Foragers distinguish between camp and the wild. In camp, things are safe and comfortable, and people should be pleasant. The wild, in contrast, is dangerous and uncontrolled. In camp, some of us must watch out for intrusions from wild, such as storms, wild animals, or hostile tribes.
For me, "going into the wild" evokes the arguments of psychedelic transhumanists.
I can relate to Nate F, having encouraged dissociation for the sake of uncovering novel ideas. That phase produced many beautiful ideas for start-ups, NPOS, and even a sort of Grand Unified Theory of economics as part of a solution to the Friendliness problem. Now, out of school, I work as a bartender, so as to re-learn what I'd forgotten, to do precisely as the OP suggests, and socialize some of these wild ideas. After about 3 years, I feel I've learned a lot about people (at least the drunks).
Neither embracing the wilderness nor camp has been effective at bridging the two. Yet, while I haven't yet shifted any paradigms, through both phases, I've grown personally .
Also, McRibs are delicious. They aren't digested too well though. Reminds me of the diverging concepts of memetics and "internet memes." Maybe, after we make in vitro meat viable, we can start growing ideas in a vat.
I do not think it is backwards at all. First, you fail to consider that it is expected of young people to be unreliable and novel and old people to be conventional and conservative. So, the social penalty for introducing novelties is likely significantly smaller if you are young.
Besides, "I imagine that young people who conform and signal reliability start families earlier" is irrelevant. What you should look for are fertility rates, not family formation. And I am quite certain that social deviants (especially if their deviation is from norms about what is and is not criminal behaviour) have higher fertility than law-abiding, hard-working,out-of-college kids.
This seems backwards. Seems that young people, who have no resources and must depend upon others to get a job etc., benefit most from signalling reliability and conformity. As you become older and more established and are regarded as more trustworthy, you can go against the flow while still be taken seriously.And as for fitness, I imagine that young people who conform and signal reliability start families earlier. I could be wrong, but I definitely don't think it's obvious that being unconventional when young is a fitness advantage.Maybe I'd buy that against the flow young and reliability+conformity old was an optimal strategy in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, but not now.
Today, living always in 'far' feels unbearably lonely, and yet it has been my path for the past nine years. People I knew still wait for me to return to the old path of the 'near' but the near did not contribute to my survival, or the survival of any one else for that matter.
This is well put. I consider myself an "explorer" in these exact terms. And I realize that self-identifying myself in that way automatically makes me 80% likely to be mentally ill.
But I really have done some significant exploration over the past 7-8 years (I am 28 now) forgoing personal social interaction (I feel very little need for it, though I love engaging with strangers) in order to spend my time inserting the best scientific research into my mind so that the various ideas can mate. Now that I have some genuinely new information, I am actively trying to find a way to present it in a way that will be accepted and utilized in advantageous ways. My greatest fear is that it will be perverted into a tool for control, marketing or just be outright rejected. The "taming" analogy fits perfectly.
Daniel Dennett has has much the same idea about 'wild ideas' - e.g. see his: "Domesticating the wild memes of religion". He talks about "meme domestication" rather than "idea taming". Dennett means 'wild' in the ecological sense.
Our double standards abound. Men love strip clubs -- even if just a rare, fun event. Yet they would be horrified if their daughter ever entertained such a job.
The internet has changed the filtering of "wild ideas" -- it will be fun to see watching the affect of the village fence collapsing and our herbicides failing.
Everything gets corrupted unless its faced by some verification function. In markets, its competition and preferences. In programming, its testing. In academic publishing, its peer-review (that is only a local maximum). Governments, people, institutions, companies all corrupt eventually. Its caused by entropy, and in humans it shows up as aging.
Companies like Apple act like startups. I remember that 1-2 engineers made the Safari browser for iPhone while on many other companies such tasks could be done by dozens. One of the reasons its a great company. Most companies etc. get all bureaucratic over time, including academia. Government is better example because it faces less competitive pressure.
And this is exactly why ideas like prediction markets are amazingly promising. They provide rather universal verification mechanism using combined signal processing capabilities of multiple humans without having to reduce the mechanism (which could be well impossible due to sheer amount of detail).
Well, what do you know, even on this blog I find posts I can agree with.
Basically, what we can infer is that an important component of the adoption of ideas is signalling. Young people feel less need to signal reliability and conformity and they also get an advantage (specifically fitness advantage, but certain social advantages ceteris paribus also) for going against the flow. As they get older, the payoff of being conventional rises but (more importantly) the risks of going against the flow become greater and the distribution of this type of outcomes heavily skews to the left.
Meanwhile, part of the reason why you are getting a lot of comments on posts about social issues and relatively less on posts about the future is because your ideas about the future are untamed (I'd say they are also incorrect but that is not relevant here) and most people who read this blog are old enough to be not that interested in them (even after the selection bias). The fact that young people are relatively uninterested in intellectual discourse and generally do not read non-entertainment blogs skews your comment distribution (or at least that is my opinion; obviously I have not bothered with analysing data).
For me, "going into the wild" evokes the arguments of psychedelic transhumanists.
