Terrible Communities

[J_]

To be clear I repeat, ERE2 means an Emergent Renaissance Ecology
In my understanding and words: a follow up from the impact of the early retirement extreme philosophy (ERE1) as elaborate described in @Jacobs book, could be an upcoming new born (awareness of) an environmentally friendly way of living.

It is a pity that Peter combines ERE2 with the words "Terrible Community". As it should be just the other way.

The emergent renaissance ecology as Jacob describes, is his searching/approaching a way to seed and plant and nurture the combination of ERE1 and ERE2 to as many people as possible. With the goal of getting a world where people are behaving "virtuous" in the sense of taking care for a better ecology.
So Peter I do get the impression that you want to help to spread the idea of ERE2. But please, do it more direct, more positive than via the words
"Terrible Community"

[daylen]

@J_

Peter was referring to the article he wrote linked at the beginning of the thread called terrible outcomes of terrible communities.

[J_]

@daylen
Yes, therefore I asked Peter to disconnect ERE2 from "terrible communities".
Being clear and understandable for people is a goal of philosophers, I think.

[AxelHeyst]

One of the aims of ERE2 is to avoid common Terrible Community traps (we haven't been using this phrase because we didn't know about it until Peter brought it to our awareness). Aka terrible communities are perhaps one anti-goal of ERE2.

Peter has been writing and thinking about how to avoid Terrible Community traps.

Hence, this thread. Terrible Communities is a good mode of inquiry with which to think about ERE2. This is what Peter is doing. He is not saying that the ERE2 concept *is* or *will result in* a Terrible Community. He's bringing that lens here to help us think with it. It's a great contribution.

Being clear and understandable for people is a goal of philosophers, I think.

If you had written "being clear for people *ought to be* a goal of philosophers" I would have shrugged and said "okay, that's a fine opinion". But "being clear for people IS a goal of philosophers"? I'm not so sure about that. Is it?

And which people -- all people? Any person? Any college educated person? Any person who can read? Any person with a graduate degree? Kegan 2's? Any person who was able to get through Heidegger?

[peterlimberg]

@daylen
Yes, therefore I asked Peter to disconnect ERE2 from "terrible communities".
Being clear and understandable for people is a goal of philosophers, I think.

If it was not clear before, let it be clear now: I did not make the claim that ERE2 = terrible communities if that is what you are saying. Quite the opposite, that ERE2 is a possible antidote to terrible communities, hence why I am here.

And btw to everyone, I finished the full series of terrible communities, six parts in total, which can be found here: https://lessfoolish.substack.com/p/all- ... ommunities

I appreciate the thoughts shared here.

[Jin+Guice]

ERE2 is a possible antidote to terrible communities, hence why I am here.

Wait... why?


Also, @peterlimberg, how do you define a sociopath?

[J_]

If it was not clear before, let it be clear now: I did not make the claim that ERE2 = terrible communities if that is what you are saying. Quite the opposite, that ERE2 is a possible antidote to terrible communities, hence why I am here.

@ Peter @ daylen @ AxelHeyst: Thank you for clarification, it really helped me to understand what Peter is doing.

[AxelHeyst]

Wait... why?

One brief answer/guess as to why ERE2 might be an antidote / part of an antidote system to terrible communities is that ERE1 people, due to having developed multiple categories of personal development to a high level, of particular note here Social and Emotional and Spiritual capital, will be less likely to fall for the traps of practice that result in Terrible Communities (reactionary structurelessness, falling for culty cultishness, the shallowness of intimacy without friendships).

As I understand it, the whole idea of ERE2 came about as part of Jacob's analysis of and experience with many groups and why they fail. So many people start groups without having done any thinking about why and how almost all previous attempts to create some new amazing form of group fail. People have ideas that sound nice and without much reflection or understanding that there is very little new under the sun, they start a group which, lo and behold, fails, because it was organized just like a thousand other groups that've failed in the past. People keep trying things that are not different from previous attempts. Insofar as ERE2 is in fact a different thing from all previous attempts, and very deliberately so, it is very interesting.

Also, @peterlimberg, how do you define a sociopath?

This is probably relevant:

As the philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-H writes: "Understanding power empowers." Foremost of all, without power literacy, there will be no answering “the sociopath question”:

How do we deal with people with innate power literacy, who are bent toward self-serving motives and are extremely skilled at manipulating social fields?

[jacob]

A simple but complete framework to describe "community = a unified group of people" is Cipolla + Spiral.

