Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

The "other" ERE. Societal aspects of the ERE philosophy. Emergent change-making, scale-effects,...
daylen
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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by daylen »

The whole anti-neo-Marxism vibe is/was certainly a corner stone of his, but he is/was mostly reacting to a green straw-man generated by angry, young(er) "representatives" with a red kernel. After his setback last year with benzo addition, he is back with more of an open mind towards aspects of green (e.g. psychedelics and crypto).

7Wannabe5
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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Crypto seems Super Orange to me. I mean it’s not like Orange is done just because Green/Yellow/Turquise/Etc. exist.

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by daylen »

It ranges from orange to yellow. On one side you have a concentration of miners in Iceland and other cold areas with cheap electricity in it with an optimization function, and on the other hand you have people like Jordan Hall envisioning where tech [including crypto] is headed in the near future. On twitter and other social networks you have many in the green middle talking about it and spreading hype (overlaps with Elon crowd).

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by daylen »

Though, super orange has a stake in it for sure.

peterlimberg
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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by peterlimberg »

Really looking forward to this session tomorrow! I hope to see the ERE fam there.

Btw, here is a symposium we had at The Stoa on the meta-crisis back in March: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... gCNt3YTRIE

ps. Peterson might be visiting The Stoa in October. I'll ask him what color he is. An Orange who is a Blue apologist with a Green shadow is my bet. ;)

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by Quadalupe »

Thanks @Jacob for your enticing talk just now (and @Peter for hosting). I had one question/train of thought thing still going on. I'll paraphrase (probably wrongly, apologies in advance). Feel free to correct my misunderstandings!

You seeminlydismissed interdisciplinary groups of experts, since they tend to talk past each other and propose solutions that only fit in their solution space (i.e. we should all just do X, provided I know (kennen) what X is). Your focus (which is not surprising) is/was still mainly on the individual:
1) build out multiple diverse skills (so not computer science and maths, but computer science, druid knowledge, slam poetry and international law)
2) become/find a trailblazer to shift the overton window, so 'insane' solutions become more viable/normal

I think that there *should* be ways to make interdisciplinary groups of experts work together better. The trailblazer solution doesn't sound that robust (kinda like the rockstar example in The Book)*. A group of people who have already specialized in various solutions *and* who can work together and grok each other might be very effective.

The question then is: how can we also get divergent thinking with various experts, without every experts just saying: "We should use technique X from my field"? Make them walk a mile in each other shoes? Put them in a mastermind group? Teach 101 courses to each other to increase the quality of conversations?

I don't know the answer, but I wanted to share my stunted train of thought.

* Then again, I had to think of Taleb's example of peanut allergies at a wedding. If even one person is allergic, a very large shift in the menu can already happen (e.g. no peanuts for anyone).

daylen
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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by daylen »

peterlimberg wrote:
Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:03 pm
An Orange who is a Blue apologist with a Green shadow is my bet. ;)
Solid assessment on the whole. Though, I would like to think there is a little yellow kernel in him wanting to bloom given his attempts at bridging science and religion in "Maps of Meaning". He mostly fell into the Jungian trap of conflating pre-rational with trans-rational, which Jung latter started to realize and hence maybe Jordan will too. This is partially related to why Jung and Freud went splitsville as Freud denied the trans-rational altogether.

---------------------------------

In response to the presentation, I enjoyed the combo of ideas presented as they work to paint a picture of what individuals with a bit of slack in their current hustle can do to start shifting their mindset in a way that allows them to integrate better into small groups. I can see how this could start bleeding into presentations that focus more on the impact of small group activities (e.g. zoom philosophy circling, mastermind groups, in-person technical skill seminars, etc.), looking at the higher-order effects of such activities as they become more popular. Basically leading to more targeted power-curve analysis for different types of activities or something like that.

It may also be interesting to see if there is a rough way to calculate or coordinate between different combinations of activities that an individual can train in. Is there some rough way to figure out how "far away" one skill is from another? and how might this lead to suggestions or insights into how an individual might diversify their skill set? Though, such an approach is highly susceptible to over-generalization. I think part of a solution to this is to generate a bunch of more particularized suggestion "spaces" based on personality and such (from which people can choose themselves). Perhaps some kind of tech can facilitate the exchange of suggestions and can incentivize the discovery of skill-set attractors lurking in the collective unconscious. Such would require a certain degree of granularity to be of much use.

