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Free Speech Just Pay Shipping
Project: Start your own revolution
Project: Start your own revolution
UPDATE 7/2011 See the comment below http://spacecollective.org/BenRayfield/6053/comment7160 about how I'm going to propose this game to the Zeitgeist Movement as a way to experiment with their idea of a Resource Based Economy as a text forum where text and the means of more efficiently producing that text is the resources. This is going to be the most strategic game ever imagined.
UPDATE: The plan is...
The game starts like a chatroom. Each player has a name and password and can say whatever they want, until more rules are added by the players. Text is the only thing in the game. New rules can be created by writing certain text. Rules can be anything definable in the text by certain rules that are like a simple programming language. The game starts only with a few rules to define that simple language which lets the players create rules. Most rules will be requirements about what players can say (as text) and requirments about the text that defines other rules. There will be rules about rules, and rules about rules about rules... This is supposed to let the players build their own text-based games inside the game, form groups of players and/or rules, form ways to keep certain text secret from other parts of the game, and form businesses, governments, and other organizations based on all this text and rules and interactions of players. Its a game where the players can make rules to censor the other players or buy freedom from such rules, all defined by whatever rules the players created earlier in that part of the game. The game will be called "Free Speech Just Pay Shipping", which refers to the pattern of advertisements calling things "free" and then requiring money for the "shipping" of the "free" thing, which contradicts the definition of "free". "Free Speech" is about freedom, not price, but the way society is becoming, your freedom to say or write what you want can be taken away and sold back to you or absolutely censored without the option to buy your freedom. In this text-based game, the only way to win is for everyone to get their freedom of speech simultaneously, which was lost in the first part of the game when the players created rules to control each other. Therefore the game must start with some problem for them to solve together, so it is not already solved when it starts. That problem is the hardest thing to figure out about how to build the game.
END UPDATE.
Free as in free speech, not as in buy 1 get 1 free just pay separate shipping. If you live in USA, you will recognize some of those words from advertising. Somehow they changed the definition of "free" so much that when people hear it they reach for their wallet. The more times you hear "free" in a commercial, the more it costs. Its statistically true. But "freedom" does not mean it costs nothing to do what you want to do. It means you're allowed to do what you want to do if you have the ability, which may involve paying for the resources necessary to do it. There are 2 kinds of "free".
Richard Stallman is famous in the free software movement for many things including writing "Free as in freedom, not as in free beer." This game is about that exact subject, how the 2 ideas have merged in society mostly, so there is only 1 kind of freedom left, the kind you buy. The game is also about learning strategies by playing the game that also can be used in the real world to solve global problems, as I explained in the second reply below (and then added this text here).
Could it be this simple? I've been building open-source software to work against the oppressors. Maybe its time for some reverse-psychology on a global scale.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freespeechpay
People complain about censoring, privacy, secret laws, monopolies, war. Think you could build better system? Prove it in this online game where text is patented/bought/sold/licensed for play money. Writing your offers/plans/etc is built on those costs.
A simulation/game to demonstrate the flaws in society being organized into hierarchies, like governments, countries, internet service providers, businesses that control cell phones and other communication devices. Could this lead to real world changes after people see how hard this simpler problem is to solve? Can they agree on anything, having the ability to censor eachother by setting the price for parts of text the others want to say?
If it works as planned, will be the last demonstration ever needed to prove that "the pen is mightier than the sword", the game logic being defined only by a few kilobytes of code, but the game overall being defined mostly by the players' interactions with it. Politicians and billionaires plan the future of Earth as cowards hiding in secret meetings, while the open-source people do the same for everyone to see. Who really has more power? Nuclear weapons they can handle, but they are most scared of a pen. This game will teach you to use one.
Like real patents, these licensed texts will be made of smaller texts, which are owned by someone else or licensed, based on agreements which are written in the same text, which has the same problems, recursively into insanity.
The only solution? Cooperation and emergent organization, not hierarchies. At least in theory. This game is going to "go viral". Put it on Facebook/Myspace/etc. The politicians and rich people don't have a chance, once this gets started.
Its not hard to write the code. Anyone have ideas for more parts of the game?
I only recently understood why people did not like my open-source softwares (like the artificial intelligence that writes code to create musical instruments that sound more the way you teach it to sound: http://audivolv.com ). People will like this "Free Speech Just Pay Shipping" game because it allows them to oppress eachother, to form groups, to hide, to speak publicly, to form governments and committees and advertising organizations... everything thats wrong with our society. It has nothing of value except the free speech you had before you started playing. Its not just a negative-sum-game. All products in its economy are negative. Censoring is the only product, and people will pay (not real money) to do it and pay others to not do it to them and their groups.
This quote from "The Matrix" movie explains it best:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Matrix
"Have you ever stood and stared at it, marveled at its beauty, its genius? Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about. Evolution, Morpheus, evolution. Like the dinosaur. Look out that window. You had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus. The future is our time."
An open-ended massively-multiplayer text game so advanced that if we win it, it becomes our reality (by connecting advanced artificial intelligence and other things to it). Jumanji.
