Social scaling is generally understood in terms of the number of people in a coordination regime, so a way to get 1200 people working together is more advanced than a way to get 12 people working together, other things being equal.
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But an important way other things are NOT equal is intimacy. 2 people working together in a marriage is more intimate coordination than 2 people paired up for a casual tennis tournament. Let’s call this density rather than intimacy. Social scaling = (size)*(density).
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Historically, industrialization monotonically increased size of the coordinating group but for a century actually lowered density. Humans could relate to each other via more cartoonish other-models. This hit a trough around the 1960s with the Organization Man set of archetypes.
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Since then, to coordinate better has meant developing better mental models of people you’re coordinating with. From “cartoon” to “healthy marriage” levels. Increasing density.
Moore’s Law of social scaling: the density of coordination doubles every generation.
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Gen X is 2x more densely coordinated than Boomers, Millennials are 2x Gen X and 4x Boomers. Zoomers are 8x Boomers.
Size has evolved interestingly in recent decades. It’s gone barbell. As a company, Facebook is 43,000 employees. As a platform it has 2.37b AUs.
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Put another way, the average Boomer mental model of other Boomers is very coarse. “Class” is good enough. Late Boomer society had say 9 classes going by Paul Fussell’s 1992 book
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Gen X? Probably double that at maybe 15-20 (think Myers-Briggs). Millennial = maybe ~100 (woke intersectional identity). Zoomer = we’ll see. Perhaps 1000 weird meme-archetypes in a lifetime. Too many to cast into a systematized hierarchy or matrix.
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The charge of “Identity politics” is mostly one generation’s disgust reaction at the greater scaling density/intimacy of the next. The greater the distance, the stronger and more emotional the reaction.
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Boomers get apoplectic at Millennial identitarianism and assert reactionary class structures. Gen X has a milder reaction: mostly private libertarianism and public non-conflict.
Zoomer fluidization of woke matrix is going to piss off Millennials.
But this is all inevitable.
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To run with the Moore’s law analogy, to work together effectively at internet scale, Zoomers will need coordination density so intimate, it will look like quantum tunneling and entanglement effects to us. They are Borg. Resistance is futile if you’re young enough.
Replying to
Ideology doesn’t matter. All ideologies are on the same densification curve. Alt-right dank meme Borg is the same as Woke-cancel-mob Borg.
If you’re too old to be assimilated, you’ll be ok-boomered out of the process.
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Point is: there seems to be growing wishful thinking that this is a volition always, ideologically driven process and that at some point “woke will go too far” or “alt-right incels will go too far” and lead to a correction towards “sanity” defined as “historical density”.
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Nope. The ideology is a consequence of densification, which itself is driven by economics and tech. Not a cause. It’s like thinking “Moore’s law will go too far and there will be a correction back to vacuum tubes”.
Doesn’t work that way. Quantum Zoomer Social Foam is coming.
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Thoughts inspired by observation that Woke Derangement Syndrome now exceeds Trump Derangement Syndrome in intensity and incidence.
Trumpism is an instance of a cyclic reaction phenomenon. Woke is a stage in a secular historical trend. Cycles self-correct. Secular trends evolve.
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Correct questions to ask are different in each case.
Cycles: when does it peak, reverse, and go into overcorrection
Secular trend: what does this morph into at next scale of evolution
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If Trumpism bothers you resist it. If Woke bothers you, punch through to the other side.
My suspicion on latter is temporalization of identity. People who wear an identity for a while like clothing evolving past those who want you to find and inhabit a “true” one for life.
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Replying to
The desired coordination density is achievable via mental telepathy or faith.
Just depends on one's word preference.
One thing is certain, many J Edgar Hoover-y, dominator ego types are going to have nervous breakdowns trying to "keep a handle on things" in the coming decade.
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