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Straussian Memes

lesswrong.com

41–50 of 56 posts

Re: Straussian Memes

#41
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, seriously, walk away. You have stumbled upon the website of a cult that ensnares smart people and eats their brains. No level of exposure is safe.

Like something that if you look at it too long you won't be able to pull yourself away? Almost as if you were petrified? That's an interesting idea. Someone ought to write an essay.

Nerd sniping

https://xkcd.com/356/

Re: Straussian Memes

#42
post #4

Did I miss something, or are none of the examples both Straussian and memetic/memes? I feel like if this were a real thing, one could imagine one example. Also, that's not how churches generally work.

Religions themselves are a great example of a Straussian meme, it’s shocking how close they got to using that example but instead went somewhere else with it that made zero sense. I suspect that the use of incredibly bad examples is some sort of intentional Straussian joke, and that the entire article itself, and not the examples in it, is supposed to be the real example of a Straussian meme.

Once you assume that any collection of Straussian meme examples is itself a Straussian meme example, you're free to start with the worst examples

And maybe that's the higher reading.

Re: Straussian Memes

#43
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like something that if you look at it too long you won't be able to pull yourself away? Almost as if you were petrified? That's an interesting idea. Someone ought to write an essay.

Nerd sniping https://xkcd.com/356/

In an early episode of EEVBlog, Jones made a big 14x14 grid of 1% tolerance resistors to estimate the resistance empirically. (He does do the knight's move like Munroe proposed at the very end.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1YrANSmOGY

Re: Straussian Memes

#44
> “There's a bit of a category mistake here, because a single utterance by a father is not a meme. But the example is meant to be an aid to developing an intuition for the general idea.”

In the Dawkins sense, if the Dad’s use of the Santa myth makes the child feel happy, and preserves in some sense their innocence (ignorance of the world the way it really is), then the mother can recreate the same myth pattern elsewhere, most likely through family traditions.

Or in a semiotics of Ecco, the parents are overcoding Santa and the child is undercoding Santa—same expressions but different interpretations between the two groups. Maybe childhood lives in that gap.

Re: Straussian Memes

#45
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between a Straussian meme and a double entendre?

Allegedly a Straussian meme is "self stabilizing" because it imposes some sort of cost to buying into the lower or higher meaning. So it's a multiple entendre that has ideological or epistemic implications. (I'm not convinced this is a thing, the examples were pretty contrived.) Whereas in the example here, acting on that advice is costly (it means losing friends) but believing it is free. And there aren't different…

I've been trying to come up with "self stabilizing" examples since yesterday, but think I finally may have stumbled upon one:

"Prep hop" videos, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpjU1UeAo or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1N3WXZ_1LM , may get forwarded by members of different subcultures for two different reasons: the first because they appreciate the comic satirisation of others, and the second because they appreciate how the comics have sweated the details of their own subculture — "we are like that only".

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McMSHqWM3G8

Re: Straussian Memes

#46

Unrelated to the topic, I’m a bit at a loss as to what to make of this website. There was a link to a really cool analysis of artificial intelligence research. And I guess they are a nonprofit and are raising $2M for “infrastructure“ but I think they mean infrastructure in the sense of software they like, and not the kind of infrastructure normal people think of like plumbing, electricity, and roads. I spent a few mi…

It's been around long enough to have a Wikipedia page [1], which can give you the main facts & demographics. In short, it started in 2006 as a group blog for people interested in AI. This was long before LLMs, and it was expected among the readership that understanding the math of decision theory would be important to AI. This spiraled out into general interest in how to be more rational as humans, and LessWrong is largely responsible for rescuing Bayesian statistics out of the academic wilderness. Many jargon phrases that are now common in nerdy circles originated there as well. They invented the field of AI safety, and are unhappy about the poor state of AI safety at this time.

There are in-person meetups (primarily as a social group) in most large cities. At the meetups, there is no expectation that people have read the website, and these days you're more likely to encounter discussion of the Astral Codex Ten blog than of LessWrong itself. The website is run by a non-profit called LightCone Infrastructure that also operates a campus in Berkeley [2] that is the closest thing to a physical hub of the community.

The community is called "rationalists", and they all hate that name but it's too late to change it. The joke definition of a rationalist is by induction: Eliezer Yudkowsky is the base case for a rationalist, and then anyone who disagrees online with a rationalist is a rationalist.

There are two parallel communities. The first is called "sneer club", and they've bonded into a community over hating and mocking rationalists online. It's not a use of time or emotional energy that makes sense to me, but I guess it's harmless. The second is called "post-rationalism", and they've bonded about being interested in the same topics that rationalists are interested in, but without a desire to be rational about those topics. They're the most normie of the bunch, but at the same time they've also been a fertile source of weird small cults.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong [2] https://www.lighthaven.space/

Re: Straussian Memes

#47
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your rant about Bay Area subcultures is suspiciously written in jargon that only someone deep in these subcultures would recognize- well done, very Straussian.

You know they do have my picture in the dictionary next to "insider-outsider!"

Thanks for providing a (meta-)example of "things-you-cant-say")?

you absolutely need to turn the "insider-outsider" idea into a paragraph that will attract downvotes (EDIT- without reading like colloquial schizo ;)

Ps: to what extent is your lack of engagement coming from a fear of counter-transferrence (/mirroring)

Re: Straussian Memes

#48
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly a Straussian meme is "self stabilizing" because it imposes some sort of cost to buying into the lower or higher meaning. So it's a multiple entendre that has ideological or epistemic implications. (I'm not convinced this is a thing, the examples were pretty contrived.) Whereas in the example here, acting on that advice is costly (it means losing friends) but believing it is free. And there aren't different…

I've been trying to come up with "self stabilizing" examples since yesterday, but think I finally may have stumbled upon one: "Prep hop" videos, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpjU1UeAo or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1N3WXZ_1LM , may get forwarded by members of different subcultures for two different reasons: the first because they appreciate the comic satirisation of others, and the second because they…

ELI5 the costs in each case?

Re: Straussian Memes

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to come up with "self stabilizing" examples since yesterday, but think I finally may have stumbled upon one: "Prep hop" videos, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpjU1UeAo or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1N3WXZ_1LM , may get forwarded by members of different subcultures for two different reasons: the first because they appreciate the comic satirisation of others, and the second because they…

ELI5 the costs in each case?

- Cost to the low (those who live on what they have earned): if we thought it was real it would mean that wealth was not on a bell curve and there may be a world past the one that all the think bois who write self help posts sketch out.

- Cost to the high (those who live on what they have): no good would come if we said it was real to folks who don't know (TMTC) and it could be bad, if they did not like that we have what we do.

We all stroll down the road of life, but if folks do not care to look at lanes not like theirs, it might make strife to both say the lanes are there, and not to laugh.

How do these costs sound?

Re: Straussian Memes

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ELI5 the costs in each case?

- Cost to the low (those who live on what they have earned): if we thought it was real it would mean that wealth was not on a bell curve and there may be a world past the one that all the think bois who write self help posts sketch out. - Cost to the high (those who live on what they have): no good would come if we said it was real to folks who don't know (TMTC) and it could be bad, if they did not like that we have…

Only quibble is that these light me up the way Nietzsche used to ;)

>we have what we do

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