I can relate to Nate F, having encouraged dissociation for the sake of uncovering novel ideas. That phase produced many beautiful ideas for start-ups, NPOS, and even a sort of Grand Unified Theory of economics as part of a solution to the Friendliness problem. Now, out of school, I work as a bartender, so as to re-learn what I'd forgotten, to do precisely as the OP suggests, and socialize some of these wild ideas. After about 3 years, I feel I've learned a lot about people (at least the drunks).
Neither embracing the wilderness nor camp has been effective at bridging the two. Yet, while I haven't yet shifted any paradigms, through both phases, I've grown personally .
Also, McRibs are delicious. They aren't digested too well though. Reminds me of the diverging concepts of memetics and "internet memes." Maybe, after we make in vitro meat viable, we can start growing ideas in a vat.
I do not think it is backwards at all. First, you fail to consider that it is expected of young people to be unreliable and novel and old people to be conventional and conservative. So, the social penalty for introducing novelties is likely significantly smaller if you are young.
Besides, "I imagine that young people who conform and signal reliability start families earlier" is irrelevant. What you should look for are fertility rates, not family formation. And I am quite certain that social deviants (especially if their deviation is from norms about what is and is not criminal behaviour) have higher fertility than law-abiding, hard-working,out-of-college kids.
This seems backwards. Seems that young people, who have no resources and must depend upon others to get a job etc., benefit most from signalling reliability and conformity. As you become older and more established and are regarded as more trustworthy, you can go against the flow while still be taken seriously.And as for fitness, I imagine that young people who conform and signal reliability start families earlier. I could be wrong, but I definitely don't think it's obvious that being unconventional when young is a fitness advantage.Maybe I'd buy that against the flow young and reliability+conformity old was an optimal strategy in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, but not now.
Today, living always in 'far' feels unbearably lonely, and yet it has been my path for the past nine years. People I knew still wait for me to return to the old path of the 'near' but the near did not contribute to my survival, or the survival of any one else for that matter.
This is well put. I consider myself an "explorer" in these exact terms. And I realize that self-identifying myself in that way automatically makes me 80% likely to be mentally ill.
But I really have done some significant exploration over the past 7-8 years (I am 28 now) forgoing personal social interaction (I feel very little need for it, though I love engaging with strangers) in order to spend my time inserting the best scientific research into my mind so that the various ideas can mate. Now that I have some genuinely new information, I am actively trying to find a way to present it in a way that will be accepted and utilized in advantageous ways. My greatest fear is that it will be perverted into a tool for control, marketing or just be outright rejected. The "taming" analogy fits perfectly.
If Humphrey Bogart recommends Chesterfield CigarettesFine by me
A good read to start the day!
Thanks Robin.
No, it doesn't mean proving an idea. It means higher status people have approved the idea.
Daniel Dennett has has much the same idea about 'wild ideas' - e.g. see his: "Domesticating the wild memes of religion". He talks about "meme domestication" rather than "idea taming". Dennett means 'wild' in the ecological sense.
Our double standards abound. Men love strip clubs -- even if just a rare, fun event. Yet they would be horrified if their daughter ever entertained such a job.
The internet has changed the filtering of "wild ideas" -- it will be fun to see watching the affect of the village fence collapsing and our herbicides failing.
Good post but I've something to add.
Everything gets corrupted unless its faced by some verification function. In markets, its competition and preferences. In programming, its testing. In academic publishing, its peer-review (that is only a local maximum). Governments, people, institutions, companies all corrupt eventually. Its caused by entropy, and in humans it shows up as aging.
Companies like Apple act like startups. I remember that 1-2 engineers made the Safari browser for iPhone while on many other companies such tasks could be done by dozens. One of the reasons its a great company. Most companies etc. get all bureaucratic over time, including academia. Government is better example because it faces less competitive pressure.
And this is exactly why ideas like prediction markets are amazingly promising. They provide rather universal verification mechanism using combined signal processing capabilities of multiple humans without having to reduce the mechanism (which could be well impossible due to sheer amount of detail).
Taming an idea means proving an idea, making it fit for mass appeal and consumption.
Unfortunately, today's collective taste has degenerated to the point where McRib is universally preferred over real pork.
He didn't mean that they are politically conservative.
How do you justify the claim that universities are conservative? Haven't they been the fortress of cultural radicals for about a century now?
Well, what do you know, even on this blog I find posts I can agree with.
Basically, what we can infer is that an important component of the adoption of ideas is signalling. Young people feel less need to signal reliability and conformity and they also get an advantage (specifically fitness advantage, but certain social advantages ceteris paribus also) for going against the flow. As they get older, the payoff of being conventional rises but (more importantly) the risks of going against the flow become greater and the distribution of this type of outcomes heavily skews to the left.
Meanwhile, part of the reason why you are getting a lot of comments on posts about social issues and relatively less on posts about the future is because your ideas about the future are untamed (I'd say they are also incorrect but that is not relevant here) and most people who read this blog are old enough to be not that interested in them (even after the selection bias). The fact that young people are relatively uninterested in intellectual discourse and generally do not read non-entertainment blogs skews your comment distribution (or at least that is my opinion; obviously I have not bothered with analysing data).