The world is complex and high dimensional. Even so, it sometimes helps to try to identify key axes of variation and their key correlates. This is harder when one cannot precisely define an axis, but merely gesture toward its correlates. Even so, that’s what I’m going to try to do in this post, regarding a key kind of difference in talk. Here are seven axes of talk:
Humans have been domesticated to support organizations. Modern organizations in western civilization no longer value human reproduction.The conundrum of human behavior not maximizing reproduction might be solved by considering human organizations. During prehistoric times, the primary human organization was the village or tribe. Each village or tribe needed to maximize reproduction in order not to be conquered by the tribe next door. Throughout most of the history of civilization, the major political and religious organizations needed to maximize human reproduction to maximize economic output and provide soldiers to prevent being conquered (or to conquer) the political or religious organization next door. The organizational goals aligned with the Darwinian goal of reproduction. Meanwhile, these organizations were also putting selective pressure on humans to evolve into organisms that better support the organization. This means humans that are obedient to the organization. So we now have humans that have been domesticated by organizations to expend energy and resources to support the organization. Similar to how we now have domesticated cattle that put more energy into producing milk and beef than reproducing. More recently, many human organizations in western civilization have begun ignoring the potential future impacts on the organization of a population that does not reproduce. They favor short-term gains to the organization, regardless of any impact on human reproduction. The reduction in reproduction is being partially offset by recruiting new organization members from outside western civilization. This might not be sustainable, and could present some significant long-term dangers to the survival of these organizations. It seems likely that the future will be dominated by some combination of:1. Transplanted organizations from outside western civilization that encourage human reproduction.2. New organizations that encourage human reproduction.3. Currently existing organizations that have realigned their goals to encourage human reproduction.Those organization currently ignoring or discouraging human reproduction seem likely to go extinct.
"Yet there are very few collected works of the best sales patter ever. Op-eds are a form of sales talk, as is romantic seduction talk, but we don’t try to save the best of those."
I wonder if you might consider the PUA community to be an attempt to formalize & document "best practices" of a kind of sales talk.
Such talk is the most easily painted as failing to motivate, and being inhuman, the result of our having been turned into mindless robots by mean capitalists or some other evil force.
I would not say this about "practical talk". When my more physics-educated friends debated the viability of the recent spin launch thing, there wass enthusiasm and passion behind it. It was highly technical and I couldn't grasp most of it, because I lacked the expertise. But it was obviously human.If I read a technical manual and I'm in the process of building something with it, it becomes highly meaningful and interesting to me.Read a manual on how to do a Covid self test recently and it was hilarious (because it referred to physical parts not there, misnumbered instructions and had repeated words).
I think the "mean calitalist"/"evil force" vibe fits to vague corporate mission statements and from CSR-talk. I think op-eds that skim over obvious counterarguments also feel evil and soulless to me. Or where obvious things are left unsaid to manufacture a fake context.
Regarding our different descendants - a simple model of ecosystems is that they contain organisms on a range of sizes. Large organisms have one set of reproductive goals. However these are surrounded by many smaller creatures that attempt to manipulate the larger creatures in service of their own reproductive goals. For example, foods try to manipulate us into spreading their seeds around. Our gut flora would like it if we went to the bathroom every 5 minutes. Pathogens like it when we cough and sneeze. There are also cultural symbionts - based on memes, not DNA - which would prefer us to spend our time teaching and proselytizing. Large organisms make use of these more numerous smaller organisms to help them adapt to the world. Find a new foodstuff? Get some more gut bacteria that know how to digest it - with no host DNA changes needed. However, in these associations the smaller symbionts often get to influence the goals of their larger hosts. In the modern world, we see small cultural symbionts running rings around their much larger hosts. Lots of reproductive resources are being diverted away from human nuclear gene reproduction into meme reproduction - to the extent that host populations could potentially crash. It seems quite plausible that large creatures will remain exploited by smaller symbionts - as part of the bargains and compromises that these creatures make with one another. The hosts have defenses to try and preserve their goals - but the smaller creatures tend to evolve quickly around such defenses.
This reminded me of the anecdote in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" in which he was seated next to a Swedish royal at a Nobel dinner. On learning that he was a physicist, the royal replied dismissively that no one knows anything about physics. Feynman responded to the effect that the reason people have trouble talking about physics is because we *do* know something about it. Which garnered a cold stare and an end to that conversation.
