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.
Conversation
(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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On the more philosophical end, there's that line from A. N. Whitehead. "civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them"
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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
Replying to
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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