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Mimetic Traps

briantimar.github.io

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Re: Mimetic Traps

#11

Post by closeparen »

jxramos wrote: post #7

This is a really mature introspective thought to articulate... > Academics have uniformly rather low salaries, increasing our tendency to focus on social status as a measure of success. Salary gradations are useful for disrupting mimetic effects because they tie effort expended directly to units of universal economic value — convertible to kilos of rice, oil, and stuff in the physical world. A price is a lifeline to…

It's probably not an accident that vigorous contempt for everything relating to markets and price signals runs high in academia, where differences in pay across occupations are considered a form of structural oppression.

Re: Mimetic Traps

#13

Post by hoseja »

worldsayshi wrote: post #10
c3534l wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but how many jobs have you had where everyone needed to make quarterly numbers, to the detriment of building something for something for future generations? Money shouldn't be the sole signal of success in society. We have enough (too much of) that already.

I think there's a larger issue of flawed heuristics for progress. The kind of memetics this article is talking about is one such heuristic. Going for the money is another. They are both potentially flawed in their core if the expectation is that they will solve our societal issues. They are both memes in that they are evolved to propagate themselves. And that's what they do best.

There is a confusing difference between "mimetic" and "memetic".

Re: Mimetic Traps

#14

Post by rocqua »

worldsayshi wrote: post #10
c3534l wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but how many jobs have you had where everyone needed to make quarterly numbers, to the detriment of building something for something for future generations? Money shouldn't be the sole signal of success in society. We have enough (too much of) that already.

I think there's a larger issue of flawed heuristics for progress. The kind of memetics this article is talking about is one such heuristic. Going for the money is another. They are both potentially flawed in their core if the expectation is that they will solve our societal issues. They are both memes in that they are evolved to propagate themselves. And that's what they do best.

Goodhart's law: "Any metric that becomes a target ceases to be a good metric".

Re: Mimetic Traps

#15

Post by pjc50 »

You want to be a little careful with how deep you dig the "does this really matter?" hole, otherwise you discover it's very dark down there with no reachable bottom. You risk concluding that nothing matters.

Re: Mimetic Traps

#16

Post by taneq »

pjc50 wrote: post #15

You want to be a little careful with how deep you dig the "does this really matter?" hole, otherwise you discover it's very dark down there with no reachable bottom. You risk concluding that nothing matters.

Yeah, don't stare too deeply into that abyss.

Re: Mimetic Traps

#17

Post by xelxebar »

pjc50 wrote: post #15

You want to be a little careful with how deep you dig the "does this really matter?" hole, otherwise you discover it's very dark down there with no reachable bottom. You risk concluding that nothing matters.

Or actually go all the way and come full circle. Nothing matters, but you can't escape doing something so might as well do something that matters.

In my experience, deconstructing meaning and value have been most instrumental to me personally finding good ways of constructing meaning and value.

Anyway, thanks for the comment. I love these conversations.

Re: Mimetic Traps

#18

Post by takinola »

It is often useful, when climbing a ladder, to ask if you want to get to the top of that ladder. I have had to do this twice in my career and in both cases made a switch to a better timeline. It's not easy to introspect but is extremely valuable to do

Re: Mimetic Traps

#19

Post by macca321 »

What a grim mindset. OTOH I really underachieved at uni by not taking it seriously, and the whole system would fall apart if everyone had behaved like me.

Re: Mimetic Traps

#20

Post by michaelwu »

2819b wrote: post #4
atemerev wrote: post #2

Meanwhile, I am trying to move out from the industry into the academia (physics), as what I am curious about is not satisfied by the industry jobs. To each their own, I guess.

To be fair, it sounds like you haven't experienced what it is like to be a full-time academic yet. Anecdotally I hear many more complaints from friends who are in academia than in industry. Low pay, bureaucracy, and rocky path to tenure come to mind...

I think bureaucracy is not specific to academia but is rather something that just arises when a group of people try to coordinate work among themselves.
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