The dynamic that creates uncalibrated realities around self-impressed autodidacts on the wild internet is the same one that creates Straussian subcultures in academia and Big Man cultures in business. The desire for leaders which imprints on nearest simpatico self-certain person.
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The difference is that Straussian great men and corporate Big Men have to work to shut down calibration in the naturally calibration-focused institutional environment. Or more frequently, have some first-generation acolyte do it for them. Online there’s no calibration from day 1.
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The key sign that you’re being owned by a unfalsifiable, uncalibrated textual tradition is that you’re encouraged to consider some core texts the truth ground. An “up is down” maneuver. Bible, Constitution, online ur texts, incoherent flows of mother-lode memes, Ancient Forums
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The devious aspect of the more sociopathic online cults is how they pretend to encourage you to “do your own research, see for yourself”, but all the while nudge/funnel you towards their ur sources by yes-and-ing you where you happen to lean that way, and ignoring where you don’t
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao
Depressingly exploitative and predatory.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1297767323441348608 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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This is active vandalism of the fragile calibration instincts of vulnerable people. They don’t know they are onstage in a magic act with a conjurer. At least with cult gurus or faith healers there is a stage and an audience that might tip you off that you’re being played.
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It’s like a Vegas magic act, except there’s no tickets and no audience doors. Only way into the audience is via the stage, and you only get a seat if you get fully taken in while on the stage. If not you’re out.
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If you could find some way to deliver diy brain calibration at scale online, you’d solve mental health, culture war, and fake news, all in one shot. I don’t think it can be done. Calibration is expensive and painful and people have to be paid or otherwise rewarded to endure it.
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Reality has a surprising amount of detail — John Salvatier (increasingly climbing the rankings in my best-things-ever-written-online) But... textual ity has a surprising amount of detail too. So it’s easy to get disoriented. http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail …
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The difference is that the detail in textuality is stretched out very thin over a lot of reality. And almost none of it is capable of providing calibration. Any random object you pick up around your home likely involves more detail than any Big History stretched over centuries.
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It’s like increasing magnification without increasing resolving power. You end up with blurry or pixelated results. How do you complete the magic trick with such poor optics? The CSI Miami trick: “enhance!” This is the function of aesthetics and why I distrust aesthetics.
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Through interpolation and smoothing, aestheticization stretches a spoonful of reality detail over vastly more reality. The aesthetic filler creates the appearance of additional detail but it’s dead detail. Not capable of supplying brain calibration.
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So maybe textuality has a pseudosurprising amount of detail. Like pseudorandom. Which is perhaps why GPT-3 can fake it so well in textual worlds.
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