Cipolla is a superset of Aristotle. To translate:
Intelligent: Good for self, good for other: Virtue
Bandit: Good for self, bad for other: Utility/Pleasure
Stupid: Bad for self, bad for other: ???
Helpless: Bad for self, good for other: ???

Quibblers, I realize that the injective and surjective properties are not particularly clean. Insofar this is an issue, consider Cipolla an alternative framework to Aristotle for looking at the counter-party relationship.

As noted before, the relationships in the community can take multiple forms in terms of what is valued and the currency used to build this value.

According to SD, the north star would be

1) purple: family
2) blue: duty
3) green: happiness/passion

1) beige: survival
2) red: power (alpha)
3) orange: career success
4) yellow: a vision

For example, market capitalism takes the form for bandit-relationship using orange money, labor, and goods to transact. It values success in terms of those three: what is your networth? what is your salary? how much stuff do you have? The "invisible hand" is supposed to generate some virtue in that while people are "first-order" bandits, their self-interest creates "second-order" intelligence. This works well but has its problems too (e.g. informational or wealth asymmetry).

Whereas circling takes the form of (borderline?) helpless-relationships using displayed emotions to transact. It values success in terms of showing up and being inclusive to maximize "care": how big is the circle? do people come back?

People may disagree with any characterization one can come up with, but it does show that there are several ways to skin a cat. For example, yellow trades in ideas. Your Bohemian academics or cultural creators may not be wealthy, but they get invited based on "having interesting ideas". Indeed, the currency of yellow is "ideas" and they're valued according to their ability to generate them.

I think using this framework is useful as a check to see if someone is just "talking their book" or "standing where they sit" basically projecting their utopian aspirations onto the world. I know I am.

[jacob]

I think using this framework is useful as a check to see if someone is just "talking their book" or "standing where they sit" basically projecting their utopian aspirations onto the world. I know I am.

This means that ERE2 design should ask and answer two questions:

1) What is the "currency" and "value" being used to transact for "21st century praxis"?
2) What is the [Cipolli] intelligent way to transact this currency or achieve this value?

The typical left-wing/green answer would be "community". The typical right-wing/blue answer would be "beans, bullets, and band-aids".

What are the answers for ERE2?

[grundomatic]

It seems like ERE1 is about escaping from something, aka "terrible communities," via the post-consumer praxis, and ERE2 is about midwifing something new. It makes sense to me that a goal disposition is needed for the former, and a practice disposition is needed for the latter.

When I write about friendships of virtue, I am actually thinking of a dyad. So, I am currently seeing friends of virtue as the relational atom of a community of virtue.

Did you write that you are presently more interested more in building the capacity for friendships of virtue than in building the friendships themselves? I think I read that, but now can't find it. It seems like ERE1 could be viewed as one way to build that capacity. The technical and economic aspects of ERE1 seem to get the most attention, but also included in the book are suggestions for developing the intellectual, emotional, and social aspects of oneself as well.

To jam my views into your model, solid individuals (dividuals?) would be the subatomic particles of the relationship atom, or halves of the dyad. It doesn't seem like normies/muggles/blue pillers/consumer suckas are going to have the capacity to be a friend of virtue (hence terrible communities), so equally important to developing friendships of virtue would be to develop people of virtue as building blocks, which around here is of course ERE1.

[peterlimberg]

Wait... why? Also, @peterlimberg, how do you define a sociopath?

I do not have a clear why yet, but a sense, and I like @AxelHeyst's guess, which I'll respond to in a moment.

Re: sociopath.

“Sociopath is an amorphous word with no consensus definition. It is often associated with “antisocial personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), characterized by limited empathy, disregard of social norms, and seeing relationships instrumentally. While sociopathy is often used synonymously with psychopathy, psychologist Robert D. Hare considers the former caused by early upbringing and social environment and the latter by genetic factors. I will define the term broadly to describe a person whose primary relational approach is to use others for personal gain.” With the footnote: “Sociopaths are often defined by their lack of empathy and sometimes by an antisocial character profile. I am using the latter definition for this entry. It is important to make this distinction because if using the former definition, there is such a thing as “benevolent sociopaths,” aka people who lack empathy but were raised to have a moral compass.”

From this entry, which has more details: https://lessfoolish.substack.com/p/a-le ... r-literacy

[peterlimberg]

As I understand it, the whole idea of ERE2 came about as part of Jacob's analysis of and experience with many groups and why they fail. So many people start groups without having done any thinking about why and how almost all previous attempts to create some new amazing form of group fail. People have ideas that sound nice and without much reflection or understanding that there is very little new under the sun, they start a group which, lo and behold, fails, because it was organized just like a thousand other groups that've failed in the past. People keep trying things that are not different from previous attempts. Insofar as ERE2 is in fact a different thing from all previous attempts, and very deliberately so, it is very interesting.

