filter by:
10 && currentDiv === 0) {
currentDiv = Math.min(currentDiv + 1, 1);
sessionStorage.setItem('coverDismissed', 'true');
}" class="overfow-hidden mx-auto">
Analects
Here you'll find all the btrmt. content from across the projects.
See everything I have on:
on-culture
On Culture
stuff On the things we create, and how they create us
show:
article
When we want to identify with a group, we <em>bias</em> ourselves to filter out all
theother ways we could be. It helps us cut down all our competing priorities
to the group. The trade-off is the benefit in diversity of thought.
article
Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths.
They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them
because they ‘go against’ the evidence is failing to recognise what
evidence they care about.
Aesthetics are facts too
Article
Facts are just a special kind of belief… Because there isn’t really
anything tangible that distinguishes a belief from a fact. Cultural and
aesthetic beliefs are facts too, in a certain light—we’re tracing the
fuzzy boundaries of our religions, theories, and convictions to put certain
meaningful aspects of the world at the centre. They’re just as true as the
facts that are more stable, and objective. They’re just centring on
something different.
Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths.
They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them
because they ‘go against’ the evidence is failing to recognise what
evidence they care about.
filed under:
article
BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture
that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It
seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and
socialisation, but there is something deeper there.
BDSM as a lazy ideology
Article
I write a lot about ideologies here. Rituals of thought and behaviour that
come out of our need to automatically solve predictable problems of a
complex world. I also point out that ideologies ‘stack’. They all sort of
‘stick together’, making these bundles of beliefs and behaviours. Most of
these are lazy: stacks of ideologies we adopt just because they’re there.
I reckon BDSM might be just one of these. It might be an ideology stack
that people gravatate to, not because it’s the most efficient way of
expressing some core human need, but because it’s just the most common. Let
me explain what I mean.
BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture
that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It
seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and
socialisation, but there is something deeper there.
filed under:
article
Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to
attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile environment,
normalised physical and emotional violence, and a lack of mental and physical
resources, and you have the ingredients for atrocity.
When groups go bad
Article
There’s this cluster of classic social psychology experiments from the 50’s
through the 70’s that you’ll be presented with in documentaries and whatnot
whenever groups of people are behaving crazily. You’ve probably heard of some
of them. Milgram’s ‘shock’ experiments, or Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or
Asch’s conformity tests, and so on. These things gloss over just how hard it is
to get people to do atrocities on a large-scale. Luckily, you have me to tell
you how they really happen.
Without more tasteful social behaviours to sample from, we’re liable to
attach very strongly to the behaviours of our group. Add a hostile environment,
normalised physical and emotional violence, and a lack of mental and physical
resources, and you have the ingredients for atrocity.
filed under:
article
The strength of our attraction to a group is a function of how different a
group is from other groups in ways that we feel like we are, or like we want to
be. Our participation in the group depends on how we see it benefitting us, and
see us benefitting the group. The stronger both are, the stronger our biases to
stay engaged.
Useful groups are biased groups
Article
There’s this cluster of classic social psychology experiments from the 50’s
through the 70’s that you’ll be presented with in documentaries and whatnot
whenever groups of people are behaving crazily. You’ve probably heard of some
of them. Milgram’s ‘shock’ experiments, or Zimbardo’s prison experiment, or
Asch’s conformity tests, and so on. This is the second in a third on group
dynamics. Here we’ll talk about what makes our attraction to groups stronger,
as well as what makes people participate in groups, and how all our group
biases make sense in the context.
The strength of our attraction to a group is a function of how different a
group is from other groups in ways that we feel like we are, or like we want to
be. Our participation in the group depends on how we see it benefitting us, and
see us benefitting the group. The stronger both are, the stronger our biases to
stay engaged.
filed under:
Bias vs Noise pt. III: Groups
Article
filed under: