speciation metaphor for meta-protocol
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November 6th, 2022
- first introduced by Jordan Hall in this 7min vide
- in Convening an Ontario meta-protocol jam I wrote
- It seems to me that: these principles are on the meta level. That is, they’re not cultural norms but rather a way of relating to norms
- Michael "Valentine" Smith commented:
- > I suspect that cultural norms are an example of these principles enacted, the same way that biological evolution is the continuation of the same thing that created stars and planets (viewing that as something like "mechanical evolution"). My understanding of the truth of your point here isn't that these principles are meta instead of object. Rather, that the interesting thing for talking about these things explicitly is the way these principles apply to the meta level. Kind of like the most interesting thing about evolution now is at the memetic level.
- I replied:
- > I think what you're saying is that cultural norms aren't ummm separate from these laws of trust-physics any more than biological evolution has ever been separate from physics? although they may not yet have discovered ~sexual reproduction or something and therefore they don't yet have a need to maintain speciation in terms of compatibility. not a bad analogy!
- Michael "Valentine" Smith brought up the liberalism paradox, aka tolerating the intolerant or welcoming the unwelcoming again
- re
- > A vast diversity of cultures can exist on top of this cultural platform. What these cultures have in common is a certain kind of interoperability—a capacity to see and honor each other.
- and I commented:
- well there's also "they can see and honor each other" which is different from "they can see and honor cultures that aren't able to see and honor other cultures"
- like in some sense the answer to the latter also has to be yes, but also... it's in practice much harder/messier.
- oh! huh, using the speciation metaphor, here's another rather weird way of thinking about it:
- Gen3 cultures have wildly different phenotypes but are broadly all of the same species in the sense that they're interoperable...
- and then ALSO some Gen3 cultures will also be able to mate with some Gen2 cultures
- and the Gen3 genes/memes are dominant and therefore the offspring will be Gen3
- I say "some" here because I think that for a Gen3 culture to mate with a Gen2 culture, they need to be much closer in object-level-culture-space than two Gen3 cultures need to be
- (and for completion's sake, I guess Gen3 could also mate with Gen1?)
- also "mate" here is something like the deep perspectival intimacy of parallax/ophanim, which we already talked on tuesday about how it has an interpenetrative vulnerability quality that's somewhat like sex.