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What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)
- LolWolf 7y agoUpvoted due to the interesting story, but the point is conceptually unclear (at least to me, but I'm quite slow) how would this improve my cognitive toolkit? I understand the (one) example presented apart from wrestling, but it is not quite obvious that the actual framework of Kayfabe immediately maps to it. It feels like there are easier constructions that would explain this exactly as well, if not better (perhaps most notably, the Prisoner's dilemma and the fact that coordination games are hard[0]). --- [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580 https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580
- gazelle21 7y agoIt doesn't, I love Eric but sometimes he tends to overcomplicate things. Kayfabe is/was more of a respect thing. If I watch a movie I'm willing to suspend belief, same goes for wrestling. When WWE "revealed" that wrestling was fake, everybody already knew.
- gameswithgo 7y agoAs an example, when you hear a politician say something outrages, insane, or crazy. Instead of thinking "oh my, what a fool this person is", consider that they may be performing, in a way agreed upon by his or her follow politicians. They know it isn't true, but that doesn't matter, because the audience doesn't care.
- battery_cowboy 7y agoThe more academic form of trolling?
- gowld 7y agoNot "academic" , just less Internetty.
- andrewprock 7y agoGiven how muddled this essay it, it appears that whatever this author is talking about has not improved his own cognitive toolkit to the point where he is able to express his thoughts clearly.
- itsArtur 7y agoI am not a native english speaker and it was really difficult for me to read this essay and understand its purpose. Is this writing style considered "good"?
- andrewprock 7y agoIn my experience, this writing style is indicative of the author speaking to an ongoing conversation where people are writing about the topic in many places. As a stand-alone essay, this is very bad. As a contribution to a conversation, as you might see in an online forum, this probably makes more sense.
- argonaut 7y agoAs a native speaker, I found the essay to be long-winded and over-complicated. It uses twice as many words as it needs to convey the same point.
- alexpetralia 7y agoPut simply, one might think of kayfabe as a consensus on the agreement of illusion; a suspension of reality. Why would anyone do this? For one, suspended reality allows us to be creative and simulate outcomes that otherwise would not occur in real life. But also, it can occur under information asymmetry. If something seems fake to me, but I am not sure if _you_ believe it is fake or not (and vice versa), we both might pretend something is real for the sake of not offending one another. This segues into another of Weinstein's terms (originally from Timur Kuran) called "preference falsification": if no one has to falsify their beliefs, we might just _state_ things we don't actually believe in, since we don't know what other people actually believe, and we don't want to run the risk of being ostracized. Overall, these two concepts explain how otherwise tenuous theories can be believed (or at least stated to be believed) by large groups of people.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- LolWolf 7y agoThanks! > If something seems fake to me, but I am not sure if _you_ believe it is fake or not (and vice versa), we both might pretend something is real for the sake of not offending one another. Yeah, I guess this is why I was referring to slightly cleaner game-theoretic formulations, but perhaps missed the main point because I didn't quite find it clear. In some sense, though, the piece calls for "active collusion" with rehearsed point and counterpoints (as in, e.g., wrestling) which seems distinct than preference falsification, which is the part I'm having a hard time squaring with the article?
- qznc 7y agoWe have much bigger illusions than wrestling. Ironically, a piece of fiction made the point much clearer to me: “All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable." REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.” ― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather Likewise, paper money: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Paper_Money https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Paper_Money
- machinelearning 7y agoEric is describing an emergent phenomenon in a particular system of politics that is often invisible to an outsider. It upgrades one's cognitive toolkit by allowing someone reason in the second order (Assuming Kayfabe) vs. the first order (Taking things at face value). If you can spot Kayfabe and realize that certain rivalries exist for the sole purpose of propping each other up, you realize that the degrees of freedom are far greater than it seems.
- PaulHoule 7y agoLet's be specific. This applies to the Democratic and Republican parties in the US.
- narag 7y agoThis applies to gossip shows more than anything else.
- remarkEon 7y agoWhich means it's definitely not limited to US politics then.
- narag 7y agoNot at all. Actually, observing how it works for realities or the gossipverse, you can spot the same patterns in politics: multiple (in USA "both") sides on some topic cluster their statements around some event, like passing of some act or relevant news. Setting the conversation agenda is specially useful to hide inconvenient topics from public scrutiny. Sex regulation, religion and other "social" controversial discussions are very effective to create noise and put in the background the economic problems, that have often more direct and severe consequences for most people.
