Vitalik Buterin on Warpcast

Vitalik Buterin pfp

Vitalik Buterin

Do "super", "hyper", "ultra", "meta" actually mean anything different beyond just being "cool prefixes" that cycle in and out of favor either organically or suddenly when a major entrepreneur just comes along and names their entire ecosystem after one of them?

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Vitalik Buterin pfp

Vitalik Buterin

Proposed decision procedure for whether or not the prefixes actually have indepdendent meanings: Identify some major products or concepts that use these prefixes. Swap the prefix out for any of the other ones in the list. Does the new name still "make sense"? If (and only if) yes, they mean the same thing.

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Norya.eth pfp

Me and my little brother used to use “super duper ultra hyper mega” as a the holy grail of cool prefixes

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Connor McCormick ☀️ pfp

Connor McCormick ☀️

imo: super - superior (perhaps literally bigger, e.g. superlinear) meta - self observing, recursive (e.g. meta study) hyper - beyond ultra - very very

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Sui pfp

you missed "power". Power badge, i mean.

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Lindo pfp

meta is the only one there that feels useful to me as it indicates layering. If I read meta i immediately understand I should be a layer up from something. Super, hyper, and ultra I am generally skeptical of.

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Jeff Feiwell pfp

Hyper means extraordinary and omnipotent

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Venkatesh Rao ☀️ pfp

Venkatesh Rao ☀️

Back in the day my co-blogger got tagged founder of “postrationality” and another writer I’m often compared to, David Chapman, with metarationality. I was getting tagged with those labels and didn’t like it so I briefly tried to make pararationality happen https://x.com/vgr/status/1079460296022867968?s=20

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Alexander Liroff pfp

Alexander Liroff

“Meta” in the epistemological usage has long had a distinct meaning that is more specific than just “cool” (usually indicating some form of self-referentiality), so I would single that prefix out from the others

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Zach pfp

title inflation but for products

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Cassie Heart pfp

In the case of extradimensionality, e.g. hypergraphs, they have specific meaning. In the case of a layer of abstraction through the use of a similar abstraction, like metacompilers, the prefix still holds meaning. But when it's just marketing, all language is fluff. 🙂

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Jonny Mack pfp

we used the name hypersub because the nft subscription data is onchain, interoperable, and can grant access to multiple places and experiences simultaneously. for this reason, i dont think super, ultra, or meta would’ve worked hyper subscriptions felt true and right do we pass the decision procedure test?

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Charlie Harrington pfp

Charlie Harrington

My reference of choice here is a combination of Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos Emeralds usage and Super Mario World secret levels.

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officercia.eth pfp

Ultra mega super cool 😅😅😅

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Les Greys pfp

I’ve used meta and hyper, I have applied the meaning to be a “hyper” aware version of building in public. Where early meant something before, and meta, hyper, etc. mean earlier. And it all has to do with information flow via new mediums imo.

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elle pfp

maybe if u are writing complicated math equations on a lisp machine in the 70s

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jacob pfp

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BORED 🥱 pfp

To quote the Simpsons, "Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound smart? ...I'm fired aren't I?"

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Liam pfp

Superchain does mean something that is encompassing multiple chains but is not itself a chain, which I think accurately reflects /optimism’s architecture.

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Colin Johnson 💭 pfp

Colin Johnson 💭

If you want to break the cycle we can use Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which means “Extraordinarily good; wonderful”

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