7 ms·

Each community decides what is "fair" in that community. Each community "represents" a slice of people. People leave communities that don't seem fair to them,

Each community decides what is "fair" in that community. Each community "represents" a slice of people. People leave communities that don't seem fair to them, that don't make them feel represented. TL;DR: Tribal people have mores. That's how tribes, people, and mores work.

beardedetim 5y ago
yes yes yes! It sucks that our Tribe can't be 7 billion people. It really does. But we should see it as a positive and a war of _benefit_ instead of a war of _ideas_. What _benefit_ does believing in QAnon offer? What _benefit_ does being apart of Group A have over Group B? Each community is responsible for its own truths and policing them how they see fit. We should be arguing over how to make our _benefits_ better than theirs, not trying to force our ideologies onto them.
- VikingCoder 5y ago
  Yes, I agree, but... When that tribe has externalities to their behavior that harm members of my tribe, is when it gets rough. (I want you to stop putting mercury in my drinking water, endangering my drinking water with your oil pipeline, I want you to wear a mask to reduce my chance of infection, etc etc etc.)
  - beardedetim 5y ago
    100% agree. There is conflict between tribes and that something that I am not clear on how to fix as nothing other than violence seems to help ensure _my_ tribe doesn't get killed off. In my perfect world, it is Mutually Assured Destruction between tribes that keeps us not putting mercury in any drinking water outside our own, etc. I know that isn't going to work but that is the most _fair_ to me.
    - VikingCoder 5y ago
      "Fair" to me is, we vote on representatives who enact regulations based on scientific evidence interpreted by experts. That's my hot take.
    - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
      My experience is new problems which look a lot like old problems are fairly common. And, in most cases, the solution to the new problem often ends up looking a lot like the solution to the old problem. Our current best-worst solution to tribalism has been a small number of sovereign nations with large populations and democratically elected governments. Everyone admits the emergent qualities are suboptimal but they are still better than all the other options we've tried so far, as the saying goes. The solution to online tribalism is likely to look very similar. Considering that the externalities of these internet-based tribes cross over into the physical world (such as the drinking water/oil pipeline examples above), I suspect this leads to a likely future where internet tribal communities end up overlapping with traditional national boundaries (eg, China's great firewall). To be clear, this isn't the future I want but it's starting to seem like the most likely outcome. I admit my past optimism for a truly "open" internet is being tested these days. I don't want a closed internet anymore than I used to - but it might simply be the only practical option if society wants to continue functioning.
  - mrjangles 5y ago
    Reading this, what is very striking is how very different the two tribes are on a fundamental level. One tribe has a list of things they are demanding the other tribe do. The other tribe just wants to be left alone.
    - thomastjeffery 5y ago
      No tribe wants to be left alone. Sure, one tribe wants to live free of societal consequences, but they still want to participate in society. Else every serious libertarian would actually go live alone and grow their own food. That doesn't happen. In reality, they go buy groceries alongside everyone else.
      - mrjangles 5y ago
        I've never seen a libertarian go to the grocer and demand that he be given food for free.
        thomastjeffery 5y ago
        I never said for free. They pay with money like everyone else. The consequences I was referring to are things like spreading COVID-19 because they are careless about it, etc.
- freeflight 5y ago
  > It sucks that our Tribe can't be 7 billion people. We've barely gotten to a stage where that is even considered a viable and realistic idea, just because it's not instantly a smashing success does not translate to an ultimate failure. Particularly as many such big ideas had to go trough their "growing pains" before ultimately working out.
  - beardedetim 5y ago
    I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. I like Dunbar's number [1] as a rough guess but am more than happy to raise it to something like 100k if one were able to be convincing. But I do not see any path forward where we can get buy-in from 300 million people let alone 7 billion. If we were to have a Tribe of 7 billion people, we would need to come up with "facts" that can be agreed upon by 7 billion people. We cannot get 7 billion people to agree that the earth is not flat. I don't have any hopes that we can get 7 billion people to agree on human rights or other things that can be described as "us vs them". This may be my anarchist/extreme leftist ideologies that I personally hold bleeding into what I think is possible/should be done. I have a very hard time separating those feelings from "facts" and I think that makes this point even more clear! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
    - freeflight 5y ago
      > I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. That goes contrary to my personal experience with a www that wasn't mainstream yet, but most certainly already had larger groups of people. As tired and lame as it might sound, imho the biggest culprit is social media and what kind incentives it has set. Social media does not thrive on facts and information, it thrives on emotions, but dry boring non-sensational headlines and information don't make people emotional. What makes people emotional, and interact with your platform, are the crass headlines and claims, the dramatic stuff. So that's what gets pushed to people, and they react accordingly by liking it, and at that point it's already a self-reinforcing loop with increasingly more sensationalist and crass claims that constantly need to top each other to stay relevant. It also directly affects what kind of content people contribute and most importantly how they do it; All the big "influencers" spend quite some time and effort in optimizing their content for that extra reach, along with that come certain behavior routines to sell the content, which then get normalized. And because traditional media struggles to keep up with that, and stay relevant, they also get colored by this, not only by having made social media their new source of reporting, but also by making their own reporting more in line with these trends. Too many just chasing the dopamine kicks from the "likes" and "karma", it feels like mass-hysteria that's steadily increasing in intensity.

beardedetim 5y ago

yes yes yes! It sucks that our Tribe can't be 7 billion people. It really does. But we should see it as a positive and a war of _benefit_ instead of a war of _ideas_. What _benefit_ does believing in QAnon offer? What _benefit_ does being apart of Group A have over Group B? Each community is responsible for its own truths and policing them how they see fit. We should be arguing over how to make our _benefits_ better than theirs, not trying to force our ideologies onto them.

