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One camp of people is always those who have invested hard work and time playing by the rules when a wave of hacking or flouting rules occurs. They identify the morality of the game with their own sunk costs within it. This is generally career institutionalists of some sort.
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On the “unfair” side you have 3 kinds of people: 1. clever people whose ways to hack rules with low risk and do so 2. Dumb lucky people who happen to be in the right place at the right time 3. Privileged people who get “lucky” in predictable ways through wealth, class, etc.
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These 3 types can blur, though they are all mutually exclusive re strict “pay your dues” people. For example you can be both a trustee and a clever rule hacker But useful to consider the 3 pure types: hacker lottery winner, failson grifter
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So that’s the 4 pure archetypes of any culture war: dues-payer, hacker, lottery winner, failson grifter. Eigenvectors. You can usually decompose any individual along these 4, after stripping away layers of denial, rationalization, guilt, projection, self-mythologizing etc
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Example of a calculus pattern: failsons full of moral self-doubt/guilt larping an undemanding dues paying career to ally with those paying much bigger dues and enjoying much firmer moral high ground. A kind of moral birging.
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If I write up this theory, gonna steal this mapping to the Beatles. Though it sounds slightly unfair to McCartney.
Quote Tweet
I'm all 4 😀 and most artists have to be all 4 Also Lennon= Hacker McCartney=Fail-son Grifter Harrison=Dues payer Ringo=Lottery winner twitter.com/vgr/status/147…
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The narrative is shaped most strongly by the failson grifters. Failchild grifter rather. This role is very gender balanced. The other 2 unfair ones often have a male bias while the dues crowd varies war to war.
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The failchildten tend to distribute about evenly into allying with one of the other 3 camps. History is written by the failchildren. At least in the short term when it’s fresh and full of alpha. In the long term only dues-paying historians care.
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Dues-paying success can be spun as a justice-served tale Skilled hacking can be spun as heroism Dumb luck needs no apology or justification, just grace in carrying yourself and some generosity in sharing Unearned privilege though… no good way to spin that
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Another calculus pattern: the skilled hackers kinda hate any attention on the dumb-luck crowd because it weakens their own story. You only get credit for above average-dumb-luck performance in a boom.
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Hmm. Harry Potter mappings: Hufflepuff: Dues payers Ravenclaw: Clever hackers Slytherin: Failsons Gryffindor: Dumb luckers Though all are degenerate examples due to being children and caricatures Harry in particular is a pure dumb-lucker
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