calcyman wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 9:30 am
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
I definitely think we should discuss this. Should we? The main reason is to promote the research - monetize it, and thus bringing wider audience from other communities, and being able to earn good buck from doing CGOL research as main occupation. This would promote the field a lot. Just like any artist that makes money from minting NFTs.
AGreason wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 9:56 am
number of communities obsessed with meaningless grift
I think you're completely missing the point of NFT. This is an opportunity for creators of different kind to monetize their effort. Creating CGOL patterns is hard work, that people are doing for free. Many artists are moving toward this model, this is good monetization strategy. From singers to basketball players all mint their work and art as NFTs. I see no reason this community will not do the same. If you think CGOL patterns are interesting and have value - this proves it's not a "meaningless grift", but a meaningful creation. Wouldn't you think the creator should be rewarded for his work?
hkoenig wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:00 am
"greater fool principle". That there is some other fool willing to buy what you've collected
I would suggest to get more familiar with NFT. How is it different from painting for example? Or signed books by author? Art collectibles have intrinsic historical and esthetic value. Virtual creations have exactly the same value as hand painted ones. It's not easier to create CGOL patterns than to draw on canvas. Or would you say Mona-Lisa is also bought by greater fools? Maybe all the museums and all the art is made of fools, then maybe all our culture is such? I would say buying Mona Lisa is better investment than buying gold.
hkoenig wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:00 am
This sounds like a pyramid scheme where the chumps are panicked into participating, lest they "lose out."
Although your description is simply wrong, unless any art in history is bought by greatest fools, but the design could create a pyramid scheme in some
other ways. Would you consider buying NFT glider gun from Gosper if he would mint only single copy of it? Do you find it very different to buying Mona Lisa from Leonardo?
hkoenig wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:00 am
So why should a non-believer respect the supposed "uniqueness" associated with something digital?
This is very simple to answer. Would you pay the same money if someone will draw the exact copy of the same painting? This is not about copy rights but about ownership. if you can own paper money, which are completely useless pieces of paper, you can own also virtual money. The money you have and own in your bank account is completely virtual. Bitcoin chain is way more reliable than your bank, and it does the exact same thing. NFTs is just the next step, allowing you to own not a single number but another property like cgol pattern. If you can own 100$ printed by US government, you can own Gosper's glider gun minted by Gosper. This is all virtual ownership for a while now. The US government doesn't even prints money, they just add several trillions to their bank account. They mint dollars.
dvgrn wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:35 am
It would be granted to the discoverer for free, with ownership not transferable to anybody else (and therefore not sellable).
Well the ownership is the point of minting. How would such model be able to get monetization? All the point of blockchain is that pieces of art are traded on the market - thus have an estimated market value, just like currency or physical art. If Gosper would mint a single gun with his discovery wouldn't you want to own it? Can you imagine some "physicals" representation of CGOL pattern that you would like to buy? Say a 3d sculpture of some pattern evolved in time?
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
and tried to make a quick buck out of our community's work.
I wouldn't call it buck from the community work. He was selling beehives and blinkers too. But I do think this simplistic model, especially without getting anyone interested in the value of such patterns appreciating the NFT as simply valueless. Like selling ice to Eskimo. You need to get community somehow interested in it. For
example Katy Perry who already has a fan base - launches an NFT drop. You need both the intersubjective value, and a community who supports it.
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
There's a huge bonus to just running a pattern in Golly too
BTW golly integration can come with "logical designer" - imagine that in order to mint P43 you need to have 4 snarks. So you need to mint snarks, i.e. you want to have a script that mints snarks - then you want to place those snarks as logical components and mint a higher component.
This is what I'm saying this can combine several of our community efforts into one big toolbox, that allows monetization. Imagine every component in you pattern is not only pixels but has a "metadata" about the larger logical function of it.
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
which we already have in the form of a couple characters on a LifeWiki page or pattern collection saying who discovered the pattern.
You are confusing discovery attribution and ownership. Think Leonardo Da-Vinci is the discoverer of Mona-Lisa but the owner is Louvre Museum. It's not the same person. Someone payed a good buck to Leonardo to own the Mona Lisa. We still know it's his painting and attribute it to him, but the "physical representation" of this painting is another story. You can also google and see the painting you don't need to go to the museum to see it, and you will not get more educated or gain any information from seeing it in the museum.
