How can we benefit everybody as much as possible?

I really don't know. But this is a very important topic (to me) that I love to discuss. The answer might depend on how we define the word "benefit". Well being? in a long-term view or short-sighted monetary/comfort sense?

Shouldn't our aim in society to benefit everybody?

I'm with you. 100%. But in order for something to last, it shouldn't be the main focus but something that comes as a side-effect (emergence?). And, this is just my opinion.

Some questions can't be answered easily. And, some can't be, at all (not from a defeatist mindset, but seeing right in the eyes of something that seems unanswerable, gives me pure joy!). To me, keeping these questions in mind while going through our life is the key. One can always find a reason to do/not-do. If you ask me, it's the question of well being and intelligence. Well being of an individual or everyone? If you see deep enough, there exists no individual without others and vice versa. To be more direct: we're embedded in our environment and focusing on one's own (depends on how greedy (in RL/CS sense) you are) life is just being short-sighted.

Two points:

1. We can start rolling out the lightest part of it - the tip - right now! The strength required by the tether is not the same across its length - to minimize weight, it has to be tapering off towards the Earth's end, with very light tip. So, let's find a suitable geostationary sattelite in orbit already, and bring some tape (tether) to it.

2. Space junk that's already in orbit, is great for the counterweight construction. It requires much less fuel to lift the junk into the geostationary orbit, than to lift it up from Earth surface.

I think this might be a bad aim for individuals. For example, suppose I have a child. If I were to aim to benefit everybody, then I would have to neglect my child. I think that maximizing (benefiting everybody as much as possible) also might not be a good aim: we need rest and leisure, time to ourselves, in order not to burn out.

I think this might be more complicated than keeping a diary or even than monitoring the body’s response to a given food using technology.

There are at least two reasons why I think this is more complicated than either of those processes suggest:

(1) such a process presupposes that the body’s needs are static. But, this is not the case. If I go for a run one day, my body’s needs that day will be different from what they are on another day when I do not go for a run. Likewise if I am sick. And, as our bodies age, of course, our needs change, too.

(2) such a process presupposes that the body’s way of processing food remains static. But, this is also not the case. The micro biome, for example, changes through time, and this has an effect on the kinds and amounts of nutrients that are available to the body after eating. Likewise regarding the age of cells/organs.

So, I think using a diary or technology can be very useful and informative—but, it also can be misleading if we do not keep the above in mind.

When I realize that the incessant cleaning of surfaces in Japan is a homeostatic fight against proliferation of bacteria in humid air, rather than just an aesthetic preference, it makes me realize another problem that these hive capsules would solve: making the air continental-climate-dry inside the capsules would automatically increase the public hyghiene.

One way to start selling quicker, is to focus on selling the simpler "independently-useful-components" of a modular product. For example, if your product is an electric toothbrush, you might develop an end-effector for existing devices, and start selling it first. I'd call this approach -- an "functional modularization" of products. In case of Hivica, it could be viable, because the "hive cell" because it has multifunctional components, that the unique kind of door, that doubles as a bed. However, to enable people to incrementally buy components of a hivica, the entire car needs to be prototyped with a long-term vision in mind, because once initial components are sold, it is harder to modify its dimensions in the future (without recall of products, sending new versions to all the customers).

Additionally, with the approach, where the customer self-assembles the car, by incrementally buying its independently useful parts, manufactured locally in each country, based on the provided drawings, by using supply chains in those countries, it becomes an imperative for the entire sale process to build a specialized app, that connects the part ordering with consumer orders. It requires maintaining partnering supplier network, similar to how people choose the delivery method, or payment method, they would be buying instance of the product to be made based on drawings, and able to choose the manufacturing shop, that will make and send the product. In such buying process, added complexity comes from the fact, that each single-part product has to be matched with different supplier, that specializes in one or other specific type of manufacturing.

In general, developing a buying experience of: "pay for our drawings, we'll submit them to your local manufacturer, and you'll receive the product" is worth a separate startup on its own. However, it's the kind of sale experience that I'd like to provide for the HiveCell buyers...

The reason why I thought of this is because I recently created this Hacker News Comment

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34614497#34618834

People upvoted me.

