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At risk of losing some people by stating some loose observations and findings with faux-confidence: Dense networks of human relations tend to lead to those hum

by patcon 7y ago

At risk of losing some people by stating some loose observations and findings with faux-confidence: Dense networks of human relations tend to lead to those humans creating specific network topologies in which liberal values tend to emerge. In places where the network is sparsed (relative to elsewhere), it is here we find reduced empathy for distant others, mistrust, populism, higher social distance between any two random nodes overall, and also bastions of socially conservative thought. My growing belief is that most social conservativism is network damage to the social fabric. But if that sounds slippery, don't worry: there is no need to purge it, as reducing the average path length in the network will see that happen on its own. Pluralistic values and greater ability to form consensus arises in spaces where we re-weave the social fabric into the sorts of topologies that cities tend to permute through on their own. Be very skeptical due to my lack of citing sources, but I share the above in earnest with this comment left in haste <3 EDIT: to be clear, I believe there is also some "illness" in the progressive left as well, due to their social distance from certain groups as well. The network is sick. A healed network will be some place in between, at a place we can all live with :)

shsyejehxtd 7y ago
This seems mostly like handwaved logic though, why don't you consider liberalism a form of populism for example? After all, the political values you're describing arise by your own admission in areas of high density. How can something be populist and yet also targeted towards a population that you've defined as being the more minor or otherwise less dense? Not that it'd be correct either, but I could take the same elements you've used and describe Liberalism as xenophobic towards anything that doesn't share its values. I really am trying to see how you arrived at the point you did but it mostly just seems like you decided one side was wrong first and developed your explanation afterwards.
Avicebron 7y ago
This is a a circular argument and somewhat disingenuous. You presuppose that liberal values emerge from a "denser network", which at surface level seems fine. Except definitionally I argue that pluralism itself doesn't work without defined in groups and out groups (denoting the plurality of the group). This is inherently "anti-liberal" in the sense that it requires continued in group and out group hostility to maintain the segmentation. Looking into history at say, early Iberia, the plurality was maintained by intense violence between muslim and christian populations living in proximity to each other. In order to maintain this plurality the in group had to drastically enforce conformity while in combat with the out group to maintain topological cohesion. To diagnose the social problems rising in the country as "network damage" is almost calling people who disagree with what I imagine is your stance as mentally ill. That is a dangerous road to move down and I would advise you to reconsider or at least allow for the nuance that potentially this isn't just about identifying characteristics of a population feeling threatened by another group. But rather this could a manifestation of a very real feeling of insecurity that is not caused by lets just say it, racial tensions, and perhaps more of an economic anxiety bent. If Maslow isn't getting his due, then the real conversation is how can people move to middle ground feel more unified by shared prosperity. Othering people based on a diagnosis of "not enough different people they talked to" adds to the problem instead of addresses it. Be very skeptical due to my lack of citing sources, but I share the above in earnest with this comment left in haste <3 EDIT: Clarity
- patcon 7y ago
  Sorry, didn't mean to imply one side as mentally ill. I'll walk it back a bit: If there's an illness, both poles have responsibility. And maybe only ill in the sense that they will break the whole together. Due to historic districting and balance of power in the USA at least, the illness on the right seems to be "winning" in the political arena there. But it'd be a comparable powderkeg if the far left got their people in without laying a foundation for consensus-building. The conservative right doesn't have as much culture of consensus-building in its DNA imho, so it's hard to look to them for any hope of resolution to the crisis of social distance. Bah, sorry, this is like a "drinks in bar" level of uff-the-cuff conversation on my part. Your reply was wonderful though :) > Othering people based on a diagnosis of "not enough different people they talked to" adds to the problem instead of addresses it. Fwiw, there's a really rad Santa Fe Institute podcast that addresses that very thing, which I'm listening to right now. tl;dr - we're all terribly biased but mostly just about people we DON'T have connection to, while we're FANTASTICALLY great integrators and estimators of even small nuances in the social fabrics that we're directly in conversation with. https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/9-U7UI7GsP https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/9-U7UI7GsP
  - Avicebron 7y ago
    Sometimes "drinks in a bar" level conversation can be the most rewarding. Let me know if you want to get a drink and talk about it. I'll cede that both poles have responsibility and that the conservative right have unified themselves mostly on a shared set of identities with little room for consensus, this is a problem. But I think we need to remove ourselves from totally binary thinking (he says as a he programs all the time) and separate some concepts like neo liberal financial models from liberal social principles as I bet we would agree on the social and disagree on the financial. I'm assuming a lot so please correct me where I'm wrong. Reactionary populism is very often correlated to what are perceived to be unfair economic policy (see "reparation" payments of post world war 1 germany to france...ended tragically in 1945). Dismissing the "conservatives" as on unified entity despite their strong coalition of identity misrepresents the problem as I see it.
    - 7y ago
remarkEon 7y ago
>My growing belief is that most social conservativism is network damage to the social fabric. I could make the exact same argument (also without sources, since I'm lazy tonight) but in the inverse, that most social liberalism is caused by network damage to the social fabric - and I bet I could make a much more compelling argument, given that the contemporary brand of social liberalism (i.e. social Progressivism) sees breaking down traditional social fabrics as an axiomatic good. >Pluralistic values and greater ability to form consensus arises in spaces where we re-weave the social fabric into the sorts of topologies that cities tend to permute through on their own. This only happens when the topologies are not organic, but artificial. And to top it all off these new topologies still require elite support to supplant the organic ones. The only reason a place like San Francisco still draws people (to the extent that it actually does; I keep seeing stories here and elsewhere about people quitting that place in droves) is because of an Elite network that is seriously incentivized to squeeze out every last benefit they can from their existing network effects before it crashes and burns.
- trophycase 7y ago
  I'd tend to agree. Ironically "othering" is one of the strongest social binders there is, see: religion, nationalism, etc.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    This isn't really "othering", though. It's similar to a two-sided-market, where the Elites sit as the middle-platform and transmit value between the existing state or corporate institutions and the, well, not-elite. And then this latter group transmits value back via an extraction mechanism employed by this Elite.
buzzkillington 7y ago
>Dense networks of human relations tend to lead to those humans creating specific network topologies in which liberal values tend to emerge. In places where the network is sparsed (relative to elsewhere), it is here we find reduced empathy, mistrust, populism, increased social distance between any two random nodes, and also bastions of socially conservative thought. Indeed. People in large cities hardly talk to one another outside of ordering coffee. People in Appalachia talk to each other constantly. Is it any wonder that the sparse social networks of densely populated areas result in reduced empathy, mistrust, populism, increased social distance between any two random nodes and also bastions of socially conservative thought. SF still sounds like it did in the 70s. You'd think a place could have gotten some new ideas since Computer Lib/Dream Machines was published there.
patcon 7y ago
EDIT2: acknowledging my shitty tone and that I deserve downvotes. I'll try harder next time not to fall into the trap of shallowly divisive statements

