Sharing an idea that came to mind while reading it, low confidence.
Maybe “forming great cultures” is really just the upper tail of “forming cultures”—the more cultures we form, the more great cultures we get.
In this case the interesting thing is tracking how many cultures we form, and what factors control this rate.
I think over the timescales described, humans haven’t really gotten much more interesting to other humans. Humans are pretty great, hanging out together is (to many) more fun and exciting than hanging out alone.
A difference could be that the alternatives have been getting more and more interesting—wandering in the woods is pretty but also boring. Walking around town might be less boring. Reading a book less boring still. Listening to music is better for some. The internet has created a whole lot of less-boring activities. Somewhere in there we crossed a threshold for “forming cultures” becoming less and less interesting.
This is basically the idea “we form cultures when we get bored, and we’re less bored”.
But let’s say I personally find the idea of starting a culture exciting, does this still affect me?
I think ‘yes’, because the people I try to recruit for participating in my culture will also have to choose between joining me and the BATNA.
Things that would update me against this: models that show “starting a culture” continues to be exciting, models that show “hedonic setpoint” reasons for the ‘BATNA gets better’ idea to be broken, evidence that more cultures are being started now than ever before.
Of all the things here I think the idea I’m most interested in inspecting is “formation of great cultures tracks formation of cultures in general”.
In this case the interesting thing is tracking how many cultures we form, and what factors control this rate.
The “old web” vs. “new web” seems interesting along this dimension; quite possibly the thing that seemed different about the phpBB days compared to reddit/twitter/Facebook is that an independent forum felt like more its own culture than, say, a Facebook group or a subreddit. I have the vague impression that Discord servers are more “culture-like” than other modern options, but are considerably less durable and discoverable, which seems sad.
Sharing an idea that came to mind while reading it, low confidence.
Maybe “forming great cultures” is really just the upper tail of “forming cultures”—the more cultures we form, the more great cultures we get.
In this case the interesting thing is tracking how many cultures we form, and what factors control this rate.
I think over the timescales described, humans haven’t really gotten much more interesting to other humans. Humans are pretty great, hanging out together is (to many) more fun and exciting than hanging out alone.
A difference could be that the alternatives have been getting more and more interesting—wandering in the woods is pretty but also boring. Walking around town might be less boring. Reading a book less boring still. Listening to music is better for some. The internet has created a whole lot of less-boring activities. Somewhere in there we crossed a threshold for “forming cultures” becoming less and less interesting.
This is basically the idea “we form cultures when we get bored, and we’re less bored”.
But let’s say I personally find the idea of starting a culture exciting, does this still affect me?
I think ‘yes’, because the people I try to recruit for participating in my culture will also have to choose between joining me and the BATNA.
Things that would update me against this: models that show “starting a culture” continues to be exciting, models that show “hedonic setpoint” reasons for the ‘BATNA gets better’ idea to be broken, evidence that more cultures are being started now than ever before.
Of all the things here I think the idea I’m most interested in inspecting is “formation of great cultures tracks formation of cultures in general”.
The “old web” vs. “new web” seems interesting along this dimension; quite possibly the thing that seemed different about the phpBB days compared to reddit/twitter/Facebook is that an independent forum felt like more its own culture than, say, a Facebook group or a subreddit. I have the vague impression that Discord servers are more “culture-like” than other modern options, but are considerably less durable and discoverable, which seems sad.