A few days ago I wrote about Human Memome Project. Today I’d like to show you a concrete example of what it looks like to contribute successfully to it.
I think you can really tell in all of his recent work that he really would LOVE if people were more memetically aware, so he could speak more directly and truthfully. He could do that if his audience was smaller, but then he'd have less influence. If his audience is bigger, he has to speak more broadly, but could still elevate it.
This is the game. I think Vsauce is the same. There's a video from like 3 years ago which feels like a huge manifesto about this sort of thing. But you can see from the comments that it "didn't work". And what Vsauce is doing now is short form content, maximally viral, WHILE increasing genuine spark of curiosity, and actually getting people to try scientific experiments themselves, not just learn from him.
Vsauce is in the same bucket. He understands how the memetic game is played, wishes it could be better, but can't push against the current by himself. No one can. But together, coordinated, open source memetic engineering, perhaps we can.
hey, appreciate you being here!!! I will almost certainly publish something completely ridiculous or flawed in the future as I keep exploring & learning here, and I will be relying on those with a sharp eye to critique 🙏
"when you tell people that “sometimes the anti science cranks are right”, they flip into believing that ALL anti science people are right, and the institutions are not to be trusted. It completely breaks your model of reality, because, if ivermectin really is good for humans, then what did it mean that all the “experts” that you trusted & believed made fun of it for so long?
Truths need to be reconciled together into a cohesive model. Throwing a true thing into an egregore may damage it, at least in the short term. The concept of “blasphemy”, and understanding what counts as blasphemy for each egregore, is going to be a significant part of the human memome project. It’s an empirical question, not a matter of opinion."
i'm struggling to read your stance here. can you help me understand your perspective:
1. do you actually believe the statement 'the anti science cranks are never right'?
2. if yes, how do you consolidate this simplistic black/white belief into your memetics?
3. if no, do you believe an egregore is worth 'protecting' even if contains such beliefs?
I wish we had this post but coming from all the different tribal angles, or something like AI asking you a few questions, and then it giving you this (or a similar) essay tailored for your specific way of looking at things
yeah one thing I keep thinking about is how (1) humans NEED work to thrive and grow (2) there is a lot of work to do, and (3) these two things are actually the same problem/cancel out.
A friend who is a local journalist was saying she loves her job because she feels like she gets paid to learn & be informed. Which made me think about how, if we had a way to automate the thing, that's nice, but the person still wants to do the work because it's good for them, and people like to consume the human's work because that feels good too.
I want anyone who has an audience to see this stuff and just take it & translate it to their tribe. It should help them grow their audience, and also spread good things. And the work of doing the translating is itself necessary to figure out how to put the pieces together. I wouldn't automate it because I think there are choices to be made, about how we shape the future/how we bridge these communities. I want us, the humans, to be driving it, steering it, and use whatever AI tools we want. But our tools shouldn't be steering us
(I'm writing this partially in response to other replies on twitter who are saying I wish we could automate this & that & i wanna say guys that's not the point!)
I imagine that many people attracted to your work are people who don't feel fully aligned with any tribe- or better said- feel unaligned with all tribes. And so the idea of them doing it themselves feels off. Even if it was to their 'adjacent' tribe or smth. (That's how I feel at least). It's common for liminal people like this to prefer the company of other liminal figures more than their own tribe in many contexts, especially in more intellectual ones.
And I bet that's part of the desire for automation, they want this good for the people around them, but would feel disingenuous or some 'holier than thou' badness that makes them not want to do it themselves. (the exception is the 'grey tribe', which is not something anyone is really born into?)
yes, I actually think this is a real problem, I think it's a current bottleneck. I keep using the phrase "friend in every part of society" (https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1944053165802107286) for this reason. I can't do this work for other tribes while being "outside" of the tribe. But I also don't want to fully align with one tribe, I still want to be able to do this work at the meta level.
This is part of the game Hank plays. There are a lot of things Hank would probably like to do or say but he can't because it conflicts with the tribe. But he's chosen to stay in and align with it. I think we want to find or attract the people in each tribe who seem memetically aware & aligned & possibly make contact.
There are tribes that I am a member of and know how to speak to, as an insider, even if I don't yet have a large audience, but I do have like, family/friends etc. For that, I'm more of a "sampler" node, I can report back information about how a narrative is perceived, but I can't "spread" or amplify a narrative very easily.
https://youtu.be/sANg0NyvVnk?si=Ir_Crftv0KhSQhFE
crazy that this is 7 YEARS AGO
I think you can really tell in all of his recent work that he really would LOVE if people were more memetically aware, so he could speak more directly and truthfully. He could do that if his audience was smaller, but then he'd have less influence. If his audience is bigger, he has to speak more broadly, but could still elevate it.