Update: First version will be a website http://freespeechjustpayshipping.com I'll put up in a few days, including a continuous voting system to elect 2 leaders for each word, still a chatroom where users have some control over eachother. Details:
Each User has a current text, which is interpreted as a sequence of words, and each word is a Group. Each Group has 2 elected leaders: FOR and AGAINST, which are each a User who was (or still is) in the Group. Each User may change their current text at any time, which changes which Groups they are in, but does not remove them from being a leader of any Group. At any time, any user in a Group can vote for a FOR and vote for an AGAINST leader for each Group that user is in. Each User has some amount of "money" (not real money), but each Group has no money. The only control the 2 leaders of a Group have is done by changing their text. The only interaction a Group has with money is it moves money between the Users in that group, always keeping the total amount of money constant, which requires that a Group consider all Users in that Group before moving any of the money. First, a Group sorts all Users in that Group by their text similarity to the FOR leader minus their text similarity to the AGAINST leader. Using that sorted list of Users in that Group, money is moved from one end of the list to the other end, gradually more as it gets farther from the middle of the list. A user in the middle of the list is not affected. The 2 users at the ends of the list get/lose the most money as a result of being in that Group. This design avoids the need for an explicit rule making system and instead works entirely by 2 elected leaders per Group and the text of each User (leaders are Users). Leaders can not say one thing and do another, because their text literally is their actions in that Group. The user-interface will be a webpage where each user can modify their text at any time, and for each word in their text, they will be able to vote for both of the 2 leaders of that word/Group. In later versions, Groups that have too many Users will be removed or replaced by longer text including multiple words, and other ways of dividing text (letters instead of words, regular-expressions, functions that take string as parameter, etc) may be included instead of defining Group by 1 word each, but the simple design described above should work well. Users whose money becomes too low lose the game, or maybe they will be restricted to say less words per minute. If we want to simulate real society more accurately, votes (for the FOR and AGAINST leaders of any Group) could be bought with User's money, or maybe the log_base_2(total money a User puts into a certain vote) should be used instead of using money as a linear function, which would make it less divergent but still allow votes to be bought. In later versions, I want the user-interface to tell the user how much their text will cost (to broadcast to the other users in this "chatroom") as they type it but before they push ENTER to say it. Costs will change as the leaders of each Group change their text, so it will only be the cost of saying it now. Later, this game can be expanded to use the "Natural Language Mouse Interface" ( also called "the first 3d search engine for text" at http://MouseSearch3d.com ) to navigate the network(s) of text the other Users typed, and to find Users who think like the current subject they're talking about, to find the conversation they should be in at any one time just by talking about similar things a few seconds ago.
UPDATE: The plan is...
The game starts like a chatroom. Each player has a name and password and can say whatever they want, until more rules are added by the players. Text is the only thing in the game. New rules can be created by writing certain text. Rules can be anything definable in the text by certain rules that are like a simple programming language. The game starts only with a few rules to define that simple language which lets the players create rules. Most rules will be requirements about what players can say (as text) and requirments about the text that defines other rules. There will be rules about rules, and rules about rules about rules... This is supposed to let the players build their own text-based games inside the game, form groups of players and/or rules, form ways to keep certain text secret from other parts of the game, and form businesses, governments, and other organizations based on all this text and rules and interactions of players. Its a game where the players can make rules to censor the other players or buy freedom from such rules, all defined by whatever rules the players created earlier in that part of the game. The game will be called "Free Speech Just Pay Shipping", which refers to the pattern of advertisements calling things "free" and then requiring money for the "shipping" of the "free" thing, which contradicts the definition of "free". "Free Speech" is about freedom, not price, but the way society is becoming, your freedom to say or write what you want can be taken away and sold back to you or absolutely censored without the option to buy your freedom. In this text-based game, the only way to win is for everyone to get their freedom of speech simultaneously, which was lost in the first part of the game when the players created rules to control each other. Therefore the game must start with some problem for them to solve together, so it is not already solved when it starts. That problem is the hardest thing to figure out about how to build the game.
END UPDATE.
Free as in free speech, not as in buy 1 get 1 free just pay separate shipping. If you live in USA, you will recognize some of those words from advertising. Somehow they changed the definition of "free" so much that when people hear it they reach for their wallet. The more times you hear "free" in a commercial, the more it costs. Its statistically true. But "freedom" does not mean it costs nothing to do what you want to do. It means you're allowed to do what you want to do if you have the ability, which may involve paying for the resources necessary to do it. There are 2 kinds of "free".
Richard Stallman is famous in the free software movement for many things including writing "Free as in freedom, not as in free beer." This game is about that exact subject, how the 2 ideas have merged in society mostly, so there is only 1 kind of freedom left, the kind you buy. The game is also about learning strategies by playing the game that also can be used in the real world to solve global problems, as I explained in the second reply below (and then added this text here).
