What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#51

Post by mirimir » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:37 PM UTC

sushisource wrote: post #35

PaulHoule wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be specific. This applies to the Democratic and Republican parties in the US.

I think that's partly why some commenters think the article isn't all that valuable. IMO, it really does not at all apply to the Dems/Republicans fight. If you've spent any amount of time with people who actually work in politics, it's readily apparent there's no kind of mutual collusion between the parties. They can barely even "collude" internally to advance their agendas. The whole thing is just a contest for who…

> If you've spent any amount of time with people who actually work in politics, it's readily apparent there's no kind of mutual collusion between the parties.

My admittedly limited experience suggests otherwise.

Many years ago, I worked for a state-level legislator, as an environmental aide. Although Republican, he supported (and contributed to) many good environmental bills. And worked closely with Democratic colleagues.

So one night over beer, I asked why he was Republican. And while he did make some cogent points about social and economic issues, his primary reason was that he lived in a Republican area, and that he'd never be elected as a Democrat.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#52

Post by mirimir » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

themgt wrote: post #46

sushisource wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's partly why some commenters think the article isn't all that valuable. IMO, it really does not at all apply to the Dems/Republicans fight. If you've spent any amount of time with people who actually work in politics, it's readily apparent there's no kind of mutual collusion between the parties. They can barely even "collude" internally to advance their agendas. The whole thing is just a contest for who…

There are often "symbolic votes" on issues, especially taken by the opposition party in a situation they know the bill could never become law. To take just one example, many Republicans ran for years on opposition to Obamacare and a promise to repeal it, even voting for repeal in the House and passing with wide margins. When finally Trump won the White House and the GOP controlled all 3 branches of gov't, they ultima…

> When finally Trump won the White House and the GOP controlled all 3 branches of gov't, they ultimately balked at voting to repeal.

Well, it is basically a Republican national healthcare program, which preserved the hugely profitable health insurance industry. Modeled on RomneyCare.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#53

Post by alexandercrohde » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

vearwhershuh wrote: post #6

I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens. On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book) It's short.

I think the distinction between Kayfabe and propaganda is that the audience knows and chooses to suspend disbelief of Kayfabe because it's engaging to them.

I like this article because I think Kayfabe is a much better explanation of certain societal tribes' mock battles, than a lack of intellect. I think propaganda is a poor theory for widespread misinformation, because if it were simply a lack of information, then giving correct information to the uninformed (e.g. wikipedia) would immediately rectify the problem.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#54

Post by motohagiography » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

The writer was a guest on Rogan this weekend, and he was very engaging, he did wander a bit. He has a particular kind of breadth-first associative intelligence that can cause listeners to become almost hypnotized by all the open cognitive loops his conversation creates, not unlike the kayfabe concept he's touting.

Similar things come up in the theory of musical composition where you create and resolve "tension," and you can drive the listeners perceptions by loading them up with mental anchors to notes and then resolving them all at once. If you learn to play any Bach, you can begin to see and articulate how he discovered it. Eric Weinsteins example of pro wrestling is identifying where it appears in narrative, but there are analogous concepts in areas like so-called, "neuro linguistic programming," where ideas are "stacked," and then collapsed into a conclusion. I only know about that part of it because I have some very diverse and interesting friends.

As a writer, I use a similar technique all the time, but in smaller more digestible loops, and only rarely with enough to take the reader into that kind of "hall of mirrors," effect great fiction writers use, where each new sentence introduces plot elements that cascade back through the story and closes loops on ideas you have already set up. Mystery novels are a the most simple example of it, where at the end _it all falls into place_.

Great auteur films like 13 Conversations About One Thing, and any Cohen Brother's pic uses a similar device.

Anyway it's fun and addictive, and while I'm sure smarter people than me have a more coherent theory of it, I can see why this fellow thinks it's important.

When you think about it, how our mind works is fundamentally the only actual problem. Everything else is just an artifact of it.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#55

Post by gowld » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

alexandercrohde wrote: post #53

vearwhershuh wrote: post #6

I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens. On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book) It's short.

I think the distinction between Kayfabe and propaganda is that the audience knows and chooses to suspend disbelief of Kayfabe because it's engaging to them. I like this article because I think Kayfabe is a much better explanation of certain societal tribes' mock battles, than a lack of intellect. I think propaganda is a poor theory for widespread misinformation, because if it were simply a lack of information, then g…

If you give someone a complicated truth and a simple emotionally appealing lie, why would they immediately recognize and prefer the truth?

