Subcultures
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Some Recent Recalibrations
Thought One
The rabidly political have continued their incremental improvements in dominating the political discussion space and have made the political discussion space somehow even worse than it was. However, the non-rabidly political have made great strides in separating themselves from the rabidly political, either by splitting off from existing groups or improvements in changing subjects and avoiding topics. That sounds very trivial, but in my very anecdotal experience the non rabidly political have undergone some major social skill upgrades. It’s halfway to real life hellbanning.Thought Two
The very online (producing and consuming) and the not very online will be the main political divide in the coming years. I was thinking about (for no obvious reason) Cal Newport (Deep Work) and James Scott (Seeing Like a State). Newport and Scott make interesting points about identity creation and maintenance, albeit from different angles. In my formulations, the various points converge with the notion that identity creation is hard, time consuming, and bends towards coherence and legibility. The online identity will become much more monotonic due to the greater amount of standardized influences. The not very online will maintain much more nuanced and varied identities.
Pair that with thought one above and the very online will become very visible and legible to the not very online and the not very online will become confusing then invisible to the very online. -
Steelmaning Yarvin
The need to steelman Yarvin came to my while I was running a few days ago.
The best I can come up with is a modification of Kling’s civilization/barbarism axis, to wit, his contribution can be described as:
Assume the world slides back and forth on a spectrum of civilization and barbarism. Each increase in civilization comes with a decrease in barbarism, and vice versa (both have benefits, structure, dynamism, equilibrium, etc). Yarvin can be thought of as contributing the thought that civilization can decay in place. The benefits of civilization can decrease with no increase in barbarism. Basically a decrease in structure without an increase in dynamism.Now that I’ve written that out (in less than 45,000 words) I will go back to disliking Yarvin.
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Insight and adage from Joe Rogan
From this interview – in a discussion about an astronaut who went full bore conspiracy theorist about UFOs
You go where the love is
The point being that here was this lonely old man, and a bunch of conspiracy theorist more or less “adopted” him, and showed him friendship, companionship and affection. In turn, he probably told them the most interesting stories, then emphasized other parts of others, and slowly went off the deep end as he lent this his authority.
Actually that makes you want to question famous members of all subcultures…