Another point to add here is that Jacob's second Stoa talk was in response (not reaction) to the meta-crisis. Given the complexity of the meta-crisis, to respond to it, equal complexity is needed, which some refer to as "emergent wisdom."



This is where I arrived at: wisdom is the response to the meta-crisis, and FoV helps each other become wiser (or at least less foolish). I proposed a "wisdom commons" for this term, "a place that makes wisdom more common," which I presented during the first 15 mins here: https://youtu.be/_YOdaJj6Ziw

From what I understood above, EFE1 is about escaping "from the cave" (perhaps terrible communities as well), and EFE2 seems to be bringing something new into existence. Could that something new be a wisdom commons, or whatever attractor term is akin? This is what is at the edge of my thinking.

[peterlimberg]

To jam my views into your model, solid individuals (dividuals?) would be the subatomic particles of the relationship atom, or halves of the dyad. It doesn't seem like normies/muggles/blue pillers/consumer suckas are going to have the capacity to be a friend of virtue (hence terrible communities), so equally important to developing friendships of virtue would be to develop people of virtue as building blocks, which around here is of course ERE1.

Yeah, this is a great point. What I'll call the NGMI crowd needs some trojan horse to give them the capacity (virtue) to make it, and ERE1 seems like one trojan horse for that.

[peterlimberg]

Quibblers

I love this term. I hereby bestow all quibblers in this thread the title of "Quibblers of Virtue"

A simple but complete framework to describe "community = a unified group of people" is Cipolla + Spiral.

Cipolla is a superset of Aristotle. To translate:
Intelligent: Good for self, good for other: Virtue
Bandit: Good for self, bad for other: Utility/Pleasure
Stupid: Bad for self, bad for other: ???
Helpless: Bad for self, good for other: ???

I like this 2x2fu, seems promising. Stupid might be Vice. Helpless might be Useful Idiot/Enabler.

[peterlimberg]

This "Quibblers of Virtue” phrase is staying with me; I’ll riff on it in a way that I hope informs how we can be friends of virtue here …

A distinction: Quibblers of Vice vs Quibblers of Virtue.

Quibblers of Vice are why I do not post much on intellectual forums. These people (aka men) pick on a person's premise, with the pretense towards truth, but are mainly motived by an ego game, either to display their own ego or thinking they are taking someone else’s ego down a notch, aka quibbling as a “leveling mechanism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_mechanism). Ultimately, I see this as “chimp politics” for nerds (https://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Polit ... 0801886562). The phrase “bad faith” is appropriate here.

But then you have Quibblers of Virtue; they do quibbling as well, but to advance a line of reasoning, making it better, or gently pointing where it went off the rails. There is a sense they are not only interested in what is true but what is good and beautiful. You can say they are coming from a “good faith” place.

The thing in common with both quibblers is that they help people “guard their premises.” Premise guarding involves strategically weakening your premises to make them more resilient against refutation, bringing them closer to the truth. This is achieved by incorporating language in your premises that tempers the certainty of their claims. Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on premise guarding in Think Again: How to Reason and Argue:

“To change the premise from “all” to “many” (or “most”) or “some” or from “definitely” to “possibly” or “significant chance” (or “probably” or “likely”) is to guard the premise. Other ways to guard premises include self-description, as in “I believe” (or think or suspect or fear)…”

For example, saying “all communities are terrible communities” has very little premise guarding, but it makes it sound provocative. To guard it, I would say, “many communities are terrible communities,” which sounds less sexy but presumably makes it more accurate.

A friend of virtue NEEDS to engage in the virtue of quibbling.

But something more is needed. To do some 2x2fu, they must also engage in Yes/And of Virtue rather than Yes/And of Vice.

Yes/And of Vice is being too agreeable, perhaps sycophantic, in a way that leads to masturbatory conversations—stereotypical Canadians, nice guys, polite office bullshit, etc. In Contrast, Yes/And of Virtue finds the signal in what someone said, then boosts it. Some call this the “omega rule” (https://youtu.be/rQA93ulyigg), or perhaps "wisdom improv" is the better term. For example, I did not know if I agreed with all that Jacob said above, probably because I did not understand it all, but the part I was resonating with, his 2x2fu, felt worthy of signal boosting.

I think both Quibbling of Virtue and Yes/And of Virtue are needed for FoV to have emergent dialogue, which is needed for emergent wisdom. But maybe not; please quibble away.

