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Stiffen your sinews if — ''when'' — you hear this one. “This time it is different”. This time, the fact that [''Here insert inconvenient but basic operating assumption of life on Earth that hitherto has spoiled the plans of dreamers and fantastist with unerring regularity''] doesn’t matter. Our new [''here insert machine/technique/technology/philosophy''] consigns these unwelcome consideration to the past. We are in a new [[paradigm]]! previous assumptions no longer hold! | Stiffen your sinews if — ''when'' — you hear this one. “This time it is different”. This time, the fact that [''Here insert inconvenient but basic operating assumption of life on Earth that hitherto has spoiled the plans of dreamers and fantastist with unerring regularity''] doesn’t matter. Our new [''here insert machine/technique/technology/philosophy''] consigns these unwelcome consideration to the past. We are in a new [[paradigm]]! previous assumptions no longer hold! | ||
He’s not proud of it, but in his wild, early years, the JC spent a time in the company of a British coven of [[vampire squid]]s. It was the early noughties. He remembers one little | === The [[Lexrifyly]] IPO === | ||
He’s not proud of it, but in his wild, early years, the JC spent a time in the company of a British coven of [[vampire squid]]s. It was the early noughties. He remembers a spring day in March 2000, when he came across one of these little tadpoles The poor little thing was in a state, lolling around his cubicle, waving a [[red herring]] for PetVan, or BluBeenz, or [[Lexrifyly]] or some such thing — one forgets — his mouth frothing, is glowing eyes rolling in their sockets. All this little analyst could do was mutter, over and over, “''I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE”''. | |||
The JC flipped a few pages — prospectuses only had two or three hundred back then, so you could lift them unaided — and remarked, “but, surely, it has no forecasted revenue, let alone profit, in the next nineteen years. It even says so in the prospectus.” | |||
Young Renfield — for that was his name — convulsed in bubbling, convulsive laughter. | |||
Yes it is! It is all ''disclosed'' man! We’re only taking orders stapled to [[big-boy letter]]<nowiki/>s! We’re wildly over-subscribed!” | |||
“But this company won’t make any money?” | |||
“You fool,” he cried. “Revenue is ''irrelevant''! This is the ''internet''! There ''is'' no ''[[money]]'' any more! Money is irrelevant! ''I'' am irrelevant! ''You'' are irrelevant —” | |||
“Now steady on, my good man —” | |||
He laughed a maniac’s laugh. “We are ''all'' irrelevant! Everything is free! We are liberated! There are no bricks and/or mortar! we are going to be rich!” | |||
The poor lad then dissolved into a gurgling hysteria, then rolled over and shot me with intense, red-beaded eyes. “How much can I put you down for? We’re full on our lines but I can get you a piece —” | |||
The JC walked on — not for the first time his natural timidity seeing him in good stead. Ten days later the market imploded, taking the young tadpole, PetVan, BluBeenz and [[Lexrifyly]] with it. | |||
=== On the lessons of history === | |||
The strangest thing about the “this time it’s different” crowd is how closely it maps to the [[data maximalist]]<nowiki/>s: those [[techbro]] [[reductionist]]s who, hopped up on Ayn Rand, [[singularity]] chat and [[Simulation hypothesis|simulation hypotheses]] conviction believe in a [[determinism|determinist]], [[algorithm]]ic, predictable, solvable universe. | |||
You know, one where if the same thing happens twice, the outcome definitively will ''not'' be different. | |||
But the [[great agglomeration]] of [[data]] — piling up, dead, stale and determinedly pointed backward as it necessarily is — surely tells a different story. | |||
For if you insist upon viewing the the unfolding universe in your rear-view mirror, reversing into the future, as it were, by reference only to the things you know that have already happened — for this is what data maximalists necessarily do — then surely your corpus must tell you that ''things will not be different''. Your corpus includes: every popular delusion, every madness, every irrational exuberance, every bait-and-switch, every pump-and-dump, every wishful misapprehension, every Svengali, every charlatan, every fraudster, ''every'' fuck-up, every hysteria, every Ponzi, bubble, boiler-room, flash-crash, scam, [[meme-stock]], short-squeeze, operational risk incident, rogue trader, credit crunch and every unexpected failure of a [[systemically important financial institution]] — all of these are coded, taxonomised, analysed and canonised in your data set — and even though your data-set tells you unanticipated fuck-ups outweigh successful innovations 10,000:1 — ''surely'' its tell you, if it tells you ''anything'' at all, that the one thing we can be certain of is that ''there will be fuck-ups''. | |||
People will be disappointed. People ''will lose money'', in unpredictable and predictable ways. The universe will ''not'' be suddenly better disposed to the same wilful, wistful, wishful, misty-eyed optimism that it has hitherto ''crushed like a bug'' at every opportunity. | People will be disappointed. People ''will lose money'', in unpredictable and predictable ways. The universe will ''not'' be suddenly better disposed to the same wilful, wistful, wishful, misty-eyed optimism that it has hitherto ''crushed like a bug'' at every opportunity. | ||
For, however measly, paltry and useless the data have collected is | For, however measly, paltry and useless the data we have currently collected is; however infinitesimally ''tiny'' a subset it is of all possible data, in all times, at all places and through all dimensions, anywhere in the total space-time of our multi-hued universe, the ''one thing'' it tells us, the single inference we can, with sparkling clarity, draw is that ''there will be fuck-ups''. | ||
So isn’t it the richest of dyspeptic ironies that these millenarian | So isn’t it the richest of dyspeptic ironies that these millenarian [[Thought leader|thought-leading]] data pioneers all somehow manage to extrapolate from this catalogue of resounding woe, that this new forward plan for this new fangled-idea, is ''different?'' | ||
===Prior times it ''seemed'' to be different, but ''wasn’t''=== | ===Prior times it ''seemed'' to be different, but ''wasn’t''=== | ||
*FTX has none of the traditional systemic risk of centralised finance because ''crypto''. And Sam Bankman Fried’s parents worked in compliance, so there’s that. @ Everyone 2021. | *FTX has none of the traditional systemic risk of centralised finance because ''crypto''. And Sam Bankman Fried’s parents worked in compliance, so there’s that. @ Everyone 2021. | ||