4/ ...and supposed to drive 65 in a 55 because everyone does. The explanations of what exceptions exist and why are usually incoherent and unsatisfying, because the real answer is that it's a bit like calculating spring back when stream bending wood - human nature says everyone
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15/ Now, the interesting thing is that in culture and politics, state (i.e. the existing truth on the ground) factors in to the results, similar to how it does in playing around w finite automata stuff.
#include Game-of-Life-with-preference-for-neighbors -> segregationShow this thread -
16/ To tie this math stuff into culture, I'm going to say that when kids start to quest for identity, they look for archetypes that somewhat reflect their own internal state and preferences, but they want identities that are recognized / embraced / respected by others.
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17/ We're a social species after all. One fun example of this is how "nerd" tended to have different expressions in different geographical locations (at least up in the Before Internet Times ; I imagine it's weirder now). Suburban Nerd differed from NYC Nerd & Country Nerd
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18/ From my brief experience of such things, suburban nerds were more likely, in the 1980s, to be into computers & D&D, NYC nerds into chess & math, country nerds into ham radio & engines.
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19/ To some degree this is initial influences from the normie culture around them, but once a subculture gets established, it propagates on its own. If there's no strong pressure in the state space to change, there's no reason NYC nerds & West Virginia nerds should converge.
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20/ So we've got these various cultures and subcultures out there, and each has an archetype. In practice, each is just a collection of things, but humans, in addition to being social creatures, are also pattern matching creatures. So there's always a quest for Platonic forms.
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21/ Platonic forms, by the way, are - IMO - just another example of nerds taking things too literally. Random Greek: man, that's a nice table. It's really almost the ideal of what a table should be Plato: You're saying that there is an IDEAL of a table, that exists somewhere?
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22/ Rando: um...I guess? Basically, I was just saying that it's a really nice table Plato: Yes, this makes so much sense, and was inherent in your words. You said more than you realized. This is a table, but there is also THE TABLE Rando: dude, what? Plato: is the Table ok?
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23/ American Gods is treating Platonically / spergtastically the idea that things have patterns. Which, to be fair, might be the origin of the gods of ancient history. Sort of like pareidolia, but different.
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24/ Anyway, the american gods have shifted between, say 1970 and 2021. The american gods used to include coyboys and astronauts, and now they include female athletes and girl bosses. This cultural change is both upstream and downstream of politics (...and business).
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25/ The gods of a given era are important to understand how people will spend money and how they will vote ... but they're also important because we each precompute and precache possible reactions to situations.
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26/ I'm sure that many an ancient Greek boy thought about how Heracles would respond to a certain situation or a different situation, and stored these responses away and - when confronting such a situation in his own life - emulated his hero.
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27/ I'm not saying that we'll do exactly what our heroes would do, but that our own personal Overton windows for actions and reactions are defined by the tropes and patterns we see in culture.
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28/ I've got more to say about this, but ... I dunno, maybe I'll save it for another time. Want to do something productive with the day. Going to poke at some fiction writing and/or harvest pumpkins.
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31/ I have rarely done things that I'm later proud of after careful thought (in the moment of decision). Most of the things I'm later proud of came after snap decisions, in the moment ... that were based on months or years of reflection and self-definition vs heroes & tropes.
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32/ If you let yourself first ponder whether you're the kind of guy who will { cheat on your wife | run into a burning building to save a child | keep the money in the wallet you find | etc } when you are presented with the choice, your chance of choosing poorly is, IMO, high.
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33/ There's a reason that we decouple selling a movie ticket from redeeming a movie ticket - it means that neither the seller nor the redeemer has an incentive or approach to pocket the money.
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34/ This works when there are two agents (two employees at the theater). Likewise, decoupling, in time, the two agents inside your own head: the decision maker and the decision follower, is a cognitive / social hack that makes collusion harder.
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35/ so, in the individual case, you get to decide which heroes you want to study and emulate. Heracles? George Washington ? Isambard Kingdom Brunell? Malcolm X? However, this is not an unbounded person decision. The menu of heroes you see is curated by society.
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37/ It will not surprise you to learn that I (a socialcon, a rationalist (broadly speaking, not Big Yud trademarked version), and a Catholic) am absolutely appalled by the post-civilization / anti-civilization slate of heroes and tropes that our current cultural betters prepare.
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38/ I talked earlier about fixed points in computations. Societies can not be static, and so they will always evolve, and their tropes and heroes and gods will change over time. We have seen, in the New Ideology, a huge act of myth/hero/god-making in just a few decades >
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39/ Stonewall Riots, Summer of Love, 1960s radical nubian goddess activist, etc.pic.twitter.com/vD8egBpeyO
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40/ the right has created far fewer new hero-gods during this period, but it has done one or two e.g. Tony Starkpic.twitter.com/lK2Eiazf5c
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44/ I suspect that the left's new gods, while much louder and bigger, are not fixed points. childless-gay-sports-woman seems like she can peel off a lot of believers from older gods in societal iteration #498, but I'm not sure how many believers she'll have in iteration #499
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