Culture is huge nested networks of memes[1] which reinforce themselves and evolve via natural selection. Their substrate is our brains.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
61–70 of 102 posts
Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I got involved in my community and active in the political movements here. When you start making issues visible and get your neighbors vocalizing the issues themselves But you didn't actually succeed in cleaning up New York, right? So maybe the problem is a culture that prioritizes "making issues visible" and engaging the "community" in "political movements," instead of every parent teaching their child from a youn…
Yes we are succeeding. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/09/16/good-trade-off-rat-ha... https://gothamist.com/news/the-hottest-clubs-in-nyc-these-da... I would even count Congestion Pricing as cleaning up the city: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/traffic_and_transit/2025/12... SLC is a major city and a dump then by your observation-only position. > instead of every parent teaching their child from a young age to pick…
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Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I got involved in my community and active in the political movements here. When you start making issues visible and get your neighbors vocalizing the issues themselves But you didn't actually succeed in cleaning up New York, right? So maybe the problem is a culture that prioritizes "making issues visible" and engaging the "community" in "political movements," instead of every parent teaching their child from a youn…
Is it a culture of "not my problem"? Maybe bad example but, Let's say you spill some food at a fast food place, shopping mall, airport. Do you make an effort to clean it up yourself or are you like "It's someone's job to clean this place therefore I can just leave it for them". Maybe that's too harsh an example but I see locals cleaning the streets in Japan, not government hired street sweepers. I don't know the deta…
I think you’re correct that it’s a culture of “someone else will do it.” Also, you can go further and pick up trash that doesn’t belong to you in an effort to keep the space clean for everyone: https://youtu.be/5N2eM7Za9Ss. In some cultures, it’s taboo to touch other people’s trash. In many more, it’s considered beneath the social class of people to clean up like that.
What amazed me about Provo and SLC was how clean and orderly the busy public spaces are, not just the nicer neighborhoods. There’s clean and orderly rich neighborhoods in every place in the world. Palo Alto pays people to go around and power wash everything. What’s rarer is places where even the busy tourist areas and lower income neighborhoods are clean. What you’ll see often in Tokyo are places that are not nice—worn out buildings, or buildings with mildew on white surfaces because it’s still a hot and humid country—but where the streets are clean and well kept.
Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certain workflows prefer non-queueing, for instance the throng empowers the bartender to load balance different groups, delay drinks to over consumers, etc etc. So other cultures can have those workflows in places we might not expect, that is not necessarily a matter of respect. In pub culture, queueing disrespects the bartender.
It depends. Many places in the UK have a tradition of "virtual queuing" at bars; they don't stand in a line because that would usually block the space, but everyone remembers who was before them. Usually the barkeep remembers as well, but sometimes they ask "who's next" and people defer to those ahead. But load balancing also happens.
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Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#65my far less eloquent take... you know that voice in the back of your end that amps you up for your first day of a new job, or springs to life when you see someone doing something annoying like cutting in line, or fuels the anxiety in the back of your mind as you lay awake at night? that's just your inner voice, right? well, really, a lot of people share inner voices. everyone has their own spin on it, and some people…
I wouldn't call those impulses an "inner voice". I'd call them learned behaviors beaten into people, and if anything we're thankfully finally seeing less of that.
If there's anything that immediately identifies someone as inexperienced and untrustworthy it's that impulsive behavior and over-reliance on "culture" instead of their own independent mind.
Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#66Culture is huge nested networks of memes[1] which reinforce themselves and evolve via natural selection. Their substrate is our brains. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics
Are those terms substantially different from the article's claims?
THe wikipedia definition of meme is "memes: ideas, behaviors, beliefs, and expressions." The author discusses frames and mental models as a topic [0]. "[A] framing is a choice of boundaries" and "A model is an analogy. It is a simplified simulation of something else." These seem to map to meme-concepts ideas and beliefs respectively and loosely. ("Frame" is probably a meta-meme or ontology that expands or contracts what memes can exist at all or what can be discerned at all.)
0. https://aethermug.com/posts/a-framing-and-model-about-framin...
Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
At its core, I believe the phenomenon of culture is intertwined with the hard problem of consciousness, which is notoriously circular and self-referential and roughly speaking “how we do/feel things ’round here” is potentially not far from the best we can do. Cultural baggage, for the lack of a better word, drives how we tend to approach reality (holistically or by dividing and classifying things, monistically or dua…
> culture is intertwined with the hard problem of consciousness Majority of people are sleep-walking as machines driven by imitation, habit and external forces. We live in a dreamlike, mechanical state lacking the awareness of this itself. apropos: Gurdjieff
Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#68Queueing culture is hilarious. Indians > Italians (ok, Italians are probably more entertaining), brits (I imagined them trying to bring queueing to indians and gave up... although india does have a semi-line culture in limited ways nowadays). As an american, grocery checkout queueing always angered me.
> As an american, grocery checkout queueing always angered me.
It should, because practically everywhere in the US does it wrong. There should be a single entry queue that distributes to the multiple handlers. Instead, you wind up with multiple queues so that people get hung up behind someone causing slow handling.
The one that infuriates me are bank queues. Look, folks, both queuing theory and experience show that you CANNOT have a single handler without your queue time going to infinity. So, how many active tellers do I always see on the unusual times I have to go into the bank? Exactly one. Always. And a queue that's backed up 6 deep.
Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes we are succeeding. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/09/16/good-trade-off-rat-ha... https://gothamist.com/news/the-hottest-clubs-in-nyc-these-da... I would even count Congestion Pricing as cleaning up the city: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/traffic_and_transit/2025/12... SLC is a major city and a dump then by your observation-only position. > instead of every parent teaching their child from a young age to pick…
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Okay. Well I think we’re done with this discussion here. I never said it was a done project but that things are changing. Enjoy your dumpy city you dont care about.
Re: Culture Is the Mass-Synchronization of Framings
#70> sarcasm is simply not a thing in Japan, and people aren't (I'm tempted to say can't be) sarcastic. It doesn't occur to them to be it.
Japanese culture absolutely has sarcasm, it simply manifests in an unfamiliar way. Homegoroshi (killing-compliment) and using a flagrantly inappropriate politeness register are some of the most common forms. Sarcasm, and more broadly humor, are highly contingent on culture and language but they're also cultural universals. They're just usually not that recognizable without familiarity with the culture and strong social skills.