I'll be pondering such to see how I might be able to help. Looking forward to another presentation or "philosopher in residence" series if you're up for it. No pressure! :)

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by jacob »

Quadalupe wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 12:59 pm
You seeminlydismissed interdisciplinary groups of experts, since they tend to talk past each other and propose solutions that only fit in their solution space (i.e. we should all just do X, provided I know (kennen) what X is). Your focus (which is not surprising) is/was still mainly on the individual:
1) build out multiple diverse skills (so not computer science and maths, but computer science, druid knowledge, slam poetry and international law)
2) become/find a trailblazer to shift the overton window, so 'insane' solutions become more viable/normal

I think that there *should* be ways to make interdisciplinary groups of experts work together better. The trailblazer solution doesn't sound that robust (kinda like the rockstar example in The Book)*. A group of people who have already specialized in various solutions *and* who can work together and grok each other might be very effective.

The question then is: how can we also get divergent thinking with various experts, without every experts just saying: "We should use technique X from my field"? Make them walk a mile in each other shoes? Put them in a mastermind group? Teach 101 courses to each other to increase the quality of conversations?
I don't think "interdisciplinary groups of experts" (E1 for short) are as bad as "intradisciplinary group of experts" (E2 for short). But they are both ineffective in two different ways because they are unable to interface/establish communication lines with the "core", that is, the rest of us.

E2 will provide specialized solutions according to X, e.g. educators say the solution is "more education".

E1 on account of interdiscplinarity realize their "expertise founded construct" (because they see different experts) and instead seek commonalities in their respective cores which are still weakly developed. An interdisciplinary group in e.g. resilience might thus still have no idea on how to personally live in a resilient way spending $40,000 per year while suggesting that the solution is CFL bulbs and growing tomato plants.

As such I don't think the problem is with "the experts" as much as it is with the non-experts, that is, the rest of us. The so-called core needs to change. Right now we get a mix of parenting and schooling. This produces a mostly even commodified human teenager. There are ways individuals could change this. Homeschooling is obvious ... unfortunately it seems like the majority of those who are most into that are exactly the types who probably shouldn't be. Also homeschooling suffers the problem that the parents themselves have the same type of weak core ... there are fewer and fewer whose ancestors are still young enough to still have a non-consumerist (pre-consumerist) core.
daylen wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:18 pm
In response to the presentation, I enjoyed the combo of ideas presented as they work to paint a picture of what individuals with a bit of slack in their current hustle can do to start shifting their mindset in a way that allows them to integrate better into small groups. I can see how this could start bleeding into presentations that focus more on the impact of small group activities (e.g. zoom philosophy circling, mastermind groups, in-person technical skill seminars, etc.), looking at the higher-order effects of such activities as they become more popular. Basically leading to more targeted power-curve analysis for different types of activities or something like that.
One of my most important constraints on what I want to focus on is the "ethical standards" slide. Call it "emergent practical action". I've been focusing on small-scale operations (like starting a website or writing a book) because those are my limits ... but it would be cool to solve the problem at a larger scale. (Although I implied that such a scale does not exist.)
daylen wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:18 pm
It may also be interesting to see if there is a rough way to calculate or coordinate between different combinations of activities that an individual can train in. Is there some rough way to figure out how "far away" one skill is from another? and how might this lead to suggestions or insights into how an individual might diversify their skill set? Though, such an approach is highly susceptible to over-generalization. I think part of a solution to this is to generate a bunch of more particularized suggestion "spaces" based on personality and such (from which people can choose themselves). Perhaps some kind of tech can facilitate the exchange of suggestions and can incentivize the discovery of skill-set attractors lurking in the collective unconscious. Such would require a certain degree of granularity to be of much use.
A good quant can always make up a measure. One might imagine a scoring model based on latticework. The problem with that is Goodhart's law. AQAL is a cruder model. A detailed model with be so data-rich so as to be confusing. The problem with simplifying stuff is that a lens has to be chosen but insofar one has no kennen of the lens, conclusions could be misleading.

The current meta-system is such that we have schools, universities, corporations, NGOs, and governments to act as attractors. My personal lament is that it's hard to move laterally. Maybe this is because management prefers to "fail conventionally" rather than take a chance. One way, which I think the Stoa provides, is to let e.g. "a mathematician teach history" (and other random combinations). (IIRC there's one university that has done that).

This "experiment" needs to be controlled though. Sailing story: After a good race that ended up at another yacht club, we decided on the way home that it would be fun if the entire crew switched positions. Result: The spinnaker was shrimped a relatively short distance from the shore as the sun was setting. Kinda goes with the "if you want to change a system, make sure each change is reversible".

