by James Santagata It is very simple. It builds linearly. In the beginning you have a variety of people, but often the most vocal are never the best ,as the best are not attracted or vocal and/or the costs vs benefits are out of whack. Over time, as objectives, reasoning, and so on mature and gel, it grows but initially it is somewhat blind rage and guerilla warfare, dank memes, short cogent logical posts, challenges, marches and some street fights. This serves to shift overton window far to the right,even if it ends up to still be true left. And it shifts again and again. The opponents have to go the opposite way, more left, which makes the gap more clear and triggers more to the left and more to the right. As that happens intra-party conflicts happen but as they are settled, detractors are silenced, shamed or flushed. As it grows, the numbers and quality improve (jumping ahead, the danger is and the fact is, once successful, the charismatic opportunists make a showing). At some point, it hits an inflection point and shifts to be non-linear growth and nonlinear reach and impact. First exponential 10^1, 10^2, 10^3 and then finally geometric, base and exponent both increase. 10^1, 20^2, 40^4, 80^16, etc.
Source: Original Site Post
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What Does It Look Like?
by James Santagata It is very simple. It builds linearly. In the beginning you have a variety of people, but often the most vocal are never the best ,as the best are not attracted or vocal and/or the costs vs benefits are out of whack. Over time, as objectives, reasoning, and so on mature and gel, it grows but initially it is somewhat blind rage and guerilla warfare, dank memes, short cogent logical posts, challenges, marches and some street fights. This serves to shift overton window far to the right,even if it ends up to still be true left. And it shifts again and again. The opponents have to go the opposite way, more left, which makes the gap more clear and triggers more to the left and more to the right. As that happens intra-party conflicts happen but as they are settled, detractors are silenced, shamed or flushed. As it grows, the numbers and quality improve (jumping ahead, the danger is and the fact is, once successful, the charismatic opportunists make a showing). At some point, it hits an inflection point and shifts to be non-linear growth and nonlinear reach and impact. First exponential 10^1, 10^2, 10^3 and then finally geometric, base and exponent both increase. 10^1, 20^2, 40^4, 80^16, etc.
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The Odds Don”t Matter Any Longer
—“What you’re going to see, increasingly, are individuals for whom the odds don’t matter any more, because they have nothing left to lose, and who will act without any expectation of success, alone at first, but eventually in groups. Only when all hope is lost will the path to victory be clear, because that is the only circumstance under which anyone will go to the trouble and risk to clear it.”— Eli Harman
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The Odds Don”t Matter Any Longer
—“What you’re going to see, increasingly, are individuals for whom the odds don’t matter any more, because they have nothing left to lose, and who will act without any expectation of success, alone at first, but eventually in groups. Only when all hope is lost will the path to victory be clear, because that is the only circumstance under which anyone will go to the trouble and risk to clear it.”— Eli Harman
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Evolutionary Origins of Moral Intuitions
Humans are demonstrably amoral (both predatory and productive) as we see fit in the moment. If this was not true we would not need so many institutions to train people on the one hand; and manners, norms, traditions and laws to assist us in cooperating; and parents, neighbors, police, judges, generals and soldiers to insure those manners, norms, traditions, and laws. We feel (almost all of us) the instinct to lie/cheat/steal/kill, just as we feel (almost all of us) the instinct to tell the truth, to transact honestly, to avoid imposition of costs, and avoid harm. Just as we feel (almost all of us) the instinct to invest in future cooperation and engage in signaling. The simple truth is that we are so exceptional at creating manners, ethics, morals, traditions, laws and institutions of their defense, that it is almost always inadvisable to violate them rather than engage in productive cooperation, no matter how limited the value or returns on cooperation are to us. That evolution has provided us with the emotions of pride and fulfillment and shame and fear, when we demonstrate those moral and immoral actions, is simply evolution’s expansion of offspring-defense to the rest of the band, and tribe (now community). And the value of that expansion of that trait of kin-selection to what we call ‘morality’ is the result of nothing more than the danger of being outcast versus the (absurdly high) rewards of cooperation. Language evolved (it appears) to increase the (absurdly high) rewards of cooperation. The adage “many hands make light work” doesn’t include a metric, but Adam Smith gave us one: divsion of labor does not merely increase linearly, but logarithmically such that the labor of one person when spread to ten is on the order of ten THOUSAND times more productive. In simple terms the better your language(correspondence), the better your verbal ability (iq), the better your division of labor (institutions of property), ad the greater your suppression of free riding, parasitism and predation (crime), the faster you will produce, the more calories you will capture in relation to output, and the more offspring you can afford, the more advanced tools and weapons you can produce. Hence why tolerance for milk (40% increase in calories form the same production) plus horse+wheel+plus bronze), allowed a small population north of the black sea to spread from spain to china. ANd why guns, germs, steel, law, and accounting allowed a small population to rapidly rule and transform the world. The primary problem is that we wish to remain children with a steady state and little stress, when it is the continuous conquest of stresses that provides evolutionary adaptation and innovation. In other words, our moral sensations are evolutionarily correct, but our work sensations are evolutionarily counter-productive. You cannot save your way out of poverty, nor avoid work your way into prosperity.
