A further potential extension here is to point out that modern hiveminds (Twitter / X / Bsky) changed group membership in many political groups from something explicit (“We let this person write in a our [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] magazine / published them in our newspaper”) to something very fuzzy and indeterminate (“Well, they call themselves an [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] , and they’re huge on Twitter, and they say some of the kinds of things [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] people say, so I guess they’re an [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] .”)
I think this is a really big part of why the free market of ideas has stopped working in the US over the last decade or two.
Yet more speculative is a preferred solution of mine; intermediate groups within hiveminds, such that no person can post in the hivemind without being part of such a group, and such that both person and group are clearly associated with each other. This permits:
Membership to be explicit
Bad actors (according to group norms) to be actually kicked out proactively, rather than degrading norms
Multi-level selection between group norms, where you can just block large groups that do not adopt truthseeking norms
More conscious shaping of the egregore.
But this solutioning is all more speculative than the problem.
A further potential extension here is to point out that modern hiveminds (Twitter / X / Bsky) changed group membership in many political groups from something explicit (“We let this person write in a our [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] magazine / published them in our newspaper”) to something very fuzzy and indeterminate (“Well, they call themselves an [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] , and they’re huge on Twitter, and they say some of the kinds of things [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] people say, so I guess they’re an [Conservative / Liberal / Leftist / etc] .”)
I think this is a really big part of why the free market of ideas has stopped working in the US over the last decade or two.
Yet more speculative is a preferred solution of mine; intermediate groups within hiveminds, such that no person can post in the hivemind without being part of such a group, and such that both person and group are clearly associated with each other. This permits:
Membership to be explicit
Bad actors (according to group norms) to be actually kicked out proactively, rather than degrading norms
Multi-level selection between group norms, where you can just block large groups that do not adopt truthseeking norms
More conscious shaping of the egregore.
But this solutioning is all more speculative than the problem.
Say more on this? I don’t see the argument. It’s also not clear why this would only affect the US for instance.
@1a3orn Could you also elaborate on why you think the ideas marketplace has became more dysfunction over the last 10–20 years?