Why isn't everything on a computer as easy as going to a website?

I thought -- today, we're often loading the whole app, as a matter of opening a website. E.g., open GMail, and you're loading an entire app. Pinning apps, or wrapping them with Electron instances of browser, was an obvious thing, and people do that. However, what you're presenting here, is a lower level, and I like it. The protocol, like config;// for the OS looks neat! I see it being useful for organizing system resources.

After watching numerous videos about floating bridges, I still think the idea I've described has merit...

The link to the project's repo is telling more than the summary. Let me see.

Welcome back, [Niamh]! I'm quite surprised how good a match is your project to the Infinity community, and I'm practically interested in the cognitive benefits it could create. For example, I find myself really innovative in certain states, perhaps it's Theta waves (?), and I'd be curious about flexibilities in self-modulating one's brain with a tool like you described in the science section.

When you say "I would do it myself if I had app building skills. Instead, I have a background in psychology, neuroscience .." -- it makes an impression that you had already played scientifically with these sound modulations using some tools or environments, where you had found that to work. If so, could you elaborate on that?

I think, the simplest approach could be to start with something like JavaScript-based web page (such as this one, using the pizzicato.js library), where people could interact with sounds.

This idea reminds me of some projects on crowdfunding platforms. They only get made / progress to the next stage if the crowdfunding reaches/surpasses a set financial target. Failing that, the funders get their money back and the project either doesn't progress or has to go elsewhere to raise funds.

Regarding Infinity project, which of these domains do you like most, when it comes to English version of Infinity?

https://mindey.com/survey/start/05421959-c745-445b-ae23-02fe0ab28746

My little survey :)

I guess, using neuralink, we could automate that collection of data about food-induced variations of well-being, quite literally reading off the signals from corresponding brain regions.

// How to discover what foods are good for each individual?

The popular answer: "there's an app for that". The funny thing is, making an app is making a list or a few of them, and asking people to fill them: doing the stats (dependence analysis) auto-discovers what's good for whom. The more participants in the study, the merrier.

However, most people don't have time for writing yet another app for this or that. Only food data won't fully solve the higher problem of individual well-being. Generic solution for this is sensors, schedulers, and database technology.

I just wonder what sensors could feel our discomfort of our bodies, like how a secchi disk measured transparency of lakes and oceans. Of we could measure the actual food-induced sense of comfort or discomfort automatically, it would very much ease the process of such data collection...

Retail buyers (consumers) buying out the producer stocks on a daily basis, as frequently as they eat/consume, does not seem to be very sustainable, because, although stocks are on the public markets for anyone to buy, they are actually a relatively scarce commodity, compared to the volume of retail trade.

However, if the said overpay would go to acquire stocks of not only the producer making the specific retail product, but also the stocks of the upstream supply chain companies contributing to the making of the said product, or, even the set of producers making equivalent products, then this would surely be more sustainable.

With time, I certainly would like to try that this idea. It's a no-brainer extra value to the consumer: shop for stocks of producers automatically, whenever you shop for ordinary consumer goods. Realizing this sort of thing would probably be most straightforward by acquiring a hedge fund, and a popular online retailer, with all the legal requirements already satisfied, then creating investment accounts with the hedge fund for all the shopping users, and sharing the investment money with the hedge fund. Such hedge fund's investing operations would be quite easy to automate, because the buying of stocks would be entirely deterministic, determined by the retail purchasing decisions.

I wonder, if people want threading comments on Infinity? Could it be that lack of threading in comments is preventing conversations?

For example, Reddit has threading. Twitter, while looks linear, has light threading too. LessWrong has threading as well... However, Halfbakery works perfectly fine without threading comments. So, do we really need comments threading?

So, would this problem be better named as "Food compatibility matching" or something like that, because that is what you're describing. "Food quest" seems very generic, could mean things anything from farming to shopping, etc., but what you're describing, is more of individually biocompatible food discovery.

Hmm, after following friends' suggestions I discovered something! The reason for my interest in food plans was a symptom - headaches.

But now after mapping the foods I eat and making a list of foods to pause for Elimination Diet, I discovered that it could be "tyramine" causing my headaches (because I started eating new foods 2 weeks ago, that contain it!) Well, I am starting my 2 week pause on these foods now and will see if that's the case.

