I’m not sure why adjacency has to be “proper”; I’m just talking about social networks, where people can be part of multiple groups and transmit ideas and opinions between them.
I approximately mean something as follows:
Take the vector-value model I described previously. Consider some distance metric (such as the L2 norm), D(a, b) where a and b are humans/points in value-space (or mind-space, where a mind can “reject” an idea by having it be insufficiently compatible). Let k be some threshold for communicability of a particular idea. Assume once an idea is communicated, it is communicated in full-fidelity (you can replace this with a probabilistic or imperfect communication model, but it’s not necessary to illustrate my point). If you create the graph amongst all humans in value-space, where an edge exists between a and b iff D(a,b) < k, it’s not clear to me that this graph is connected, or even has many edges at all. If this is true for a particular idea/k pair, then the idea is unlikely to undergo information cascade, because additional effort is needed in many locations to cross the inferential gap.
As you say, the ability to coordinate large-scale action by decree requires a high place in a hierarchy. With the internet, though, it doesn’t take authority just to spread an idea, as long it’s one that people find valuable or otherwise really like.
Somewhat related, somewhat tangential, I think the internet itself is organized hierarchically as nested “echo-chambers” or something similar where the smallest echo chambers are what we currently call echo-chambers. This means you can translate any idea/concept as existing somewhere on the hierarchy of internet communities, and only ideas high on the hierarchy can effectively spread messages/information cascades widely.
Is there anywhere you can concretely point to in my model(s) you would disagree with?
if there’s anyone in this community who recognizes the potential of facilitating communication.
I agree this is (potentially) high leverage. My strategy has general been that expressing ideas with greater precision more greatly aids communication. An arbitrary conversation is unlikely to transmit the full precision of your idea, but it becomes less likely that you transmit something you don’t mean and that makes a huge difference. The domain of politics seems mostly littered with extremely low precision communication, and in particular, often deceptively precise communication, wherein wording is chosen between two concepts to allow any error correction of behalf of a listener to be in favor of the communicator. Is there any reason why you want to specifically target politics instead of generally trying to make the human race more sane, such as what Yudkowsky did with the sequences?
I approximately mean something as follows:
Take the vector-value model I described previously. Consider some distance metric (such as the L2 norm), D(a, b) where a and b are humans/points in value-space (or mind-space, where a mind can “reject” an idea by having it be insufficiently compatible). Let k be some threshold for communicability of a particular idea. Assume once an idea is communicated, it is communicated in full-fidelity (you can replace this with a probabilistic or imperfect communication model, but it’s not necessary to illustrate my point). If you create the graph amongst all humans in value-space, where an edge exists between a and b iff D(a,b) < k, it’s not clear to me that this graph is connected, or even has many edges at all. If this is true for a particular idea/k pair, then the idea is unlikely to undergo information cascade, because additional effort is needed in many locations to cross the inferential gap.
Somewhat related, somewhat tangential, I think the internet itself is organized hierarchically as nested “echo-chambers” or something similar where the smallest echo chambers are what we currently call echo-chambers. This means you can translate any idea/concept as existing somewhere on the hierarchy of internet communities, and only ideas high on the hierarchy can effectively spread messages/information cascades widely.
Is there anywhere you can concretely point to in my model(s) you would disagree with?
I agree this is (potentially) high leverage. My strategy has general been that expressing ideas with greater precision more greatly aids communication. An arbitrary conversation is unlikely to transmit the full precision of your idea, but it becomes less likely that you transmit something you don’t mean and that makes a huge difference. The domain of politics seems mostly littered with extremely low precision communication, and in particular, often deceptively precise communication, wherein wording is chosen between two concepts to allow any error correction of behalf of a listener to be in favor of the communicator. Is there any reason why you want to specifically target politics instead of generally trying to make the human race more sane, such as what Yudkowsky did with the sequences?