"It's magic. All technology is."

You may balk at this as being ultimately futile but our entire existence is built on trying to break apart and simplify the world we exist in, starting with the first cut between self/inside and other/outside (i.e. "this is me" vs "this is where I am" - a distinction that becomes immensely relevant after the moment of birth). Language itself only functions because we can create categories it can operate on - regardless of whether those categories consistenly map to reality itself.

The cause of the universe must itself be uncaused, or else it is only an intermediate cause that must itself refer ultimately to an uncaused cause. An infinite regress is impossible with respect to existence. Unlike causes per accidens which can in principle be infinite in length, a cause `per se` cannot; without a terminus, there would be nowhere from which the latter causes would derive their force, so to speak, like an arm pushing a stick that is pushing a rock that is pushing a leaf. Meaning, the cause is not some distant one in time, but one always acting; otherwise, everything would vanish. The only cause that could have this property is self-subsisting being.

From there, you can know quite a bit about what else must be true of self-subsisting being.

So the cause or dare I say reason for the universe being the way it is will depend on its cause.

"The universe" cannot be that cause, as the universe and everything in it is contingent.

But the universe is contingent. It isn't necessary. It is one big chain of dependence.

A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money in exchange for biometric registration on the network, in a lot of countries all over the world. It seemed to be an attempt to set up some sort of global electronic ID system and currency all in one.

That silver sphere is an iris scanner, IIRC.

Got shut down pretty hard in a bunch of places as a potentially illegal invasion of privacy.

Was it free money? I recall that it was some shitcoin token paid out, which may or may not be worth something.

I could be wrong, of course.

Apparently the token was only offered in some countries, and in some places where it was offered, that was considered enough of a bribe to render void the informed consent to collect and process private data.

* For what it's worth, my cynicism for Worldcoin and that eye scanner thing is currently about 7/10: moderately high but could be much worse.

By comparison, I'm 9/10 in cynicism for Facebook and 10/10 in cynicism for everything Musk does except SpaceX, my SpaceX cynicism is only 5/10.

Not necessarily - they look whatever you want them to look. In this case sama wanted to create a feeling of futurism - the story being he is leading a global AGI revolution and you can be a part of it by staring in a metal ball.

You only get a scan at the start, after that it's basically a usual crypto wallet + private key. They don't ask for your name or id or anything at the start. Although they are now offering me like $25 if I'll scan my passport and do kyc stuff. I think they are trying to make it into a payment/investment network.