yeah egregore is my fav concept as well. especially after reading this @sarahdoingthing essay:
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/05/07/weaponized-sacredness/ …
i used to think they were too weird for mainstream, but now pretty convinced anything can happen 
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As the junior partner in that particular bit of thoughtcrime, I think it's possible to read too much into the metaphor, but it does help frame parts of the problem. For instance, a lot of social media processes are bafflingly opaque at a human level, but make more sense...
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Replying to @St_Rev @aaronzlewis and
...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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Replying to @St_Rev @aaronzlewis and
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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Replying to @St_Rev @aaronzlewis and
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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Replying to @St_Rev @aaronzlewis and
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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Replying to @St_Rev @aaronzlewis and
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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Replying to @St_Rev @aaronzlewis and
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.
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.