If you flip the bowl over, and set a marble on top, this may be an unstable equilibrium—assuming you can even manage to get it stay there in the first place (equilibrium).
1. A post without any comments on it, may be a stable equilibrium (with regard to total length).
2. Multiple crabs in a bucket.
3. If people pick up trash when there’s not a lot of trash, but not if there’s a lot, then both ‘clean’ and ‘trash everywhere’ can be stable equilibriums.
4. Walking up stairs (or going up an elevator). At a higher level, you maintain your altitude. (And jumping up and down doesn’t perturb this into collapse—usually.)
5. A math problem has never been solved. (After being solved, it takes surprisingly little time for new proofs to appear, compared to how long it took the original proof to appear.)
6. Being stuck in Earth’s gravity well. Rarely, intense perturbations push things out into space.
Inspired by adamShimi’s ‘error correcting codes’ here:
7. When writing out bibliographies by hand, errors in (copied) citations (proliferating). Or...ambiguity retention. Less ambiguity requires someone who has clarity, but if no one has clarity...
These are great! I particularly enjoy the social ones, like #1 and #3. They suggest a more general phenomenon, where people generally mimicking others can create all sorts of equilibria. It’s interesting, because it’s not like there’s very strong incentives locking in those equilibria, just a kinda weak tendency, so shifting that sort of equilibrium could potentially be easier than the sort of incentive-locked equilibria which people talk about a lot.
A comment on something might spark discussion, but also
People might read a post and have no comment. (Perhaps an upvote, but no comment.) A very long post could also have some of this effect by way of length, by taking time to digest, but it can also be something about the post (and the audience). (A work which is very good, and self contained, isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it might end up shared a lot. Sometimes though, things just don’t spark discussion.)
2. Endless threads
A long time ago, on my shortform, I mused that whether a website was alive or dead could be pinpointed based on whether there was activity. More specifically, relative to a topic or subject—a post might not get responses, but someone might respond with another post. At one extreme end, a website could be alive, and have discussion without comments. On the other end, if there weren’t anymore posts, but comments continued, it could still be alive.
The main issues with that last possibility being:
Reddit inherently blocks this (threads get locked down after a month)
The format, UI, functionality etc., might have to be set up in a different way to facilitate that effectively. (If you’re trying to look like Reddit, then while it might be possible, it’s probably going to be a pain to navigate.) Other forum formats are a lot more friendly towards this. (For example, the responses~, or threads, are arranged in pages. (Thus say, navigating to the end consists of: scrolling to the bottom (click and drag the scrollbar, or use a key combination), and clicking the button with the last number.)
Abandoning infinite scroll, and things like it.
Might require some system for tagging people (or things one is responding to), or searching and filtering.
I could be wrong about this, but at least one orderly driver might be required. (Editing, and linking are essential for this, because I’m talking about charting a path.)
I’m not sure what other kinds of forums there could be, or what tools they’d need.
3. (Some) Posts with lots of responses
In contrast, this question/post:
Explicitly focuses on and requests engagement
Focuses on a question which is open ended
For comparison, sometimes on stackexchange, or stackoverflow, I’d find questions sealed because they:
rarely: got a lot of responses (not enough reading other responses lots of repetition, low grade responses)
Were classified as ‘subjective’. Interestingly, that made stack more interesting as a source of answers because, without objective answers more info. was harder to find and in high demand (as a reader, and showing up as lots of responses). This was disappointing. (If say ‘consequences of voting on karma were disabled or something’ instead then that would have been better.)
If you flip the bowl over, and set a marble on top, this may be an unstable equilibrium—assuming you can even manage to get it stay there in the first place (equilibrium).
1. A post without any comments on it, may be a stable equilibrium (with regard to total length).
2. Multiple crabs in a bucket.
3. If people pick up trash when there’s not a lot of trash, but not if there’s a lot, then both ‘clean’ and ‘trash everywhere’ can be stable equilibriums.
4. Walking up stairs (or going up an elevator). At a higher level, you maintain your altitude. (And jumping up and down doesn’t perturb this into collapse—usually.)
5. A math problem has never been solved. (After being solved, it takes surprisingly little time for new proofs to appear, compared to how long it took the original proof to appear.)
6. Being stuck in Earth’s gravity well. Rarely, intense perturbations push things out into space.
Inspired by adamShimi’s ‘error correcting codes’ here:
7. When writing out bibliographies by hand, errors in (copied) citations (proliferating). Or...ambiguity retention. Less ambiguity requires someone who has clarity, but if no one has clarity...
These are great! I particularly enjoy the social ones, like #1 and #3. They suggest a more general phenomenon, where people generally mimicking others can create all sorts of equilibria. It’s interesting, because it’s not like there’s very strong incentives locking in those equilibria, just a kinda weak tendency, so shifting that sort of equilibrium could potentially be easier than the sort of incentive-locked equilibria which people talk about a lot.
Contents
1. Posts without comments
2. Endless threads
3. (Some) Posts with lots of responses
1. Posts without comments
re: #1
A comment on something might spark discussion, but also
People might read a post and have no comment. (Perhaps an upvote, but no comment.) A very long post could also have some of this effect by way of length, by taking time to digest, but it can also be something about the post (and the audience). (A work which is very good, and self contained, isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it might end up shared a lot. Sometimes though, things just don’t spark discussion.)
2. Endless threads
A long time ago, on my shortform, I mused that whether a website was alive or dead could be pinpointed based on whether there was activity. More specifically, relative to a topic or subject—a post might not get responses, but someone might respond with another post. At one extreme end, a website could be alive, and have discussion without comments. On the other end, if there weren’t anymore posts, but comments continued, it could still be alive.
The main issues with that last possibility being:
Reddit inherently blocks this (threads get locked down after a month)
The format, UI, functionality etc., might have to be set up in a different way to facilitate that effectively. (If you’re trying to look like Reddit, then while it might be possible, it’s probably going to be a pain to navigate.) Other forum formats are a lot more friendly towards this. (For example, the responses~, or threads, are arranged in pages. (Thus say, navigating to the end consists of: scrolling to the bottom (click and drag the scrollbar, or use a key combination), and clicking the button with the last number.)
Abandoning infinite scroll, and things like it.
Might require some system for tagging people (or things one is responding to), or searching and filtering.
I could be wrong about this, but at least one orderly driver might be required. (Editing, and linking are essential for this, because I’m talking about charting a path.)
I’m not sure what other kinds of forums there could be, or what tools they’d need.
3. (Some) Posts with lots of responses
In contrast, this question/post:
Explicitly focuses on and requests engagement
Focuses on a question which is open ended
For comparison, sometimes on stackexchange, or stackoverflow, I’d find questions sealed because they:
rarely: got a lot of responses (not enough reading other responses lots of repetition, low grade responses)
Were classified as ‘subjective’. Interestingly, that made stack more interesting as a source of answers because, without objective answers more info. was harder to find and in high demand (as a reader, and showing up as lots of responses). This was disappointing. (If say ‘consequences of voting on karma were disabled or something’ instead then that would have been better.)