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This thread feels like it could do with a write-up, but I feel lazy about doing it.
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Trying out various oks for feel ok boomer ok nazi ok wokie ok centrist ok millennial ok techie ok incel ok chad damn they all work this is the broad spectrum antibiotic of memes
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I think it works because it tells the other side that you have a reasonably complete predictive model of what people-like-them think and say. Being fully aware of anything they could say means that you don't need to listen to what they're saying now.
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"You have no capacity to surprise me" is a hurtful thing to say to a person, but it's not recognised as a common insult. I wonder if it's becoming more common now, in a more diverse online world? It's a compression technique, really.
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We experience *both* a greater diversity of viewpoints, *and* a greater number of people espousing those viewpoints. At some point you just *have* to say "ah, these people are all boomers and say boomerish things, I shall henceforth regard them as NPCs of class 'boomer'".
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The alternative means engaging with far more than Dunbar's number of notionally individual people, which is inefficient if they mostly say the same things. And so many people are saying so much nowadays that compression is essential cognitive self-preservation.
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The only thing that bothers me about this neat explanation is that it doesn't seem to be what I do. Or, at least, I feel uncomfortable about doing it, and always try to give people the chance to say the surprising thing that breaks the predictive model. I'm sad when they don't.
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