Could it be this simple? I've been building open-source software to work against the oppressors. Maybe its time for some reverse-psychology on a global scale.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freespeechpay
People complain about censoring, privacy, secret laws, monopolies, war. Think you could build better system? Prove it in this online game where text is patented/bought/sold/licensed for play money. Writing your offers/plans/etc is built on those costs.
A simulation/game to demonstrate the flaws in society being organized into hierarchies, like governments, countries, internet service providers, businesses that control cell phones and other communication devices. Could this lead to real world changes after people see how hard this simpler problem is to solve? Can they agree on anything, having the ability to censor eachother by setting the price for parts of text the others want to say?
If it works as planned, will be the last demonstration ever needed to prove that "the pen is mightier than the sword", the game logic being defined only by a few kilobytes of code, but the game overall being defined mostly by the players' interactions with it. Politicians and billionaires plan the future of Earth as cowards hiding in secret meetings, while the open-source people do the same for everyone to see. Who really has more power? Nuclear weapons they can handle, but they are most scared of a pen. This game will teach you to use one.
Like real patents, these licensed texts will be made of smaller texts, which are owned by someone else or licensed, based on agreements which are written in the same text, which has the same problems, recursively into insanity.
The only solution? Cooperation and emergent organization, not hierarchies. At least in theory. This game is going to "go viral". Put it on Facebook/Myspace/etc. The politicians and rich people don't have a chance, once this gets started.
Its not hard to write the code. Anyone have ideas for more parts of the game?
I only recently understood why people did not like my open-source softwares (like the artificial intelligence that writes code to create musical instruments that sound more the way you teach it to sound: http://audivolv.com ). People will like this "Free Speech Just Pay Shipping" game because it allows them to oppress eachother, to form groups, to hide, to speak publicly, to form governments and committees and advertising organizations... everything thats wrong with our society. It has nothing of value except the free speech you had before you started playing. Its not just a negative-sum-game. All products in its economy are negative. Censoring is the only product, and people will pay (not real money) to do it and pay others to not do it to them and their groups.
This quote from "The Matrix" movie explains it best:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Matrix
"Have you ever stood and stared at it, marveled at its beauty, its genius? Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about. Evolution, Morpheus, evolution. Like the dinosaur. Look out that window. You had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus. The future is our time."
An open-ended massively-multiplayer text game so advanced that if we win it, it becomes our reality (by connecting advanced artificial intelligence and other things to it). Jumanji.
Update: First version will be a website http://freespeechjustpayshipping.com I'll put up in a few days, including a continuous voting system to elect 2 leaders for each word, still a chatroom where users have some control over eachother. Details:
Each User has a current text, which is interpreted as a sequence of words, and each word is a Group. Each Group has 2 elected leaders: FOR and AGAINST, which are each a User who was (or still is) in the Group. Each User may change their current text at any time, which changes which Groups they are in, but does not remove them from being a leader of any Group. At any time, any user in a Group can vote for a FOR and vote for an AGAINST leader for each Group that user is in. Each User has some amount of "money" (not real money), but each Group has no money. The only control the 2 leaders of a Group have is done by changing their text. The only interaction a Group has with money is it moves money between the Users in that group, always keeping the total amount of money constant, which requires that a Group consider all Users in that Group before moving any of the money. First, a Group sorts all Users in that Group by their text similarity to the FOR leader minus their text similarity to the AGAINST leader. Using that sorted list of Users in that Group, money is moved from one end of the list to the other end, gradually more as it gets farther from the middle of the list. A user in the middle of the list is not affected. The 2 users at the ends of the list get/lose the most money as a result of being in that Group. This design avoids the need for an explicit rule making system and instead works entirely by 2 elected leaders per Group and the text of each User (leaders are Users). Leaders can not say one thing and do another, because their text literally is their actions in that Group. The user-interface will be a webpage where each user can modify their text at any time, and for each word in their text, they will be able to vote for both of the 2 leaders of that word/Group. In later versions, Groups that have too many Users will be removed or replaced by longer text including multiple words, and other ways of dividing text (letters instead of words, regular-expressions, functions that take string as parameter, etc) may be included instead of defining Group by 1 word each, but the simple design described above should work well. Users whose money becomes too low lose the game, or maybe they will be restricted to say less words per minute. If we want to simulate real society more accurately, votes (for the FOR and AGAINST leaders of any Group) could be bought with User's money, or maybe the log_base_2(total money a User puts into a certain vote) should be used instead of using money as a linear function, which would make it less divergent but still allow votes to be bought. In later versions, I want the user-interface to tell the user how much their text will cost (to broadcast to the other users in this "chatroom") as they type it but before they push ENTER to say it. Costs will change as the leaders of each Group change their text, so it will only be the cost of saying it now. Later, this game can be expanded to use the "Natural Language Mouse Interface" ( also called "the first 3d search engine for text" at http://MouseSearch3d.com ) to navigate the network(s) of text the other Users typed, and to find Users who think like the current subject they're talking about, to find the conversation they should be in at any one time just by talking about similar things a few seconds ago.
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