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Communities are not fungible

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: Communities are not fungible

#71

Post by talkingtab »

01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote: post #65
talkingtab wrote: post #56

When we think about communities we need an effective model of what they are and how they operate. What then is an effective model for a community? In "Twitter And Teargas", Zeynep Tufecki argued that the community afforded by Twitter was unable to effect long term, substantial change and therefore Arab Spring is now a footnote. Twitter affords flash mobs. That concept - affordance - provides a hint for a model of com…

> What is the most effective way to get rid of ants? To destroy their ability to use a pheromone trail. Perhaps we could just put advertising in it? I'm taking this analogy for myself :) > what kind of social system would afford long term substantial change? In my experience over the last year, these things are true... First, in-person interaction is strictly better than digital. You can meet lots of people digitally…

The point about trust and respect is a good insight. Especially in the context of our current internet. A friend once said to me "trust is the one thing you can't get on then internet". So how would one bring that trust to the internet?

And the insight about meetings brought back memories of some horrendous meetings. At software companies. OMG. But very funny very long after the fact. Good points all. Trust, respect, reputation.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#72

Post by econ »

Two things this reminds me of.

I was once part of a "traveling" community that would sign up for every new platform. A good few tech bloggers among us. We would meet again and again but the community still failed long term despite everyone artificially trying to make it work. I got one good friend out of it, whom I never talk to.

I one time tried to root in a new city, I talk with everyone, buy cups of coffee for reluctant strangers, had a ton of fun and a ton of laughs but nothing permanent grew. I made two good friends whom I never talk to.

In my home town I must have 1000 people I almost never talk to. Adds up to a lot of talk. Familiar faces everywhere.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#73

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

talkingtab wrote: post #70
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another insight (corollary?) for Sapir-Whorf is that your language prevents you from thinking some things Last time I looked, Sapir-Whorf is almost universally discredited among linguists and cognitive scientists. The wikipedia summary: "The hypothesis is in dispute, with many different variations throughout its history. The strong hypothesis of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, is t…

It does not matter if a hypothesis is discredited if it helps you build an effective model that works. If you use a discredited hypothesis to make bread and make a great tasting and edible bread, then the hypothesis has value. Even if it is "wrong". Because it works. Here are some question for you: can you think of any things you cannot think of in your language? Hints. Beethoven, Van Gogh, 7. Can a democracy evolve…

No, it doesn't work. Humans (at least) are very powerful metaphor users, and it is typically possible to discuss things for which there is no direct language in terms of metaphors (and analogies). We do this all the time, and it pretty much removes all bounds on what we can talk (and think) about with language.

Lots of poetry makes no sense if you consider it to be a series of words to be literally interpreted according to a grammar rules and a dictionary. But it can often hint at meanings and ideas that can't be expressed directly.

Of course, there are some things that always remain that are harder to get rid of. That's not "lack of language preventing you from thinking things", but rather "assumptions so deeply built into language that it is hard, though perhaps not impossible, to escape them".

Re: Communities are not fungible

#74

Post by kjshsh123 »

Classic slam dunk on economists, except I think it's a bit of a miss. They're a classic scapegoat and punching bag but there's tons of economics research on community.

Saying economics doesn’t model community is a bit like saying physics doesn’t model color because some models ignore wavelength variation. It depends which models you’re looking at and what their purpose is. There is substantial economic research on: Social capital (e.g., Putnam, though he’s political science adjacent; economists like Glaeser formalize it) Network effects and network structure Repeated games and reputation Religious participation and club goods (Iannaccone’s work is central here) Identity economics (Akerlof & Kranton) Trust and informal institutions Household bargaining models Matching theory, where who you match with specifically matters

I think the fact that communities are not fungible is frankly obvious. Fact is communities do die, and sometimes there are long run benefits to consider.

The challenge is actually nurturing and valuing community which this post doesn't actually grapple with.

E.g. the problem with Robert Moses wasn't just development. It was the style of development which was inherently anti-community. Nurturing a community requires common space where people bump into each other harmlessly. Highways dividing neighbourhoods, for people in their private cars to get to neighbourhoods with no commercial life and large setbacks between homes.

It's not that Robert Moses didn't realize community isn't fungible. It's either that he didn't realize how bad it would be for community or that he just didn't value community in the first place.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#75

Post by throw4847285 »

talkingtab wrote: post #70
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another insight (corollary?) for Sapir-Whorf is that your language prevents you from thinking some things Last time I looked, Sapir-Whorf is almost universally discredited among linguists and cognitive scientists. The wikipedia summary: "The hypothesis is in dispute, with many different variations throughout its history. The strong hypothesis of linguistic relativity, now referred to as linguistic determinism, is t…

It does not matter if a hypothesis is discredited if it helps you build an effective model that works. If you use a discredited hypothesis to make bread and make a great tasting and edible bread, then the hypothesis has value. Even if it is "wrong". Because it works. Here are some question for you: can you think of any things you cannot think of in your language? Hints. Beethoven, Van Gogh, 7. Can a democracy evolve…

Look, I thought the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was great when I learned about it, too. I love the movie Arrival (and the Ted Chiang story it's based on). But if you aren't a social scientist, it can be very appealing (and self-defeating) to latch onto a specific concept you heard about and try to create some grand theory of the world. This is fine, but it's sophistry, not deep thinking.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#76

Post by didgetmaster »

glroyal wrote: post #42

Communities are not fungible, but they are also not permanent. Because humans are mobile, the community changes as people, institutions, infrastructure, and industries come and go over time. Even if a substantial fraction of the population never leaves the geographic boundaries that contain the community they were born in, their web of relationships constantly changes as old neighbors leave and new neighbors arrive,…

Like many technical people, my personality naturally gravitates towards introverted behavior. I am very comfortable being alone for long periods of time, and in spending my day writing code or fixing bugs with just me and my computer.