- sushisource 7y agoI think that's partly why some commenters think the article isn't all that valuable. IMO, it really does not at all apply to the Dems/Republicans fight. If you've spent any amount of time with people who actually work in politics, it's readily apparent there's no kind of mutual collusion between the parties. They can barely even "collude" internally to advance their agendas. The whole thing is just a contest for who can get the most pithy soundbite for the day. It's horrible and ineffective and stupid but there's no "Republicans and democrats are working together to.... do exactly what?" conspiracy.
- mrfusion 7y agoThis really puts into words/framework what I’ve been thinking for a while. Thanks for sharing.
- vearwhershuh 7y agoI suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens. On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book) It's short.
- mirimir 7y agoYes, I ought to read that. From the Wikipedia article: > On the other hand, writers such as Marvin Olasky justify Bernays as killing democracy in order to save it. In this way, the presence of an elite, faceless persuasion constituted the only plausible way to prevent authoritarian control. That last sentence makes no sense to me. Why wouldn't authoritarian governments use propaganda?
- someguyorother 7y agoIt appears to be saying "authoritarian governments can use both direct persuasion and faceless persuasion. Democracies can't use the former, and can't use the latter unless they allow themselves to by the methods shown here." Direct persuasion would be something akin to Weber's charismatic authority: the typical cult of personality stuff. A representative democracy, not having its identity tied to one singular leader, can't do that.
- andrewprock 7y agoDemocracies use direct persuasion extensively, typically on non-majority groups, for obvious reasons.
- mirimir 7y agoYou're using "direct persuasion" differently from parent. And I have no clue which is accepted. Parent seems to equate "direct persuasion" with "charismatic persuasion", but for you it seems more like coercion. Right?
- mirimir 7y agoBefore reading TFA, I was thinking "What's their agenda?" / "What's in it for them?" / "What's their bias?" etc. But this is a deeper cut. However, in looking for kayfabe, there's the risk of conspiracy thinking.
- qnsi 7y agoI used to follow him on Twitter but got a conspiracy vibes from him. Got the same in this post. After other noted here that he has some kind of Grand theory of physics, that sadly experts dont agree with, I mentally classify him as a crackpot from now on
- iron0013 7y agoKayfabe is such an important concept in this historical moment! To me, the “audience” is the most interesting component, and the “performers” are almost irrelevant, except to the extent that they must provide some fantasy that (ever so nominally) purports to be reality (or lies purporting to be truth). The psychological process by which the audience fully commits to and “believes” the fantasy, while at the same time being fully aware on some level that the fantasy is obviously untrue is fascinating, and deserves much more attention and research. Obviously, this is closely related to the idea of doublethink, but kayfabe gives more agency to the audience. Rather than being forced to engage in doublethink by big brother and an authoritarian government, kayfabe “believers” are all together with each other the agents of their own delusion. I think the biggest contributor to whether someone “buys in” to a kayfabe fantasy is their capacity for conformity; seeing the rest of the crowd treat the obviously untrue fantasy as if it were reality gives the individual permission, or “cover”, to participate in the fantasy themselves. I’m guessing anyone reading this knows what non-wrestling kayfabe scene I’m talking about—except maybe those who are already participating in it themselves—and even for those folks, well, it all depends on what “knows” means, doesn’t it?
- futureproofd 7y agoEric Weinstein most recently explained his Kayfabe theory on the Joe Rogan podcast, in this Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA He also makes reference to this particular article.
- cronix 7y agoA bit shorter, and more focused from a different interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsgWSPWX-6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsgWSPWX-6A
- BrandonM 7y agoI found the video to be worthwhile overall. For anyone looking for the Kayfabe-specific part, though, it starts at about 23:40: https://youtu.be/bsgWSPWX-6A?t=1420 https://youtu.be/bsgWSPWX-6A?t=1420
- markc 7y agoAre you telling me that Blake and Adam weren’t actually rivals??!!
- machinelearning 7y agoDoes this mean Tiger King was all a Kayfabe?
- alexandercrohde 7y agoMaybe you mean this as a joke but it absolutely was. At one point Joe mentions he and Carole made a lot of money off each other. He ran a whole internet show on the premise of vilifying her, and her whole "Cat Rescue" zoo couldn't exist without the likes of him. They both denounce each-other but depend on each-other. Though I suppose Kayfabe would maybe imply some mutual understanding of this interdependence and some agreed-upon boundaries.
- rikthevik 7y agoSort of like Batman and the Joker?
- kadal 7y ago"you won't kill me out of some misguided sense of self righteousness and I won't kill you because you're just too much fun" I had the same thought
- machinelearning 7y agoLol I think its a case study in Kayfabe, especially the part where Joe Exotic ironically went off-script and orchestrated a shoot. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_(professional_wrestling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_(professional_wrestling) A "shoot" is when the agreed-upon boundaries are broken and a "worked shoot" is one where they are "broken" but actually planned E.g. when Joe's barn burned down. Classic.
