Refinement Culture (2020)(paulskallas.substack.com)
paulskallas.substack.com
Refinement Culture (2020)
https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/refinement-culture
48 comments
The article uses the examples following:
1. Sports. Specifically, basketball, swimming, and gymnastics. Pretty much every community of any reasonable size has a community pool and a community basketball court. There are at least 6 basketball courts and 3 lap pools within a 10 minute drive of my house -- that I know of! -- and all get regular use. Gymnastics is also reasonably popular.
2. Logo design. I'd wager there are way more logo designers today than ever before. Also, this was not a compelling example IMO.
3. Cars. This one is more complicated, but it's really safety regulations that push homogeneity. First, I'll assert that sacrificing participation for fewer bodies splattered across the pavement is a good thing. And, second, again, that's probably a false choice -- I'd wager that there are a larger total number of people designing/making/modifying cars today than ever before. Maybe even a larger percentage of the population (thanks, youtube).
This works for other examples too. E.g., climbing will be added to the next Olympics. The Olympic versions of the sport are what I would call extremely refined, but climbing is more popular than ever.
When TONS of people do a thing, and the rewards for doing it well are reasonably good, that is when you get refinement.
1. Sports. Specifically, basketball, swimming, and gymnastics. Pretty much every community of any reasonable size has a community pool and a community basketball court. There are at least 6 basketball courts and 3 lap pools within a 10 minute drive of my house -- that I know of! -- and all get regular use. Gymnastics is also reasonably popular.
2. Logo design. I'd wager there are way more logo designers today than ever before. Also, this was not a compelling example IMO.
3. Cars. This one is more complicated, but it's really safety regulations that push homogeneity. First, I'll assert that sacrificing participation for fewer bodies splattered across the pavement is a good thing. And, second, again, that's probably a false choice -- I'd wager that there are a larger total number of people designing/making/modifying cars today than ever before. Maybe even a larger percentage of the population (thanks, youtube).
This works for other examples too. E.g., climbing will be added to the next Olympics. The Olympic versions of the sport are what I would call extremely refined, but climbing is more popular than ever.
When TONS of people do a thing, and the rewards for doing it well are reasonably good, that is when you get refinement.
>> “It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them.
That's a great quote to describe the meme stock phenomena.
That's a great quote to describe the meme stock phenomena.
Here is part two if anyone wants to continue reading: https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/refinement-culture-c1b.
This deserves to be shouted from the hilltops
>In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming greedy selfish unethical crooks. And in commerce we prefer relations to transactions, ready to support the local butcher because we feel we are part of a community and we are not alone --we are paid back with a smile and someone who says hello in the street. Indeed the central flaw in optimization is thinking that "everything else" ceases to exist and makes people think the individual, not the collective, is the true unit --when such thinking blows up the system. We humans are punished when we try to optimize, as if we suddenly ceased to be humans.
>In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming greedy selfish unethical crooks. And in commerce we prefer relations to transactions, ready to support the local butcher because we feel we are part of a community and we are not alone --we are paid back with a smile and someone who says hello in the street. Indeed the central flaw in optimization is thinking that "everything else" ceases to exist and makes people think the individual, not the collective, is the true unit --when such thinking blows up the system. We humans are punished when we try to optimize, as if we suddenly ceased to be humans.
> In human relationships we can't optimize without becoming greedy selfish unethical crooks.
I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around me. That is because I don't feel good when I have everything and others have nothing.
> we are optimized enough for survival already
Survival up to reproduction age, and maybe a bit more for raising grandkids. Past that, everything is our own making - we haven't ever lived so long, and the current epidemic of heart disease and cancer is as a result of never-before-seen ages and chemical substances - like the Standard American Diet.
I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around me. That is because I don't feel good when I have everything and others have nothing.
> we are optimized enough for survival already
Survival up to reproduction age, and maybe a bit more for raising grandkids. Past that, everything is our own making - we haven't ever lived so long, and the current epidemic of heart disease and cancer is as a result of never-before-seen ages and chemical substances - like the Standard American Diet.
> I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around me. That is because I don't feel good when I have everything and others have nothing.
How much do you optimize for the people around you? Do you spread things between yourself and others equally, or optimize that everyone still get some, but you still get most?