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Evolutionary Origins of Moral Intuitions
Humans are demonstrably amoral (both predatory and productive) as we see fit in the moment. If this was not true we would not need so many institutions to train people on the one hand; and manners, norms, traditions and laws to assist us in cooperating; and parents, neighbors, police, judges, generals and soldiers to insure those manners, norms, traditions, and laws. We feel (almost all of us) the instinct to lie/cheat/steal/kill, just as we feel (almost all of us) the instinct to tell the truth, to transact honestly, to avoid imposition of costs, and avoid harm. Just as we feel (almost all of us) the instinct to invest in future cooperation and engage in signaling. The simple truth is that we are so exceptional at creating manners, ethics, morals, traditions, laws and institutions of their defense, that it is almost always inadvisable to violate them rather than engage in productive cooperation, no matter how limited the value or returns on cooperation are to us. That evolution has provided us with the emotions of pride and fulfillment and shame and fear, when we demonstrate those moral and immoral actions, is simply evolution’s expansion of offspring-defense to the rest of the band, and tribe (now community). And the value of that expansion of that trait of kin-selection to what we call ‘morality’ is the result of nothing more than the danger of being outcast versus the (absurdly high) rewards of cooperation. Language evolved (it appears) to increase the (absurdly high) rewards of cooperation. The adage “many hands make light work” doesn’t include a metric, but Adam Smith gave us one: divsion of labor does not merely increase linearly, but logarithmically such that the labor of one person when spread to ten is on the order of ten THOUSAND times more productive. In simple terms the better your language(correspondence), the better your verbal ability (iq), the better your division of labor (institutions of property), ad the greater your suppression of free riding, parasitism and predation (crime), the faster you will produce, the more calories you will capture in relation to output, and the more offspring you can afford, the more advanced tools and weapons you can produce. Hence why tolerance for milk (40% increase in calories form the same production) plus horse+wheel+plus bronze), allowed a small population north of the black sea to spread from spain to china. ANd why guns, germs, steel, law, and accounting allowed a small population to rapidly rule and transform the world. The primary problem is that we wish to remain children with a steady state and little stress, when it is the continuous conquest of stresses that provides evolutionary adaptation and innovation. In other words, our moral sensations are evolutionarily correct, but our work sensations are evolutionarily counter-productive. You cannot save your way out of poverty, nor avoid work your way into prosperity.
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Compartmentalization Allows Boiling of The Frog (meaning “us”).
by Eric Best There is also a disconnect between day-to-day life and political reality. Even most people who are politically aware compartmentalize the daily grind (work, exercise, family, sleep, shopping, etc) and politics. Even as political disaster looms larger, it has the aspect of fiction. It exists while you pay attention to it, posting online or what have you, and when you wake up the next morning and enter the rat race it no longer seems as real. Yet in the halls of power, the gears never stop turning.
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Compartmentalization Allows Boiling of The Frog (meaning “us”).
by Eric Best There is also a disconnect between day-to-day life and political reality. Even most people who are politically aware compartmentalize the daily grind (work, exercise, family, sleep, shopping, etc) and politics. Even as political disaster looms larger, it has the aspect of fiction. It exists while you pay attention to it, posting online or what have you, and when you wake up the next morning and enter the rat race it no longer seems as real. Yet in the halls of power, the gears never stop turning.