[daylen]

The thing in common with both quibblers is that they help people “guard their premises.” Premise guarding involves strategically weakening your premises to make them more resilient against refutation, bringing them closer to the truth. This is achieved by incorporating language in your premises that tempers the certainty of their claims.

Is it fair to say that this approach may be complimentary to process of finding novel premises or claims? In that if you are looking to guard your premises then presumably you have already found the approximate or appropriate truth for your temperament. Strategically weakening it may be akin to navigating around a local optimum. Whereas sometimes finding another local optimum involves strengthening claims to increase their decidability/refutability/testability.

For instance, you might have the default belief of "most people are like me". You gather evidence here and there that this might not be the case but decide to ignore it because the "most" qualifier may account for the difference. Then one day after enough counter evidence is accumulated you have some crisis of belief that perturbs the premise into "no one is like me". This puts you on a different hill nearby from which to deconstruct or gain vantage perspective over the original hill of "all people are like me", which had alongside it the original premise of "most people are like me".

Or another example may be making the bold claim that all matter has mass. Only to reveal an experiment that finds photons to be massless and later stumbling upon a speed limit for the universe.

This is often a theme in math whereby premises or axioms can be made more particular to derive more particular conclusions or theorems. For instance, you can switch from claims about complex numbers to claims about reals or even integers. The historical attempt to integrate many branches of math in part lead to peeling back the onion to get at more general premises deriving more general theorems that tied several branches together. Sometimes along the way very concrete and bold premises such as the angles of a triangle adding up to 180 degrees turned out to be incomplete (i.e. only accounts for a flat surface).

Though, it may be that surfacing self-confidence onto a particular hill that captures a partial truth is sufficient for participating in a wisdom commons. That is, perhaps it doesn't matter so much if you believe no one is like you or that everyone is like you but rather that you temper that belief with qualifiers cross-context?

[Slevin]

@peterlimberg I'm not sure if you've read "What's our Problem" yet, but your FoV and QoVirtue seem to be in alignment with Tim Urban's (of fame of the "wait but why" blog) "idea labs" and "genies". To do some idea bodging: friends of virtue create "idea lab" spaces where bad ideas get the knife (or maybe just not amplified), and then the collection of amplified ideas (with hedging, which is I think a good term for "guarding your premises", used to approximate how sure everyone is about the idea) over enough connection nodes will create a collective best guess intelligence ("genies").

[peterlimberg]

Is it fair to say that this approach may be complimentary to process of finding novel premises or claims? In that if you are looking to guard your premises then presumably you have already found the approximate or appropriate truth for your temperament. Strategically weakening it may be akin to navigating around a local optimum. Whereas sometimes finding another local optimum involves strengthening claims to increase their decidability/refutability/testability.

Yeah, this is a nice way to frame it.

Here are the models I use to understand this: a premise, a proposition or declarative sentence with a “truth value,” is always in a relationship with our other premises. Wittgenstein has a term for a person's ecology/web of premises called “logical space”: the total sum of all possible states of affairs, different from the actual state of affairs. Wittgenstein writes, “a proposition determines a place in logical space,” hence premises are like coordinates in logical space. The propositions we hold shape the figuration of our logical space, enlarging it or making it smaller. Example:

“I own only one cat and his name is Socrates.”

Assuming this is true, other propositions in logical space can be known from this: I own an animal, I have only one cat, my cat has the same name as a philosopher, etc. Some propositions are now made impossible: I do not own two cats, I do not have a cat named Nietzsche, etc.

The more unguarded a person's premises are, the smaller the logical space a person has to play in, but allows them to act in the world toward something (an ideologue). The more guarded their premises, the larger the logical space they have to play, but it prevents them from grabbing onto a premise long enough to act on it. I refer to this as “Transperspectival Masturbation”: https://lessfoolish.substack.com/p/tran ... sturbation

So, to successfully navigate reality, imo, we’ll need to know when to unguard and guard our premises, like inhaling and exhaling. Guarding allows one to see the adjacent possible worlds while unguarding allows one to move toward them.

[peterlimberg]

@peterlimberg I'm not sure if you've read "What's our Problem" yet, but your FoV and QoVirtue seem to be in alignment with Tim Urban's (of fame of the "wait but why" blog) "idea labs" and "genies". To do some idea bodging: friends of virtue create "idea lab" spaces where bad ideas get the knife (or maybe just not amplified), and then the collection of amplified ideas (with hedging, which is I think a good term for "guarding your premises", used to approximate how sure everyone is about the idea) over enough connection nodes will create a collective best guess intelligence ("genies").

Cool. Yeah, seems similar.