> Competition implies a provider of gifts and those who chase those gifts. The provider will always use faulty proxies to determine who to provide to, thus becoming disproportionately important to the process. Acquiring the gifts is always disproportionately more important than anything else.
I think we are on the same page with respect to the dangers.
I am reminded of the experiments in which rats are getting hits of dopamine. What is it called? Behavioral conditioning? Skinner conditioning? Very simple, but very powerful.
And this I think is the specter that haunts Science/Education. Sheer force of collective habit maintains the status quo. There is lots of evidence for 'work' (even workaholicism) but paradoxically diminishing results. I am reminded of those students who write down everything the lecturer says in class but don't have the time to understand what the lecturer is trying to get across.
> You can't truly channel competition anywhere because it's always routed to itself.
Here we sort of disagree. I agree that it is potentially an uncontrollable positive feedback loop but I think competition (and also our sense of fairness, demotism, voting, equality) can be channeled.
To use an analogy, these instincts we have are like Water or Electricity. Dangerous but controllable to great effect. The goal of good governance is to 'traffic shape' these forces into productive causes.
Competition in the wild is simply Hobbesian violence, one man against the other. It requires the halter of a market with its price system and exchanges to be funneled productively. There are huge problems of course but we at least know a halter actually exists.
What I am calling 'fairness' in its natural state is a powerful raw instinct to enforce conformity and uniformity among the tribe members. There is an obvious biological connection to these instincts, to our genetics, our genes in their voting blocks trying to spread their influence. This is known in biology as R selection, where the system is optimizing for volume (the overall hypothesis is called R-k selection).
In my opinion there exists no 'halter' (as of yet, but I hold out hope) for fairness. I do not believe a proper mechanism has yet been invented by humankind. Yes humans build institutions to control it, like standardized education, democracy, republics, but I am unconvinced as to their strength against a sudden surge in the tide of popular feeling. Sooner or later, like the rise of the Communists, brute strength wins out over elegant attempts to moderate, basically mob rule followed shortly by blood rule with tyrants. Year Zero. A Reset. It has happened countless times in history.
Democracy leads to entropy. Competition has the potential to take us to Moloch.
Basically you either need to choose your poison, or we need to come up with a better system. I currently err on the side of Moloch, because it is a slower death than the alternative.
> A lot of bad things are caused by instincts that come naturally. That's actually specifically why I pointed those two out: they're natural, and they're extremely dangerous and we should always be aware of them creeping up and keep them in check.
> Instead, we created whole institutions to worship them.
That's about the size of it, yes.
> The "mediocrity is everywhere" thinking is part of the problem, as it drives everyone to worry about how "mediocre" they look and rush after the best thing ever all the time, instead of calming down and doing the right things. Publishing a failing study is mediocre. Helping people in need is mediocre. Doing a little bit of fitness to keep yourself healthy is mediocre. Yet, that is exactly what we need more of.
> I think you were trying to say something else.
This is interesting, thank you. You're quite right that over-optimizing is a threat (Moloch) but I shall reformulate my complaint here.
Mediocrity is a threat (Entropy), but, and I feel this is important, if we have enough fields or subfields of exploration, avenues of research then Mediocrity basically loses its meaning. The division of labour allows everybody to potentially be a winner.
It does not eliminate average results but it disperses them over a large area, which should mean net progress across the board is higher. Does that make sense?
> Mediocrity will always be everywhere because it's a mathematical fact - most people are in the middle. So, yes, it's everywhere. That's tautological.
We all know smart people achieving mediocre results (via Molochian competitions).
We all know not-as-smart people achieving, if not success in the sense of being on the first page of a top ten Google search results, achieving success in their local maximum.
In my opinion the second is in some sense smarter than the first because they are better adapted to their niche, they have a better foundation on which to ultimately progress.
I suppose I could summarize my feeling on the subject by saying I care more about increasing the whole population's IQ (or other metric) by 1 point, than about collecting the 'cream of the crop' and curating talent, because although the second initially appears most impressive, the truth is that the whole network benefits much more from the first.
I started responding to your post but after a while I found that we're not on the same page on so many things that you just seem to be stating as fact that I'm not sure if this is bridgeable. All of these things are worthy of a major discussion of their own.
> Sooner or later, like the rise of the Communists, brute strength wins out over elegant attempts to moderate, basically mob rule followed shortly by blood rule with tyrants. Year Zero. A Reset. It has happened countless times in history.
> Democracy leads to entropy. Competition has the potential to take us to Moloch.
> Mediocrity is a threat (Entropy).
> We all know smart people achieving mediocre results (via Molochian competitions). We all know not-as-smart people achieving, if not success in the sense of being on the first page of a top ten Google search results, achieving success in their local maximum.
These are major statements that you can't really just assume to be true or that the other person finds them true. And I don't agree with any of them. Not to mention the lack of context on highly vague terms like entropy.
> fter a while I found that we're not on the same page on so many things that you just seem to be stating as fact
I try to make clear what my priors, assumptions are. And which portions I think are personal opinion.
I don't mind my assumptions being attacked, but I do mind that people "show their work".
How many internet discussions have you had with people who did not clearly delineate what their premise was?
That leads nowhere because the premise has a tendency to evolve (ever more detailed refinement) when disagreement.
If you know what I think you're not shadow boxing with a set of stereotypes.
> These are major statements that you can't really just assume to be true or that the other person finds them true.
Of course not, but I'm not making an argument for them here. I'm writing an internet comment, not a book.
> And I don't agree with any of them.
That is fine, although I don't really yet know your interpretation of what we see.
> Not to mention the lack of context on highly vague terms like entropy.
Here I must take askance. Entropy is widely used across topic areas but it is not a vague concept. Entropy is another word for randomness and disorder.
In the context of a society, you could say a Dark Age was less ordered than the previous age when the Roman empire ran the show. Typical hallmarks of anti-entropy effort include roads, aqueducts and cities. Ruined cities, disintegrating roads and falling bridges are results of entropy. The social and physical meanings of entropy are intertwined.
If that is not evident to you then you are correct to say our discussion is not bridgeable. If there is one thing I find disagreeable it is a relativism that posits all states are equally good. At that rate people will be flinging their brains into bins.
> A lot of this smells like neoreactionarism.
And what if it is? You shall find everything interesting happens at the peripheral. Conservatism and liberalism are after all, if nothing else, definitely repeated routines of thought. Hard to take good observations there. Of course if there is nothing to fix then there is no need to!
> How many internet discussions have you had with people who did not clearly delineate what their premise was?
Too many. And I often have the same problem since my premises are often far from what is expected. I try to bridge it as I can, but limitations of the human language and text space and all that.
> Of course not, but I'm not making an argument for them here. I'm writing an internet comment, not a book.
But it seems like you're making an argument /from/ them. Your definition of mediocrity is different from mine (mine is defined as: a person who will by others be considered mediocre in some context, which often resolves to a person who has low-to-medium relative ability in a skill). I don't have a definition of "entropy" to begin with, because it's not really something I care about. Randomness and disorder is the official definition, yes. I can't splice "randomness and disorder" onto reality. Reality seems to actually tend in the opposite direction, at least on a planetary level (i.e., dust -> planets -> creatures on planets). Mediocrity, given these definitions, seems utterly orthogonal to entropy. A football player called "mediocre" by others because he fumbled during a random game, or a person who is moderately OK at tech support being considered "mediocre" because they're not great, to me do not at all contribute to entropy. So I can only imagine your use of the word "mediocre" is something else.
> In the context of a society, you could say a Dark Age was less ordered than the previous age when the Roman empire ran the show. Typical hallmarks of anti-entropy effort include roads, aqueducts and cities. Ruined cities, disintegrating roads and falling bridges are results of entropy. The social and physical meanings of entropy are intertwined.
My problem is that the definitions are too vague. As well as culturally biased. Rome is more ordered than mud huts. But is Rome more or less ordered than modern USA? Mongol clans? Soviet Russia? Czarist Russia? Maybe there are different flavors of orderliness? I'm not really sure. Not to mention, if you consider it on a global level, you have to sum up the results in some way, and then determine whether the entire Earth is more or less ordered than some other timeframe.
I think there's a difference between "everything is relative and all states are equally good" and "everything is not relative but I'm not convinced on what's more ordered and I don't trust your methods, either".
Nonetheless, I still fail to see the relevance of the football player being called mediocre or the tech supporter not doing too great of a job to the fall of Western civilization.
> We all know smart people achieving mediocre results (via Molochian competitions). We all know not-as-smart people achieving, if not success in the sense of being on the first page of a top ten Google search results, achieving success in their local maximum. In my opinion the second is in some sense smarter than the first because they are better adapted to their niche, they have a better foundation on which to ultimately progress.
From the earlier post. This to me sounds like an amalgamation of just-world hypothesis and "nature is good". I don't correlate any specific outcomes to one's "smartness" since I don't believe in either. I don't respect "niches" too much since I don't believe in the latter. I disagree with both, and THAT disagreement is fairly fundamental, it's very hard to find a bridge between the "nature is bad and the world is not fair" and "nature is good and the world is fair" groups, or even the other combinations.
> And what if it is? You shall find everything interesting happens at the peripheral. Conservatism and liberalism are after all, if nothing else, definitely repeated routines of thought. Hard to take good observations there. Of course if there is nothing to fix then there is no need to!
Sure, let's say all the interesting ideas are there, but there is still a problem in assuming a specific vocabulary or axioms when talking to someone who is not already familiar. I have my own framework that's not conservatism, liberalism, or neoreactionism, but I try to keep it more or less under wraps or contextualize parts of it, because otherwise discussion gets very confusing. The whole line about communists and democracy and entropy and year 0 didn't make any sense to me until I considered neoreactionist thought. For other people I think a large portion of the post is likely just gibberish.
> Your definition of mediocrity is different from mine (mine is defined as: a person who will by others be considered mediocre in some context, which often resolves to a person who has low-to-medium relative ability in a skill).
That's a definition I'd accept. Perhaps we're not alien species after all ;-)
I definitely see that mediocrity is context dependent. Nobody is a super-man excelling in all. People like Sam Altman and Peter Thiel have rotten days as do us all.
However it seems like there are pools of mediocrity in society. It is not a stand-alone individual phenomena. You don't find many Nobel Prize winners in council estates in Britain. Or any kind of winner apart from the Lottery.
While nobody can excel at everything, we should be a bit suspicious when we see a place where there is mediocrity in everything apart from alcoholism and gambling addictions. That would suggest either extreme assortative mating (highly unreasonable, in the time scale of centuries) or that a group of people is being subdued systemically on the memetic level. What does one say when we see an entire area code suffering from what seems like depression or some existential crisis of purpose? The contrast with former glories is particularly sharp in the North of England, but if you've ever been to a similar region you get it. It is like a giant question mark in the landscape, unexplained. We should see a roughly random distribution of talents, there would be elites, yes, but there would also be a long tail. I don't see much of a long tail in present society in America or Europe, whereas I am convinced there was.
These thoughts lead me to the belief that mediocrity is primarily caused by societal structure. This suggests that talent is allowed to be exposed sometimes and not others, which depending on how you look at it, is either a very dystopian view of society and/or a potentially very hopeful one.
And of course we are seeing these same 'pools' arising in Science and Education. Whatever the 'rot' is, it is surely spreading.
> But it seems like you're making an argument /from/ them.
I have a proselytizing streak in me. When I believe something is so, then others must know. However like yourself I am not a purist, I cherrypick my way through various lines of reasoning and often am of two or more contradictory minds on one topic. Currently I believe NRx's positions on Western society and its politics (The Cathedral) are useful insights with predictive power. I think also that every model has limits. The utility of Conservatism and Liberalism has run its course in the West and now it is time for something new or old again. In the Asian countries such as China this may not be true.
> Randomness and disorder is the official definition, yes. I can't splice "randomness and disorder" onto reality.
> Reality seems to actually tend in the opposite direction, at least on a planetary level (i.e., dust -> planets -> creatures on planets).
Let us stick to centuries or thousands of years at most!
I think depending on the scale of resolution you look at physical reality, you'll see different things, but this is another topic.
> My problem is that the definitions are too vague. As well as culturally biased. Rome is more ordered than mud huts. But is Rome more or less ordered than modern USA? Mongol clans? Soviet Russia? Czarist Russia?
I can easily imagine comparing them! There are absolutes, like average life expectancy, and then confounding factors such as efficiency gains making less things to measure. As a brute estimate, you could multiply the number of years of life by the number of people the empire or system can support. That by itself should give us a fair guess at complexity. Or we could look at density, since average city size should correlate with complexity.
> Not to mention, if you consider it on a global level, you have to sum up the results in some way, and then determine whether the entire Earth is more or less ordered than some other timeframe
We already do this really. GDP. I realize all these metrics will have flaws, but if you are consistent about using them you can obtain a fair idea of trends and won't miss unusual events e.g. The Black Death. If GDP is negative from 2017 - 2117, projektir will be far from shocked if armed with that information he/she steps from the Time Machine and observes humankind.
> I think there's a difference between "everything is relative and all states are equally good" and "everything is not relative but I'm not convinced on what's more ordered and I don't trust your methods, either".
That is fine, my methods I just came up with a minute ago notwithstanding there may be good objective metrics for orderliness.
> I still fail to see the relevance of the football player being called mediocre or the tech supporter not doing too great of a job to the fall of Western civilization.
Many functions in society are options or choices.
Items like the ability to travel over distances, to not be killed, to feed and water oneself, to provide for a family, these are not really options. If enough people can't accomplish those kinds of tasks then society does actually collapse.
Fundamentally, are you saying that if the symptoms of a degeneration appear in a society, that the people of that society just don't or can't be trusted to recognize them?
I mean we have records, letters from Rome and Egypt, and they seem to indicate a very acute sense of catastrophic decline.
> From the earlier post. This to me sounds like an amalgamation of just-world hypothesis and "nature is good". I don't correlate any specific outcomes to one's "smartness" since I don't believe in either. I don't respect "niches" too much since I don't believe in the latter. I disagree with both, and THAT disagreement is fairly fundamental, it's very hard to find a bridge between the "nature is bad and the world is not fair" and "nature is good and the world is fair" groups, or even the other combinations.