Insofar an "app" was developed, the question is whether people would act on it. Lets say I input my vision, plan, and discomforts (almost like a dating platform)... and the app spits out 5 matches with email addresses. Do you think that would lead anywhere?
daylen wrote:
Thu Sep 02, 2021 2:18 pm
I'll be pondering such to see how I might be able to help. Looking forward to another presentation or "philosopher in residence" series if you're up for it. No pressure! :)
Oh, that's probably gonna happen whether I'm up for it on not. I just have to figure out the topics.

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by jacob »

Here's the presentation on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MGQgQZHx1Q

guitarplayer
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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by guitarplayer »

Hey @Jacob, a wee exercise in appreciation of poetry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feLT7Btuqpc

At 2:46 you'll find the word you were referring to in the talk!

Example of a translation from Scots to English:

https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2761

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Cool presentation. Some random thoughts I had:

1) The marketing brilliance of the "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" campaign re: your time scale/breadth of influence diagram.

2) How does achievement of old-school Benjamin Franklin style classical liberal arts education possibly conflict with "earn quick" tactic often advised towards FIRE?

3) I had a bit of an "ah-ha" moment on topic of "ken" vs. "know", because I realized that I long ago went meta on this dichotomy, because I ken the world of books or library science, because was my very early avocation and my profession. By happenstance, one of the 7 books I picked up from the library yesterday was Hurley and Dobson on Enneagram Types. Thought I had was that overlay of The Three Centers (Affective, Theoretical, Effective) on to Random Library Book Pick Exercise might be revealing of most productive opposite side of the wheel of knowledge/kenning exploration/work, because a realm you truly "ken" is going to be one where, no matter whether your innate temperament/philosophy tends towards one or another, your Venn diagram does include all 3, more or less. For instance, "Shop" appeals to Effective, "Soulcraft" appeals to Affective, and a book entitled "Shop as Soulcraft" will also appeal to Theoretical. So, is a book on Basic Woodworking the most opposite to a textbook on Advanced Environmental Science? Obviously not when there are also books in the genre of Amish Romance to be found in the library. However, all 3 of these books/genres might point towards a shared human desire for "return to simplicity."

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by AxelHeyst »

I really liked the visual metaphor of populations ‘drafting’ off the pocket of mimetic low pressure behind trailblazers, pushing shift vs. drift. Perhaps a theme to explore in this new sub (which I’m very excited about) is ‘best practices for aspiring trailblazers’. In particular your points about having graceful failure glide paths as opposed to an ingredient that is poison. Great stuff.
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Ego
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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by Ego »

jacob wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 7:37 am
Here's the presentation on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MGQgQZHx1Q
This was exceptional. Really well done. You have obviously been thinking about how to integrate it all for a long time. There were several ideas or metaphors that made my neurons sing. I had to stop and screenshot this one.

Image

Nice work!

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by boomly »

The vast majority of humans will likely always be blue/k3. They derive their beliefs from their community. While everyone believes they "think for themselves", they (generally) only change their beliefs when their community changes.

No amount of persuasion, evidence, consequences, rewards, education will sway like simple social proof.

Red/k2s routinely change the views of communities by first pretending to be like them, gaining control of the communication, and then promoting their own views, usually some form of power maintenance, and not anything useful to the community. They simply make it appear that everyone in the community believes something, making it true.

This can happen quite quickly, if you look at various revolutions, cults, and political movements.

I'm not sure if there's an ethical way to use this method, but it's something to consider.

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by daylen »

@boomly Oh idk. Seems like you can sway people with orange factoids and green multicultural pressure overtime. Assuming that the blue community recognizes that you are on their side.

I always hear this idea that people are not persuaded by evidence and so forth(*), but I think this is mainly because people who argue from evidence tend to do a bad job at making people feel that they are on the same side. Though, I suppose this requires a certain degree of finesse in alternating between various colors (i.e. tier two).

(*) This is mostly true, of course.

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by boomly »

daylen wrote:
Sat Sep 04, 2021 8:06 am
I always hear this idea that people are not persuaded by evidence and so forth(*), but I think this is mainly because people who argue from evidence tend to do a bad job at making people feel that they are on the same side. Though, I suppose this requires a certain degree of finesse in alternating between various colors (i.e. tier two).

(*) This is mostly true, of course.
People are always looking for evidence. The human brain is an evidence-looking-for machine. As ostracism is the worst fate for a social animal, they are constantly looking for evidence that something is approved of by their community.

