[Last updated on 25 Dec 2013- the newest version is here.]
This blog revolves around my interest in organizations and interfaces that change behavior. With that broad topic, I’ve been able to slide around to pretty much anything I’ve read that interests me. I’ve pushed out about 70 posts since I started in late August, of varying qualities, lengths, and amounts of original content.
There have been some common threads that my posts have hit. If you’re only interested in one thread, maybe this can help. I write a lot of disparate notes in the same posts, though, but you’ll have to dig to get at any of those for now, sorry. Most of my posts are not represented here, including ones I’m pretty fond of.
EDIT: Since I last updated wordpress, my fonts have apparently been going nuts. I’m not sure what’s up with that.
DownWing Thought (and other Internet Politics)
Prereq: Upwing/Downwing and Etherealization
I’m fascinated by fringe politics, partly for the rhetorical/tribal functions that are easier to see in ecosystems I’m not a part of, and partly for their clarifying effect on the failings of more familiar political thought. (A little more on my rationalization of this obsession in “Why Weird Politics” here.)
- Mencius Moldbug I (On the UpWing/DownWing dichotomy, and exploring the introductory work of a popular neoreactionary)
- Mencius Moldbug II (Specific ideological/policy suggestions from Moldbug)
- Two Books on Incomprehensible Man-made Systems (“Normal Accidents” on technology, “Reflections on Judging” on the judicial system)
- A Survey of the Dark Enlightenment (Looking beyong Moldbug to the larger neoreactionary ecosystem)
- Hollow States (two kinds) (a DownWing and a more value-nuetral definition of a “hollow state” and how to respond to them)
- Open Source Warfare (Primer for would-be guerrillas.)
- Fukuyama’s Vetocracy (Indictment of the current system)
- Probabilistic Minarchism (the most interesting angle on Libertarianism I have encountered.)
- Expecting more from ecological DownWings. Had too much fun with the Dark Enlightenment guys.
- I started writing UpWing stuff but mostly explicitly UpWing writers bore me with their familiarity. Gradualist view of driverless cars, an attempted embrace of total surveillance states. Singularitarianism, accelerationist, happy stuff.
Oswald Spengler and Decline of the West
- Prereqs: Notes on Historiography mentions Spengler and other historians I took an interest in this year. Wrote all of this in early October 2013.
I got into Spengler through John Greer’s blog. Greer is a fascinating DownWing author has been a fount of resources on certain strains of thought.
- Spengler’s Winter (an intro)
- Spengler’s Meaning of Numbers (on the first chapter of Decline of the West)
- Faustian Culture (Spengler’s preferred title for “Western” culture)
- Spengler on Pseudomorphosis (Cultures that clash)
“Apologetics” (Narratives that define groups)
- Apologetics I (Intro, best practices)
- Apologetics II (Biblical Apologetics and their intended effect)
- Tribe Building: Narratives and Social Graphs (An archetype-driven story of tribe formation, and a bit about rhetorical affordance again)
- Tribe Dismantling: Confusion vs Closure (On Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Confusion, two sides of the same coin)
Minds
Inspired by Ribbonfarm’s 2013 guests (mostly Mike Travers and Kevin Simler, although I liked all of the guest writers), I started looking into “Parliamentary Minds” and “Bicameral Mind” threads of thought, which I was mostly familiar with through Daniel Dennett and Douglass Hofstadter before.
- Diplomacy with Foreign Minds (introducing some other people’s work; talking about Octopi, etc.)
- Anatomy of a Metaphor (Julian Jaynes Part 1)
- What Consciousness Isn’t (Julian Jaynes Part 2)
- The Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Part 3)
Views of Human Organization
Posts responsible for a lot of the vocabulary I use.
- Molding Behavior(Cultural evolution and High Modernism. A little dated already.)
- Developing Organizations(Forced Moves/Good Tricks and the TIMN framework- a recurring framework in this blog).
- Kludge(defining problems with complex bureaucracies- a recurring theme in this blog).
- Codification (on proceduralizing behaviors. Pseudo-sequel is “That Vision Thing“)
Numbers as Rhetoric
- The Simulation Gap (on procedural rhetoric and how numbers make experiences)
- Reducing to Numbers (on arguing with numbers)
- Spengler’s Meaning of Numbers (culture’s understanding of numbers are different)
Historiography:
The oldest thread in this blog was on a nonlinear view of history and technology.
- Notes on Historiography (a survey of ideas)
- Decay on the Technology Tree (warning: really old)
- Unpainted Statues (warning: really old)
Scrambled Notes
There’s some idea development going on in short bursts here, based on readings I enjoyed.
- In-Flight Notes (Oct 25-States of Matter metaphors)
- Mulling Over (Oct 26- list writing, the I Ching, “Congressional History”)
- More Mulling (Nov 3- water talents and making a job yours; infrastructure, fundamentalism, Rules for Radicals)
- “Escape Velocity” (Nov 12- a name for a special seminal event in a life story)
- “Game Change” (Nov 13- Structuralist politics vs the Horse Race)
- Even More Mulling (Nov 22- Starting to dig into the “minds” topic. Deep Play, Scenius, Endosymbiosis, drugs)
- In-Flight Notes II (Nov 27- animal cognition, privilege, apologetics, a mass of old quotes)
- Mulling: Governing Systems (Dec 5- Voight, Last Psychiatrist on Catching Fire, Algorithmic Governance, Libertarian Paternalism)
- Mulling: Class, Mythologies, Performance (Dec 9- Downton Abbey,101 Objects, Spraching, Smarm)
- Friday Notes (Dec 13- Narrative Injection Therapy, Atheist View of History, Opinion Indeterminism)
- Notes: Brains, Coherence, Wolfram (Dec 19- as the title says.)
- Miscellaneous Notes (Dec 24- Creepypasta, Bitcoin, Holacracy, O’church’s 3-Ladder Class System, etc.)
Early Consolidations
This is some longer stuff I tried my hand at earlier, but will probably be retreading soon because they were sloppy, too-early draft attempts.
The Weird and the Banal / Playing Everything