# 034 On data and average human beings

**Published by:** [The Cheshire Cat](https://paragraph.com/@cheshirecat/)
**Published on:** 2024-09-17
**URL:** https://paragraph.com/@cheshirecat/034-on-data-and-average-human-beings

## Content

I have amassed two months of bookmarks. Casts mentioning articles, tools and even mints that deserved more attention than my current state could offer. All filed into a private feed of bookmarks. I've attempted to sort through them, but given up. Too much to go back, read, ponder and integrate. Felt FOMO creeping up and decided screw that! No FOMO for me. I strongly believe that nothing is lost for ever. A cast that got into my bookmarks but now is drowned in them, will percolate again to the surface. Nothing is linear. Not your personal growth or the trouble that you face. Thanks wanderlots.eth for casting what I think.FarcasterCallum Wanderloots ✨ on WarpcastPeople like to think that life is linear. It's not. So much of what we experience is non-linear and unpredictable. The future has infinite possibilities. However, looking back, there is ONLY ONE path we have taken. A digital garden helps trace the path you have already walked so you can make more informed decisions in the future 🌊 🌱 https://imagedelivery.net/BXluQx4ige9GuW0Ia56BHw/d09acc40-3e90-4496-c454-86819fc40f00/original https://imagedelivery.net/BXluQx4ige9GuW0Ia56BHw/5a57fa97-e6e4-4d13-e8f3-3c98826aba00/originalBut first for everyone who missed it, or forgot it already: MTV news is gone. This is mind-boggling, culture-destroying, and normal. How many texts from the ancient greeks do we still have? Fewer than you think. Admittedly, this one being gone hit home. FarcasterTrish🫧 on WarpcastThought the forgotten generation would think thoughts about this https://www.thewrap.com/mtv-news-website-shuttered-archives-deleted On search, AI and cultureThere is so much data. It is a problem. Servers require space, electricity, and water to keep everything nice and cool. Want to invest in something and cash in later? Invest in clean drinking water. Fuck that, just invest in water. When you are thirsty, you're ready to drink everything. One solution to the data problem is to delete old data. Like MTV news. Another solution is teens not taking ten thousand bathroom pictures every day. But teens will remain teens and will not listen to old farts until they become old themselves. Deleting MTV news is easier than changing behavior. But don't fret, there is a sliver of hope. Nobody* wants to delete all the data. Without it, we can't train algorithms. Anything from the Google's search ranking to your preferred LLM model requires data. These algorithms have to be trained to get a response that is good enough for most people. This is an important distinction: We're optimizing for a global maximum, not for your specific local maximum. Everything is averaged out making sure that the average human being is happy with the experience. Are you that average human being?FarcasterNaomi on WarpcastGm VIPs. Currently reading Filterworld by Kyle Chayka. If you too wonder why all those coffee shops look the same no matter which part of the world you go to and culture has less depth, this is for you. https://imagedelivery.net/BXluQx4ige9GuW0Ia56BHw/bd54613a-e2e3-4127-8397-e41970c23f00/original* I'm trying to stay on-point. People love to delete data that puts them in a bad light. You know that history is written by winners, aka data is produced and stored by those in power. No power, no choice over what data is stored.I bet you would not describe yourself as average. You have a couple of talents, suck in some aspects, and, yes, are average in other areas. But you are not an average human being. That being only exists in tables. Go on, and add color to whatever you create. Create context. Make it you.Seeing Matthew continually develop the programming in a way that clearly reflects his instincts and values reminds me how special it is to create a context to show other people what you love. from towards small scale worldingEvery time you give the middle finger to Google's search recommendation you are adding color to your life. Search is optimized for efficiency. It's about putting the restaurants, movies, books with the highest recommendation at the top of the list. We're back at the blandness of the world. A data-driven way out of this is to put the user, that's you, in control for what you want to optimize for. When I search for public transport routes I want to optimize for having a seat. If you are bored with the world, go add some color. Sent out signals with what you resonate and stop minting everything that passes by your timeline, because just in case it goes to the moon. Go and mint stuff that isn't yet polished, that you know will never be viral because it's still being formed in the mind of the creator. Thanks LGHT for this wisdom shared during Higher Together EP01 (Go and mint that!)FarcasterChic on Warpcasthttps://imagedelivery.net/BXluQx4ige9GuW0Ia56BHw/bc5abda2-f915-4ca0-fe7a-04122108bf00/original https://warpcast.com/chicbangs.eth/0x9485104dWhen you cook without salt, it just takes meh. Bland and boring. Go and be the salt of the world, support the decentralized internet and build weird sites.Farcasterelle on Warpcastcame across this list of alternative internet projects aimed at "re-decentralizing the internet." it's a little out of date with a several dead