But it's funny that I discovered this unexpected solution (experiment to try) after publicly sharing this puzzle here, which prompted conversations with 2 different friends and led to the interesting solution to try out!

So yeah thank you friends for responding to my puzzle (even if it was in 1:1 rooms!) :)

My experiment learnings to be shared in 2 weeks..

Inga recommends Elimination Diet

Mindey recommends this video and this video, and tracking foods in a diary

// I believe that improving our health is the same as improving our physical body in the gym. If you work persistently and track your progress you can achieve Extreme Health and measure it.

Welcome to Infinity, [Dr Modestas]!

Agree, to improve, got to persistently measure, and we could discuss at length about the ways to measure all the important aspects of health. Ideally, we could measure abstract categories, like, the dimensions of happiness (I made a questionnaire for that.) to very narrow and specific variables, like... such simple things as "reaction speed" are easy to measure with a smart-phone (perhaps more important for police to measure the reaction speed, than alcohol amount, because reaction speed could be compromised not just by alcohol, but by many other substances, so reaction speed test is more generic indicator of intellectual acuity). We should probably brainstorm about the possible tests, that best correlate with actual health, and then decide what to invest time to develop.

Very good event With Acoustics Scientist & Inventor of the CymaScope John Stuart Reid you can attend for FREE on Wednesday: https://theshiftnetwork.com/event/50950/2?email=m.jarutis%40gmail.com

Dealing with our health and tracking our progress is like going to the gym. Some people can be persistent, find motivation and attend the gym and some, unfortunately, can't. I believe that improving our health is the same as improving our physical body in the gym. If you work persistently and track your progress you can achieve Extreme Health and measure it. Thanks, Mindey for a very good discussion. Dr Modestas Jarutis (www.HolisticDoctor.eu)
Anyone who would like to track their health can complete my health questionnaire once a week or once a month and we can discuss what needs to be done to improve health. https://baserow.io/form/CyNiJ4IrbQ839JgS2HY_gxrzckmqYZZD398wIwZv7LE

Like there's "Home automation", would this be something akin to "Life automation"? I guess, the subscriptions should also monitor for exceptions to rules based on statistical preferences, and ask to make exceptions. For example:

"Lock my house when I leave proximity of the house"

The statistics may show, that people don't want to lock houses by default, and only want to lock the house in the cases that unwanted parties (like a thief) are approaching to it, and then ask:

"Only you? What about your family members? Would locking it when a stranger is trying to access it be sufficient? ..."

Now, COVID test strips make me think of mosquitoes with bellies that do chromatography.

Fake it until you make it? This reminds me the idea of generative search, which was a thought that we should generate non-existing products to satisfy search needs. It's not bad idea to vote for them (models of products) and even fund them. I'm all for this.

// So this imaginary website is where marketing professionals create beautiful copy and beautiful imaginary products and services and cost it all.

I think, ideally, as mentioned in the previous idea, this work would be highly automated...

For some products (like hardware and mechanical systems), this should work quite well. On the other hand, some products, like mobile phones had become so similar one to another, that all of them look like boxes with round corners, and it would be rather difficult to capture the differences by their basic appearances. People search by features or brands. It's weird how brands become products.

// selectively breeding mosquitoes by giving to bite for blood over a thicker honeycomb-like structure, that prevents the mosquito head from approaching too close to the skin, so that only mosquitoes with relatively longer proboscis could reach the blood for survival //

This has to be doable under home conditions! Just take a bucket of water outside the window to collect mosquito larvae, and make that "honeycomb-like structure" for selecting. However, due to mosquito being a vector for disease transmission, this needs to be checked with local laws and regulations. However, I think this could be a nice YouTube video story.

I suggest that the value of people's money be directly valued based on that person.

So money isn't just a number, and that number has buying power but that there is a recursive function person_x(person_y(society_valuation((f(person_z, numerical amount, person_z_demand_history, person_z_work_or_additions_to_society)))) = buying power.

I think the valuation of money is invisible at this time.