- allemagne 7y agoKayfabe is also apparently a convenient method for sidestepping an entire discipline for ideological purposes. >Perhaps confusing battles between "quantum" and "classical" physicists could be best understood as happening within a single "orthodox promotion" given that both groups suffered no injury from failing (equally) to develop a unified theory of gravity.
- whytaka 7y agoOther than the obvious application to the Democrat/Republican rivalry puppeteered by corporatists, the other application that came to mind is Youtube celebritydom.
- ljw1001 7y agoPretty sure this is the least likely concept to improve anyone's cognitive toolkit on the entire list. Its presence almost seems like an inside joke.
- gHosts 7y agoI'm astonished that a search of the comments here produces no hits for that master of modern Kayfabe... Trump.
- danieltrembath 7y agoOr that the article author is Managing Director of Thiel Capital. I'll grant this is getting into Ad hominem territory, but I point it out because an 'it's all just a performance' viewpoint seems kind of worrying when you wield signifiant influence.
- tomhoward 7y agoWeinstein is very publicly in opposition to Thiel over the suitability of Trump for the presidency, but the fact that they both think about a concept like kayfaybe and its influence on serious public affairs, indicates something interesting about how they think about the forces at play in the world.
- tomhoward 7y agoDiscussions about contemporary politics tend not to go well on forums like this, but in the author's appearance on Rogan a few days ago, he specifically discusses this concept with reference to Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA&feature=youtu.be&t=4320 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA&feature=youtu.be... This is the part where he introduces the concept of kayfabe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA&feature=youtu.be&t=3668 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA&feature=youtu.be...
- block_dagger 7y agoThe Elephant in the Brain is a good read that generally supports this article.
- qnsi 7y agodoes it really? I am in the middle of reading it The Elephant in the Brain and I agree with the parts I read. I strongly disagree with Weinstein and think he's spreading conspiracy theories
- motohagiography 7y agoThe writer was a guest on Rogan this weekend, and he was very engaging, he did wander a bit. He has a particular kind of breadth-first associative intelligence that can cause listeners to become almost hypnotized by all the open cognitive loops his conversation creates, not unlike the kayfabe concept he's touting. Similar things come up in the theory of musical composition where you create and resolve "tension," and you can drive the listeners perceptions by loading them up with mental anchors to notes and then resolving them all at once. If you learn to play any Bach, you can begin to see and articulate how he discovered it. Eric Weinsteins example of pro wrestling is identifying where it appears in narrative, but there are analogous concepts in areas like so-called, "neuro linguistic programming," where ideas are "stacked," and then collapsed into a conclusion. I only know about that part of it because I have some very diverse and interesting friends. As a writer, I use a similar technique all the time, but in smaller more digestible loops, and only rarely with enough to take the reader into that kind of "hall of mirrors," effect great fiction writers use, where each new sentence introduces plot elements that cascade back through the story and closes loops on ideas you have already set up. Mystery novels are a the most simple example of it, where at the end _it all falls into place_. Great auteur films like 13 Conversations About One Thing, and any Cohen Brother's pic uses a similar device. Anyway it's fun and addictive, and while I'm sure smarter people than me have a more coherent theory of it, I can see why this fellow thinks it's important. When you think about it, how our mind works is fundamentally the only actual problem. Everything else is just an artifact of it.
- xvector 7y agoParts of your comment aren't making much sense to me. Could you define the following terms? "breadth-first associative intelligence" "open cognitive loops"
- eindiran 7y agoNot OP but this is my reading: * "Breadth" as opposed to depth; in the sense of someone who knows a lot of relatively surface-level things across many areas, and can synthesize them. "Associative" in the way you're quickly associating concepts. In the same sense as "free association". * The loops are analogous to the notes mentioned in the OP that are resolved all at once. Imagine a chain of associated concepts revealed over a conversation, sometimes with gaps between, that all lead towards a larger synthetic point.