I don't mean that as a challenge or attack. It's a genuine question.
How much do you optimize for the people around you? Do you spread things between yourself and others equally, or optimize that everyone still get some, but you still get most?
I don't mean that as a challenge or attack. It's a genuine question.
> I disagree. I optimize for myself AND the people around me. That is because I don't feel good when I have everything and others have nothing.
True. But most try to make sure that they have just a little bit more than anybody else around them.
True. But most try to make sure that they have just a little bit more than anybody else around them.
That is not always true in my experience. Several generations on my and my wife's families put up with backbreaking hard work and privations in order to build a better future for later generations. Simultaneously other branches of our families spent what they had and enjoyed better lives at the time instead. It was a huge investment that really paid off in my generation, my family's debt to them is incalculable and largely unpayable.
I feel the same way.
I wonder how true the preference for relationship over transaction is. I buy fish from my local fishmonger because it’s qualitatively substantially better tasting. If that stopped being true, my relationship with him would end immediately and “supermarket fish it is now, because that’s about 50% the cost”. He can basically only stay in business by competing on quality because he can’t possibly compete on price and there aren’t enough people who would pay his rent out of a sense of charity for the local fish butcher.
If your fishmonger is good they've correctly identified you as a quality-driven customer. And for you quality means freshness trumps cut, which trumps knowledge, which trumps variety, which trumps packaging and so on.
Another customer was identified as driven by service, banter, tradition, speed, familiarity etc.
It's all relationship.
Another customer was identified as driven by service, banter, tradition, speed, familiarity etc.
It's all relationship.
I thought the data in sport stuff was interesting, but the rest of your arguments were fairly superficial and got lost in the weeds.
I guess my main gripe was that a lot of your thesis can be explained by trend. Women looking like Kardashian is simply no different than looking like Sophia Lauren in a bygone era. AirBnB's being sameish? Go back to the 70s and notice the uniformity of interior design with plywood, rockwalls, bright orange vinyl, etc. Brand mascots being smoother and slicker - again - just reifying the values of our era in the same way the original mascots reflected the masculine values of their day.
As for your broader argument about refinement (itself a clumsy descriptor for all this) - is this really anything new? Hasn't optimisation been the fundamental constant since humans started doing stuff?
I guess my main gripe was that a lot of your thesis can be explained by trend. Women looking like Kardashian is simply no different than looking like Sophia Lauren in a bygone era. AirBnB's being sameish? Go back to the 70s and notice the uniformity of interior design with plywood, rockwalls, bright orange vinyl, etc. Brand mascots being smoother and slicker - again - just reifying the values of our era in the same way the original mascots reflected the masculine values of their day.
As for your broader argument about refinement (itself a clumsy descriptor for all this) - is this really anything new? Hasn't optimisation been the fundamental constant since humans started doing stuff?
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There's a meme going around about this, shorthand for "global homogeneity" I wonder if the author knows about this meme.
A nit on the basketball portion of the article:
> Now the game has shifted to 3-point shooters and players who drive to the basket for close shots. How did this happen? Almost every team now has an NBA analytics department in the front office.
This is minimizing the effect of the rules changes in the NBA that have occurred over the past 20 years to restrict defensive players and protect shooters. The basketball of the 2020's is a different game from the basketball of 90's.
For consideration:
Rules Changes: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bRnr3x...
Analysis: https://sidelinesources.com/the-defensive-rule-change-that-s...
> Now the game has shifted to 3-point shooters and players who drive to the basket for close shots. How did this happen? Almost every team now has an NBA analytics department in the front office.
This is minimizing the effect of the rules changes in the NBA that have occurred over the past 20 years to restrict defensive players and protect shooters. The basketball of the 2020's is a different game from the basketball of 90's.
For consideration:
Rules Changes: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bRnr3x...
Analysis: https://sidelinesources.com/the-defensive-rule-change-that-s...
In professional sports the more crucial metric is the number of butts in the bleachers and watching on the tube. Winning more games sure helps with that. But in baseball there's a tension between winning more games and playing more exciting games with more action. With those things going in the opposite direction, the whole business model is threatened. Politics have been blamed for the ratings drop, but a lot could be just that games have gotten progressively more boring.
