There are better and worse neighborhoods on the Internet as well as IRL.
There are neighborhoods where people are systematically victimized and the people don’t know it. Where people live among criminals and garbage and eat sh*t and not only don’t know any different but enjoy belonging to a group, think that garbage is stimulating and get a nice dopamine, seratonin or oxytocin rush from the sh*t they eat.
Living on the internet, the problem now shifts to:
1. Educating individuals to discriminate differences (develop taste);
2. Individuals being able to tolerate differences long enough to act (see #3);
3. Individuals eing able to integrate or reject differences, as the context requires
3a. to design a rough draft of choices
3b. to chose among them
3c. to carry out the choice
3d. to keep a log of all of the above
(OODA is a simplified version of the above)
3e. to come together for problems that are too large to solve individually or which involve community conditions (the environment)
1. Taste is the ability to discern or discriminate. Sifting A from B. Sifting A into A1 & A1; B into B1, B2, B3, etc.
2. Some folks get very anxious seeing something new or encountering something that doesn't fall into their expectations. Rather than tolerate a momentary bit of discomfort, they immediately have a fit, like a toddler who can't find both Spiderman socks and thrashes until an adult finds both matching socks. Homeostasis is also an example of being able to tolerate differences.
3. Acting requires the ability to choose, the actuators to do the acting, and being able to do this in real-time.
3a. Integration of differences is also called learning or training. Muscles and brains detect differences and adapt to those differences in a fashion where there is still continuity with the previous version of self (the ability to organism maintain "integrity" is done through "integrating").
3b. Some differences are too large for an individual to integrate, so we work together to do that work. We don't integrate like two bacteria merging, but functionally come together to get work done (we integrate virtually, not in reality) and then we separate again.
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It is scale and emergent properties that are the recent game-changers for humanity, for good and ill.
Previously, IRL, the one-on-one interactions in our communities helped keep crime down; kept real and informational viruses from spreading very far (individuals or communities died before spreading them); kept children and the simple/unsophisticated out of harm's way (including teaching them what was poisonous), kept an eye on folks with obsessive behavior and lured them into IRL interactions.
Now, living on the internet, criminal activity can be done at scale, garbage can be distributed and left lying about at scale, and even riches, such as pithy insights, superb music, amazing TV, images of beautiful people and engaging mammal videos can be distributed at scale. These riches are so easy to share at scale that the plain but entirely serviceable boy or girl next door, or pickup basketball game or community softball tournament, don't get chosen: images, video and gaming give a marvelous simulacra.
We can't just trust algorithms for taste:
A. First of all, they don't have meatspace presence; they literally don't have skin in the game. B. Second, they can fail in the funnel, in the pipe from the funnel, and in the last mile of delivery.
Thus, at some point, humans in meatspace need to have the first, middle and last says.
There are billions of us; we shouldn't just all just rely on FAANG to sort it out for us, otherwise we will merge into one giant paramecium.
We will always need:
Protection.
Education.
Skillful regulation, including sandboxing and sunsetting.
That's so true, Eric. I started my online career coaching business 3 years ago, and it gave me so much freedom! I'm from Greece, lived in the UK, Switzerland, and France, and all my clients are based in the US!
in person still seems needed for manufacturing and hardware prototyping / production. software things can be done remote but still large amount of physical stuff (food, energy, and transportation, cars and planes) that can really only be produced when people are co located
I'm happy to see Eric Cartman in this post!
There are better and worse neighborhoods on the Internet as well as IRL.
There are neighborhoods where people are systematically victimized and the people don’t know it. Where people live among criminals and garbage and eat sh*t and not only don’t know any different but enjoy belonging to a group, think that garbage is stimulating and get a nice dopamine, seratonin or oxytocin rush from the sh*t they eat.
Living on the internet, the problem now shifts to:
1. Educating individuals to discriminate differences (develop taste);
2. Individuals being able to tolerate differences long enough to act (see #3);
3. Individuals eing able to integrate or reject differences, as the context requires
3a. to design a rough draft of choices
3b. to chose among them
3c. to carry out the choice
3d. to keep a log of all of the above
(OODA is a simplified version of the above)
3e. to come together for problems that are too large to solve individually or which involve community conditions (the environment)
1. Taste is the ability to discern or discriminate. Sifting A from B. Sifting A into A1 & A1; B into B1, B2, B3, etc.
2. Some folks get very anxious seeing something new or encountering something that doesn't fall into their expectations. Rather than tolerate a momentary bit of discomfort, they immediately have a fit, like a toddler who can't find both Spiderman socks and thrashes until an adult finds both matching socks. Homeostasis is also an example of being able to tolerate differences.
3. Acting requires the ability to choose, the actuators to do the acting, and being able to do this in real-time.
3a. Integration of differences is also called learning or training. Muscles and brains detect differences and adapt to those differences in a fashion where there is still continuity with the previous version of self (the ability to organism maintain "integrity" is done through "integrating").
3b. Some differences are too large for an individual to integrate, so we work together to do that work. We don't integrate like two bacteria merging, but functionally come together to get work done (we integrate virtually, not in reality) and then we separate again.
-----------
It is scale and emergent properties that are the recent game-changers for humanity, for good and ill.
Previously, IRL, the one-on-one interactions in our communities helped keep crime down; kept real and informational viruses from spreading very far (individuals or communities died before spreading them); kept children and the simple/unsophisticated out of harm's way (including teaching them what was poisonous), kept an eye on folks with obsessive behavior and lured them into IRL interactions.
Now, living on the internet, criminal activity can be done at scale, garbage can be distributed and left lying about at scale, and even riches, such as pithy insights, superb music, amazing TV, images of beautiful people and engaging mammal videos can be distributed at scale. These riches are so easy to share at scale that the plain but entirely serviceable boy or girl next door, or pickup basketball game or community softball tournament, don't get chosen: images, video and gaming give a marvelous simulacra.
We can't just trust algorithms for taste:
A. First of all, they don't have meatspace presence; they literally don't have skin in the game. B. Second, they can fail in the funnel, in the pipe from the funnel, and in the last mile of delivery.
Thus, at some point, humans in meatspace need to have the first, middle and last says.
There are billions of us; we shouldn't just all just rely on FAANG to sort it out for us, otherwise we will merge into one giant paramecium.
We will always need:
Protection.
Education.
Skillful regulation, including sandboxing and sunsetting.
The heart and courage to act
That's so true, Eric. I started my online career coaching business 3 years ago, and it gave me so much freedom! I'm from Greece, lived in the UK, Switzerland, and France, and all my clients are based in the US!
SF?
Knowledge work is merely going to follow manufacturing jobs: outsourced to the Global South for much lower wages and no job protections.
"Someone once remarked: if IRL were a movie, the visuals would be amazing, but the plot and characters would suck"
Who said this? Spot on.
in person still seems needed for manufacturing and hardware prototyping / production. software things can be done remote but still large amount of physical stuff (food, energy, and transportation, cars and planes) that can really only be produced when people are co located