What ought?
Yknow, in chess they have this armageddon format to decide winner after way too many drawn results and a decisive result needs to be delivered. Currently, it seems that it is a coin toss, and the winner of the coin toss can pick black or white where black has four minutes to white's 5 minutes but needs only a draw to win the game. And it seems to me recently most people in winning the coin toss pick black because the advantage of 1 minute extra thinking time and playing white does not make winning odds higher enough than 50%.
I was thinking along the lines of, yknow, how they balance games, for if out side is consistently picked, the next update will either nerf that side (due to usage) or buff the other side to create balance. But of course, who is tracking all armageddon game choices?
However, I thought of another way to make it more fair. My proposal is this: instead of it being a set time disadvantage of 4 mins vs 5 mins, the coin toss could create, yknow, rough guidelines for what is to be proposed. So for example, lets say the guideline is 3-10 mins.
So once again you start with the coin toss. Winner of the coin toss decides whether to propose the time odds or to pick. Basically someone proposes time odds - how much time for black, how much time for white with the same idea that black has only to draw to win and his opponent then picks whether to play white or black. In this scenario, and especially since no two players are the same, the proposer has to pick time odds closest to 50% based on 50% results since if the opponent knows him well, he will pick the one most favorable to him. Where one competitor proposes and the other selects, it seems then that there is no complaint from either side for the thing to be unfair. Because if the picker says it is unfair, he could have picked the other, if the proposer says it is unfair, he could have proposed a fairer option and so, by allowing more flexibility (creating the proposer), unfairness is kinda eliminated. Even without guidelines this should theoretically work assuming that players are equally confident of all time formats but of course they aren't and tournaments cannot last forever so some guidelines will be helpful.
So that is my suggestion for the chess world. Free of charge, if anyone wants to use it, feel free to use it. It would also incorporate some sort of game theory and knowing your opponent heh, makes it even more strategic, outside of the chessboard though slightly more complicated a system. Afterall, if you think old armageddon is best you can always propose old armageddon and let your opponent pick, unless your opponent wins the coin toss and decides to pick then you are kinda out of luck. What you cannot do is propose old armageddon and pick black tho.
It is my contention that this broad idea, one proposer and one picker among competitors can generally lead to a fair outcome for most situations where opponents might not agree on what constitutes a fair playing ground. So this would be applicable for say, dota 2 drafting sequence .etc. though of course if the proposal becomes too complex, then there are some (time) costs associated with having to think up a fair proposal.
Although then, perhaps it brings into focus knowledge asymmetries that might be exploited.
And in actual fact, this is what happens in the market economy, amirite, usually the seller proposes a price, and the buyer decides whether to buy or not. sometimes, say in an auction or what, the buyer is the one that proposes the price and the seller decides whether to sell. The big difference, then is that there are many many sellers and many many buyers and furthermore, the buyer and seller cannot switch position as easily as how to chess players can switch black and white.
Ok so bringing this to the concept of leaseholds... Next post probably.
With eternity set upon it
And an infinite God-shaped hole in it.
I dunno man, I think the human heart is so huge. Yugeee like trump would say.
It looks at everything and wants everything to be right, it knows what is right, what is beautiful and what ought. Even when it cannot articulate it, or justify it well with words. It makes claims on reality, normative claims even.
It sees injustice and war and vast economic inequality and says not good. It sees charity and innovation and enjoyment of the small things and says good.
What right does humanity have to say to the sunset "how beautiful" or to UK weather "how dreary"? Or to marvel at the expanse of the universe or to dread an upcoming in camp?
Do animals do any of this? I think so much doesn't make sense on a conception of world based on just survival and procreation.
Anyway the point is it is huge, my own heart is huge. I feel very strongly that the world isn't what it should be. That I am not what I should be.
There is this huge hole yknow, not just God-shaped, but God-sized. And whatever I throw into it, idk, there's this deep deep unsettling nag at the bottom knowing that it isn't right. This is not to say that i'm unhappy or discontent with life now. It goes deeper than that yknow. I think I am reasonably happy and content, but when I face this, existential emptiness. Man, nothing satisfies. I think my experience of God doesn't fully satisfy either. Maybe it is something deficient in how I experience God? Or maybe it is something deficient in God-experiences without new creation.
Oh boy, a few things struck me. Especially given yknow, the current situation.
One is focus on brevity - getting to the point and having clarity
and having demonstrated it above, I am probably going to flout that first rule by rambling on, but hey, self awareness and yknow, a little bit of artistic license.
Personally though, I think this is something that I have to work on. I can be brief on things i'm clear on and when i'm clear what is expected on me. Otherwise, additional words is usually for hedging yknow, covering bases. It's like investing, you diversify because you don't know or are not confident. If you are confident you can make bold and effective moves.
Second is about investing in people. Or talent collecting. Hmmmmm... For those of you that know me... Hmm... I do think it is very important though, people last for eternity. And, I think he mentions the friendships forged in pursuit of a common goal along the way is one of the biggest gifts of life. And time and social energy are precious amirite. I like how he doesn't use people but builds them up and engenders in them loyalty. And how he spends time and links ideas in people.
Oh and I really detest stupid meetings.
Funnily enough it seems like he is synonymous with giving scholarships as an investment in people. Though how he describes his own version of giving scholarships, the exacting standards as well as the personal touch, the loyalty demanded and the letting go of poorly performing people seems quite different from the general public (and indeed, even some scholarship holders - idaresay? - view of scholarships as a ticket to coast and get promoted quickly). Develop from young is something there is a biblical mandate for. Develop in what though? And also, as a side note, it made me really annoyed with my thesis results and tarnishing my own meeting of standards - i suppose i had not much to lose and invested in other things, man, took what i thought was a calculated risk and it flipped. Ohwell I've already reflected at length on this but still, it appears here and there.
I share his distaste for bond breakers - heh, why I didn't want a bond too. It seems to me that scholarships shine when they really identify talent and give them the leg up, especially if they are not as privileged. Scholarships suck donkeyballs when recipients are selected based on class and social markers that masquerade as merit.
Third about having vision. In the book, it paints this picture of a visionary. Dang this guy can see 5-10-15 years ahead. To be honest, that is so hard. I don't think I am sufficiently visionary for my liking and it is a tough skill to hone. One thing that the book leaves out is on his ideation process. I need some comparisons to see how many crappy ideas he has, or failures, or things that were thrown out or wrong bets or what he learnt from them in order to augment my own experience.
Being visionary is actually pretty sick la you not just need to predict future, you need to shape future and see what is important out of the big picture which you need to grasp well. It requires a set of thinking that is suppressed by our own education system with its focus on testables, basically yknow, within parameters. Doesn't cope well with unknowns. And man, this visionary thinking is really poor in, uh, places. People just don't think enough eh.
Fourth about having tenacity to enact your vision. This is where a lot of the bulldozing and charming and by-any-means-necessary comes in, the stuff that he is known for. Mmm... Everyone loves an asshole on their side amirite? And even better if the person is not being an asshole for something stupid.
That being said, I like to think of it as "power potential". Basically the ability to enforce your will on reality - usually through other people. Think it is a art to hone. There are so many factors to this though, and having great "power potential" can make one a criminal mastermind as much as a stellar contributor. Cosmically, God has the greatest "power potential" right? What he says goes, but for us humans... I'm not sure how much we should aspire to it but it sure is convenient...
Fifth is about what you are living for. Therein lies a significant difference I suppose. Yknow, I love to read biographies about people that did not waste their lives. I think there is something right, in itself, in not wasting life, life is meant to be lived fully (and there are many ways to live it fully). In this particular case, his main concern was his country, Singapore. Mmmmm to be honest, my current thinking on this is still I don't see a particular need to privilege your won countryman over the rest of the world. Some sort of more universal humanity. And of course, I am living for a different sort of kingdom. This are the things you will bring your "power potential" to bear on y'know. Or rather... What you bring your "power potential" to bear on shows what you are living for. So you can preach whatevershit you like, what you beg borrow steal .etc .etc for is what you are actually living for. So in other words, for most boring people, comfort or nothing or something like that. And this links closely with your vision.
Sixth about taking risk, responsibility and ownership and buckstopping, and integrity in people. Yknow, whats so nice about this whole thing. It is balanced right. Lots of risk-taking balanced with high responsibility and ownership and drive. Freedom balanced with accountability. Blank checks (or close to blank checks) with integrity.
One reflection here is that you can build a organisation or whatever conglomerate of people on two axes. One is trusting integrity of systems the other is in integrity of people.
When one swings too much towards integrity of systems with lots of checks and balances and redundancies, you get a bureaucratic nightmare and a bunch of disempowered zombies trudging against the red tape, doing the bare minimum that the tape stretches to allow. And that sucks. I hate it. Army is like that mostly. Very uninspiring.
When you swing too much towards the integrity of a person/people. The chance of rampant abuse is high. When the buck stops at a person, and it always does, instead of some convoluted law or precedent set sometime ago by again, some person, and the person lacks integrity, you generate massive harm potentially. Though if the person/peoples are good, there is much good to be gleaned. Well... It seems to me that alot has to be on selecting the people and destructive self-servingness should be big no go. It helps alot that say, goh keng swee buck stops for philip and he does whatever he wants and only has to justify to one guy, shearing tape in the process. Literally shearing. And this helps also when the bosses are in touch with the ground and the ground with the bosses.
Oh and as a last point, I really like what he said about eunuchs being destructive - the layer between decision maker and people on the ground that get work done. Is negative utility okay. So as many tiers as possible cannot be the solution either, even as much as we love to tier rewards so they more justly remunerate work.
Yknow, voting with votes is cool and all and important and at the same time. At the same time, did you know, you also hold a very important vote per person -> you can constantly vote with your time and energy.
That being said I like to think that those who read my blog are already mostly doing this... Cos my readership has integrity amirite. And those that really need to hear it are not gonna read this because they complain complain complain want other people to solve this solve that legislate on this legislate on that. Maybe get the word out there somehow, I don't know how.
Perhaps asking people to repent is really not so easy. eh?
With that high handed attitude how will people repent? That's how not to evangelise 101.
Yknow, much has been said about the labour share of income. And how ours is at a low (comparatively) 42%.
And it really made me wonder.
What is the upper middle / upper class dream? To earn a lot of money, stockpile capital, live off passive income. Right? You know how you work really hard and sell your soul at a high stress investment banking job, earn 3 million by 30, by 2 rental properties, flip them occasionally, semi retire, flip more properties and invest in stocks, get 10 million by 40 and live off passive income for the rest of your life. Something like that?
What would the labour share of income be for that person over his life? Well it would be exceedingly high and then after that, decline to zero by the time he is 40.
And I was thinking, yknow, what is stopping a state from basically taking that form of strategy in life. To accumulate massive reserves by working hard, tight fiscal policy bla bla bla. And after 2-3 generations (I suppose timelines have to be stretched), the returns on investment for the reserves accumulated would be sufficient for the running of the state with very little required for tax revenue and if there are surpluses, they can either be reinvested or disbursed to citizens (the shareholders).
Seems like a plan right? Plus here in Singapore, possibly the first few generations had already done quite a bit of that for us (if our size of reserve hugeeeeeeeee).
Well, I wonder.
For we kinda know that there are countries that don't have tax revenue and disburse money to their citizens occasionally. Most of these countries have oil wealth (which is, technically land rather than capital though I suppose it is quite easily converted from one to the other). So it isn't necessary to need to collect taxes. Wealth is then, shared (to what degree is dependant on the ruler) with the populace - usually the ruler keeps a hefty chunk to himself.
Assuming that such a thing is pulled off in Singapore and Singapore (govt) basically has enough money to slash taxes to the barest of minimum, living off returns on investment, what are the ramifications? I think there are two aspects to be looked at here before moving on to discuss the desirability of it.
Internally what does this mean? It seems to me that any country that is able to guarantee this sort of "unearned" (non-labour) income tends to become rather isolating - citizenship is restricted because each citizen is basically owning an asset. I'm not sure what the dynamic will be then but it will be interesting. Essentially each child being born, assuming that returns on investments are shared somewhat equally, will be wealth being gained. The govt will also have no lever of trying to maintain racial balances through immigrants because, once again, immigration will be restricted to preserve the income of the country. Perhaps therein we have the solution to our declining birthrate. Perhaps, also then, a declining birthrate will not be a liability - for labour will not be the main wealth producer of the country? And perhaps a declining birthrate will mean more for all! Pretty much like royals intermarrying eh, to keep the wealth within the family.
Well there are many internal aspects to look at, what sort of jobs or pursuits will citizens pursue once the tax burden is low or nil and if living becomes aided by govt handouts from wealth. I suppose to some degree we can look to the oil rich nations esp, maybe norway (since it is sort of a democracy). Also, how will it affect the political system will be interesting. Since the fundamental concern will no longer be jobs i suppose. LOL.
Of course the best case scenario is it becomes some sort of utopia, imagine a capital funded kind of universal basic income is created and everyone has their basic needs met and can focus on living and pursuing whatever they want without worrying about survival and all the goodness of humanity comes pouring out and we end up creating even more value because we don't have to worry about profits and do things such as harmful competition and/or predatory things. The arts and sports and whatever other pursuits flourish woohoo!
Of course, again, the best case scenario is highly unlikely. Highly possible that there will be huge amounts of struggle over controlling this source of "free money" especially since it is "unearned" by those alive. Potential to turn highly nasty is huge. If families and history is anything to go by, this always ends up the case when wealth becomes so abundant that people do not have to work for it. Alas the greed of the human heart knows no bounds eh?
On this note, we have to look at the external aspects. Every time there is "free wealth" or rather, income that does not require labour, powerful interests will be drawn to it. And there will be need to defend your massive stockpile like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold from knights, who are in this case, the bad guys. This means that at the very least, security and defence will remain a priority.
For the upper middle class / upper class citizen, the state provides the police to protect your wealth. But there is no world police man (At least not one that wants your wealth too). So highly likely, you'll either have to spend some of that wealth defending it, either personally or by hiring other people to do it for you (basically play off competing interests). Most of the oil wealth countries are essentially propped up by the USA and hence beholden to them on quite a lot of the important things.
I think lastly, one wants to look at the desirability of essentially being a rentier in the world stage. I don't think my distaste for rentiers is a secret but... I dunno man.
Capital cannot create value without labour. And... basically heres where the labour share of income matters right. How much money you wanna let a guy earn just for sitting on a pile of money? Well here I'm looking at it with what is just remuneration. And if you don't have capital, and have no/low chance to get capital, of course you want it low. If you have capital you want it high. And it seems captial is more scarce than labour for the moment so... Free market wins?
Maybe a friend is someone we respect enough to allow them to correct us (more).
This world is, not so easy to grasp. By ourselves we find it hard, if not impossible to process all sorts of new information coming at us. And so we need other people (of course there are other reasons why we need other people too).
I suppose a part of being a friend is being someone that you trust to get a sensible take on the world and things around. Maybe this is more like an intellectual companion. But in any case, I probably find this quite... important and am perturbed when I find my friend "fails" in such a way. But I suppose this is how tribalism comes about. I think this might be one of the main reasons why it is so hard to have friends of other core beliefs, which is unfortunate.
Of course there are merits to the individual arguments themselves. But coming from a friend, it is more potent as it has been sieved and perhaps probably been presented in a more personalised-to-you way.
Even if this is not ideal, I think this is by far, quite practically how most people come to inherit, keep and/or change their worldviews.
[[Book wishlist (lend me pls)]]
[[The Story Thus]]
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[[The Talk (also silent)]]
[[The Ancients]]