The ‘bad’ word is just not useful in such situations, I think you even noted that a bunch of people wish I hadn’t used it in Complexity is Bad and Choices are Bad.
We need some amount of level 4 awareness. We need to be able to change social reality not only communicate inside it. And the level 4 effects happen whether we intend or notice them, or not.
What I’d be tempted to call bad is when the general simulacrum level gets to 4. Or when someone gets into the patterns of inability to think about reality on the object level or even to realize a reality exists. It’s still a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.
Also, I don’t think my original comment here was intended to focus on the “badness” characterization.
What I meant to be saying is “It seems like the overall simulacrum model was invented, in large part, to some particular failure modes that happen when society or individuals operate primarily on the level 4 level.” Thus, I realize my suggestion to factor out the implicit “level 4 is complicated” claims probably flies against the original intended-use-case of the model. But, nonetheless, I think it’ll be easier to talk about “societal level 4” and it’s pathologies with a different model that builds off a simpler simulacrum model.
I was just using “bad” as shorthand. It wasn’t meant to be a cruxy element of my argument.
The ‘bad’ word is just not useful in such situations, I think you even noted that a bunch of people wish I hadn’t used it in Complexity is Bad and Choices are Bad.
We need some amount of level 4 awareness. We need to be able to change social reality not only communicate inside it. And the level 4 effects happen whether we intend or notice them, or not.
What I’d be tempted to call bad is when the general simulacrum level gets to 4. Or when someone gets into the patterns of inability to think about reality on the object level or even to realize a reality exists. It’s still a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.
Nod, makes sense.
I think we are (at least mostly) in agreement about this aspect of the territory, and the disagreement is just over what sort of maps are most useful.
Also, I don’t think my original comment here was intended to focus on the “badness” characterization.
What I meant to be saying is “It seems like the overall simulacrum model was invented, in large part, to some particular failure modes that happen when society or individuals operate primarily on the level 4 level.” Thus, I realize my suggestion to factor out the implicit “level 4 is complicated” claims probably flies against the original intended-use-case of the model. But, nonetheless, I think it’ll be easier to talk about “societal level 4” and it’s pathologies with a different model that builds off a simpler simulacrum model.
I was just using “bad” as shorthand. It wasn’t meant to be a cruxy element of my argument.