Notices by แทกโนมันซี (technomancy@icosahedron.website), page 2

@garbados boycotts and strikes are an example of applying threats to attempt to shift the optimal strategy of a profiteer. for such a strategy to be effective, it helps to understand what makes it credible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-credible_threat

@garbados right, but that's only one side of the game; it's interesting to see how those payoff matrices interact with those of actual humans, especially since human values vary so widely. as human values shift over time, how does that shift the optimal strategy of the profiteer?

@garbados if you use it as a means of justification, of course it's nonsense. but if you frame it in terms of "everyone makes decisions which maximize their expected payoff" as a way of explaining motivation and behavior, then it can be a helpful way to analyze situations.

the key is that "payoff" is not always monetary, it comes down to whatever that person happens to value. if one side values wealth while the other values humanity, it's going to play out differently than you might think.

@garbados if your local library has https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/games-people-play-game-theory-in-life-business-and-beyond.html available for checkout I would strongly recommend it; I feel like it really expanded my understanding of strategic decision making

@garbados in both situations you have two parties at odds with each other, considering their expected payoff for each choice and how the other's move will change their expected payoff. anticipating what the other side will do in each scenario over an iterated series of interactions is a big part of making good strategic decisions.

@garbados I think the similarity comes from the fact that they're both game theory problems

stop putting an apostrophe in yall you cowards

@bgcarlisle I think they were worried that there may have been backups or redundant systems that they weren't able to stomp out?

@emacsomancer @greyor @emsenn yes, but the lack of cons is not the reason Clojure is not simple, and the presence of cons does not make CL and elisp simple. =) but it's roughly true that lisp 1.5 is a subset of CL/elisp and not a subset of Clojure.

@emacsomancer @greyor @emsenn yeah well I think Scheme is the only one that retains that simplicity in any real sense. (I like to think that Fennel comes close)

@emsenn @emacsomancer @greyor maybe the term is "fundamental" or in some sense "primitive"

everything flowing from the root of seven special forms in the Lisp 1.5 paper

oooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh I get it now

"Aladdin Sane"

took me long enough

@taweret it's a hard job but somebody's gotta do it.

@mattly @ieure I guess... in some sense it must be a relief to be free from the burden of having to write code that's clean and abstracted, when "just get it done" is the best you can aim for.

@mattly @ieure the problem is every time I look at that I hear a voice in my head screaming "ABSTRACT THAT AWAY YOU COWARD" which gets very distracting. I guess you just learn to ignore it?

@mattly @ieure oh yeah, I mean that's absolutely reasonable. being picky about language isn't a particularly practical strategy, and people are a lot more important than technology.