This is the clearest description of this model of social reality that I’ve seen – I found the metaphors easy to work with, and appreciated the degree of ways it built on itself.
It’s making me think about a few other fake frameworks and how they fit together.
The first half of this post reminded me a lot of Melting Asphalt’s Personhood essay. The shared concept is having a interface that makes it easier to plug into a social network. But the scene metaphor was a helpful lens that oriented my thinking slightly differently (and in particular, instead of thinking in terms of “everyone uses the same interfaces so that they tile easily”, there are multiple roles which can fit together depending on context).
I’m also interested in how this fits (or doesn’t) with the Elephant / Rider metaphor [aka Barrel of Monkeys + Wrangle or Monkeys + Voicebox or whatever]. The Player vs Character model is interesting in that… I think the Character is the one whose more of the PR Agent, which I normally associate with the ‘Rider’ and conscious thought.
I don’t think the mapping quite makes sense, but insofar as Player == Elephant, this is a framing wherein it makes more sense to me to “identify with” the Elephant.
I will note that the metaphor I found least intuitive was calling the network “Omega” – I’d personally have named the post “The Improv Scene Model of Social Reality” or something, rather than focusing on that. But YMMV.
I do think having a unique name for this post to make it easier to refer to (without concept clashing with similarly-named posts) would be handy.
That makes sense. I do want to reference this as akin to Omega from Newcomb’s Problem, though. That’ll become very, very relevant in a future post. But from where you’re standing, I think what you’re saying makes a lot of sense.
Might I propose renaming the post The Social Improv Web? Like Raemon, I think that “Real World Omega”, while being an important component of what you’re saying here, is less likely to act as a sticky handle for this post.
Perhaps leave the old title in a parenthetical for continuity’s sake: The Social Improv Web (aka “Real World Omega”).
I worry that “The Social Improv Web” creates a different wrong impression though.
Also, none of these are names I natively use for it, but I’ve started to refer to the emergent distributed intelligence sometimes as “Omega”, which totally matches stuff about Newcomblike problems that I’ll be talking about later. (The mythic mode name I use for it is “Fate”… but I don’t want to embed mythic mode in the way we talk about the framework here. I’d rather keep in mind that mythic mode is one possible implementation.)
I think I, personally, will close to never remember to call it “the social improv web”.
So… I’m not yet persuaded.
But I like the thing you’re trying to address, and the effort you put into it.
After reading your Mythic Mode post, and before seeing this comment, I was trying to think of a possible mythic mode name for this other than Omega. Hermaeus Mora, a Lovecraftian-like being from the Elder Scrolls video game series, overpowers any other ideas in my head:
Hermaeus Mora, also known as Hoermius, Hormaius, Hermorah, Herma Mora, and The Woodland Man is the Daedric Prince of knowledge and memory; his sphere is the scrying of the tides of Fate, of the past and future as read in the stars and heavens. He is not known for being good or evil; he seems to be the keeper of both helpful and destructive knowledge
He/it also looks like a bunch of tentacles, which is sort of web like.
I don’t think this is remotely a name that could spread, but when I recalled that I thought of him as Herman when I played the game, I became very amused at the idea of calling “The Intelligent Social Web” by the name Herman.
It does not! We were smart and clever and the english-looking part of the link is basically irrelevant – all the work is being done by the hash part of the url.
Agreed. “Omega” already refers to too many other things in our discourse. I almost didn’t open this post because I thought it would be about decision theory/ Newcomb. One reason Moloch works is that’s it’s an old reference that wasn’t currently being used to describe a hundred other things.
In keeping with the theme, how about calling the social network something like Hestia, Vesta, or Eunomia. You can write a post personifying it in a poetic and mythic way. Omega can be her son with Hephaestus, if you like.
If you wait too long to change it, it’s going to stay Omega by default, and I think that would be a BAD thing.
For what it’s worth, the mythic mode name I usually give the social web is “Fate”, and the mythic name I give scripts played out in the web is “fates”. As in, “It’s his fate to be poor, so Fate will see to it that his business does not succeed.”
Val did mention he planned to tie it more explicitly in with Omega and decision theory later in the series, so I don’t think this particular approach would make sense.
This is the clearest description of this model of social reality that I’ve seen – I found the metaphors easy to work with, and appreciated the degree of ways it built on itself.
It’s making me think about a few other fake frameworks and how they fit together.
