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Mimetic Traps

briantimar.github.io

21–27 of 27 posts

Re: Mimetic Traps

#21

Can’t say I’ve ever thought of Twitter as a way to avoid mimetic traps.

Yeah, I liked the read but the two tips I somewhat disagree with is the twitter tip (because honestly, even if you use twitter right, there is a low signal to noise ratio) and the price signals for failure/success. Sometimes its better to to accept a title change to create the illusion of a meteoric rise even if the compensation doesn't immediately follow. Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just…

Same here.

> Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just makes me shudder

Yeah. I maintain that currently, the marginal RoI on sales&marketing is greater than on actually doing something useful - it's too easy to bullshit people into giving you money, so making money is only weakly correlated with doing something useful.

(I know this hinges on the definition of "useful" and I haven't put enough time to clarify it even for myself, but roughly: for me, something useful means making people happier or suffer less, or increasing the pool of knowledge about the world humanity has. Making people suffer, or part with their money for very suboptimal reasons, has negative utility.)

Re: Mimetic Traps

#22
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It’s about the same everywhere.

Bureaucracy perhaps but without doubt the politics in academia are some of the most unpleasant you’ll ever encounter.

Re: Mimetic Traps

#24
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s about the same everywhere.

Bureaucracy perhaps but without doubt the politics in academia are some of the most unpleasant you’ll ever encounter.

I’ve encountered truly rotten politics in industry, too. My experience though is about 6 summer internships and one relatively friendly PhD so maybe I have a rosy picture.

Re: Mimetic Traps

#25
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.

I found this website useful in navigating that balance: https://meaningness.com/eternalism-nihilism-and-meaningness

Re: Mimetic Traps

#26
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.

> Nothing matters, but you can't escape doing something so might as well do something that matters.

This goes straight into Google Keep for a rainy day

Re: Mimetic Traps

#27
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…

The highest paid folks in my university’s engineering department are making $500k
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