VikingCoder 5y ago
Yes, I agree, but... When that tribe has externalities to their behavior that harm members of my tribe, is when it gets rough. (I want you to stop putting mercury in my drinking water, endangering my drinking water with your oil pipeline, I want you to wear a mask to reduce my chance of infection, etc etc etc.)
- beardedetim 5y ago
  100% agree. There is conflict between tribes and that something that I am not clear on how to fix as nothing other than violence seems to help ensure _my_ tribe doesn't get killed off. In my perfect world, it is Mutually Assured Destruction between tribes that keeps us not putting mercury in any drinking water outside our own, etc. I know that isn't going to work but that is the most _fair_ to me.
  - VikingCoder 5y ago
    "Fair" to me is, we vote on representatives who enact regulations based on scientific evidence interpreted by experts. That's my hot take.
  - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
    My experience is new problems which look a lot like old problems are fairly common. And, in most cases, the solution to the new problem often ends up looking a lot like the solution to the old problem. Our current best-worst solution to tribalism has been a small number of sovereign nations with large populations and democratically elected governments. Everyone admits the emergent qualities are suboptimal but they are still better than all the other options we've tried so far, as the saying goes. The solution to online tribalism is likely to look very similar. Considering that the externalities of these internet-based tribes cross over into the physical world (such as the drinking water/oil pipeline examples above), I suspect this leads to a likely future where internet tribal communities end up overlapping with traditional national boundaries (eg, China's great firewall). To be clear, this isn't the future I want but it's starting to seem like the most likely outcome. I admit my past optimism for a truly "open" internet is being tested these days. I don't want a closed internet anymore than I used to - but it might simply be the only practical option if society wants to continue functioning.
- mrjangles 5y ago
  Reading this, what is very striking is how very different the two tribes are on a fundamental level. One tribe has a list of things they are demanding the other tribe do. The other tribe just wants to be left alone.
  - thomastjeffery 5y ago
    No tribe wants to be left alone. Sure, one tribe wants to live free of societal consequences, but they still want to participate in society. Else every serious libertarian would actually go live alone and grow their own food. That doesn't happen. In reality, they go buy groceries alongside everyone else.
    - mrjangles 5y ago
      I've never seen a libertarian go to the grocer and demand that he be given food for free.
      - thomastjeffery 5y ago
        I never said for free. They pay with money like everyone else. The consequences I was referring to are things like spreading COVID-19 because they are careless about it, etc.
freeflight 5y ago
> It sucks that our Tribe can't be 7 billion people. We've barely gotten to a stage where that is even considered a viable and realistic idea, just because it's not instantly a smashing success does not translate to an ultimate failure. Particularly as many such big ideas had to go trough their "growing pains" before ultimately working out.
- beardedetim 5y ago
  I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. I like Dunbar's number [1] as a rough guess but am more than happy to raise it to something like 100k if one were able to be convincing. But I do not see any path forward where we can get buy-in from 300 million people let alone 7 billion. If we were to have a Tribe of 7 billion people, we would need to come up with "facts" that can be agreed upon by 7 billion people. We cannot get 7 billion people to agree that the earth is not flat. I don't have any hopes that we can get 7 billion people to agree on human rights or other things that can be described as "us vs them". This may be my anarchist/extreme leftist ideologies that I personally hold bleeding into what I think is possible/should be done. I have a very hard time separating those feelings from "facts" and I think that makes this point even more clear! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
  - freeflight 5y ago
    > I don't have any data to back this up but my overall feeling/ideology is that we can't have groups larger than some number. That goes contrary to my personal experience with a www that wasn't mainstream yet, but most certainly already had larger groups of people. As tired and lame as it might sound, imho the biggest culprit is social media and what kind incentives it has set. Social media does not thrive on facts and information, it thrives on emotions, but dry boring non-sensational headlines and information don't make people emotional. What makes people emotional, and interact with your platform, are the crass headlines and claims, the dramatic stuff. So that's what gets pushed to people, and they react accordingly by liking it, and at that point it's already a self-reinforcing loop with increasingly more sensationalist and crass claims that constantly need to top each other to stay relevant. It also directly affects what kind of content people contribute and most importantly how they do it; All the big "influencers" spend quite some time and effort in optimizing their content for that extra reach, along with that come certain behavior routines to sell the content, which then get normalized. And because traditional media struggles to keep up with that, and stay relevant, they also get colored by this, not only by having made social media their new source of reporting, but also by making their own reporting more in line with these trends. Too many just chasing the dopamine kicks from the "likes" and "karma", it feels like mass-hysteria that's steadily increasing in intensity.