This is the game. I think Vsauce is the same. There's a video from like 3 years ago which feels like a huge manifesto about this sort of thing. But you can see from the comments that it "didn't work". And what Vsauce is doing now is short form content, maximally viral, WHILE increasing genuine spark of curiosity, and actually getting people to try scientific experiments themselves, not just learn from him.
Vsauce is in the same bucket. He understands how the memetic game is played, wishes it could be better, but can't push against the current by himself. No one can. But together, coordinated, open source memetic engineering, perhaps we can.
This is the Vsauce video, "The Future of Reasoning": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ArVh3Cj9rw
My thread on it: https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1914703369190441273
You reckon the same thing is happening with veritasium's video on game theory? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM
beautiful essay
You know, I used to be a big hater, but your work has been only getting better and better.
hey, appreciate you being here!!! I will almost certainly publish something completely ridiculous or flawed in the future as I keep exploring & learning here, and I will be relying on those with a sharp eye to critique 🙏
I try to spend more time listening instead of yapping these days — looking forward to what you put out!
"when you tell people that “sometimes the anti science cranks are right”, they flip into believing that ALL anti science people are right, and the institutions are not to be trusted. It completely breaks your model of reality, because, if ivermectin really is good for humans, then what did it mean that all the “experts” that you trusted & believed made fun of it for so long?
Truths need to be reconciled together into a cohesive model. Throwing a true thing into an egregore may damage it, at least in the short term. The concept of “blasphemy”, and understanding what counts as blasphemy for each egregore, is going to be a significant part of the human memome project. It’s an empirical question, not a matter of opinion."
i'm struggling to read your stance here. can you help me understand your perspective:
1. do you actually believe the statement 'the anti science cranks are never right'?
2. if yes, how do you consolidate this simplistic black/white belief into your memetics?
3. if no, do you believe an egregore is worth 'protecting' even if contains such beliefs?
thank you for this question! Inspired today's post: https://defenderofthebasic.substack.com/p/discernment-is-the-bottleneck
happy to elaborate on any point / let me know if it answered your question!
Again, a great post
I wish we had this post but coming from all the different tribal angles, or something like AI asking you a few questions, and then it giving you this (or a similar) essay tailored for your specific way of looking at things
yeah one thing I keep thinking about is how (1) humans NEED work to thrive and grow (2) there is a lot of work to do, and (3) these two things are actually the same problem/cancel out.
A friend who is a local journalist was saying she loves her job because she feels like she gets paid to learn & be informed. Which made me think about how, if we had a way to automate the thing, that's nice, but the person still wants to do the work because it's good for them, and people like to consume the human's work because that feels good too.
I want anyone who has an audience to see this stuff and just take it & translate it to their tribe. It should help them grow their audience, and also spread good things. And the work of doing the translating is itself necessary to figure out how to put the pieces together. I wouldn't automate it because I think there are choices to be made, about how we shape the future/how we bridge these communities. I want us, the humans, to be driving it, steering it, and use whatever AI tools we want. But our tools shouldn't be steering us
(I'm writing this partially in response to other replies on twitter who are saying I wish we could automate this & that & i wanna say guys that's not the point!)
I imagine that many people attracted to your work are people who don't feel fully aligned with any tribe- or better said- feel unaligned with all tribes. And so the idea of them doing it themselves feels off. Even if it was to their 'adjacent' tribe or smth. (That's how I feel at least). It's common for liminal people like this to prefer the company of other liminal figures more than their own tribe in many contexts, especially in more intellectual ones.
And I bet that's part of the desire for automation, they want this good for the people around them, but would feel disingenuous or some 'holier than thou' badness that makes them not want to do it themselves. (the exception is the 'grey tribe', which is not something anyone is really born into?)
yes, I actually think this is a real problem, I think it's a current bottleneck. I keep using the phrase "friend in every part of society" (https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1944053165802107286) for this reason. I can't do this work for other tribes while being "outside" of the tribe. But I also don't want to fully align with one tribe, I still want to be able to do this work at the meta level.
This is part of the game Hank plays. There are a lot of things Hank would probably like to do or say but he can't because it conflicts with the tribe. But he's chosen to stay in and align with it. I think we want to find or attract the people in each tribe who seem memetically aware & aligned & possibly make contact.
There are tribes that I am a member of and know how to speak to, as an insider, even if I don't yet have a large audience, but I do have like, family/friends etc. For that, I'm more of a "sampler" node, I can report back information about how a narrative is perceived, but I can't "spread" or amplify a narrative very easily.
(On that note of "seeing how narratives are perceived by different tribes", you might like this "prism" model of memetics: https://x.com/DefenderOfBasic/status/1943126842799722815)
yes. resonates. I am an easy sample node, where I know how information is being processed, narrative perceived, etc.
But spreading is MUCH harder, especially because most people get tagged as an 'outsider' very quickly if they say anything with friction
Interesting.
How do you pronounce egregore, when you say it?
egg re gore
(some people say egg re go ree but those people are wrong)