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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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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Electronic social media has greatly increased the speed, distance and fidelity of these kinds of signals, so I think we're in the middle (or beginning) of a period of furious egregore evolution. Evolution is always an arms race, so things are getting weirder and weirder.
End of conversation
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.
