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by qingcharles 223 days ago
This WorldCoin image will forever live rent free in my head:

https://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/08...

3 comments

What exactly am I looking at?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)

A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money in exchange for biometric registration on the network, in a lot of countries all over the world. It seemed to be an attempt to set up some sort of global electronic ID system and currency all in one.

That silver sphere is an iris scanner, IIRC.

Got shut down pretty hard in a bunch of places as a potentially illegal invasion of privacy.

>A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money

Was it free money? I recall that it was some shitcoin token paid out, which may or may not be worth something.

I could be wrong, of course.

Depending on degree of cynicism*, both takes are compatible with what was observable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)

* For what it's worth, my cynicism for Worldcoin and that eye scanner thing is currently about 7/10: moderately high but could be much worse.

By comparison, I'm 9/10 in cynicism for Facebook and 10/10 in cynicism for everything Musk does except SpaceX, my SpaceX cynicism is only 5/10.

It was 'worldcoin'. And yes I used the term 'money' very loosely there.

Apparently the token was only offered in some countries, and in some places where it was offered, that was considered enough of a bribe to render void the informed consent to collect and process private data.

It was crypto coins that you could trade for money. I did it and have got about $300 worth.
Ah got it. I've heard about that but apparently were behind how Iris scanners look these days.
> but apparently were behind how Iris scanners look these days

Not necessarily - they look whatever you want them to look. In this case sama wanted to create a feeling of futurism - the story being he is leading a global AGI revolution and you can be a part of it by staring in a metal ball.

Just another step closer to the creepy desires of building an AI "replica" human. Gotta get the look right (with Sora), the fingerprints and iris (with Worldcoin), the personality (ChatGPT erotic mode)...
A worldcoin gizmo which is basically a digital camera and I think has some face scanner stuff like an iphone. Once they've scanned and checked you are someone who hasn't been done already they give you basically a crypto wallet with some 'worldcoin' shitcoin in. And there's an app.

You only get a scan at the start, after that it's basically a usual crypto wallet + private key. They don't ask for your name or id or anything at the start. Although they are now offering me like $25 if I'll scan my passport and do kyc stuff. I think they are trying to make it into a payment/investment network.

Looks suspiciously like the robot that pumped Princess Leia full of drugs.
"How does it work?"

"It's magic. All technology is."

Given that we don’t know why electromagnetism exists, this is basically true for many technologies.
What do you mean? We know quite well how electromagnetism arises from U(1) symmetry in gauge theory. What else is there to know?
What does U(1) symmetry in gauge theory arise from?
It's turtles all the way down.
Not from bribes and/or moving faster than the regulators. Altman's projects, on the other hand...
At some point the answer is “because that’s what reality is.”
If by "reality" you mean "the universe", then the way the universe is depends on a cause, as the existence of the universe is not explained by the universe itself (even an "eternal" universe). Its existence is contingent on some other cause that ultimately cannot be contingent and thus does not require explanation.

So the cause or dare I say reason for the universe being the way it is will depend on its cause.

[flagged]
In science, it is the same thing.
We don't know why the world itself exists so everything is magic
Speak for yourself. That "we" is presumptuous.

The cause of the universe must itself be uncaused, or else it is only an intermediate cause that must itself refer ultimately to an uncaused cause. An infinite regress is impossible with respect to existence. Unlike causes per accidens which can in principle be infinite in length, a cause `per se` cannot; without a terminus, there would be nowhere from which the latter causes would derive their force, so to speak, like an arm pushing a stick that is pushing a rock that is pushing a leaf. Meaning, the cause is not some distant one in time, but one always acting; otherwise, everything would vanish. The only cause that could have this property is self-subsisting being.

From there, you can know quite a bit about what else must be true of self-subsisting being.

There doesn’t need to be a why the world exists. It does that’s all there is to know. There doesn’t have to be purpose just an explanation of how not why
GP probably meant "how" as in "By what mechanisms" not "why" as in "For what purposes". So "why" as in "what makes it do what it does".
Well, it does what it does because it's shaped like itself.
This is true, and the fact that humans mostly become blind to this magic past the age of 5 is one of the reasons we live in such a dismal world.
This but unironically.