You don't believe some people's native intelligence is higher or lower than others?
You don't believe societal niches exist?
Perhaps this is a straight disagreement but maybe I just don't understand what you're saying.
> but there is still a problem in assuming a specific vocabulary or axioms when talking to someone who is not already familiar.
Usually, true, but not in these circles I find, after all you understood what I was saying.
> The whole line about communists and democracy and entropy and year 0 didn't make any sense to me
Entropy I explained, Year Zero is a reference to the Khmer Rouge.
The only thing I can think to add here is that in NRx thought Democracy is taken as being Communism Lite, like how there exists a Diet Coke soda.
> For other people I think a large portion of the post is likely just gibberish.
That is partly by design. Journalists have short attention spans and suffer from buffer overflows. They then fall back on 'Fascists!', which not even they wholeheartedly believe.
I think we are on the same page with respect to the dangers.
I am reminded of the experiments in which rats are getting hits of dopamine. What is it called? Behavioral conditioning? Skinner conditioning? Very simple, but very powerful.
And this I think is the specter that haunts Science/Education. Sheer force of collective habit maintains the status quo. There is lots of evidence for 'work' (even workaholicism) but paradoxically diminishing results. I am reminded of those students who write down everything the lecturer says in class but don't have the time to understand what the lecturer is trying to get across.
> You can't truly channel competition anywhere because it's always routed to itself.
Here we sort of disagree. I agree that it is potentially an uncontrollable positive feedback loop but I think competition (and also our sense of fairness, demotism, voting, equality) can be channeled.
To use an analogy, these instincts we have are like Water or Electricity. Dangerous but controllable to great effect. The goal of good governance is to 'traffic shape' these forces into productive causes.
Competition in the wild is simply Hobbesian violence, one man against the other. It requires the halter of a market with its price system and exchanges to be funneled productively. There are huge problems of course but we at least know a halter actually exists.
What I am calling 'fairness' in its natural state is a powerful raw instinct to enforce conformity and uniformity among the tribe members. There is an obvious biological connection to these instincts, to our genetics, our genes in their voting blocks trying to spread their influence. This is known in biology as R selection, where the system is optimizing for volume (the overall hypothesis is called R-k selection).
In my opinion there exists no 'halter' (as of yet, but I hold out hope) for fairness. I do not believe a proper mechanism has yet been invented by humankind. Yes humans build institutions to control it, like standardized education, democracy, republics, but I am unconvinced as to their strength against a sudden surge in the tide of popular feeling. Sooner or later, like the rise of the Communists, brute strength wins out over elegant attempts to moderate, basically mob rule followed shortly by blood rule with tyrants. Year Zero. A Reset. It has happened countless times in history.
Democracy leads to entropy. Competition has the potential to take us to Moloch.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Basically you either need to choose your poison, or we need to come up with a better system. I currently err on the side of Moloch, because it is a slower death than the alternative.
> A lot of bad things are caused by instincts that come naturally. That's actually specifically why I pointed those two out: they're natural, and they're extremely dangerous and we should always be aware of them creeping up and keep them in check.
> Instead, we created whole institutions to worship them.
That's about the size of it, yes.
> The "mediocrity is everywhere" thinking is part of the problem, as it drives everyone to worry about how "mediocre" they look and rush after the best thing ever all the time, instead of calming down and doing the right things. Publishing a failing study is mediocre. Helping people in need is mediocre. Doing a little bit of fitness to keep yourself healthy is mediocre. Yet, that is exactly what we need more of.
> I think you were trying to say something else.
This is interesting, thank you. You're quite right that over-optimizing is a threat (Moloch) but I shall reformulate my complaint here.
Mediocrity is a threat (Entropy), but, and I feel this is important, if we have enough fields or subfields of exploration, avenues of research then Mediocrity basically loses its meaning. The division of labour allows everybody to potentially be a winner.
It does not eliminate average results but it disperses them over a large area, which should mean net progress across the board is higher. Does that make sense?
> Mediocrity will always be everywhere because it's a mathematical fact - most people are in the middle. So, yes, it's everywhere. That's tautological.
We all know smart people achieving mediocre results (via Molochian competitions).
We all know not-as-smart people achieving, if not success in the sense of being on the first page of a top ten Google search results, achieving success in their local maximum.
In my opinion the second is in some sense smarter than the first because they are better adapted to their niche, they have a better foundation on which to ultimately progress.
I suppose I could summarize my feeling on the subject by saying I care more about increasing the whole population's IQ (or other metric) by 1 point, than about collecting the 'cream of the crop' and curating talent, because although the second initially appears most impressive, the truth is that the whole network benefits much more from the first.