The Permanent Upper Crow

(permanent-upper-crow.jasonwu.ink)

59 points | by whiteblossom 2 hours ago

12 comments

  • imnotyy 1 minute ago
    Reminded me of a book called Finite and Infinite Games
  • thegrim33 1 hour 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.
    • kubb 7 minutes ago
      Understandig how the hammer falls tells you where to stand to avoid it.
    • pocksuppet 1 hour 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.
    • whiteblossom 1 hour ago
      are we not all slaves to the top hat?
    • keybored 21 minutes ago
      Are we the Baddies? Yes, and how interesting. I could vibe a game about that.
  • arjie 1 hour 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 1 hour ago
      Once I realized I couldn’t decline, I left the website and left the top hat on the table.
      • ricardobayes 1 hour 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 1 hour 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 25 minutes 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".

  • jc4883 1 hour 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.
  • juancn 59 minutes ago
    So that's how you become a galactic civilization!
  • nprbst 1 hour ago
    CAWn't believe how hard this hits
  • RAZKOM 35 minutes ago
    I honestly love the look of the website. It makes me want to play/make a 2d scroller.
  • saaaaaam 1 hour ago
    Well done! Fun and satirical
  • dheera 1 hour 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"

  • ricardobayes 1 hour ago
    Brilliant
  • Yumat 1 hour ago
    It never ends…

    Super cool concept

  • aselimov3 1 hour ago
    This is quality