projects still listed as active and doesn't even have farcaster or atproto on it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ still, it's interesting to see all the attempts so far. lots of stuff i'd never even heard of! https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet?tab=readme-ov-file#generalFarcasterBrad Barrish on WarpcastKinda gloomy, which I sympathetic to, but ultimatley disagree with the take. Worth a read though. https://rafichaudhury.com/site/blog/Freehand-WebDo stuff that hasn't yet been proven to work because no one else is as crazy and unique as you: There are far more good ideas out there we can post-rationalize than there are good ideas we can pre-rationalize[...] What university teaches you to do is reduce every problem into a two-body problem, which can be solved mathematically to a single, optimal, right answer. Pretend that the problem is that simple, solve for the pretend simplistic model, and then pat yourself on the back. [...] No, the trick here is to go and find some completely different variable that no one’s looking at and try messing around with that instead. Is Everything BS?On building your worldImagine you can hit three keys on your laptop and land in a different universe. Not drastically different. Just a tad bit. Nicolas Sarkozy a gangster, a nuclear summer wiping out most of Europe, or the invention of truly new energy sources (examples taken from Black Swan a short story by Bruce Sterling. A breath of fresh air after Gods of Kiranis). Of course this isn't possible. But don't despair, you still have agency in this worl. The world you are creating is the result of the people you interact with (I'm not advocating for blindly cutting people out just because they are making your life a tad bit sour). Your decisions are influenced by the timelines you feed your brain with.FarcasterErik on Warpcastfrom mona’s blog, this one shook me “We need to start being open to other worldviews before thousands of people emerge from altered states of consciousness with weird experiences that science can’t explain (or in other words, that don’t fit within materialism). If you feel resistance to this suggestion, ask yourself: would you rather be Galileo or one of his lame ass colleagues who wouldn’t even look through his telescope?” https://psychedelicrenaissance.substack.com/p/things-science-cant-explainFarcasterBrad Barrish on WarpcastRemember when being connected and tethered to our devices was a sign of importance and even prestige? That's over. It has flipped. In the not-so-distant future, there will be a new class of people, not defined by their monetary wealth but by their temporal wealth. A new sense of value and importance will be placed on being disconnected and on slowing down.On data, ownership and incentivesThere is a simmering new meta around ownership of data and rewards. None of it is that new. Remember when Rainbow introduced points? Or Linear's bounty to have wallets categorized as bots vs human for distributing rewards? It's continuing. Giving money away is harder than it seemsFarcasterTrent on WarpcastWe've only just started building crucial long-term incentives for core contributors IMO needs another order of magnitude flowing through this holistic, credibly neutral, member-governed funding mech. (incredible work to squeeze this viz out of Dune by @cheeky-gorilla 🔥) https://warpcast.com/protocolguild/0x717b6fafBlast's airdrop isn't a connect-wallet-and-cash-in experience. They know people want the money, and used that external incentive to tell them repeatedly about Blast's vision. Thanks to years of schooling, we all know that repetition helps with remembering stuff.FarcasterTPan on Warpcast3 Themes to Learn from Blast's TGE (Token Generation Event) https://paragraph.xyz/@tpan/308-3-themes-to-learn-from-blasts-tge-token-generation-eventOn one side we're discussing how to give money to people who do small, at times meaningful tasks to grow a protocol. On the other side of the data meta we're wondering what are solutions where data creators (aka users) own their data and get rewarded for it. Li is making a push for data DAOs, datalatte lets you mint your digital twin (go on, do it!), and Sohey and their team build a datagator giving everyone the opportunity to cash into the AI hype.FarcasterDaniel Lombraña on WarpcastJust created my digital twin and ranked to mint a dataBarista NFT with @datalatte. 🤖☕ Get your personal AI agent and fight back against the AI monopolies! http://databarista.datalatte.com:3000/framesFarcasterSohey.base.eth on WarpcastFor Ethglobal hackathon my team and I (@quix & @stoopidpenguin ) built Data Gator! In today’s digital world, apps like X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram gather our data to market to us. Yet, users rarely benefit from the data they create. Datagator changes this dynamic. Datagator lets users consentfully share their data in exchange for financial incentives. Using a Large Language Model (LLM), we aggregate user data into a global information layer accessible to paying customers. https://supercast.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/QmVs1d9wjoxtTpLhAHJcwhvehXAHnYAGSHZ4LzXv34VN6T?filename=Screenshot-2024-07-17-at-15.18.19.pngEnjoyed this curation? Collect before it descents into the abyss of the internet, becomes untraceable and lost for everCollect

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