Vitalik Buterin pfp
Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
I am noticing that the most successful new ideologies of the past decade are very object-level (prescriptions on specific issues) and quite little meta-level (social processes for making decisions on object-level issues). Examples: * Abstract libertarianism feels much weaker than 10 years ago. But issue-specific versions of it are quite successful: YIMBY (housing), the crypto space * e/acc (it's about all technology in theory, but ends up being about AI in practice) * The largest cluster in effective altruism morphed from being meta-level ("think harder to making sure your donations are going where they can do the most good!") to object level (AI safety, with a little bit of animal welfare and global public health) * Longevity movement Maybe network states and Glen and Audrey's Plurality movement are two exceptions - but in general the above feels like a strong pattern. Any ideas why this meta level -> object level shift seems to be taking place?
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peth pfp
peth
@peth
It‘s just more practical.. Even if you start at the meta level, it comes down to "ok, where do we start" - and then even this very first step or MVP ends up taking waaay longer. Meanwhile the meta ideology gets diluted & sometimes dies in execution bc of the plethora of reasons people hop in to support that specific issue. Let‘s look at metamodernism, possibly the most meta of meta ideologies. Basically starts with "lets take the deconstructionist view of postmodernism but combine it with the progressivist mindset of modernism" Then it goes "ok, lets start with these focus areas:" - Democratization Politics - Updating systems of governance - Community Politics - Improving the quality of human relationships - Existential Politics - Supporting people’s life journeys & mental health - Freedom Politics - Protecting people from all forms of oppression - Empirical Politics - Evaluating policies & institutional practices - Politics of Theory - Co-developing the narratives societies rely on ...
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peth pfp
peth
@peth
Zooming in, you see each has natural allies across the political spectrum, as well as existing nonprofits, forprofits & governmental initiatives acting in that area. ...In a web of powers & incentives, along with natural enemies or people who could abuse these memes into furthering their own agenda... Tl;dr I think meta ideologies hit reality and splinter into something far more complex, unpredictable, sometimes completely disconnected from the initial ideology & sometimes tragic, as seen throughout the 20th & into 21st century 🥲 Even when successful, they turn into a dozen flavors of the thing, start infighting & dividing. Again boosted, manipulated & exploited by malicious actors (basically the "geeks, mops & sociopaths" story as well as the whole "identity politics" currently taking place) All of this kind of also made people afraid of meta ideologies, which are by definition totalitarian. Part of the reason people have an allergic reaction to "woke" & start talking about "the communist agenda" 🤣
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