Wikipedia happened, and then Conservapedia happened as a reaction.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#56

Post by scythe » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

>The decades old battle in theoretical physics over bragging rights between the "string" and "loop" camps would seem to be an even more significant example within the hard sciences of a collaborative intra-promotion rivalry given the apparent failure of both groups to produce a quantum theory of gravity.

In string theory we quantize gravity by attaching voodoo parameters to particles, and manipulating those parameters so that they forbid the gravitational ultraviolet catastrophe. In LQG or NQFT we attach voodoo parameters to spacetime, forbidding tiny singularities. We can also attach voodoo parameters to gravity itself and get the theory of asymptotically safe gravity. I think that would be four theories. Anyone who finds better-justified voodoo parameters should be welcomed into the ring, but that is very difficult.

Personally I find the voodoo parameters in NQFT to be the least weird, but Connes (a leading proponent) earned some raspberries for his oh-wait-I-didn't-mean-that revision of his prediction of the Higgs mass ( https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf ).

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#57

Post by gowld » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

sushisource wrote: post #35

PaulHoule wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be specific. This applies to the Democratic and Republican parties in the US.

I think that's partly why some commenters think the article isn't all that valuable. IMO, it really does not at all apply to the Dems/Republicans fight. If you've spent any amount of time with people who actually work in politics, it's readily apparent there's no kind of mutual collusion between the parties. They can barely even "collude" internally to advance their agendas. The whole thing is just a contest for who…

The current president is literally both a Democrat and a Republican.

The OP article was written in 2011. Not long before, maybe as recent as 2000, there was a lot more so called "civility" in government, where most of the debate was pork barrel negotiations, not major party line votes on major legal upheavals.

R and D worked together on things like handing ever more power to corporations and the military industrial complex, and diverting national wealth to the weathiest people.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#58

Post by krnsll » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

alexandercrohde wrote: post #53

vearwhershuh wrote: post #6

I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens. On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book) It's short.

I think the distinction between Kayfabe and propaganda is that the audience knows and chooses to suspend disbelief of Kayfabe because it's engaging to them. I like this article because I think Kayfabe is a much better explanation of certain societal tribes' mock battles, than a lack of intellect. I think propaganda is a poor theory for widespread misinformation, because if it were simply a lack of information, then g…

I've always found the mutual knowledge vs common knowledge dichotomy to be a good way to conceptualize this distinction between kayfabe and propaganda (although it is not strictly speaking the perfect analogy here, it does offer some insight). The famous blue-eyed islanders puzzle is a great illustration of the concept (and perhaps something to occupy one's time with in quarantine).

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#59

Post by gowld » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

battery_cowboy wrote: post #34

gameswithgo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an example, when you hear a politician say something outrages, insane, or crazy. Instead of thinking "oh my, what a fool this person is", consider that they may be performing, in a way agreed upon by his or her follow politicians. They know it isn't true, but that doesn't matter, because the audience doesn't care.

The more academic form of trolling?

Not "academic" , just less Internetty.

Re: What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

#60

Post by theonionknight » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

machinelearning wrote: post #12

LolWolf wrote: post #2

Upvoted due to the interesting story, but the point is conceptually unclear (at least to me, but I'm quite slow) how would this improve my cognitive toolkit? I understand the (one) example presented apart from wrestling, but it is not quite obvious that the actual framework of Kayfabe immediately maps to it. It feels like there are easier constructions that would explain this exactly as well, if not better (perhaps m…

Eric is describing an emergent phenomenon in a particular system of politics that is often invisible to an outsider. It upgrades one's cognitive toolkit by allowing someone reason in the second order (Assuming Kayfabe) vs. the first order (Taking things at face value). If you can spot Kayfabe and realize that certain rivalries exist for the sole purpose of propping each other up, you realize that the degrees of freed…

"If you can spot Kayfabe and realize that certain rivalries exist for the sole purpose of propping each other up, you realize that the degrees of freedom are far greater than it seems."

I feel as though this concept specifically isn't novel. Some would argue this situation could be applicable to the cold war--perhaps the soviet union didn't prop the United States up, but it certainly allowed us to foster and strengthen our sense of nationalism, which typically leads to a more robust state.