This reminded me a lot of Lewontin's Paradox of Variation: the fact that genetic diversity does not increase with population size as expected. From my ignorance, I suspect the mechanisms are similar.
Long comment:
Yesterday I read "She Said I Want Something That I Want" [1] and was very impressed by the content. There was a link to this one and, again, it was an awesome read. Both posts are probably not life-changing but they sure are mental-model-changing.
[1] Which was linked to in "The Artification of Culture" by Simon de la Rouviere.
I came to the comments section expecting to see dozens of comments... and not a single one. Ok, you were right that "writing 10,000 word essays about memetics in 2024" is not the best way to get views. Maybe it's better that way because the forces described in this post do not apply to this blog :).
I have to say that in my case you are preaching to the choir. I opted out of algorithmic content years ago and now only use RSS and sites with simple chronological sorting. And regarding this:
> The system is not ‘them’, it is ‘us’. And you can’t just leave.
> ‘The Main Characters Who Became NPCs’
In my experience, if you're lucky ($lucky$) enough, it's possible to leave... but only up to a point, and you'll have to give up a LOT. As you say later, "you have to play the game everyone else has designed", but you can choose (almost) not play at all. I like to think I've avoided the NPC phase by not playing.
Anyway, thank you very much for sharing your writing.
And I fully agree with one of the core ideas: you can only "not play and have a good life" if your concept of "good life" is NOT the one "defined by the system".
... now that I wrote that, maybe "rejecting the system-goals" is the definition of "not playing the game".
I wonder if there’s a conflation here between stasis and convergence— feeling like culture isn’t advancing, versus feeling like the same things are emerging over and over.
I think the objection to the idea existing in a system implies stasis is that similar systems in nature aren’t always static— they can be, depending on the forces acting on them, but if those forces change they can indeed shift, and shift radically. Some of those shifts may be predictable or familiar. But a predictable dynamic within a system is not the same thing as a system in stasis.
So I guess I think it’s not sufficient to say stasis is systemic. I agree that it probably is, but that’s only identifying the level on which a dynamic might be identified. In itself, it doesn’t explain why it might be stable.
Short comment:
This reminded me a lot of Lewontin's Paradox of Variation: the fact that genetic diversity does not increase with population size as expected. From my ignorance, I suspect the mechanisms are similar.
Long comment:
Yesterday I read "She Said I Want Something That I Want" [1] and was very impressed by the content. There was a link to this one and, again, it was an awesome read. Both posts are probably not life-changing but they sure are mental-model-changing.
[1] Which was linked to in "The Artification of Culture" by Simon de la Rouviere.
I came to the comments section expecting to see dozens of comments... and not a single one. Ok, you were right that "writing 10,000 word essays about memetics in 2024" is not the best way to get views. Maybe it's better that way because the forces described in this post do not apply to this blog :).
I have to say that in my case you are preaching to the choir. I opted out of algorithmic content years ago and now only use RSS and sites with simple chronological sorting. And regarding this:
> The system is not ‘them’, it is ‘us’. And you can’t just leave.
> ‘The Main Characters Who Became NPCs’
In my experience, if you're lucky ($lucky$) enough, it's possible to leave... but only up to a point, and you'll have to give up a LOT. As you say later, "you have to play the game everyone else has designed", but you can choose (almost) not play at all. I like to think I've avoided the NPC phase by not playing.
Anyway, thank you very much for sharing your writing.
reading and thought are much appreciated, thank you
to be honest I do agree you can not play and have a good life (depending on how you make money), but I suppose I wrote this for people locked in
And I fully agree with one of the core ideas: you can only "not play and have a good life" if your concept of "good life" is NOT the one "defined by the system".
... now that I wrote that, maybe "rejecting the system-goals" is the definition of "not playing the game".
I wonder if there’s a conflation here between stasis and convergence— feeling like culture isn’t advancing, versus feeling like the same things are emerging over and over.
I think the objection to the idea existing in a system implies stasis is that similar systems in nature aren’t always static— they can be, depending on the forces acting on them, but if those forces change they can indeed shift, and shift radically. Some of those shifts may be predictable or familiar. But a predictable dynamic within a system is not the same thing as a system in stasis.
So I guess I think it’s not sufficient to say stasis is systemic. I agree that it probably is, but that’s only identifying the level on which a dynamic might be identified. In itself, it doesn’t explain why it might be stable.
"If you're reading it, it's for you."