Humans are.
Villains in the veil
Villains in the veil
Feeding on mass ignorance and greed
bend the world to their wills
Villain with dollar bills
Zero to One
the unproud
mistaken the capitalistically lucky with the intellectual
the green monster from within will not stop, until
its tentacles
extend deep into foreign realms of the social and the political
Villain staging the show
not/for, open/close
you can count on the con man to wow you
even though, the only tricks he knows
are capital and the “law” of scale
Let’s just hope that the con not turn into evil
as the thing in his hand might be powerful and real
Villain taking pills
for depression or exhaustion of mechanistic ideals
devoid of humanity
the hubris sees all things as industrial:
from electric cars to space travel
from inserting chips into human brain
to spreading his DNA artificially, beyond the typical few
Villains as idols
Idols to villains at the turn of the table
Awaken from the meaning crisis we’re in
before generations of generations of villains will follow!
The Tombstone score and badge system
How do we judge a person on his deathbed? I propose a rating system based on two axes:
- The Net Contribution Score (NCS). Improvements, damages, advancements or setbacks, what’s the overall contributions this person made to the world? An ordinal ranges from five minuses to five pluses.
- The Humanity Score (HS). Virtue, integrity, honor, infidelity, dishonest… How humane is this person’s intentions and actions. An ordinal ranges from five “
B”s to five “G”s where “B” represents “bad” and ‘G’ for ‘Good’.
Operating at the sentiment level (Good/Bad, Positive/Negative) and capped at the familiar five-star model, the Tombstone scores are easy to administer and manage.
Below diagram was made with the wonderful Desmos, the online graph calculator.
The four quadrants spanned by the two axes represent the four categories of people (The Tombstone badge):
- Heroes. Overall good human who made net positive contributions to the world. Think Albert Einstein.
- Humans. Overall good human who made net negative contributions to the world. This is where tragedy happens. Can’t think of a good model for this category.
- Villains. Overall bad human who made net negative contributions to the world. Think Adolf Hitler.
- Creatives (need a better name). Overall bad human who made net positive contributions to the world. Think Hitler’s mad scientists who made advancements in technologies, or some evil person who produced great art. Creatives who made themselves rich are called capitalists.
When the good and bad or the positives and negatives cancel out, the person receives no score on one or both axes. As a result, the person is not categorized into any of the quadrants and hence receive no badges:
- “GGGG”. A pretty good person who makes zero net contribution to the world.
- “++”. A neither good nor bad person who makes net positive contribution to the world.
- “ ”. Empty score. A neither good nor bad person who makes zero net contribution to the world.
The Tombstone score and badges can be applied at different levels[1]:
- Macro (world) level. People with Tombstone badges are outliers. The majority of us cluster around the origin, with no badges and leave no traces in this world.
- Micro (personal) level. No matter how small you’re as a person, you have agency to your immediate environment. You can be a brave hero as a homeless man or a rich villain to your neglected children. On this Fathers day, for example, let me proclaim to the world: Dad, you’re my personal hero!
Since I have a future use of the Tombstone score and badge system in mind, please cite this page as you reference it and any forms of commercialization is forbidden.
Tombstone score of contemporary tech celebrities
With the risk of being sued for libel, I list my personal ratings of tech celebrities below as an example of how to use the Tombstone score and badge system.
| Person | Tombstone Score | Tombstone Badge | Rationales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Gates | GGG+++ |
Hero | Good dad (G), Cheated on his ex-wife (B), Nerdy in a good way (G), Windows (++), Visual Basic(+), Philanthropy (GG). |
| Steve Jobs | G++++ |
Hero | Good family man (G), Apple (+++), Pixar (+). |
| Mark Zuckerberg | GG-- |
Human | Good family man (G), Philanthropy (G), Addictive social networks (- - -), Metaverse (+). |
| Sundar Pichai | G- |
Human | Nothing bad in media about this man (G), Chrome (+), Mis-management and use of Google talents (- -). |
| Satya Nadella | G |
n/a | Good family man (G), Savvy businessman reverted Microsoft’s image(+), Lack of innovations(-). |
| Jeff Bezos | BB++ |
Creative | Cheated on his ex-wife (B), Leadership principles(G), Attitude toward workers and toxic corporate culture(B), Wasting money on personal pet project (B), Amazon (+), AWS Cloud computing (+). |
| Elon Musk | BBBB++++ |
Creative | Attitude toward woman and his own child (B), Attitude toward workers (B), Hubris(B), Vanity (B), Tesla (+), SpaceX (+), X(-), Starlink (+). |
| Sam Altman | B- |
Villain | Nothing good in media about this man (B), ChatGPT (+), CloseAI (- -) |
| Peter Thiel | BB-- |
Villain | Not proud of and authentic to his identity (B), Pouring his money into social and political engineering (B), Libertarianism for himself and his elite friends, Palantir and ClearView surveillance state for the rest(- - -), Paypal (+) |
| Sam Bankman-Fried | BBBB- |
Villain | Fraudster (B), Hypocrite wearing effective altruism mask (B), Political engineering (B)[2], Hubris (B), FTX (-). |
The creatives such as Elon Musk needs special attention. With so many ‘B’s and so many ‘+’s in his Tombstone score, he’ll be the most dangerous villain should he decided to put all his industrial prowess into bad use. For example, should Elon decided to run for any public office[3], folks, whether you’re on the left, center or right, being a sheep or hyena, don’t vote for him. We can afford the villains to be rich, but not powerful.
The Day of Judgement
The Judgement Day should be now, rather than at the end of time. It should be conducted by the people, rather than God. It should be a continuous process as history unveils itself rather than on one particular day.
Q.E.D.
References
Notes
[1] Of course there could be infinite intermediate levels, but even the two extreme levels can be connected in William Blake‘s sense of “To see a World in a grain of sand, and a Heaven in a wild flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an hour.” ⤴
[2] Why I hate political engineering so much? Plain and simple, the big money is defying the one-person, one-vote rule.” ⤴
[3] Am I right? Am I right? Am I right? Four months after this blog is posted, Elon knelt in front of Trump. As to who is whose useful fool, it’s hard to tell.” ⤴