No matter how otherwise detrimental something is, it rarely rises to the disaster of being rejected by your community. And, no matter how beneficial something is, it rarely is as advantageous as being accepted by your community.

So, it's actually quite rational for the individual to be persuaded by the evidence that really actually matters to their immediate well-being - how this thing will impact their social status.

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by Lucky C »

jacob wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 7:37 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MGQgQZHx1Q
Thank you for this, Jacob. Do you have other emergent movement examples like you give at the 1 hour mark which might be failures we can learn from? They seem to check all the boxes, yet have some flaws on closer examination, or for some reason just never caught on?

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by jacob »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 8:02 am
2) How does achievement of old-school Benjamin Franklin style classical liberal arts education possibly conflict with "earn quick" tactic often advised towards FIRE?
Is that a rhetorical question?

If by "FIRE" you mean the "devolved" version that involves getting an upper-income specialist job in a hot career field while curbing one's consumption to median levels, the conflict is obvious.

I no longer think a classical liberal arts education is possible. It's been 100-150 years since it was possible for one human to have frontier understanding in more than one field. I want to add some comments to my answer to the first question of the Q&A in the presentation. Namely, the [transdisciplinary] goal is to study something in all four quadrant and then go deep (to the frontier) in one of them. I'm not necessarily calling for everything to get a phd which is but one example of pushing the envelope. What's important are not the technical details or the tools learned but the meta-learning going on. In that regard a phd (designer), a masters (mechanic), and a bachelor (technician) are different in kind rather than degree.

For example, making this was as a "mentally game-changing" as writing the MSc thesis in terms of shifting or rather unlocking new perspectives on the world. (BTW, did I ever show a pic of the second clock I'm working on?)

Image

Of course that's just one example. Maybe a more general way of phrasing it is that "inventors of the gaps" should do at least one 10,000 hour dive, 3--5 3,000 hour dives, 10ish 1,000 hour dives, and so on ... and I suggest these be chosen according to interest. Insofar I was to make recommendations, the potential for unlocking solutions might very well turn into ones I'm already capable of myself. What's needed is diversity. Everyone following the same "curriculum" would destroy the idea of transdisciplinarity.

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by jacob »

Lucky C wrote:
Mon Sep 06, 2021 6:02 pm
Thank you for this, Jacob. Do you have other emergent movement examples like you give at the 1 hour mark which might be failures we can learn from? They seem to check all the boxes, yet have some flaws on closer examination, or for some reason just never caught on?
Lets compare Tiny Houses to van[-living] conversions.

Tiny houses check boxes 1, 2, and 3 of the presentation but they don't have a graceful exit failure-mode. The obvious one is that construction remains unfinished but the sneakier one is that there's no good secondary market if you ever want to sell and move out after a few years. The market is not there (yet?).

Converting a cargo van for living does check all four in the sense that it can be reverted to its original configuration and sold for little loss.

Living in a commercial travel trailer also checks all four.

As such I'd predict that TH popularity will not sustained, whereas van conversions will. Living in a camper has been around since they were invented due to check all four.

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Re: Resolving the Meta-Crisis With Emergent Movements and Post-Consumerist Praxis

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob:

The question was mostly rhetorical. Obvious sign that I am significantly Green is my current disdain for anything like brute force efficiency. I don't think that becoming a plumber rather than going to college is an entirely great idea. Also, one of my minor life regrets is that I didn't apply to the Great Books liberal arts degree program offered at St. John's College but instead did the opposite and bundled myself off to engineering school in the U.P.

I must have spaced on the part of the presentation where you described the four different quadrants, but I can grok that clock-making (I don't recall seeing picture of second clock.) would certainly be in a different quadrant from theoretical physics, and the example you offered of "poetry" would certainly be in a third quadrant, and maybe "handling disputes in forum community" would be in a 4th?

I guess figuring out how many progressive (as opposed to passive) hours towards mastery one has accumulated in various fields could be an exercise kind of like Step 1 in YMOYL where you try to come up with a total of all the money you ever earned in your life thus far. For instance, I've almost certainly spent more than 10,000 hours of my life-energy devoted to the activity of Cooking, but most of those hours were not progressive, so my capability level would be much lower than PhD/MasterChef.

Another thought I had was that beyond the dichotomy of knowing of vs. kenning, there would be capabilities you have allowed to go rusty and others you simply no longer can perform. For instance, a 35 year old very talented sports writer who didn't play past high school and a 65 year old retired professional player in the field of Football.

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