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
a) don't know enough about computers to realize it's just a GIF,
Just like 100$ in your bank account - is just a number stored in their hard drive.
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
b) people who think they can find someone like person a to scam into profit.
I don't think NFT is a scam. If I draw a painting and you like it - and you pay me money to own it, it's not a scam. Even if only two of us like this painting and no one else is.
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
anyway, so someone could just copy it into Golly and share the RLE, devaluing it.
Do you think googling Mona Lisa seeing all the virtual pictures, devaluating the physical copy of it? Or telling everyone how much money you have in your bank account devaluating the value you have? The money in your bank account is completely virtual. And the money is just useless pieces of paper.
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
The main problem is that Life goes against everything NFT's stand for. Patterns should be free and accessible to everybody to use,
I think you are completely missing the point of NFT. This is another way to monetize your art work without any copyrights. This is exactly the opposite of what you are saying. The more people use the pattern the more value the original NFT attributed to the discovery would have.
You are basically confusing ownership, contribution and usage. To make it clear: Katy Perry can today release a song. Mint it on blockchain and as more people listening to it for free the more value she can gain from the minted NFT that she could sell. This is both allowing the artist to monetize his work, the audience to enjoy the work for free. This would still forever remain her song, even if she sold the minted NFT of it to several people. They don't gain any copyrights, actually NFTs gain more value from forbidding any copyrights enforcing MIT license on it.
dani wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:40 am
remember CAcoin? - just we really shouldn't go anywhere near NFT's.
The point of CA coin was to convince people to use CGOL soup search. NFT does the exact same thing for exact same reason, and much more - like encouraging discovery of glider synthesis, and discovery of new composite patterns that people find interesting (new guns, oscillators, larger patterns etc.)
CA coin is also not feasible today - the market moved from proof of work to proof of stake and other means to reach consensus and validation.
pcallahan wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 10:57 am
but I like this even less
calcyman wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 12:45 pm
Agreed. That's half of my concern about this idea being applied to GoL; the other half is that it could lead to heated disputes about who discovered a pattern.
Would you agree that CGOL pattern discovery is artistic work? Pretty hard work I would say. Obviously we do it for free and for fun, but I don't see a lot of logic to assume people should do stuff for free. I think we in many ways fail to monetize our work and our art. Monetization could bring some undesirable people to the community, but it could also hype it bringing many bright minds to it as well.
About who discovered the pattern: anyone can mint whatever he wants. The market i.e. the community decides if this is worth anything, each individual can decide it to himself. This is the beauty of free market - no one is obliged to any value of anything. BTW I don't think only the discoverer can mint his work, but I think if you publish a discovery and you say "those 10 NFTs are representing my monetization of the discovery". Then if you would like to mint again the same discovery, you can. And maybe someone will pay you for the second mint too, but the first will have much more value. Obviously this kind of stuff should be possible to validate and report scams - if we design everything correctly.
calcyman wrote: ↑October 3rd, 2021, 12:45 pm
Minting NFTs out of your own creations == absolutely fine!
Minting NFTs out of someone else's creations == just not cricket.
Anyone can mint whatever they want. The value on the market will settle such disputes. I guess those CGOL patterns on nftkey have very very little value if at all. Once again we can as a community see value in some nfts and promote them and devaluate the other nfts. As a community we create value to patterns all the time - for example by likes, views, downloads, posting the patterns in LifeWiki and voting for them in Pattern Of The Year competition. I would guess the discoverer can mint his pattern twice (in meaningful manner), when he first posts it, and when he has won some place in the POTY.
The problem is not that we can't evaluate pattern values, the problem is that we don't have any monetization system whatsoever. NFTs add extra complexity to evaluation of them as they have both the pattern, the minter and the minting time. But this is a minor addition that can be settled in a free market.
I would say you as an art expert - you may say that this or that NFT is complete garbage as it was minted by someone who is not the creator. People could agree or disagree with this opinion, but it has its merit. I guess that artistic value is based on some amount of experts opinion and people who are willing to invest money into the art based on those opinions. I'm not entirely sure how this market works.