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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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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That's not the _only_ thing they are, but it's a useful simplification sometimes.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.