But I also enjoy interacting with other people. It just takes the right 'community' to draw me out of my shell. There have been periods of my life when I was outgoing, because I was in the right environment (college, certain jobs, sports, etc.). Other periods allowed me to retreat into my own isolated world.

There just isn't a magic formula that produces the right kind of community that we want on demand.

Re: Communities are not fungible

#77

Post by ChicagoDave »

piffey wrote: post #61
ChicagoDave wrote: post #57

After reading this I wonder if ifMud has survived 29 years because we use a modified perlMud that has an IRC-like channel communication system. We’re not beholden to any commercial service and the mud is self-hosted by the community (generally the IFTF - IF Technology Foundation). No one could disrupt our community the way Discord or Reddit might.

First time hearing about ifMud despite being someone who spent a lot of time on MUDs and MUSHs in the past, hacking on various ones. Seems like a neat community and would love to hear more about it.

Head on over to http://ifmud.port4000.com/.

Create a user, login, find the Adventurer's Lounge and hang out. We don't actually build or play in the mud anymore. We use the channel system to talk about "stuff and things" and really not a ton about IF anymore. A lot of politics these days.

The most recent discussions were on:

#sci/med/health/health #alt/conspiracy #misc/politics/gayrights #alt/animals/chickens #misc/cars #misc/AI #tech/.../programming

Re: Communities are not fungible

#78

Post by moon2 »

That's what capitalism does – it isolates individuals and destroys communities. No wonder why so many people are befriending AIs and there's a "loneliness epidemic" going around.

When it comes to physical communities (e.g. neighborhoods), I think about some neighborhoods in São Paulo that are being destroyed by buildings and construction sites everywhere [1]. So many neighborhoods full of stories and friendships and people who took care of each other, now becoming part of this massive verticalization, speculation and isolation. Neighbors have to leave due to construction companies' harassment. The ones that decide to stay have to live without their friends around, in neighborhoods that grow more dangerous, with worse traffic, with less small businesses and without knowing who are their new neighbors (which aren't even long term living). Their houses look exactly like Carl Fredricksen's house from Pixar's Up.

When it comes to digital communities, I can only be reminded of how Orkut and MSN defined lots of adolescences in Latin America. Orkut literally had the concept of communities, where people gathered around similar interests (just as the early web's forums). I made a lot of friends in Orkut and MSN Messenger, some of them are still my friends after more than a decade. Facebook tried to recreate the idea of communities (with their groups), but Facebook is pretty much dead for younger people. And Instagram is just so isolating. It has a whole lot of standardized and algorithmically curated content that alienates you from other human beings.

I believe the reason why Orkut (owned by Google) was killed was that they wanted more users, maybe to compete with Facebook. But Orkut was too localized, it basically talked to Brazil and some other countries in Latin America, and India, where it was created. After killing Orkut, Google invested a lot on Google+ (do you remember that fiasco??).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCIQoN0fUE0

Re: Communities are not fungible

#79

Post by AlienRobot »

Carrok wrote: post #53
jpereira wrote: post #35

When thinking about online communities I think the lack of "global" identities has dramatically hampered community migration and evolution. I fully agree with the author that you can't just pick up and move a community wholesale but irl we do see patterns of migration, disaporas, etc that bring along with them relationships and trust networks. That's been basically impossible to do online. The networks where most of…

I can’t disagree with this more. Even on discord I have four accounts for different contexts. One, my real name. Another, my gaming name. Another, my music/stage name. Another still, a different gaming name. Why? Because I don’t want people in any of those contexts knowing anything about who I am in the other contexts. This is a feature, not a bug.

Agreed. I find it ironic that online communities thrived on the detachment between the virtual persona that posts are associated to and the real persona that is writing the posts, but for one reason or another some people insist in connecting both.

It's a "need to know" basis, and I don't need to know your face, I don't need to know your gender, your age, where you are from, what job you have, I don't need to know your political affiliation, your religion, your other hobbies, what movies you watched, games you played, books you read, whom you follow, what communities you have joined. I don't need to know anything more than what the words in the post say.

When you "need" to know what is real you end up with social media like "BeReal" which is just an enormous privacy nightmare (requiring you to take photos at random times) just to make sure that people aren't editing photos or showing only the good aspects of their lives to the internet. Since when has "posting on the internet" become synonymous with a panopticon?

Re: Communities are not fungible

#80

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Meneth wrote: post #30
nicbou wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, these platforms are free and much easier to work with, especially for non-technical administrators. As of today, there just doesn't seem to be any good simple forum software. They all seem to need quite a bit of upkeep.

Gratis in terms of dollars, but not free. You pay by letting them take your community hostage.

> Gratis in terms of dollars, but not free.

That is what "free" means.

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