The Permanent Upper Crow

thegrim33•about 2 hours ago

What's interesting is the creator of the site has listed on their linkedin that they're ... wait for it ... a co-founder at some generic AI startup with the goal of using AI agents to automate away manual jobs.

pocksuppet•about 2 hours ago

So he's obviously on the winning side of this transaction. Hopefully the losing side is someone who isn't you. Maybe it's a VC fund.

root-parent•38 minutes ago

I grok that as the author having a sick sense of humor. I like it....

kubb•about 1 hour ago

Understandig how the hammer falls tells you where to stand to avoid it.

whiteblossom•about 2 hours ago

are we not all slaves to the top hat?

keybored•about 1 hour ago

Are we the Baddies? Yes, and how interesting. I could vibe a game about that.

Tossrock•25 minutes ago

In case you're wondering, there are 106 CEOs / companies, and at 107 it just loops around.

whiteblossom•22 minutes ago

PRs to add web-llm welcome ;)

though I would argue the current state is more reflective of reality...

cheers

arjie•about 2 hours ago

Fascinating. I was able to escape the suffering by simply not purchasing a top hat. An interesting lesson that the pursuit of conspicuous consumption is the root of one’s own suffering.

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

xattt•about 2 hours ago

Once I realized I couldn’t decline, I left the website and left the top hat on the table.

ricardobayes•about 2 hours ago

That's easier to do in a video game, but I guess the real life analogy would be to sell it all and move off-grid to Alaska?

the_af•about 2 hours ago

Your reply reminded me of the free game Oiligarchy by Molleindustria (which made quite a few indie hits in my opinion).

In that game, if you played "well" you ended up destroying the world. The only winning move was, indeed, not to play.

shaftway•about 1 hour ago

I think OP is referring to the 80's movie WarGames - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames

At the end a strategic defense computer is asked to play Tic Tac Toe against itself and suddenly "learns" about no-win scenarios. Then it does the same with nuclear launch scenarios, and finds that they're all no-win. It decides that nuclear war "is a strange game", and "the only winning move is not to play".

calvisitor•5 minutes ago

hey when does this game end?

imnotyy•39 minutes ago

Reminded me of a book called Finite and Infinite Games

jc4883•about 2 hours ago

How does it come up with the CEO and business' name? I assume there's gotta be finite number and the game has to end (?) Anyways, sick game.

Tossrock•24 minutes ago

There's a pre-generated list with 106 entries, and when it reaches the end of that list, it loops around.

nprbst•about 2 hours ago

CAWn't believe how hard this hits

juancn•about 2 hours ago

So that's how you become a galactic civilization!

RAZKOM•about 1 hour ago

I honestly love the look of the website. It makes me want to play/make a 2d scroller.

saaaaaam•about 2 hours ago

Well done! Fun and satirical

ricardobayes•about 2 hours ago

Brilliant

Yumat•about 3 hours ago

It never ends…

Super cool concept

aselimov3•about 3 hours ago

This is quality

dheera•about 2 hours ago

Yep, this is basically the world today. The only difference in the real world:

"What if I told you you can buy that $10 hat today using borrowed money that you don't have, pay $1/year interest for the rest of your life until you pay it back, but you have to earn $2/year more in order to have $1/year more to pay, but to earn $2/year more, your company has to earn $3/year more"

"Oh and you also need to buy insurance for that $10 hat because it's not yours, and you have to pay us for the insurance we're going to buy in addition to the insurance you're going to buy to insure us from you, so that'll be another $1, or you have to make $2 more to have $1, or your company needs to make $3 more, so now your company needs to make $6/year more"

"Oh and we're also going to devalue the $ so you actually need to make $10/year more because a $ won't be worth that much in a couple years"

The Permanent Upper Crow

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Discussion (25 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews