When Pixels Collide

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wood
Posts: 355
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2015 5:53 am

When Pixels Collide

Post by wood »

http://sudoscript.com/reddit-place/

Fascinating read. I guess one can see similar behaviour in humans, not only in this case or e.g. online computer games with factions/forums being organized, but also in the real world.

Dragline
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: When Pixels Collide

Post by Dragline »

Thanks for that.

This is the same behavior described in many of the experiments on "model worlds" conducted at the Sante Fe Institute and described in Beinhocker's "The Origin of Wealth", even down to the Creators, Protectors and Destroyers.

It also shows how cultures can evolve out of mimicry and "theory of mind" (copying others and attributing agency or free will to the actions of others). Then you see how the copying leads to envy and conflict -- the contests of the flags. Then to finger pointing and scapegoating. "What Place needed was a villain that everyone could agree upon." And in the end, the infectious black dotters become the ultimate scapegoats that the leaders get everyone to destroy, which maintains order in the "society". This is exactly the way Rene Girard posited how traditional human cultures work. See the second video on this page: http://www.prospectingmimeticfractals.c ... -lens.html It pretty much describes what happened in "Place".

Except in real human cultures, the scapegoats are just as often innocent as guilty.

7Wannabe5
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Re: When Pixels Collide

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

This is also what happens in ecosystems with boundary and energy influx. The notion of climax forest was, I guess, just a delusion of humans tending towards Protector.

Where I reside there are many murals on the sides of buildings, but also a lot of crude graffiti. Somebody torched the little free library stand, but then somebody else fixed it. The safe suburb where I grew up looks almost the same as it did 40 years ago.

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fiby41
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Re: When Pixels Collide

Post by fiby41 »

A smaller Pakistani flag was made below the Indian tricolor. The Pakistani flag was replaced more quickly that it was made by the bow and arrow flag of Shiv Sena (political party.) :P ) :D :)
Many millenia before Place, when humanity itself was still in its infancy (the real one, not the one on Reddit), Hindu philosophers theorized that the Heavens were made of three competing, but necessary, deities that they called the Trimurti. They were Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Protector, and Shiva the Destroyer.

Without any single one of them, the Universe would not work. For there to be light, there needed to be dark. For there to be life, there needed to be death. For there to be creation and art, there needed to be destruction.

Over the last few days, their vision proved prescient. In the most uncanny way, Reddit proved that human creation requires all three.

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