The first half of this post reminded me a lot of Melting Asphalt’s Personhood essay. The shared concept is having a interface that makes it easier to plug into a social network. But the scene metaphor was a helpful lens that oriented my thinking slightly differently (and in particular, instead of thinking in terms of “everyone uses the same interfaces so that they tile easily”, there are multiple roles which can fit together depending on context).
I’m also interested in how this fits (or doesn’t) with the Elephant / Rider metaphor [aka Barrel of Monkeys + Wrangle or Monkeys + Voicebox or whatever]. The Player vs Character model is interesting in that… I think the Character is the one whose more of the PR Agent, which I normally associate with the ‘Rider’ and conscious thought.
I don’t think the mapping quite makes sense, but insofar as Player == Elephant, this is a framing wherein it makes more sense to me to “identify with” the Elephant.
I will note that the metaphor I found least intuitive was calling the network “Omega” – I’d personally have named the post “The Improv Scene Model of Social Reality” or something, rather than focusing on that. But YMMV.
I do think having a unique name for this post to make it easier to refer to (without concept clashing with similarly-named posts) would be handy.
That makes sense. I do want to reference this as akin to Omega from Newcomb’s Problem, though. That’ll become very, very relevant in a future post. But from where you’re standing, I think what you’re saying makes a lot of sense.
Might I propose renaming the post The Social Improv Web? Like Raemon, I think that “Real World Omega”, while being an important component of what you’re saying here, is less likely to act as a sticky handle for this post.
Perhaps leave the old title in a parenthetical for continuity’s sake: The Social Improv Web (aka “Real World Omega”).
(I have written on naming concepts to reduce incidents of people thinking they understand terms they haven’t even heard before)
I strongly support renaming the post into something like “The Social Improv Web”.
Mmm… strong mixed feelings.
I agree about the general point about naming.
I worry that “The Social Improv Web” creates a different wrong impression though.
Also, none of these are names I natively use for it, but I’ve started to refer to the emergent distributed intelligence sometimes as “Omega”, which totally matches stuff about Newcomblike problems that I’ll be talking about later. (The mythic mode name I use for it is “Fate”… but I don’t want to embed mythic mode in the way we talk about the framework here. I’d rather keep in mind that mythic mode is one possible implementation.)
I think I, personally, will close to never remember to call it “the social improv web”.
So… I’m not yet persuaded.
But I like the thing you’re trying to address, and the effort you put into it.
I do get the concern you have here, although I at least worth checking if something like “Omega, the Social Web” or some such permutation works.
After reading your Mythic Mode post, and before seeing this comment, I was trying to think of a possible mythic mode name for this other than Omega. Hermaeus Mora, a Lovecraftian-like being from the Elder Scrolls video game series, overpowers any other ideas in my head:
He/it also looks like a bunch of tentacles, which is sort of web like.
I don’t think this is remotely a name that could spread, but when I recalled that I thought of him as Herman when I played the game, I became very amused at the idea of calling “The Intelligent Social Web” by the name Herman.
I don’t like the name “Social Improv Web” for this thing in particular.
The handles I’m mostly taking away from this article are “roles” and “the web.”
So my suggested names would be “Your Role in the Web” or “The Web”
[lol “Web” stopped looking like a word to me]
Okay, persuaded. How’s this?
(Unfortunately, this breaks links to this post…)
It does not! We were smart and clever and the english-looking part of the link is basically irrelevant – all the work is being done by the hash part of the url.
See also:
https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/AqbWna2S85pFTsHH4/the-intelligent-blargity-blarg-wahooo-wahooooo------smile-syntax-social-web#mY64qZqoEJXzwCTFK
Woohoo! I am pleased to be wrong here!
Agreed. “Omega” already refers to too many other things in our discourse. I almost didn’t open this post because I thought it would be about decision theory/ Newcomb. One reason Moloch works is that’s it’s an old reference that wasn’t currently being used to describe a hundred other things.
In keeping with the theme, how about calling the social network something like Hestia, Vesta, or Eunomia. You can write a post personifying it in a poetic and mythic way. Omega can be her son with Hephaestus, if you like.
If you wait too long to change it, it’s going to stay Omega by default, and I think that would be a BAD thing.
For what it’s worth, the mythic mode name I usually give the social web is “Fate”, and the mythic name I give scripts played out in the web is “fates”. As in, “It’s his fate to be poor, so Fate will see to it that his business does not succeed.”
Val did mention he planned to tie it more explicitly in with Omega and decision theory later in the series, so I don’t think this particular approach would make sense.