Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content The psychology of paying, bitpass and fear of thinking
Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content
The psychology of paying, bitpass and fear of thinking

As the Tao says it is right and wrong, the psychology of mental transactions are how movies and holocausts are made. The notions of perception give us paths for action and it is this bases that treads the paths that form over our lives. To quantify these assets is the greatest energy expenditure in life, they define us as us. I have a horrible problem mentally with buying toilet paper, toothpaste and eating because I feel that I buy food to use toilet paper and I have to get toothpaste so that transaction stays at optimal efficiency. Some common opinion thinks this makes me “soft”, but on the other hand I am ok with not knowing if I can do something before starting it, I get hit by cars, taxis and city busses (quite literally) every couple months and I regard and interact with people that are mostly seen as unstable without the normal amount of foreboding. So the transactions of life depend very much on the user and what skills are available to he/she. That said I think there are trends that can be made from overlaps of human behaviors and in identifying these I think useful networks can evolve. So the question is, is bit pass a useful interaction? I do not have a large pool of data in terms of other people so I think I will cop-out and just speak of myself. The notion of payment is in its essence a notion of time, will you trade your time for what you get back. This is how I think of all my jobs and paychecks how long do I have to work to be able to do what I want, not working? So the notion of mental time transaction is a very strong argument against it but the counter to that is the social selection of adequate grouping or boundary recognition. e.g.: The way music stores only sell albums and sometimes singles but if you want to by a sequence of cords they would tell you to screw off. These notions of classifications are largely based on a demand to supply relationship that works itself out largely divorced from the payment aspect of the relationship. e.g.: if you wanted to buy 100 fish eyes from a fisherman you would have to buy 50 fish from him/her at probably a bulk rate because the time expended on cutting the fish eyes out on top of catching the fish would outweigh the time/cost relation of a fisherman. But if you went to a butcher his time is specifically geared at cutting fish eyes out so you could get a workable cost value for yourself. The other large question for me is privacy it personally bothers me to have all my transactions documented and available for sale you can probably extrapolate the reasons why. So I think guaranteed reliable transfer of assets that are not traceable is key to equitable social governance. Each person has to be in full regard of him or her personal self in relation to groups of individuals or by the shear time scale addition they will be buried and turned into worm food for the crop. So the relation of personal gain from social interaction is always there and it is just a matter of distinguishing the reliable return ratio’s involved in the interaction of human “psychology” with “technology”. What the rules of the game are. As to shirkys fame without money I think it only speaks to trying to get laid.

The psychology of wealth.

Everquest I just didn’t know.
I don’t think the world of everquest can represent the total of human social interaction, but it did highlight some social strategy and perception quite clearly. It was interesting to see what problems could be authored out of the game, and what problems persisted, intentionally or unintentionally. For instance, one had to develop social interactions to play the game (trading, cooperative hunting ect.), but when put into practice a climate of dissatisfaction arose from these cooperative systems. The social organizations were too complex to be written over like a bad glitch where you step somewhere and end up falling forever. So to fix the problems of economy the rules are manipulated, this gives eerily similar results compared to what happens in the “real” world when fixing the problems of the guarantor state vs. socialism vs. hierarchal corporatist capitalism.
This got me wondering what has been authored out of our own socioeconomic system. What are the problems we have agreed to negate or “solve” and what problems do we come back to, churning them over and over in our own social interactions. All the recurring problems in everquest seem to be with the social economic relationships and not with the structure of the world itself. The question whether to play or not becomes more influenced by social interaction and not by the option of being able to build an ice castle or have a medieval spaceship. This seems to say to me that there might be a certain level of physical stimuli that is important only in relation to the social network it can create. Pong comes to mind as another game example where the physical stimulus is quite limited, but allows for more than enough structure to make it addictive when you combine it with another person’s psychology.
So what is the purpose of the game? what enjoyment can you receive? what is the wealth of the game? In everquest wealth being only revealed in a visual and auditory sense, (lacking much of the other stimulus related to enjoyment such as taste, touch, chemical reactions, ect.) creates a representational possession and not one of direct physical stimulus. So except for the awe at the graphics of your new castle, wealth is enjoyed as a representation of your social ability in the game. And the procurement of wealth depends on; A. the time spent in the world abiding by the rules and B. your ability to problem solve the strategies of the game. The respect you receive is a acknowledgement of your skill in dealing with the structure of Everquest. This wealth is protected and held true from a collaborative social decision. The game needs a complete effort of everyone that plays to say yes, by these rules they are more or less wealthy than I and I consider what they have more or less valuable. Diamonds have the same mechanisms at work. Because of the fact of an individual’s ability to stockpile all necessary wealth at will, a socially agreed upon substitute had to be found for “virtual” fulfillment.
What do you get someone that could work for a week and go out and buy three rooms full of bread? You would have to buy them something that is not as physically demanding to own, but gives socially what a whole house of bread would. So it doesn’t surprise me that the world of everquest is the 77th largest economy because there is no appreciable difference between the needs and mechanisms of the virtual and “real” world. All this is much the same way as Marxists have their table that gets up and dances with the “specter of commodity” (social valuation). When you have to relate not just to the object but to all other human need a new value arises from an object. You are creating value from the combined living situation and desire of everyone else that participates in the social exchange. And in Everquest all the people involved come from good base economic situations, such as being in a position to have a computer and Internet access and all that comes with it. Probably if you averaged all the people that played everquest their social standing would be much higher than a 77th ranking, but scaled to what they actually invest into the game it works out to the 77th place. This would be a good description of mental wealth or how much resource is used to fulfill their social desire.
It is the same way large corporations get their economic status by vying for your participation in their economy, trying to get your portion of resource in their system. And many of these other “real” blue chip traders are just as ephemeral as everquest. They produce the same mechanisms of social pleasure embodied as designer jeans, Rolexes and one thousand dollar omelets. All have real physicality (just as Everquest does) but the values generated by them are of a socially representative means. The specific meanings generated by the placement of the objects in the systems are as different as the systems themselves. But these meanings are all non-dependent on the physical use value of the object (buying a thousand dollar omelet does not presuppose you are a epicurean or a great humanitarian, but it does mean that somehow you have the social cache to spend a thousand dollars on eggs), when they are filling a very real demand. The deficits of the mind are just as engrossing as those of the body and if your body is relatively satisfied the minds troubles are all that there is, it is your world. so I don’t think it is fantasy to wonder how a dark elf could love I think it’s a very pressing problem or one we at least like to get ourselves into.