My impression is that money already works like that (e.g., air ticket price fluctuation makes cheap travel more affordable at times, there are also various cheap deal opportunities, called "sell-offs", etc., and the value of money is very contextual and multiple: e.g., a single unit of currency being worth a cup of coffee AND a trip to another side of the country, sometimes at the same price), but it's not visualized, and not focused on making the opportunities apparent to segments of society. Is it that what you're proposing -- is some system to visualize that, and help alleviate the wealth inequality?

In Ireland there's something called the stock market bar, where prices of menu items are displayed on a television display, the prices change over time over the night. You can get a drink or food cheaply if you wait for it.

There's some algorithm which causes the stock market bar to be entertaining to those who visit.

Now, society is composed of many people, and each person is contributing a different thing every second.

Some people (consumers) contribute demand for products: water, electricity, food which generates work for others. This is a good thing. We need to represent that demand as part of a wave function. So we need some way of detecting demand for things, digital accounting systems can solve this problem. Such as an app on a smartphone with a button. Or digital NFC keyed shops and workplaces.

When everyone is watching television, no work is being done and when the kettle is turned on, the use of electricity goes up.

I think some people contribute to a better society than other people. I think essential workers such as delivery drivers, chefs and supermarket logistics are very important people for civilized civilization. They allow the rest of society to function. Unfortunately there is no prestige in these positions and they are not respected by the vast majority of society. Unfortunately, educated people are not willing to do these kinds of jobs due to economic incentives mean they can get more elsewhere.

People who have wealth are lazier than people who are forced into labour everyday, economically they produce more wealth but they also do less actual work in the world. Feeding 1000 people in a local area is more fundamentally essential than generating $billions in revenues.

I don't want to force everyone to be productive, that's the opposite of my goal.

I want the people who do the most work to be rewarded by what they can afford. So even a poor person should deserve the output of 1000 rich persons he provides for.

The wave function produces a higher number when work is done and a low number when no work is being done.

This is a force multiplier. The demand signal is really valuable, when you're in a restaurant and there is a demand for a certain menu item, you cook more of that kind of item in preparation for the demand.

Likewise, a laptop or phone manufacturer produces more of the kind of item that has high demand. The demand signal itself is valuable but nobody is paid for it.

People should be paid for their demand signal, as it coordinates society and orchestrates best use of resources for mutual profitability.

The wave function is added to what money you do have, and this increases the power of your purchases and acts as additional money in the system.

You didn't specify the how this would work exactly... So how?

When a programmer wants to play a benevolent big brother? Go to a construction site, and look around, then, you find people who may be struggling with their task, and help out. Sure, online, private corporations have made surveillance systems that convert the collective digital work environment into something like a construction site, where they distribute computers with tracking software, so that they can always take a look at how each employee is doing. It may be one of the reasons why companies of certain type (the ones that care about their people), succeed. However, the closest thing to what you're describing in the wider social setting with privacy constraints, is a contacts application with labeling system, where you label all of your contacts by their skills, and then communicate with them based on need. I used to do so in the past. Example: you know a particular skill, say, "chemistry knowledge", so you label your friends who have that knowledge. If you have a problem, then you can write them by filtering whom to write by the label. It's not very efficient though, because you're bothering more people than necessary with a particular task or question. Ideally, you would find the only one perfect contact to bother, who is most likely to know how to solve the problem, and bother others only if bothering the first one resulted in the need for another.

At Google, employees decide what to do and their manager's ratify it. Unfortunately productivity at Google is very low and the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai has threatened layoffs.

You could have two kinds of equity and dilute every month based on who reinvests what.

Equity from capital and equity from value added.

The equity in issue is diluted every month but equity that wasn't served (i.e equity people are sitting on) is expired.

The idea is that management and workers gain the most equity over time and they become the de facto owners over time.

The original capital gets what they put in

Well my use of the word "exhausting" applies to the nature of work compensation. When the worker is paid for their work, the transaction is over. The work is exhausted in its utility for the worker but not for the capital owner.

Capital is the opposite, it never exhausts in its utility. Even if you are paid back for the capital, you get more of it back.

A worker contributes more work over time than capital did at the beginning. It's kind of a chain reaction that is maintained by workers.

