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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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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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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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