It isn’t all efficient test-driven trial-and-error learning. It has a lot of potential for breaking out of tradition because it is *bad* at tradition. Tradition is something youth settles into at 35 as it runs out of energy rather than locks on to at 19 after A/B testing of chaos
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Maybe I’m overfitting some very limited and sparse observational data, but I think there’s something real here. Something analogous, in fact, to deep learning AIs. Gen Z is deep-learning the world rather than GOFAI-learning it like every previous generation.
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It might seem weird to call this traditionalism, since the *content* is not necessarily traditional. It’s some uncanny valley memetic soup mixing ancient statuary, “classical” aesthetics, anime, black reaction gifs etc. But the low-energy signature is that of traditionalism.
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Is this good or bad? I don’t know. It’s like asking if deep learning is good or bad vis-a-vis GOFAI. I am trying to resist my own sense that it is bad. I’m trying to see how it might be adaptive.
But it’s hard not to sense the cost being incurred.
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I can’t resist the sense that this is a prematurely aged, prematurely optimized, pattern-locked generation that has been *too good* at learning for its own good. That I was perhaps well-served by my learning environment being “bad”, anti-doerist, and forcing reflection.
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tldr: This is either an H. L. Mencken generation that has figured out the "an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" for the complex problem of “life’ by trial and error, OR it is a transcended generation that is experiencing an enlightenment that will leave us oldies behind.
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Counter theory: their Boomer parents went hard away from tradition. Boomers never embraced institution building or norm upholding. They went directly from 70s counter culture to 80s me generation. Gen Z "traditionalism" is a radical reaction to their parents' neglect of tradition
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And this Boomer neglect of traditionalism produced an extremely precarious world: looming climate disaster, decline of democracies, breakdown of capitalism's populist promise. Under precariousness people look for stability. Plus these problems may need anti-invidualist solutions.
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I don’t think this is an alternate theory. It’s more like you passing historical judgment and assigning blame for the pattern I’m pointing out 🙂
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Ha. Well maybe. I was responding, specifically, to your theory about the "cult of doerism" as being the cause here. "Doerism" is part of Boomer-dominated Me-first materialism. I think actually a lot of the instinct here you've identified as "traditionalism" is a reaction to that.
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Hmm. Maybe. I think doerism is more recent and has more to do with ubiquitous access to the internet.
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I'd like to hear you flesh out the idea of "doerism" more. It made me think of things like:
* Glorification of startups
* Elevation of STEM over the humanities
* Cynicism towards art and idealism about design
* Skepticism towards party politics
* General anti-instutionalism
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It’s in that family, but I don’t see it as primarily that stuff. That stuff is intellectual/ideological. GenZ doerism resists that kind of intellectualization.
I’m mostly for all those things you’re against, as you know, but I’m pro-doerism by ideology rather than nurture.
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