I am surprised to see a lack of attention to parallels between empathy in a tribal setting and conscientiousness in an individual tribesman in discussions here. It is a scary setting we find ourselves in when we all can be agreeable through sites like Kiva and Kickstarter, neurotic through sites like 4chan and reddit, extroverted through services like Facebook and flickr, open through services like Google; and yet there is not one place that translates in a tribal way to experiencing any form of conscientiousness online today.
I am driven to understand this to mean that there is a very limited scope of conscientiousness in the physical world at large today. Is this lack of accountability and self-discipline not what is being addressed when we thumb up a post like this? I want these parallels to be discussed here, but my wherewithal in forums such as this is limited.
Where can we go to share, develop, and experience a sense of Jiminy Cricket today in either world actual or the nets? If there is not a place left where this sense of organized social self is available in a rich format, I can then only encourage people to continue to try and change others’ ways of thinking, if only to be sure conscientiousness’ utility survives our tribes’ rapid-fire cultural shifts to one day prove more effective and less invasive than the current orthodoxy nyan describes.
and yet there is not one place that translates in a tribal way to experiencing any form of conscientiousness online today.
How about Beeminder? I haven’t used it, so I’m not sure how public (if at all) are the commitments one makes there. If everything one does there is between oneself and Beeminder only, maybe there’s scope for starting up a communal version. Although I can imagine the sort of flame wars that could develop if one person is making a public commitment that another person thinks evil. It would probably have to be specialised to communities having some general commonality of goals.
I just wrote a suggestion to Beeminder authors to add group goals. Two options:
Competitive mode: All people make the same commitment. The only difference between individual commitments is that all lines are displayed on the same graph. (So in addition to avoid losing, you have a motivation to get more points than your friends.) If a person loses, others continue. If only one winner remains, they get an option to cancel the commitment after one week (because the motivation of competition is gone; and maybe the rest of the group wants to start the game again).
Cooperative mode: A commitment fulfilled by the group together; a sum of individual contributions must reach a given limit. The system does not care about who did what, they either win as a group, or lose as a group. However, the individual contributions are displayed, so they can translate to group status.
This could translate conscientiousness into a group status, thereby encourage conscientiousness. (Well, assuming that no one cheats when entering data, etc.)
The group goals could work also without the Beeminder system. Just make a graph where all group members can report their progress, without any time limits. In the cooperative mode, the game ends when the sum of contributions reaches a specified value. In competitive mode, when the first player reaches the specified value, others get an additional week to keep up or lose.
(In a competitive mode, players could specify handicaps, for example that one point by person A is equal to two points by person B. Maybe it would make some sense in a cooperative mode, too.)
I am surprised to see a lack of attention to parallels between empathy in a tribal setting and conscientiousness in an individual tribesman in discussions here. It is a scary setting we find ourselves in when we all can be agreeable through sites like Kiva and Kickstarter, neurotic through sites like 4chan and reddit, extroverted through services like Facebook and flickr, open through services like Google; and yet there is not one place that translates in a tribal way to experiencing any form of conscientiousness online today.
I am driven to understand this to mean that there is a very limited scope of conscientiousness in the physical world at large today. Is this lack of accountability and self-discipline not what is being addressed when we thumb up a post like this? I want these parallels to be discussed here, but my wherewithal in forums such as this is limited.
Where can we go to share, develop, and experience a sense of Jiminy Cricket today in either world actual or the nets? If there is not a place left where this sense of organized social self is available in a rich format, I can then only encourage people to continue to try and change others’ ways of thinking, if only to be sure conscientiousness’ utility survives our tribes’ rapid-fire cultural shifts to one day prove more effective and less invasive than the current orthodoxy nyan describes.
How about Beeminder? I haven’t used it, so I’m not sure how public (if at all) are the commitments one makes there. If everything one does there is between oneself and Beeminder only, maybe there’s scope for starting up a communal version. Although I can imagine the sort of flame wars that could develop if one person is making a public commitment that another person thinks evil. It would probably have to be specialised to communities having some general commonality of goals.
I just wrote a suggestion to Beeminder authors to add group goals. Two options:
Competitive mode: All people make the same commitment. The only difference between individual commitments is that all lines are displayed on the same graph. (So in addition to avoid losing, you have a motivation to get more points than your friends.) If a person loses, others continue. If only one winner remains, they get an option to cancel the commitment after one week (because the motivation of competition is gone; and maybe the rest of the group wants to start the game again).
Cooperative mode: A commitment fulfilled by the group together; a sum of individual contributions must reach a given limit. The system does not care about who did what, they either win as a group, or lose as a group. However, the individual contributions are displayed, so they can translate to group status.
This could translate conscientiousness into a group status, thereby encourage conscientiousness. (Well, assuming that no one cheats when entering data, etc.)
The group goals could work also without the Beeminder system. Just make a graph where all group members can report their progress, without any time limits. In the cooperative mode, the game ends when the sum of contributions reaches a specified value. In competitive mode, when the first player reaches the specified value, others get an additional week to keep up or lose.
(In a competitive mode, players could specify handicaps, for example that one point by person A is equal to two points by person B. Maybe it would make some sense in a cooperative mode, too.)