I wonder what rule change in baseball could fix this, along the lines of the basketball shot clock. From a business perspective, the leagues as a whole should be refining that instead.
Up to a point, anyway, given that gladiatorial combat to the death would probably be a huge draw. "Next on ESPN, The Hunger Games XXIII. Stay tuned!" Maybe we're already evolving in that direction with the popularity of competitions like "Alone" and the battle royales on Twitch.
I wonder what rule change in baseball could fix this, along the lines of the basketball shot clock. From a business perspective, the leagues as a whole should be refining that instead.
Up to a point, anyway, given that gladiatorial combat to the death would probably be a huge draw. "Next on ESPN, The Hunger Games XXIII. Stay tuned!" Maybe we're already evolving in that direction with the popularity of competitions like "Alone" and the battle royales on Twitch.
The article suggests that the original Olympic athletes aimed at some ineffable ideal of human form, not just winning. By contrast, athletes now optimize for winning with results that the author finds unappealing. Did baseball players in the 70s really have some more holistic ethos of the game, though? Or were they doing their best to win, just as players do now, but with more imperfect knowledge of how to do it?
As for your suggestion that we ought to optimize the rules themselves (i.e. so that players and teams end up playing in the way that we want), I'm skeptical of this. I have a feeling that, whatever rules we adopt, optimization of the sort in question is liable to produce the same sorts of distortions.
As for your suggestion that we ought to optimize the rules themselves (i.e. so that players and teams end up playing in the way that we want), I'm skeptical of this. I have a feeling that, whatever rules we adopt, optimization of the sort in question is liable to produce the same sorts of distortions.
Refinements already killed the most easily refined sports, like anything involving a car or a horse. Team sports are next. I don't know about baseball, but volley and soccer are moving quite fast on that direction. Basketball is already gone. Games are all the same nowadays.
Individual sports should be more resilient to refinements, because more capable athletes can do a larger diversity of moves. But that also won't last forever, at some point people will get enough flexibility that they are able to do the optimal performance for each modality, and then all competitions will be the same there too. (Muscle based modalities are mostly there already.)
Individual sports should be more resilient to refinements, because more capable athletes can do a larger diversity of moves. But that also won't last forever, at some point people will get enough flexibility that they are able to do the optimal performance for each modality, and then all competitions will be the same there too. (Muscle based modalities are mostly there already.)
Sabermetrics has absolutely ruined baseball.
Great essay. I’ve been thinking of this as a rise in “professionalizing” everything (I have neighbors who hire people to string up Christmas lights and decorate their tree) but this essay gets to the heart of it.
It’s a movement to a monoculture which, in every context, increases risk of failure. Plus it’s boring.
Edit: part two of the essay expresses this risk well: “… systems cannot really optimize; optimization leads to nonlinear increase in hidden risks which invariably blows up the apparatus.”
It’s a movement to a monoculture which, in every context, increases risk of failure. Plus it’s boring.
Edit: part two of the essay expresses this risk well: “… systems cannot really optimize; optimization leads to nonlinear increase in hidden risks which invariably blows up the apparatus.”
It reminds me of all the new ways Wall Street has found to squeeze every last dime out of American life.
Such as: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-w...
Such as: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-w...
This explains the popularity of youtuber boxing. People are looking for unrefined, less predictable sport
Sure, things become boring as they become popular, and therefore optimised.
Rather than lamenting the loss of baseball, you can go and find another sport that is more immature, scrappier, and so on. If pop music is predictable then find a music genre that is less well known.
The key is to look to where the money is, and then go elsewhere.
Rather than lamenting the loss of baseball, you can go and find another sport that is more immature, scrappier, and so on. If pop music is predictable then find a music genre that is less well known.
The key is to look to where the money is, and then go elsewhere.
I didn't see a definition, but this seems to be a concise instance of the effect:
> These minimal improvements in each phone are indistinguishable to the average person. It's still 2007 we are stuck. All they can do is add another camera to the back. Refining.
It's kind of interesting that all of the examples lie in mass culture. Sports. Phones. Marketing. Cars.
Writing is covered in Part 2:
> It managed to get the top of Hacker News without anyone realizing it wasn’t a real person writing it [GPT-3 did].
https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/refinement-culture-c1b
Even so, writing that appears on the front page of HN is not likely to be too far out of the bounds of normal. That's the whole idea.
What all of these phenomena have in common is mass market selection pressure. You have a thing that needs to appeal to the largest possible audience.
Is it any surprise that the things that pop out the other end of this Darwinian selector tend to look the same? To be a little too optimized? To lack personality or quirkiness?
If you want to see counterexamples, look at any niche community. They're all over the Internet. Some of them surfaced during the last US presidential election, to the shock and horror of the masses. These communities seem to be growing in number, and exploring ever more exotic norms of behavior, aesthetics, spirituality, and ground truth.
> These minimal improvements in each phone are indistinguishable to the average person. It's still 2007 we are stuck. All they can do is add another camera to the back. Refining.
It's kind of interesting that all of the examples lie in mass culture. Sports. Phones. Marketing. Cars.
Writing is covered in Part 2:
> It managed to get the top of Hacker News without anyone realizing it wasn’t a real person writing it [GPT-3 did].
https://paulskallas.substack.com/p/refinement-culture-c1b
Even so, writing that appears on the front page of HN is not likely to be too far out of the bounds of normal. That's the whole idea.
What all of these phenomena have in common is mass market selection pressure. You have a thing that needs to appeal to the largest possible audience.
Is it any surprise that the things that pop out the other end of this Darwinian selector tend to look the same? To be a little too optimized? To lack personality or quirkiness?
If you want to see counterexamples, look at any niche community. They're all over the Internet. Some of them surfaced during the last US presidential election, to the shock and horror of the masses. These communities seem to be growing in number, and exploring ever more exotic norms of behavior, aesthetics, spirituality, and ground truth.
The "ideal male body" in the last article in the series (in a picture from a tweet) is Fedor Emelianenko, a legendary heavyweight MMA fighter (and that's really understating it).
Of course Fedor is no body-builder, but 80% of males on the planet would probably find it very hard to reach Fedor's physique, even if they trained as hard as he must have.
Anyway Fedor became legendary for his skill and his technique, not his physique. In the olden days of MMA, when men fought like men, in the ring, rather than like animals in a cage, Fedor made his name by bringing down enemies bigger and stronger than himself in a sport were you don't win on points; and also of course for exhibiting something that approached chivalry and honour, as much as such can be found in any sport where two grown men turn each other's face to mush for a crowd's entertainment.
I digress. Fedor's is not the ideal male body. The ideal male brain, maybe - for a time of war, certainly. But he's a professional fighter and most males aren't. Holding his body up as the ideal male physique is committing the same sin of unnatural over-otpimisation the rest of the article (very clumsily, I find) supports.
Of course Fedor is no body-builder, but 80% of males on the planet would probably find it very hard to reach Fedor's physique, even if they trained as hard as he must have.
Anyway Fedor became legendary for his skill and his technique, not his physique. In the olden days of MMA, when men fought like men, in the ring, rather than like animals in a cage, Fedor made his name by bringing down enemies bigger and stronger than himself in a sport were you don't win on points; and also of course for exhibiting something that approached chivalry and honour, as much as such can be found in any sport where two grown men turn each other's face to mush for a crowd's entertainment.
I digress. Fedor's is not the ideal male body. The ideal male brain, maybe - for a time of war, certainly. But he's a professional fighter and most males aren't. Holding his body up as the ideal male physique is committing the same sin of unnatural over-otpimisation the rest of the article (very clumsily, I find) supports.
> They shaved Little Caesar’s chest.
Would love to see the full documentary on this one.
Would love to see the full documentary on this one.
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I am a professional cartoonist and it is my professional opinion that the older picture of Chuck E Cheese at the end of the article is a steaming pile of nasty airbrushed mess. Not appealing. Over-rendered.
I generally found article meh, but old Chuck is better then new Chuck. And I dont even know who Chuck is, just that head is overly large in new one and it looks worst.
My take on this is that somehow this seems to be human nature at play (and should be accounted for) . This applies for anything that has some set of rules defined (be it by people, or nature). Basically a game. Everyone is trying to maximize for the win. Now and then a new thing is discovered and along with it, some new use cases for maximizing the wins. It's the same for politics (obscure laws that open different use cases), music (millennial whoop) , film (netflix only running series with 2-3 seasons) , formula 1, etc.
