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This has been on my mind lately. Salvatier's blog post is great, but it's been sinking in for me that everything he says applies to major collective delusions as well. The stock market for eg. has a surprising amount of detail. So does the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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Reality has a surprising amount of detail. johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/real But so do escaped realities. ribbonfarm.com/2015/01/16/on-
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I think the more correct, or at least more precise statement is: "reality has a surprising amount of _surprising and boring detail_" Being a reality nerd is about making that boring part interesting for yourself.
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When you go down a tvtropes or fandom wiki site bunnytrail, there is an endless amount of detail to master, but it is also endlessly interesting AND not entirely surprising (like looking up the details of a minor and obscure superhero's superpowers is never truly surprising).
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But if (for eg) you do what Salvatier recommends and look into the surprising amount of detail in "boiling water", it's both surprising how complex it is, and kinda boring unless you find a way to get interested in say convection physics and heat transfer in uneven metal plates.
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Wong's point in that article is that effort shock is a result of miscalibrating the surprising amount of detail in reality due to the conditioning effects of karate-kid style sports montages that make it look easy, quick, and fun, with a nice soundtrack.
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Replying to
disagree: the karate kid actually goes out of its way to present martial arts as onerous, absurd, and always reversible in whatever gains you make, which doesn't jive with our expectations i.e. daniel-san keeps getting his ass kicked, and has to
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Replying to
i agree with that--compressing that pattern in a short time period is unrealistic, but if you revisit it; he never really gets his black belt, they just have him put one on to enter the joke there is that black belts and tournaments are fundamentally meaningless
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