly what they would have earned anyway? That's analysis waiting to be done; similarly with the other metrics.
Any aspiring computer science, economics, psychology, or sociology PhDs in the audience? DM me to riff on dissertation topics. Or, I guess, reply in the comments :)
Contrary to all the narratives I heard growing up about population growth and overpopulation, China's population is projected to be HALF of what it is today in the year 2100. (Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/world-population-2100-country/)
1.4+ billion to a mere 700 billion, mostly older people is a recipe for disaster. It seems that the return to communist principles isn't serving the country well.
However, one factor that China has in its favor is nuclear power. All the nuclear plants that they have spent years developing and building will provide them electricity at HALF the cost as compared to the USA within a couple of decades. This implies to me that China's economy will shift increasingly towards using machines and AI, rather than humans, for manufacturing and labor.
I hope the West can keep up with the nuclear energy race. Interesting times ahead.
Suggestion: The "Invitee Limit" field should appear pre filled with a default value
Day 346 of snailposting everyday 'til BTC hits $100k.
__@_'-'
Quite some things, but the short answer would be: better understanding my current situation and plan for the next moves in life ;)
More specifically: