He’s owned it though. Did his probation and community service.
Many, maybe most of us did stupid things, it’s part of a hacker youth. Owning it, admitting it, that’s a big part of building trust and proving to others that you’ve grown and changed.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but you should invert the question and think about it.
In the case of a cathedral, I think it is relatively easy to commit to the project you won't see through, it has a significance to those people making the commitment. What becomes much more challenging is when future generations don't have the same level of commitment, it's a much bigger ask to stop. Maybe there is a better use of the resources that could impact people immediately; if it's a church, I'm thinking feeding the hungry and clothing the naked sorts of things. It's hard to stop something that "we've just been doing." It's also hard to ask "why are we doing this?"
In 200 years, suppose there is some crisis we cannot predict and the recital is to be interrupted or stopped. There will be an incredible amount of pressure on somebody to make a good choice. Pressure that was created by a distant ancestor, of sorts. That might be part of the beauty of it, that might be part of the bond that ties different people together throughout time and it might be wonderful. What if there is a caretaker that is ready to retire and cannot find the next caretaker? That seems like a horrible position to be in.
Japan is or was doing multi-generational mortgages a while back (I assume they might still be.) as it was the only way a family could afford to buy a property. I can see that being a tremendously loving act for your children or grandchildren in providing a property that they will own, but I could just as well see it being a gigantic burden to them, what if they want to live somewhere else? Them following their bliss effectively changes the living and working future of the parents.
There's always an opportunity cost to making art. Taking your argument to it's extreme people should never paint or make music but instead spend all their time growing food and building homes (and distributing those goods because that's a big crux, we could feed everyone on the planet if we got food to the right people).
The cool thing about freedom is that we don't have to be rational monks that are slave to economic utilitarism.
This conundrum comes up sometimes in the context of generational starships, about intermediate generations being born into bondage board, committed by their ancestors to a shitty life in a metal tube, with their only purpose being a preordained duty to keep a few systems operational and produce the next generation of slaves just so that eventually someone can birth the arrival generation.
Alastair Reynolds' book Chasm City touches on a bunch of this, in particular the class warfare angle of some wealthy travelers getting to enjoy the journey in peaceful cryosleep while the poor ones pay for their passage in servitude.
> being born into bondage board, committed by their ancestors to a shitty life in a metal tube, with their only purpose being a preordained duty to keep a few systems operational and produce the next generation of slaves just so that eventually someone can birth the arrival generation.
This isn't really so different from being born on Earth, except that we take being born on Earth for granted, and the population is really really big.
We're all living in the world created by our ancestors. All their short sighted fuckups (lead poisoning, climate change) or triumphs (tech, art) is ours to bear.
Ehhh I see where you're coming from but I don't think it's quite the same. Here on Earth is the default, and while each individual's opportunities are greatly affected by the circumstances of their birth and parentage, with effort and luck there's a fair chance to change one's stars.
Opting into an interstellar voyage is a significant reduction in opportunity for almost anyone.
And yes, the same could be said for a European colonist crossing the Atlantic to the Americas in the 16th century, and many of them did face starvation, exposure, etc, but it's different when you're largely committing yourself and your immediate family to those hardships, under the belief that the timeframe for "a better life" is the next generation. Committing intermediate generations is a different beast.
You're assuming life after the journey was guaranteed to be better, but not all colonists and immigrants happened to head to the world's future superpower.
Every decision is potentially committing descendants to the consequences of that choice (and to wit: life aboard a generation ship hardly need be a miserable or undesirable one, at the size of say, a large town and surrounding hinterland you have as much or more opportunity as anyone else at most times in history - I think generation ships force us to confront uncomfortable questions about what is the meaning of life on Earth which we try to sweep aside by deciding they're an impossible moral burden).
I spend too much time thinking about all the stuff that can go wrong on generation ships.
You take off for your destination, but when you get there you find out that humans back on earth made a faster ship 100 years after you left and beat you to the destination.
You spent generations expecting to be bold explorers pushing the frontier and getting to claim nice territory, and you show up to find you’re in second place.
> You take off for your destination, but when you get there you find out that humans back on earth made a faster ship 100 years after you left and beat you to the destination.
That's the beauty of a long-term commitment. You are stating so much confidence about the future that you say "yes, we can have a functioning society and set aside these resources".
Sure, you can create scenarios were that fails. You can do that for anything. The power lies in saying "we are willing to remove these paths from consideration because we as a people are committed to not letting them occur".
It's a model that fails if you apply first-order utilitarian calculus. But the intangible value of the hope and commitment in it likely overshadows any immediate gain. This isn't about how to maximize utilization or optionality. It's a bold statement about who we are, and a lodestar to aspire to. (Which is, ultimately, the job art does)
> In 200 years, suppose there is some crisis we cannot predict and the recital is to be interrupted or stopped. There will be an incredible amount of pressure on somebody to make a good choice. Pressure that was created by a distant ancestor, of sorts. That might be part of the beauty of it, that might be part of the bond that ties different people together throughout time and it might be wonderful. What if there is a caretaker that is ready to retire and cannot find the next caretaker? That seems like a horrible position to be in.
We have plenty of examples where this has already happened. Traditions that were maintained at significant cost in the face of difficulties or opposition. Caretakers of something ancient who struggle to find an heir. We tend to view them positively.
> Japan is or was doing multi-generational mortgages a while back (I assume they might still be.) as it was the only way a family could afford to buy a property.
I suspect this has been misreported. Japanese mortgage terms are pretty normal and property prices are much lower than in the west (even the bubble only really affected central Tokyo). There's a practice of an elderly parent being able to get a mortgage that's then "inherited" by a child, in cases where the parent is retired or close to retirement, but it's pretty much a face-saving (and tax-avoidance) measure.
They couldn’t even quarry the Washington Monument out of a single color of stone. It’s not that visible in pictures but if you go see it on a sunny day it’s hard to ignore that stupid line in the middle.
If you take too long building a cathedral the quarry might exhaust itself in the meantime. So even if you keep to the design it might not look right.
> The outside facing consists, due to the interrupted building process, of three different kinds of white marble.
For some cathedrals that visible mismatch in the materials might be a feature, not a bug.
At least that's the case for the co-cathedral in Zamora, Michoacán which had its construction interrupted for almost a century due to the Mexican Revolution, the Cristero War and its subsequent expropriation by the government. In this context, the mismatching facade remains as a testament of the building's history.
Maybe a crisis will occur and maybe our descendants will have to make a tough choice, but that could enrich the story of the performance. If they choose to end the performance for whatever reason, that’s their business. The hopes and desires of one generation can only hold sway over the next for so long.
> If they choose to end the performance for whatever reason, that’s their business.
Well, in this case, "you can already buy a ticket to the finale, so your distant descendants can go see it." Selling tickets for an event that far in the future makes it the business of the ticket purchaser and whoever they leave the tickets for.
Is the money collected from the tickets being held in such a way that it can be refunded if/when this project fails before another 600 years have gone by? If not, it seems like a potential scam in that sense.
No need to speculate wildly or cast unsupported aspersions. The funds from the “Final Ticket” sales are explicitly a financial contribution to supporting the project. Nobody buying one is unaware of that fact, there’s no potential for scam.
It's not wild to speculate that a ticket I buy for an event 600 years in the future might not be honored. People get screwed over on pre-orders with timetables far smaller than that.
Again, if they sell something they're calling a ticket to the final part of the performance, then they have a financial duty to keep the project going (or refund the ticket) and it's not "their business" to end the project early like the person I replied to was claiming. At the very best, they could invest the money and use only the interest to support ongoing operations, but they need to keep the original value available to refund or else they need to fulfill what the ticket's for-- if they do neither of those things, they ripped people off, period.
If they're just funding the project's continuation, it's on them for pulling the marketing stunt (and/or false advertising) of calling it a ticket for this event in 600 years instead of just taking donations, selling present-day tickets and/or merch, etc. Fine print saying "actually, this ticket isn't a real ticket, it's just for fun" doesn't make them look better to me, so I don't see how that'd be a defense in your mind.
> It's not wild to speculate that a ticket I buy for an event 600 years in the future might not be honored. People get screwed over on pre-orders with timetables far smaller than that.
I think you're framing this in the wrong way. Anyone buying a ticket knows there is no guarantee that this finale will occur, or that even if it does, that whatever entity in is in charge of it by then will honor the tickets. They treat this as a donation to something they care about, and the ticket is a cute gift of appreciation. And on top of that, the descendants of the ticket-purchasers may have lost the tickets generations ago, not even know about them, or not even care.
Suggesting that people are getting "screwed over" is unnecessarily dramatic.
Again, the terms of the purchase are explicitly laid out. Maybe go read them? It’s not a marketing stunt, not false advertising, and it is a real ticket. It’s a financial contribution to the project, same as any donation. You can rationalize your speculation and assumptions but the terms of the deal aren’t confusing anyone buying these tickets. Donations with merch attached to them as ‘thank yous’ are absolutely standard practice, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Regardless, I guarantee nobody who buys one will be alive to redeem the ticket. Your best choice, if you were hoping to be there, or if you don’t want to contribute is to not purchase a Final Ticket. Aside from that, there’s really no call for muckraking. Zero people will be duped, they are extremely clear with their intent.
> Regardless, I guarantee nobody who buys one will be alive to redeem the ticket.
I agree 100%, which is part of what makes it such an easy scam to pull off!
You're attempting to sell this thing as a donation with a fake toy Monopoly-money not-actually-expected-to-be-redeemed ticket thrown in. The top commenter of this thread shouldn't have tried to include the ticket as a serious value-add if that's what it is. The comment specifically said "you can already buy a ticket to the finale, so your distant descendants can go see it [using the ticket]," not "so you can support the project out of the kindness of your own heart without any guarantee your descendants will get to see the finale."
Jesus, maybe dial the cynicism down a bit. This is not that serious. It's a fun thing where people get to donate to a bit of art they care about, and get a token of appreciation in return. I doubt any of these "purchasers" really care all that much if their descendants actually end up able to go to a finale in 600 years, outside of the "wouldn't it be cool if..." sense.
Smh. It’s not a scam, and it is a serious value add, and a real ticket. For someone, just not you. And only if the project survives, which is why they’re fundraising. https://www.aslsp.org/the_final_ticket.html
Weren’t the Eagles a .500 team through week 4 and then won it all last season? You are correct that some teams mail it in once they’ve got the playoff seed locked but its a small handful of games. The broncos were a .500 team through game 6 and were in a wild card game last season.
In those few games where they sit starters, the backups absolutely want to do their best to get starting jobs, the games aren’t uncontested.
This simply impacts the viewers of the sport, right?
When you play, you can play with whatever equipment you want, with a like minded group of players. Keep the game as “pure” as you want or use “The Sure Thing” clubs from top golf. The changes only matter on TV and then specifically if you compare that product to years or decades back. MLB is an incredibly poor example of maintaining purity. the most sacred records in the game were totally shattered, repeatedly, with modern technology and pharmaceuticals all in order to increase TV viewership and no penalties at all. To pretend there is some preservation of purity they are keeping these guys out of the Hall of Fame for a while, but the teams didn’t have fines or lose wins or draft picks or even have any of these guys suspended when everyone knew they were cheating.
It’s this intersection between taking part and entertainment where this odd gatekeeping happens. I hated hydraulic disc brakes and EPS on race bikes, until I tried it, the stuff is great but for myself I still ride bikes without electronics and rim brakes sometimes. I pinch the barbs on my hooks when I fly fish, I know others don’t and probably catch fish that I don’t, but for me I pinch the barbs. Oddly, I find it acceptable to use completely modern lines and rods and can throw a fly way better than any angler could in years ago. I’ve been able to find more satisfaction competing against myself with my own criteria than worrying about the purity on tv.
Yeah, but you still can play with the harder to use clubs or older balls or whatever. Some amateur coming to the course and driving 300yds too easily doesn't have to change the way you play.
I guess if you want to compete with them then there is that.
I'm American of Irish descent and have spent a lot of time in Ireland. The walls mentioned were sort of an academic trick. They had to do "work" to get "paid" and so they were made to just build walls so that they could then be paid in food and not starve.
If you hike around and see them, it's stunning. They were handmade. The rocks weren't insitu, they were carried in. It's not the pyramids, but in a relatively contemporary time they were made rather than just providing assistance.
That someone needs accountability themselves. Musk is not elected, his role isn’t defined. Really, he’s a patsy, he can do what he does, fortify his corporations, maybe trim some waste, have a falling out with Trump (it’s inevitable) and then trump blames him for the damage.
Mise is right on the edge of being pretty killer. I’m bullish on it. It also includes a lot of nice to haves that you can declare, like k9s, which isn’t exactly a dev tool but becomes expected
It seems more stark even. The energy costs that are current and then projected for AI are staggering. At the same time, I think it has been MS that has been publishing papers on LLMs that are smaller (so called small language models) but more targeted and still achieving a fairly high "accuracy rate."
Didn't TMSC say that SamA came for a visit and said they needed $7T in investment to keep up with the pending demand needs.
This stuff is all super cool and fun to play with, I'm not a nay sayer but it almost feels like these current models are "bubble sort" and who knows how it will look if "quicksort" for them becomes invented.
Many, maybe most of us did stupid things, it’s part of a hacker youth. Owning it, admitting it, that’s a big part of building trust and proving to others that you’ve grown and changed.