What makes a subject or information source easy to overindex on?
I suspect it is being at the edge of legibility. A satisfying basic epistemic structure with infinitely deep margins of nerd-out value.
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Overindexing is a central skill in making your own viable reality. The narrow knowledge base has to distort your overall knowledge base. Otherwise you just end up with a bit of zombie non-loving knowledge.
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A good overindexing subject is one where nerding out over the collateral is almost as satisfying as nerding out over the thing itself.
Come for the X
Stay for the nerd-interest graph around X
Become terminally trapped by the social graph around X
For X=Charlie Munger for eg
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Overindexing examples
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What are you overindexed on?
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Good copypasta results from taking some overindexed thinking out of its social context
Navy seal, Rick and north high IQ, what else?
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Our insecurities also play a big role here.
We over index on things that we are fearful of losing.
(Yes, legibility plays a role but we are wonderful rationalisers)
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But if there isn’t enough information to feed the overindexing it just turns into generalized anxiety
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Said another way: The attentional "pull" of the subject's smallest pedagogical "unit".
Meme cultures have nearly perfect forms of this, but lacks overarching knowledge structure.
Masters are born from someone falling in love with the smallest repetitive drill a subject has.
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Again, for me it is the complex of LARP, game design, narrative design, and the surrounding social graph. Lovely infinite headspace.
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