If workers input and causes was valued and treated as capital, they would gain equity over time.

Ownership should be based on who is doing the work.

Or equity should expire.

Yes, I noticed that the term "compensation" meaning pay for cost, is problematic, and therefore, created this equity model to remedy the situation. In essence, if an employer only pays for the cost of making, they paid for your loss, and took your gain, whereas in reality, both of you added equal amount of resources -- one added those resources in terms of labor costs, another (employer) in terms of monetary costs, and got a result, which, if the payment from employer only covered the cost, then, the result should be shared in equal parts between the employer and the employed, and based on this rule, if put in legal practice, we could have a fair distribution of wealth. However, the described equity model actually solves the problem in accounting sense...

Can you explain exactly, how this would "labor as capital" be treated? According to my formula, the labor would automatically become co-ownership of shares generated by work results, and this is what I'm thinking of, when it comes to fully-fledged investment model on the Infinity family.

So we have security services that defend us from evil such as counterterrorism, counterfraud and countercrime. They take access to our private data to keep the institutions safe, such as governments, monarchy and civil society.

They say that those that would give up privacy for security deserve neither. The question also becomes, who watches the watchers.

Any fashion that limits what I need to carry with me every day. Perhaps t shirts that are chipped and have biometric data and a account number to pay for things with, so I can go to a shop or restaurant and pay with the clothes I am wearing. By scanning the tshirt and entering a password on the keypad.

Or some way to carry a USB charger cable with me, that isn't awkward.

Fashion interests me because what we wear works like a trigger in society. Fashion shapes social norms. For example, punk movement was partly expressed through wearing heavy boots and ripped jeans. Through outfit, one can see their tribe member on the street. Within outfit comes behaviours and values attached to that subculture.

In older times, women would wear heavy dresses that are like sculptures put on them. These outfits promoted certain values again.

So, looking ahead, I'm curious what elements will be in outfits of the future? Secondary question is, what values/behaviours will these futuristic outfits will promote?

I got a manequin and started fashion course and a map of my inspirations on Miro as well as I have a collection of outfits as materials. I'm a bit overwhelmned now I have to say. Also a purpose of this project has changed a bit. So I'm thinking how to evolve.

Since my last update, website was changed 2 more times, 2 client projects started and one more collaborator joined us to co-create a training programme due to launch this August. More soon!

Also in User Profiles it'd be useful to have this Feature:

Offers (general) Requests (general)

So that each Infinity member could describe:

• how they would like to help other members and collaborate (=Offers)

• what support/collaboration they would like to get for their problems , ideas or projects

Links between members are key (links make a system) and tech could facilitate collaboration more :)

It would be useful if in User Profile page, user's problems/ideas/projects would be grouped under Top Categories (e.g. Education, Tech, Society, etc)

This way it's easier to see common interests between different people

How is this different from the idea of "Convertible note"?

[thekhan], Well, that's exactly the problem that we want to solve: to enable people with an idea, that makes logical sense, to start working on it, and get funded for doing it from the moment when it:

• (A) logically makes sense
• (B) someone is willing to put their time and resources to it

In my opinion the cross missing the most critical point, which is time. Time is required to create a basis for every project and sadly it's the most scarce resource of all. Funders will ask for a MVP (minimum viable product) for funding. Unless you have time to create a MVP you will have no chance from the beginning. And only after MVP the cycle can start.

What you're proposing is to get banks, shops, busy postal offices and other such places learn from airports, that had already implemented waiting halls with amenities and conveniences? I think, it would be preferable, of course, better than plain waiting.

Gitlab is archiving dormant GitLab projects. and freshmeat.net was a site I did use for finding new open source projects. Unfortunately they stopped updating the site. And we're replaced by freshcode.club

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32338481

The problem is universal. For someone to keep doing something for someone else, there needs to be some return. The free lunch doesn't last forever.

Ah I forgot I posted that, I shall add a differentiation between this question and that question (commit to buy)

(a) Commit to buy is when you have money and you are willing to pay money for someone to create something based on a description. Multiple people join a commit to buy and add more money to it. The people who do the work decide what to create.

(b) Worker escrow is to command someone to create a piece of work, the worker is told what to do.