in a complex social system, there can be a conspiracy without conspirators the emergent behavior of a system sometimes looks like a highly coordinated conspiracy, even if no one is actually pulling strings at the top we don’t have good language to talk about this phenomenon
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...through a *biological* lens -- the egregore's 'cells' have to be able to recognize one another as parts of its 'body'. So while ultracomplex signaling games are exhausting to try to analyze semantically, they're easier to think about as being something like antigens.
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interesting — can you say more about the antigen metaphor
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Antigens are chemical 'keys' that activate antibodies. The surface of a cell is studded with them. There are 'self' antibodies, which the immune system recognizes as belonging, and 'non-self' antibodies, which immune cells attack.
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Metaphor: to recognize the parts of itself, an egregore needs them to identify themselves even more than a living being does, because the egregore's parts are dispersed through space and interpenetrate with the parts of other egregores.
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Metaphor: so humans infected by an egregore have to yell "I AM EGREGORE! I AM EGREGORE!" at each other _all the time_, or at least when fed an appropriate trigger, because it's not like you can smell if someone's Republican or whatever.
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Metaphor: Egregores also try to disrupt rival egregores. This leads to an immunological arms race with all kinds of complex behavior arising from the basic 'recognize/attack' imperatives.
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Not a metaphor: It cuts through a lot of complexity if you can say 'I'm not sure what this slogan means but it seems to be about showing which faction someone belongs to'
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thanks for the explanation this is super interesting. seems like you’re saying virtue signals are a type of antigen
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.
