Ephemeral subcultures used to be the essential drivers of culture, and are still disproportionately significant relative to their populations (but less so than in the 80s-90s). explains their lifecycle:
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Scott contrasts his analysis with my Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths model (which I mostly stole from ). He doesn’t see the sociopaths. The comment section on his essay includes many people pointing to sociopathic destruction of various subcultures—crypto is a common example.
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So I read this essay and - I am not trying to insult anyone here - but the reason the author does not see sociopaths is because what he describes is itself the modus operandi of a sociopath: he sees everything as a competition for status.
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That’s very interesting… I will contemplate. I think and I would both acknowledge being a little bit sociopathic ourselves. Not sure whether would!
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We all like status, obviously, but if status is the main motivation - and not creating something cool or fun - then nothing interesting will come from it.
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Yes, definitely. OTOH, Scott (author of OP) constantly makes cool fun things, so even if he's slightly sociopathic, he's also a geek and a creator and a vast long-term asset to his subculture(s).
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Yeah I'm definitely not commenting on the person but on the essay which describes subcultures as vehicles to easily gain status. IMO that is not what subcultures are about for most people.
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But one reason why we don't have subcultures like in the 80s anymore is probably that society as a whole has become more permissive of difference.
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A punk in 1977 was an outcast, but now you can do all sorts of things without being ejected from polite society, so the identity and community factor is much weaker, there is no 'us against them' anymore.
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New advertising slogan: “Join LessWrong, it’ll be great, you’ll be despised by everyone and can share a bedroom with three other outcasts!”
(Your point seems insightful and correct :)
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not sure what you guys are talking about... your implied definition of sociopath appears to have drifted enough in the 2-3 indirections here that it has no real relationship with mine
my usage is in terms of being *out* of status games and being able to program them for others
iirc, scott's self-assessment in his gloss on the gervais principle was that he was mostly clueless in that scheme, if that is accurate, any sociopath moves he might make would be unconscious/accidental
I don't know enough about him to form an assessment one way or another
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That's machiavellianism, in my ideolect. Also I am loathe to include morality in "status games". Overlap is noise.
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yes, my treatment is roughly machiavellian in spirit
many people acquire a couple of isolated machiavellian technique skills, but machiavellianism as a generic philosophical disposition is actually quite rare, and where it exists, it creates a lot of headroom for evolution
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