I think the 2 threads I did today, on knowledge vs situation awareness and on respect/disrespect are related and I’m sort of triangulating a potentially interesting alternative to thinking in terms of expert vs lay epistemologies. This is nerdy vs honor-based epistemologies.
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What they share is a) disinterest and/or incapability in acquiring knowledge and b) significant use of respect and social mechanisms (social proof or procedural technical correctness) to mitigate lack of knowledge
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People who put in more work to acquire actual knowledge on the other hand, tend to slowly wean themselves off respect-based social epistemology mechanisms. This is the nerd instinct. The drive to actually look inside blackbox. To learn how it works rather than just how to work it
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Nerds can of course have their own insecurities and internal respect competitions, but fundamentally actually wanting to know how something works regardless of whether it can be exploited without such knowledge: that’s the nerd instinct.
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Appreciative knowledge for its own sake, regardless of instrumental utility. 80% of the time, this means same outcomes at higher cost relative to bureaucrats or scenesters.
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20% of the time, you might be right and even then 80% of those cases it might not matter because rewards are tied to the social mechanisms like popular appeal or rules compliance. So nerdery might only be a winning posture 4% of the time net and you might never hit those cases.
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So to return to original question: there are 2 epistemologies here, and it’s not expert vs lay or insider vs outsider, It is respect-based epistemology vs nerdery-based epistemology.
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let’s call those running on respect epistemology, whether insider bureaucrats or outsider button-pushers... Eloi. Surface [of knowledge] dwellers. Those who work to understand and pay a cost 96% of time, and win 4% when others lose: Morlocks Interior [of knowledge] dwellers.
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In the short term the Eloi will generally win. In the long term, Morlocks will occasionally win big. Not 4% of the time, that’s just being right when others are wrong and it mattering. It also has to matter in a big way to make up for steady costs. So about 0.32% maybe.
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By this it is not at all clear that Morlocks have long-term evolutionary advantage, contra both H. G. Wells and Neal Stephenson. The Eloi might prevail if things get lucky for them.
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