- scythe 7y ago>The decades old battle in theoretical physics over bragging rights between the "string" and "loop" camps would seem to be an even more significant example within the hard sciences of a collaborative intra-promotion rivalry given the apparent failure of both groups to produce a quantum theory of gravity. In string theory we quantize gravity by attaching voodoo parameters to particles, and manipulating those parameters so that they forbid the gravitational ultraviolet catastrophe. In LQG or NQFT we attach voodoo parameters to spacetime, forbidding tiny singularities. We can also attach voodoo parameters to gravity itself and get the theory of asymptotically safe gravity. I think that would be four theories. Anyone who finds better-justified voodoo parameters should be welcomed into the ring, but that is very difficult. Personally I find the voodoo parameters in NQFT to be the least weird, but Connes (a leading proponent) earned some raspberries for his oh-wait-I-didn't-mean-that revision of his prediction of the Higgs mass ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf ).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- softwaredoug 7y agoAI is a kind of kayfabe? - Marketing depts want to sell AI solutions as it’s higher perceived value - Execs/managers want to check an AI checkbox to show their using the latest tech - Practioners want to grow AI skills to find interesting opportunities and stand out from regular devs - Academia wants to talk up their AI solution to get more attention and funding (and find jobs!) - The media wants to write about robots taking over the world Whether or not there’s real value when any particular machine learning solution on any given domain problem is seen as less important than the signaling that we’re all using cutting edge tech. We all just participate in the mutual deception.
- baxtr 7y agoCould this not be summarized as “organized fake rivalries to create entertainment while the audience doesn’t care”. Thus, it’s not applicable to politics unless it’s organized. This is not an emergent system property, but must be designed and organized in order to happen.
- sigil 7y agoEric Weinstein is a delight to listen to: a polymath, a contrarian, a great interviewer, really gifted verbally. I'm a Portal subscriber and I've listened to his Rogan interviews all the way through. That said... I have the sinking feeling that you're right about the breadth-first thing, and it's about to become a bigger issue. Back in the 80s Weinstein was working on an alternative Grand Unified Theory. When his work was marginalized, he never really got over it, and he's now using his platform (an important platform for many other reasons!) to try and right that wrong. To that end, he just published a 2013 talk he gave at Oxford on this theory. [0] What he has not published in all these years, afaik, is an actual math paper describing his theory. This is the mark of a charlatan. I fear for Eric, and for all the other positive things springing up around The Portal, if it's discovered he lacks the depth and rigor we've all been assuming he has. In other words, he could turn out to be not just a "breadth-first associative thinker," but someone who lacks the self-awareness to know when he's out of his depth; a dangerous know-it-all. Eric if you're reading this: publish the paper the damn paper -- with the help of a mathematician or physicist if needed -- or drop it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg
- knzhou 7y agoPhD student in theoretical physics here. I will confirm: Weinstein is a charlatan, and all of us know it. As far as I can tell, the only people who believe in him are non-physicists who consume exclusively pop science. In other words, he's acting as the literal definition of a dishonest public intellectual. It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency and real expertise.
- crispyambulance 7y ago> It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency and real expertise. I agree, if by "verbal fluency" you mean stringing together heavyweight jargon and concepts like Eddy Van Halen doing a guitar riff. Even in a colloquium filled with subject matter experts that kind of pace is off-putting and raises red-flags instantly-- but this guy does it when communicating with the general public, fully knowing that people are going to be lost in a matter of seconds. ... so yeah, that and NO FREAKING PAPERS. It's a bit disconcerting for a theory that purports to unify relativity with quantum mechanics.
- cairo_x 7y ago> a world in which investigative journalism seems to have vanished and bitter corporate rivals cooperate on everything from joint ventures to lobbying efforts Says the man behind Thiel capital.
- cairo_x 6y agoAwww. Thiel-bots not happy? Bah! Your daddy is a creep. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/clearview-ai-facial-recognition-alt-right_n_5e7d028bc5b6cb08a92a5c48?ri18n=true https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/clearview-ai-facial-...
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- TheDesolate0 7y agoRTFM
- whodidntante 7y ago"The falseness of a judgement is not necessarily an objection to a judgment: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements (to which synthetic judgments a priori belong ) are the most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live - that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself , by that act alone, beyond good and evil." Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Society is based on shared concepts/stories, the effectiveness of that society is based on the value of these shared concepts, not their truth/untruth. On a small scale: Washington and the cherry tree Daily conversation (How are you ? Good !) Santa Claus Public persona of hollywood stars, entertainers, politicians, etc. etc On a large scale: Freedom/Democracy Capitalism/Socialism Religion
- ajuc 7y agoLess cool word for it: conspiracy. I guess it's a particular kind of conspiracy, so maybe it's useful to have a word for that? But I don't think it describes the political scene well. Politicians from opposite parties aren't rehearsing debates with their opponents and choosing who wins before the debate starts. There's some level of "cover your ass" and "don't annoy too many people" that makes accountability almost impossible, but kayfabe isn't the right analogy IMHO. It's not intentional cooperative theatrical performances, it's just an effect of incentives being what they are.
- User23 7y agoI had a similar experience when I read Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. It's one of those concepts that is obvious in retrospect, but really helps clarify understanding. His conceptual framework of bullshit as communication that is intended to persuade with no regard either way for truth has certainly helped me read this article.