by patcon 7y ago

shsyejehxtd 7y ago

This seems mostly like handwaved logic though, why don't you consider liberalism a form of populism for example? After all, the political values you're describing arise by your own admission in areas of high density. How can something be populist and yet also targeted towards a population that you've defined as being the more minor or otherwise less dense? Not that it'd be correct either, but I could take the same elements you've used and describe Liberalism as xenophobic towards anything that doesn't share its values. I really am trying to see how you arrived at the point you did but it mostly just seems like you decided one side was wrong first and developed your explanation afterwards.

Avicebron 7y ago

This is a a circular argument and somewhat disingenuous. You presuppose that liberal values emerge from a "denser network", which at surface level seems fine. Except definitionally I argue that pluralism itself doesn't work without defined in groups and out groups (denoting the plurality of the group). This is inherently "anti-liberal" in the sense that it requires continued in group and out group hostility to maintain the segmentation. Looking into history at say, early Iberia, the plurality was maintained by intense violence between muslim and christian populations living in proximity to each other. In order to maintain this plurality the in group had to drastically enforce conformity while in combat with the out group to maintain topological cohesion. To diagnose the social problems rising in the country as "network damage" is almost calling people who disagree with what I imagine is your stance as mentally ill. That is a dangerous road to move down and I would advise you to reconsider or at least allow for the nuance that potentially this isn't just about identifying characteristics of a population feeling threatened by another group. But rather this could a manifestation of a very real feeling of insecurity that is not caused by lets just say it, racial tensions, and perhaps more of an economic anxiety bent. If Maslow isn't getting his due, then the real conversation is how can people move to middle ground feel more unified by shared prosperity. Othering people based on a diagnosis of "not enough different people they talked to" adds to the problem instead of addresses it. Be very skeptical due to my lack of citing sources, but I share the above in earnest with this comment left in haste <3 EDIT: Clarity

