I think I’ve seen spaces which have their own culture in a way which is distinct from the ouside culture, who manage to presist by onboarding people by brigingn them straight in, but in managble numbers.
My leading hypothesis is that this can work for a while, but is fragile. I.e. the separation of the space’s culture and ouside culture can break if too many new people enter at once, of if someone too incompatible person joins, but dispite this such spaces can still exixt for years. Possibly because they are obscure and hard to find, and thus most newcombers are brough in by members, who filter who they bring in. Or the way the group is advertised causes enouhg self selection.
I think that an example of this is the cultre at Burn events (e.g. Burning Nest in the UK). I was going to say “burner culture” but I don’t think this is corret (or specific enough). Burning Nest (or Boarderland in Sweden) was great in a way a burner meetup in London (that I went to shortly after Burning Nest) had none of, and I’m not sure why, but probably being semi-separated from the the rest of the world at a camp site for days, is an active ingredient.
But an alternative hypotesis is that the type of spaces Duncan talks about is diffrent from what I have yet expreienced.
I’ve been to a CFAR workshop, but I have not been in a community where everyone knows that everyone knows about CFAR techiques.
I’ve done the Phyics training, and then gone to Phyics concrerences where it’s common knolage that everyone has pysics training. This was pretty great. But there is nothing going on at a Phiscs conference that would fundametnally break is a non-Physist hangs out there.
I saw people mentioned Eternal September on the internet, not frequently, but over years. and currently my model of this even (That happened before my time and i didn’t witnessed) is that it’s exactly instance of “the separation of the space’s culture and outside culture can break if too many new people enter at once, of if someone too incompatible person joins, but despite this such spaces can still exit for years.”
people had nice culture, people was joining every September and at first was disruptive, and it took time to acculturate, but the ratio of old timers- new timers was good enough, and the number small enough, so the culture persisted. then, The General Public got access to the internet, and the culture broke, and was never rebuilt again.
edit in reply to gears of ascension asking for source: the “never rebuilt again” is the opinion of people who was there, and i encountered lamenting the days of old. i take them at their word that it wasn’t build again. my own opinion of why is that the internet have pockets of nice places, but there is vast, vast difference between place when the default is nice, that everyone or almost everyone cooperate, and place when the default is defection, and there are small pockets of cooperators. those are very different dynamics, very different worlds to live in. ( i don’t have links to the random places when i encountered that, sorry.)
I expect that society have a lot of implicit gray spaces. This could possiby look like:
[public events] = [gray space] [privet house parties (and other invite only events)] = [inner garden]
This should work as long as old timiers attend the public meetups AND newcommers have the attitude of trying to conform to the culture they are visiting and also sort themsleves out if it isn’t for them.
When running an inner sim of how I expect this to work, I notice that I expect that most newcommers will not have this atitude by default, which will drive away old timers (inclduing those who whold have otherwise been happy to mentor newcommers).
On the other hand, sub culutres does exixt. So maybe my inner sim is wrong? Or maybe this is something we have recently collectlivly gotten worse at doing?
I remember a proverb “When in Rome do as the Romans”, meaning you’re supposed to adapt to the local culture you’re visiting. However I’ve not heard anyone syaing this or anything like it for years. Also, our western maistream culture went though a phase of woke dominance, and part of woke culture is to demand that every space conform to cernain woke norms, which is kind of the oposite. This is one of the parts of woke culture I liked the least, and now I’m worried that [not allowing subcultures to do thier own thing] is going to stick around, even as the cuture pendelum swings in the other direction. But hopefully not.
Inner Rings definitely exists, and sometimes they even allow to have nicer environment. but this is very different from martial arts class or undergraduate program. there are number of differences. the first is, that one is place that dedicated to learning something, and the other not. the second is legible standards. and the third is… I’m not sure how to pint at it. existence? legible existence?
maybe my book club have inner ring, and maybe they are even nicer then the general members—but maybe not, maybe their are more mean-girls then the other. inner ring is not well-kept garden, it just some people that locally have more status.
in most random social scenes, there is some culture, but it’s sort of random. result from what sort of people come first and some random things. there are two book groups with different culture, and it’s mostly not because they decided that, and there is no greyspace and no well guarded gardens in the inner rings.
your description take guess-culture approach to greyspaces and subcultures, and i am pessimistic about it viability outside of small communities. there is only so much you can have without saying. with guessing only. people will be wrong, and if you never fix them, a lot of them will remain wrong.
i don’t know if we become worst, and i do think there are various cultural threads to pull here. fie example. Woke allow only some sorts of subcultures and pretty hostile to most. but also… i don’t see a lot of places that actually trying. a lot of things are on the internet now, and social networks destroyed a lot of cultural knowledge on how to create and moderate groups.
also, i’m not in USA, and things come here slower. i hope the woke wave will subside, though i’m not sure how much subcultures thing connected to it. I’m not even sure there are less subcultures now then there was 30 years ago. how you even measure that?
