Human beings will always betray you

Ciaral Laval posts an interesting question/news: apparently the stuff created by "Cory Linden" is now seen as created by "Cory Ondrejka", and there is a discussion of "Is using your real life name for your avatar name good or what ?"

I can understand the possible reasoning on LL side for musing with this idea - the attempt to avoid the burden of regulating the world by attaching this burden to possibly "spoiling" one's RL identity by "wrong" inworld actions in SL, and as well to assist in RL legislation over the activities of SL.

To me, quite frankly, this would mean the end of the "our world, our imagination" thing, and it's one of the worst moves that LL could make - unless they want just to become a kind of "virtual 3D communications platform for real world".

I've been always saying that one thing SL did not do what it could - to become a field for trying out the possible completely and crazily new economic and society ideas, at a relatively small expense - compared to trying them out in the real world. Ok, well, maybe replacing the centrally-issued currency with some other form of interaction is too much - so the crazily new economic ideas are out. But still there is/was the interesting social experiment - how will the world organize if left unregulated.

The absence of the bind of RL name to avatar name inworld, means that the people are able to act genuinely, with much less constraints put on them - hence allowing for a better exposure of the true human nature, as opposed to the "human nature altered by the society, economics, and current morale".

But as soon as you bind the RL name to SL name - you push the actions under the microscope of their interaction with the real world.

There's quite an interesting video documentary series. I do nt agree with at least some parts of it, yet it makes one think and wonder - which is, although painful, is always a good thing.

It makes me draw some parallels, and argue that if there is a RL name exposed by inworld, this means the end of SL.



SL is unique in comparison to many other environments is that there is no explicit purpose in playing it. So, it is an extreme experiment in "negative liberty" as defined by Isaiah Berlin - see the third movie of the documentary series for an indepth discussion on this.

I'd argue that the low concurrency numbers of SL and declining growth are the consequence of the absence of purpose. The exponential growth was the hype that has arised there - you can make millions while not standing up from your chair!. While not necessarily the most sophisticated (there might be some things in the world that are better than money), it is certainly a purpose. And this has attracted new millions to SL.

And together with that there was a discovery of wildly deviant behaviours for someone with "augmentist" view on SL and strong conservative view on RL - so there were vocal few who said "Pheww... Beurk!", and the chanting crowd that always follows the leaders went into the same spin - and the same folks who a few months before were blindly singing hallelujah, were now throwing the stones. Couple this with some attempts to regulate the scammers or the biz that was not legal according to the US legislation - and you get what we have now.

Cory pushed out or simply left, Philip steps down, and everyone seems to understand and welcome the move. I can understand both. It gets boring - it gets exactly the same like any other business. Noone would argue that the toilet paper is extremely important, yet it's not something worldchanging - and it's worldchanging possibility that I like SL for, not just being an "3d business platform".

Nobody Fugazi argues that it would be hard to introduce this in a way that hurts the community. I would argue the opposite - it is hard to introduce this in a way that does *not* hurt the community.

As a pure "3d business platform", SL is years before being mature. Besides, if i am in for a serious business, like buying the car, I'll still prefer to go to the dealer and try out the real thing. It's this magic smell of "you can be anything and anyone and do almost anything without bringing the baggage of your RL reputation and without risking much" that makes SL so special.

Do not take it that SL reputation is not important - I hope "Dalien Talbot" has some reputation and some image, which I value. It's maybe even not so different from the one of the meatball behind the keyboard, but I prefer to keep the two - to be able to clearly separate where I try things and dream about things - here, and where I do the things "as I am supposed to".

If that little invisible and shaky wall of different identities disappears - there will be much less room for experiment - and, remember, as they say, human beings will always betray you, so think twice before you fully trust your avatar life fully to them...

30 pieces of silver...

I've been reading up so much on the SL content piracy in the blogs, that it is not much fun anymore.

Some of the folks it's an easy problem that should "just be fixed", and it is not fixed yet merely because of the stupidity and ignorance of the punk libertarian tekkies.

Some of the folks realise it's a damn hard thing, entangled with psychology, economy, philosophy, one's notion of integrity, and somewhat a little bit technical (I applaud Ordinal for the well balanced analysis of the situation - but call up for the benevolent dictator to appear out of the box and fix everything.

Personally, I believe in the openness.
However, one thing I question is if we'd take a random sample of 1000 avatars from the crowd - how many of them would knowingly go and save 30 silver pieces in exchange of their integrity ?

I've mentioned the experiment the other day - but today I thought - there's already quite a few places live, where this kind of experiment might take places - it's just a matter of exposing them.

For this purpose I've created a new blog Second Thefts: the alleged thefts in SL revealed and openly discussed.

The rest is written there, and I will be looking forward for any posts there, and we will see how the experiment turns out.

0xFF: the banks

As comes from the title, this is post number 255 :) and I noticed - uh oh - the banks are not permitted anymore in SL. Amusing. Let's see what this gives to economy. I am curious.


One notable comment on the blog:

"SOME (not much, though) sympathy for the ‘investors’. Face it, a game/simulation environment like SL is a far better place for children (I am referring to behavior here, not chronology) to learn the hard facts of economic life than IRL!"

Very insightful.

Now, the next step is to require all the business owners have an official registration as a business entity. As well to have all the funny money incomes declared.

p.s. it is not for no reason that you just get a L$1000 when you have opensim, and are not able to use them anyway :-)

microfinancing in SL: a loan to you on *your* conditions.

I've been thinking about the power of trust, and about how Grameen bank functions without any tough measures and has quite high return rate (i.e. people do not run with the money). Looking at my SL balance, which thanks to your tips has risen to around L$3800 (which is a bit too small to throw to the friends at the charity), I got an interesting idea.

I can lend up to 3xL$1000 to those three who come up with the compelling business ideas and whose business plans are convincing enough.

How do we arrange the community pressure ? very simple. I will write the names, the business plans and the terms of the loan (amount and the suggested interest) on this blog.

So, if you are determined enough to rather loan L$1000 than to buy it for three RL bucks, feel free to drop an IM or leave the comment here.

The only restriction is that the time interval is bound by 4 weeks and the returned amount must not be less than the one borrowed :-)

How much you return (i.e. the %% - it's up to you to determine).

Let's see if anything comes up out of this crazy idea...

p.s. and obviously - by sending me an IM, you allow it to be published here.