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I suspect one reason drew fire for broaching sex redistribution is simply because as a signal booster he diverted scarce public attention to that topic. The actual opinion matters less than the act of putting that topic in the public short-term magic 7±2 meme buffer
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Boosting the topic says “the needs/motives/desires of this group X are worth more attention than those of every other group I’m not signal-boosting.” I suspect it would be useful for public figures to preface displays of public curiosity with justification of importance.
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Unlike private curiosity, public curiosity of thought leaders deploys more than their own attention. It’s a public attention allocation decision. When you tweet or RT something, you’re deploying num_followers*clickbaitness*avg_time attention, Like national park hygiene norms.
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In an attention scarcity (or information overload) environment people are desperate for meta-signals on what to pay attention to. Hell, there’s even a account that RTs things likes. That’s how starved the information economy is for quality meta-signals.
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The “fiat news” concept from is useful here. It’s a billion channel universe and you have some ability to mint fiat news whether you are aware of it or not, so be mindful what you boost.
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I have always tended to self-censor public curiosity to things I think will harmoniously interest others in that space. This is from before I had any sort of platform. I suspect this is a basic personality trait. I just don’t like making a scene. I take all conflict offline.
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Internet pollutes the concept of "public". Here's a 2x2, privacy/audience: - open channel/wide reach (news) - open channel/selective reach (blog) - closed channel/wide reach (open invite chat) - closed channel/selective reach (private chat) Only news is political by default.
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Looks like the rules of counting in the game of Go. Two virtually opposite definitions of politics -- process/activity and introspection/highlighting -- can be almost proven to result in the same "politics vs. no politics" classifications of various acts.