Conversation

Replying to
I’m all for mediocrity that is self-aware of its own mediocrity. That can make it actually fun, and paradoxically elevate it above mediocrity, both for producer and consumer. Irony is the leveler-upper of well-calibrated average brains.
1
47
But mediocrity convinced of its own genius (engineers producing crackpot physics theories and pestering physicists with them is a good genre) is the bane of the Internet. But it wasn’t too bad in first couple of decades when they were mostly isolated. Now they can build tribes.
1
50
99/100 of these tribes are the one-eyed leading the blind. Uncalibrated people very impressed with themselves attracting other Uncalibrated people looking for cultural leadership. Result: a Cambrian explosion of local consensus realities, all free from calibration.
2
61
But what makes this extra frustrating is that the 1 time in 100 when genuinely intellectually pathbreaking tribes form, they struggle. Struggle for resources, institutional support, big patrons, prominent memetic wins, viral vigor...
1
36
The median online tribe is much worse than the median institutional tribe. Less rigorous, more bullshitty, less skeptical of itself, more self-certain, less capable of systematic self-doubt... But the 1 in 100 will be far superior to the median institutional tribe.
1
44
This mediocristan/extremistan difference means that *every* self-important online tribe thinks it is in the 1% of “special” tribes, and it’s everybody else who comprises the unwashed masses pwned by sloppy conspiracy cults. And all think they’re superior to institutional tribes.
1
37
I’m not entirely sure where this will go. Institutional authority is crumbling rapidly. I’m probably from last generation to have benefitted from a lot of time in both worlds, when they were both healthy and in a good yin-yang balance of power.
3
29
In the future there may be nowhere to go to get your brain calibrated, as universities get sold for parts and social proof of status in subreddits and Facebook groups substitutes for calibration. This is one reason I’m suddenly interested in maker/diy type stuff.
3
50