Conversation

2019 resolution: "let's make things boring". "The opposite of every great truth is also a great truth" -- Niels Bohr (?) "You learn most in direction of maximal interestingness" is a great truth. "You learn most in direction of maximal boringness" is also a great truth.
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(not saying I'm adopting it, though I may...) From Axios today: "The bottom line: Norms and precedents are boring. The lack of them is interesting, but almost always at a severe cost."
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Feels a bit Chesterton Fencish, but it needn't be. Making things boring is (for instance) the basic challenge of scaling an innovative technology.
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I think Seth Godin said something like "a technology becomes socially interesting when it becomes technologically boring."
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Replying to
We focus a lot on the abuse/discarding of norms with the line "this is not normal." You make things interesting by flouting norms. You make things boring by installing norms.
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Hypothesis: cults/alt realities rise to prominence by being interesting, but establish themselves for the long term by deliberately becoming boring. If you stop at flouting/breaking old norms, you'll vanish like a flash flood leaving no trace behind. Old norms will just come back
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The other half of the equation, "normalizing" new things, is the scary part, but we often confuse it with simply being numb/jaded/exhausted/burnt out by repetition of a transgression. That's not "normalization."
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The joke "the beatings will continue until morale improves" gets at why mere repetition of a transgression to exhaust the capacity of outrage is not a way to install a new norm. A norm is self-enforcing without much energy/coercion/"beating".
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Trump era has numbed us to a lot of things, but it hasn't actually normalized any new behaviors that weren't already normalized. So far, "this is not normal" hasn't been a necessary chant. That's the good news.
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There's been a few wannabe new-normalizers in the crowd (Miller?) but they've had low impact at the norms level outside of regulatory hacks/de-institutionalization efforts. Fortunately, it still isn't "normal" to be cruel to children. Pussy-grabbing hasn't replaced hand-shaking.
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I have ideas on how to actually install norms and make behaviors normal, boring, and most importantly, not-shameful. You can't do it to all behaviors, a pre-normalization reasonableness test applies. But for good candidate norms, there's a playbook of sorts.
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8 Rules for Norms 1. Make it unskilled 2. Make it self-reinforcing 3. Automate it 4. Take heroism/villainy out of it 5. Make it visible+imitable 6. Make it microkarmic (1 recycled can: 1 whuffie) 7. Unbrand it (secret handshake -> ordinary) 8. Uncode it (virtue signal value =0)
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If you successfully do these 8 things, it will become part of background social infrastructure that is self-regulating, auto-socializing etc. It will also drain all the culture-war energy out of the behavior and any counter-behaviors. Suck the air out, starve the flames
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