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Maybe a more illuminating question would have been to ask not in the definitive, to ask instead about the subjective:
.... do territory owners feel a moral responsiblity to downzap such posts
Maybe I unconsciously didn't ask it that way because I am still interested in this abstract mechanism by which we (i.e. society, Stackers etc.) arrive at 'the right thing' and whether people here think in terms of definitive morality, or whether they just act based on monetary incentives.
It means the system is wrong, not that the people are wrong.
I hold people to a higher standard, i.e. both can be wrong. That said, I try to temper my expectations of them. In a community where the law is perfect and sacred, people will still get caught transgressing it. Most moments in history, to my mind, where attempts were made at engineering pristine human behaviour--we groan at because of a glaringly fatal mistake that became obvious only in hindsight. That said, I'm not opposed at attempts to engineer something that tries to leverage human greed to create social harmony.
On the other hand, I am thinking of morality as a kind of insurance against anti-social behaviours understood as harmful to the group, i.e. profiting by a crime or scammer puts everyone else at more risk. (The cosmic balance you alluded to, FAFO, etc... Another eg.: You might like screwing your first cousin, it might not even be illegal to screw your first cousin, but that doesn't preclude the potentially damning consequences it has to your offspring in an oopsie scenario.)
I will never measure anyone to as high a bar as I measure my own actions. I don't even expect for others to be their own harshest judge in turn. Thus, I do not really care what other people do. I do not expect the corruptor of beauty to recognize said beauty. I do not expect the predator to empathize with their prey.
Well put.
I wish that it were different, but in this world, in this time, I don't think it likely that we'll find much beauty in any big picture. It's only when you zoom in deep enough and put the pile of shit under a microscope that you can witness the beautiful dance the bacteria are performing.
Ahhh, another Opti-ism for the books.
a more illuminating question
I'd have answered that one with "yes". I think more territory owners would have too. Not a majority by my count on the other post, but at least a whole lot closer to 40/60 instead of under 15/85.
I hold people to a higher standard
I'm past opti-the-dictator. Even though I'm supposedly good at it. I'm also very good at gaslighting people into believing that what they're doing is their own idea. I just don't really like myself much when I'm in that role and I've been quite successful in avoiding it for the last 15 or so years. So, under the condition that I get to speak my mind - and for all I care it gets downzapped to oblivion - I generally let people be. I do think we can make a 1000x better world if people think things through sometimes, but there aren't many examples that inspire people anymore. Currently, it is, in most if not all aspects of life, more appealing to take than to give.
i.e. both can be wrong.
In this case, I think that because SN is a product under development, and k00b is searching to build a ranking/recommendation system that aligns with something closer to democracy than plutocracy - i.e. something that reflects a common ground based on what stackers feel is quality content - and is not easy to hijack or abuse, it is the system that is wrong right now. It was an experiment and it was announced as such. Honestly, I think that it's already amazing that it lasted this long.
It could have been closer to functional when people would be acting a bit more in long term shared interests than their own short term ones, but the fact that people don't is imho enough evidence that the experiment got something wrong. Which is a pity because I liked the idea of this system.
I am thinking of morality as a kind of insurance against anti-social behaviours understood as harmful to the group
I think that if we were a town instead of an online community, the outcome would be quite different. For some reason its not just the money that has "magic internet" properties, there are also the magic internet personalities. But we are on a website here and not in some town, and chickenshit scambois that would never even dare opening their mouth to me f2f are here peddling horseshit. So something does need to happen and I don't think that the group as a whole is ready to give up sats for that battle. Which fwiw is still, despite me not wanting to hold people to any high standards, extremely disappointing to me, because we have so many great people here. If we cannot do this, then who can? I say no one.
Opti-ism
At least there is still beauty!!!
I mean that I am my own harshest judge and I reserve the highest bar for myself. I will never measure anyone to as high a bar as I measure my own actions. I don't even expect for others to be their own harshest judge in turn. Thus, I do not really care what other people do. I do not expect the corruptor of beauty to recognize said beauty. I do not expect the predator to empathize with their prey.
I'm not trying to change people's behavior with my recent posts, or impose some morality upon them. It wouldn't work, as this current round of the SN experiment is completely destroyed by greed. It means the system is wrong, not that the people are wrong. It means that the system will change. Because the desired outcome, where things that clearly a majority does not want to see are not still the top visible post, has not been the outcome of the system in place.
That is indeed the way of the world too, but the problem is that the social consensus seems to agree with me that scammers are bad, right? Or does it? The outcome right now is that the scammer does not get neutralized. I saw a comment from a younger stacker this morning expressing awe of the 3M number and assigning legitimacy to the post because of the number of sats listed, while it being a boost for over 99.95% of the value displayed, aka it has no merit, just someone is gaming a number.
It means the scammer is succeeding. And the consensus is in fact: "give me my sats, do not bother me." "Waste more, suckers." "Please downzap more often, it is good for SN." "You're so generous, downzapper." "I have no reason to downzap because no one comes to my territory anyway". "I need this money". "I'm poor." "I'm in the red".
So social consensus is also "no, there is no obligation". There is an obligation for SN to give me free sats. But not to be a safe place on the internet. You downzap? HFSP. I will not have fun though.
Exactly. So everyone will get what they deserve. And they'll choke on the half million sats. I wish that it were different, but in this world, in this time, I don't think it likely that we'll find much beauty in any big picture. It's only when you zoom in deep enough and put the pile of shit under a microscope that you can witness the beautiful dance the bacteria are performing.