I think I’ve seen spaces which have their own culture in a way which is distinct from the ouside culture, who manage to presist by onboarding people by brigingn them straight in, but in managble numbers.
My leading hypothesis is that this can work for a while, but is fragile. I.e. the separation of the space’s culture and ouside culture can break if too many new people enter at once, of if someone too incompatible person joins, but dispite this such spaces can still exixt for years. Possibly because they are obscure and hard to find, and thus most newcombers are brough in by members, who filter who they bring in. Or the way the group is advertised causes enouhg self selection.
I think that an example of this is the cultre at Burn events (e.g. Burning Nest in the UK). I was going to say “burner culture” but I don’t think this is corret (or specific enough). Burning Nest (or Boarderland in Sweden) was great in a way a burner meetup in London (that I went to shortly after Burning Nest) had none of, and I’m not sure why, but probably being semi-separated from the the rest of the world at a camp site for days, is an active ingredient.
But an alternative hypotesis is that the type of spaces Duncan talks about is diffrent from what I have yet expreienced.
I’ve been to a CFAR workshop, but I have not been in a community where everyone knows that everyone knows about CFAR techiques.
I’ve done the Phyics training, and then gone to Phyics concrerences where it’s common knolage that everyone has pysics training. This was pretty great. But there is nothing going on at a Phiscs conference that would fundametnally break is a non-Physist hangs out there.
I saw people mentioned Eternal September on the internet, not frequently, but over years. and currently my model of this even (That happened before my time and i didn’t witnessed) is that it’s exactly instance of “the separation of the space’s culture and outside culture can break if too many new people enter at once, of if someone too incompatible person joins, but despite this such spaces can still exit for years.”
people had nice culture, people was joining every September and at first was disruptive, and it took time to acculturate, but the ratio of old timers- new timers was good enough, and the number small enough, so the culture persisted. then, The General Public got access to the internet, and the culture broke, and was never rebuilt again.
edit in reply to gears of ascension asking for source: the “never rebuilt again” is the opinion of people who was there, and i encountered lamenting the days of old. i take them at their word that it wasn’t build again. my own opinion of why is that the internet have pockets of nice places, but there is vast, vast difference between place when the default is nice, that everyone or almost everyone cooperate, and place when the default is defection, and there are small pockets of cooperators. those are very different dynamics, very different worlds to live in. ( i don’t have links to the random places when i encountered that, sorry.)
Tanks, that’s helfull
I expect that society have a lot of implicit gray spaces. This could possiby look like:
[public events] = [gray space]
[privet house parties (and other invite only events)] = [inner garden]
This should work as long as old timiers attend the public meetups AND newcommers have the attitude of trying to conform to the culture they are visiting and also sort themsleves out if it isn’t for them.
When running an inner sim of how I expect this to work, I notice that I expect that most newcommers will not have this atitude by default, which will drive away old timers (inclduing those who whold have otherwise been happy to mentor newcommers).
On the other hand, sub culutres does exixt. So maybe my inner sim is wrong? Or maybe this is something we have recently collectlivly gotten worse at doing?
I remember a proverb “When in Rome do as the Romans”, meaning you’re supposed to adapt to the local culture you’re visiting. However I’ve not heard anyone syaing this or anything like it for years. Also, our western maistream culture went though a phase of woke dominance, and part of woke culture is to demand that every space conform to cernain woke norms, which is kind of the oposite. This is one of the parts of woke culture I liked the least, and now I’m worried that [not allowing subcultures to do thier own thing] is going to stick around, even as the cuture pendelum swings in the other direction. But hopefully not.
Inner Rings definitely exists, and sometimes they even allow to have nicer environment. but this is very different from martial arts class or undergraduate program. there are number of differences. the first is, that one is place that dedicated to learning something, and the other not. the second is legible standards. and the third is… I’m not sure how to pint at it. existence? legible existence?
maybe my book club have inner ring, and maybe they are even nicer then the general members—but maybe not, maybe their are more mean-girls then the other. inner ring is not well-kept garden, it just some people that locally have more status.
in most random social scenes, there is some culture, but it’s sort of random. result from what sort of people come first and some random things. there are two book groups with different culture, and it’s mostly not because they decided that, and there is no greyspace and no well guarded gardens in the inner rings.
your description take guess-culture approach to greyspaces and subcultures, and i am pessimistic about it viability outside of small communities. there is only so much you can have without saying. with guessing only. people will be wrong, and if you never fix them, a lot of them will remain wrong.
i don’t know if we become worst, and i do think there are various cultural threads to pull here. fie example. Woke allow only some sorts of subcultures and pretty hostile to most. but also… i don’t see a lot of places that actually trying. a lot of things are on the internet now, and social networks destroyed a lot of cultural knowledge on how to create and moderate groups.
also, i’m not in USA, and things come here slower. i hope the woke wave will subside, though i’m not sure how much subcultures thing connected to it. I’m not even sure there are less subcultures now then there was 30 years ago. how you even measure that?