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Once an era starts feeling like complete “history” you start to see distinctions among things that: a) were transient and internal to era b) integrated in a way individual steps don’t matter c) “passed through” era as open items d) started but didn’t end d) got laid to rest
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Picking up from this earlier thread on a periodic action that’s getting viscerally clear to me
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I think recent eras are: 1964-1979: long 60s 1980-1993: long 80s 1994-2007: long 90s 2008-2021: long Weirding 2022-2033: long 20s Enough time has passed that long 80s, long 90s feel like “history” to me now. Don’t remember long 60s since I was only 5 when it ended.
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In my head, I have a crackpot engineering model taking shape 🤣 a) zero-mean noise b) potential field c) pass band signal from earlier d) history sources e) history sinks Sort of groping for “history” as a hyperobject here. Like a self-reconfiguring electric circuit.
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Examples for just completed 2008-21 Long Weirding era a) zombie/vampire movies b) AI and climate c) Culture war (orig: long-60s Nixonland) d) crypto e) Cold War (rip Gorbachev) e is debatable: for eg I think Putin’s new agenda is a throwback to Tsarist era, not Cold War contd.
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Doesn’t have to be big history. It trickles down to individual ordinary life events as well. For eg I think I could segment everything I’ve written in the last era into those 5 categories at personal biographical scale. Levels interact. For Gorbachev, personal touched world.
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a) is not necessarily insignificant. It may be big for people living through it. Stuff that starts and wraps up in-era with no unresolved residues that supports but doesn’t shape further history. One-off side quests that will make the history books but not breed more history.
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Kinda like childless but important individuals whose historical impact is time-boxed by their own lives. Like say a major mathematician who states and proves an important theorem and leaves neither kids nor a school of mathematics tradition behind. Just a big, completed gift.
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I’ve been chasing this thought since 2017, in a demented and quixotic quest to figure out whether psychohistory (cartoon science in Asimoverse) can be made real. The idea in this thread and quoted one is finally starting to feel prime-radiantish 😇
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