Humans have been domesticated to support organizations. Modern organizations in western civilization no longer value human reproduction.The conundrum of human behavior not maximizing reproduction might be solved by considering human organizations. During prehistoric times, the primary human organization was the village or tribe. Each village or tribe needed to maximize reproduction in order not to be conquered by the tribe next door. Throughout most of the history of civilization, the major political and religious organizations needed to maximize human reproduction to maximize economic output and provide soldiers to prevent being conquered (or to conquer) the political or religious organization next door. The organizational goals aligned with the Darwinian goal of reproduction. Meanwhile, these organizations were also putting selective pressure on humans to evolve into organisms that better support the organization. This means humans that are obedient to the organization. So we now have humans that have been domesticated by organizations to expend energy and resources to support the organization. Similar to how we now have domesticated cattle that put more energy into producing milk and beef than reproducing. More recently, many human organizations in western civilization have begun ignoring the potential future impacts on the organization of a population that does not reproduce. They favor short-term gains to the organization, regardless of any impact on human reproduction. The reduction in reproduction is being partially offset by recruiting new organization members from outside western civilization. This might not be sustainable, and could present some significant long-term dangers to the survival of these organizations. It seems likely that the future will be dominated by some combination of:1. Transplanted organizations from outside western civilization that encourage human reproduction.2. New organizations that encourage human reproduction.3. Currently existing organizations that have realigned their goals to encourage human reproduction.Those organization currently ignoring or discouraging human reproduction seem likely to go extinct.
Sure, not a crazy description.
"Yet there are very few collected works of the best sales patter ever. Op-eds are a form of sales talk, as is romantic seduction talk, but we don’t try to save the best of those."
I wonder if you might consider the PUA community to be an attempt to formalize & document "best practices" of a kind of sales talk.
I had in mind non-participants painting this talk this way. Participants of course find more meaning in it.
Such talk is the most easily painted as failing to motivate, and being inhuman, the result of our having been turned into mindless robots by mean capitalists or some other evil force.
I would not say this about "practical talk". When my more physics-educated friends debated the viability of the recent spin launch thing, there wass enthusiasm and passion behind it. It was highly technical and I couldn't grasp most of it, because I lacked the expertise. But it was obviously human.If I read a technical manual and I'm in the process of building something with it, it becomes highly meaningful and interesting to me.Read a manual on how to do a Covid self test recently and it was hilarious (because it referred to physical parts not there, misnumbered instructions and had repeated words).
I think the "mean calitalist"/"evil force" vibe fits to vague corporate mission statements and from CSR-talk. I think op-eds that skim over obvious counterarguments also feel evil and soulless to me. Or where obvious things are left unsaid to manufacture a fake context.
Regarding our different descendants - a simple model of ecosystems is that they contain organisms on a range of sizes. Large organisms have one set of reproductive goals. However these are surrounded by many smaller creatures that attempt to manipulate the larger creatures in service of their own reproductive goals. For example, foods try to manipulate us into spreading their seeds around. Our gut flora would like it if we went to the bathroom every 5 minutes. Pathogens like it when we cough and sneeze. There are also cultural symbionts - based on memes, not DNA - which would prefer us to spend our time teaching and proselytizing. Large organisms make use of these more numerous smaller organisms to help them adapt to the world. Find a new foodstuff? Get some more gut bacteria that know how to digest it - with no host DNA changes needed. However, in these associations the smaller symbionts often get to influence the goals of their larger hosts. In the modern world, we see small cultural symbionts running rings around their much larger hosts. Lots of reproductive resources are being diverted away from human nuclear gene reproduction into meme reproduction - to the extent that host populations could potentially crash. It seems quite plausible that large creatures will remain exploited by smaller symbionts - as part of the bargains and compromises that these creatures make with one another. The hosts have defenses to try and preserve their goals - but the smaller creatures tend to evolve quickly around such defenses.
This reminded me of the anecdote in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" in which he was seated next to a Swedish royal at a Nobel dinner. On learning that he was a physicist, the royal replied dismissively that no one knows anything about physics. Feynman responded to the effect that the reason people have trouble talking about physics is because we *do* know something about it. Which garnered a cold stare and an end to that conversation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...
very good. *neutral advice