A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money in exchange for biometric registration on the network, in a lot of countries all over the world. It seemed to be an attempt to set up some sort of global electronic ID system and currency all in one.
That silver sphere is an iris scanner, IIRC.
Got shut down pretty hard in a bunch of places as a potentially illegal invasion of privacy.
It was 'worldcoin'. And yes I used the term 'money' very loosely there.
Apparently the token was only offered in some countries, and in some places where it was offered, that was considered enough of a bribe to render void the informed consent to collect and process private data.
> but apparently were behind how Iris scanners look these days
Not necessarily - they look whatever you want them to look. In this case sama wanted to create a feeling of futurism - the story being he is leading a global AGI revolution and you can be a part of it by staring in a metal ball.
Just another step closer to the creepy desires of building an AI "replica" human. Gotta get the look right (with Sora), the fingerprints and iris (with Worldcoin), the personality (ChatGPT erotic mode)...
A worldcoin gizmo which is basically a digital camera and I think has some face scanner stuff like an iphone. Once they've scanned and checked you are someone who hasn't been done already they give you basically a crypto wallet with some 'worldcoin' shitcoin in. And there's an app.
You only get a scan at the start, after that it's basically a usual crypto wallet + private key. They don't ask for your name or id or anything at the start. Although they are now offering me like $25 if I'll scan my passport and do kyc stuff. I think they are trying to make it into a payment/investment network.
If by "reality" you mean "the universe", then the way the universe is depends on a cause, as the existence of the universe is not explained by the universe itself (even an "eternal" universe). Its existence is contingent on some other cause that ultimately cannot be contingent and thus does not require explanation.
So the cause or dare I say reason for the universe being the way it is will depend on its cause.
I feel like the language of this argument is self-undermining. The existence of the universe being dependent on a cause that is itself not contingent on anything else… As easily the existence of the universe could be not contingent with anything else.
And you have an implied axiomatic assertion that everything must have a cause, even though that necessarily results in an infinite recursion of cause-finding.
Nowhere did I say or imply everything needs a cause. That's your baggage. In fact, it is the exact opposite: that because an infinite regress is incoherent and impossible, there must be some necessary uncaused cause where the buck stops.
"The universe" cannot be that cause, as the universe and everything in it is contingent.
The cause of the universe must itself be uncaused, or else it is only an intermediate cause that must itself refer ultimately to an uncaused cause. An infinite regress is impossible with respect to existence. Unlike causes per accidens which can in principle be infinite in length, a cause `per se` cannot; without a terminus, there would be nowhere from which the latter causes would derive their force, so to speak, like an arm pushing a stick that is pushing a rock that is pushing a leaf. Meaning, the cause is not some distant one in time, but one always acting; otherwise, everything would vanish. The only cause that could have this property is self-subsisting being.
From there, you can know quite a bit about what else must be true of self-subsisting being.
There doesn’t need to be a why the world exists. It does that’s all there is to know. There doesn’t have to be purpose just an explanation of how not why
Sure but that's somewhat tautological and not very helpful if you seek an empirical or predictive understanding of it. The question really is what complexity of the system (meaning: all of it) is irreducible and what can at least be approximated with simplified models.
You may balk at this as being ultimately futile but our entire existence is built on trying to break apart and simplify the world we exist in, starting with the first cut between self/inside and other/outside (i.e. "this is me" vs "this is where I am" - a distinction that becomes immensely relevant after the moment of birth). Language itself only functions because we can create categories it can operate on - regardless of whether those categories consistenly map to reality itself.
This is the most maddening topic I've experienced in recent times. My guess is it's the ghost of ww2. Anything that looks or smells like a definitive reduction of a human being to numbers is to be opposed, regardless of utility.
What you are choosing, instead, is the management of the phenomenon you're trying to avoid by corporations—more or less emergent feudalism.
Consider the options: a corporation knows everything about you vs. no entity knows any information about you except for whether you're eligible for the service being provided, and that you exist. The former is the current state of affairs. The latter, I think, is a better state of affairs.