patcon 7y ago
Sorry, didn't mean to imply one side as mentally ill. I'll walk it back a bit: If there's an illness, both poles have responsibility. And maybe only ill in the sense that they will break the whole together. Due to historic districting and balance of power in the USA at least, the illness on the right seems to be "winning" in the political arena there. But it'd be a comparable powderkeg if the far left got their people in without laying a foundation for consensus-building. The conservative right doesn't have as much culture of consensus-building in its DNA imho, so it's hard to look to them for any hope of resolution to the crisis of social distance. Bah, sorry, this is like a "drinks in bar" level of uff-the-cuff conversation on my part. Your reply was wonderful though :) > Othering people based on a diagnosis of "not enough different people they talked to" adds to the problem instead of addresses it. Fwiw, there's a really rad Santa Fe Institute podcast that addresses that very thing, which I'm listening to right now. tl;dr - we're all terribly biased but mostly just about people we DON'T have connection to, while we're FANTASTICALLY great integrators and estimators of even small nuances in the social fabrics that we're directly in conversation with. https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/9-U7UI7GsP https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/9-U7UI7GsP
- Avicebron 7y ago
  Sometimes "drinks in a bar" level conversation can be the most rewarding. Let me know if you want to get a drink and talk about it. I'll cede that both poles have responsibility and that the conservative right have unified themselves mostly on a shared set of identities with little room for consensus, this is a problem. But I think we need to remove ourselves from totally binary thinking (he says as a he programs all the time) and separate some concepts like neo liberal financial models from liberal social principles as I bet we would agree on the social and disagree on the financial. I'm assuming a lot so please correct me where I'm wrong. Reactionary populism is very often correlated to what are perceived to be unfair economic policy (see "reparation" payments of post world war 1 germany to france...ended tragically in 1945). Dismissing the "conservatives" as on unified entity despite their strong coalition of identity misrepresents the problem as I see it.
  - 7y ago

remarkEon 7y ago

>My growing belief is that most social conservativism is network damage to the social fabric. I could make the exact same argument (also without sources, since I'm lazy tonight) but in the inverse, that most social liberalism is caused by network damage to the social fabric - and I bet I could make a much more compelling argument, given that the contemporary brand of social liberalism (i.e. social Progressivism) sees breaking down traditional social fabrics as an axiomatic good. >Pluralistic values and greater ability to form consensus arises in spaces where we re-weave the social fabric into the sorts of topologies that cities tend to permute through on their own. This only happens when the topologies are not organic, but artificial. And to top it all off these new topologies still require elite support to supplant the organic ones. The only reason a place like San Francisco still draws people (to the extent that it actually does; I keep seeing stories here and elsewhere about people quitting that place in droves) is because of an Elite network that is seriously incentivized to squeeze out every last benefit they can from their existing network effects before it crashes and burns.

trophycase 7y ago
I'd tend to agree. Ironically "othering" is one of the strongest social binders there is, see: religion, nationalism, etc.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  This isn't really "othering", though. It's similar to a two-sided-market, where the Elites sit as the middle-platform and transmit value between the existing state or corporate institutions and the, well, not-elite. And then this latter group transmits value back via an extraction mechanism employed by this Elite.

buzzkillington 7y ago

>Dense networks of human relations tend to lead to those humans creating specific network topologies in which liberal values tend to emerge. In places where the network is sparsed (relative to elsewhere), it is here we find reduced empathy, mistrust, populism, increased social distance between any two random nodes, and also bastions of socially conservative thought. Indeed. People in large cities hardly talk to one another outside of ordering coffee. People in Appalachia talk to each other constantly. Is it any wonder that the sparse social networks of densely populated areas result in reduced empathy, mistrust, populism, increased social distance between any two random nodes and also bastions of socially conservative thought. SF still sounds like it did in the 70s. You'd think a place could have gotten some new ideas since Computer Lib/Dream Machines was published there.

patcon 7y ago

EDIT2: acknowledging my shitty tone and that I deserve downvotes. I'll try harder next time not to fall into the trap of shallowly divisive statements