What are the alternatives? Which future do we want among those alternatives?
Alt0: Stop optimizing. Unlikely. The incentives will pull agents to optimize.
Alt1: Change the rules of the games. Unlikely to a lesser degree. They did this to hockey relatively recently.
Alt2: Go local. Like the rise of kabbadi in India, going for local sport or local groceries will allow for greater diversity. Somewhat happening.
Alt3: ?
Alt0: Stop optimizing. Unlikely. The incentives will pull agents to optimize.
Alt1: Change the rules of the games. Unlikely to a lesser degree. They did this to hockey relatively recently.
Alt2: Go local. Like the rise of kabbadi in India, going for local sport or local groceries will allow for greater diversity. Somewhat happening.
Alt3: ?
Alt3: Teams compete across an aggregation of multiple sports, which are randomly-ish chosen from a pool at the beginning of the season. Say, 10 sports total, 3 of which are chosen each season.
This is the same way ML models are kept from specializing too much, right?
This is the same way ML models are kept from specializing too much, right?
My impression is that professional sports won't have a long-lasting future. I don't see any way to avoid that fate.
The best future would be people actively doing sports and competing locally in insignificant but fun leagues.
> Women all wear the same makeup now.
I doubt it. I haven't seen a lot of women done up for work since last March, but this is not my recollection.
> They all look kind of like Kim Kardashian.
Where does this gentleman live?
> Everyone is taking vitamins now.
Perhaps in the neighborhoods where the women all look kind of like Kim Kardashian.
I doubt it. I haven't seen a lot of women done up for work since last March, but this is not my recollection.
> They all look kind of like Kim Kardashian.
Where does this gentleman live?
> Everyone is taking vitamins now.
Perhaps in the neighborhoods where the women all look kind of like Kim Kardashian.
Somewhat related, but about academic economics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27273346
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This is a huge problem in video games now IMO. Any card game everyone plays the same decks, in MOBAs everyone builds the same and prioritizes the same picks, in MMOs everyone wants only the BiS gear and specs the same way, etc. Basically so many games are "solved" and there are so many people who min-max the games become totally unfun.
Funny the author brings up the Olympics because I always complain that the most aesthetically pleasing figure skating runs never win because they aren't crammed wall to wall with "technical requirements". Also re: baseball, I wonder how many more ads there are today?
Funny the author brings up the Olympics because I always complain that the most aesthetically pleasing figure skating runs never win because they aren't crammed wall to wall with "technical requirements". Also re: baseball, I wonder how many more ads there are today?
This article reminded me of an excerpt from "Diary of a Bad Year," where J.M. Coetzee complains that the insistence on accuracy and objectivity in sports officiating represents an anti-social, inhuman attitude toward sport (think about why many people find the prospect of robot umpires in baseball distasteful). Coetzee suggests that this trend began in horse racing because bettors had money riding on the outcome, and that demanded accuracy.
It's tempting to think that the "refinement culture" that Skallas is talking about, which encompasses everything from hyper-optimized athletic training, to corporate mascots rebranded for sex appeal, is similarly motivated by what is, at base, just capitalism.
It's tempting to think that the "refinement culture" that Skallas is talking about, which encompasses everything from hyper-optimized athletic training, to corporate mascots rebranded for sex appeal, is similarly motivated by what is, at base, just capitalism.
Most people, including me, do not think bad officiating is randomly distributed, so human officiating is inherently unjust.
Help me understand Paul, as I'm a tad bit younger - what's that mid-to-late 2000s writing style? Mind giving some examples?
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Paul learned a lot from Taleb. He internalized this insights and applied them more broadly to culture. Insightful.
"It has to do with refinement of things, games, products and aesthetics. It’s hard to describe exactly WHAT Refinement Culture really means."
The author fails to provide any shape to this. He doesn't describe what refinement culture is. It's a list disconnected changes. I don't know what he's trying to say other than "I don't like how some things change". An AI may have written a better article (if this wasn't already AI generated).
The author fails to provide any shape to this. He doesn't describe what refinement culture is. It's a list disconnected changes. I don't know what he's trying to say other than "I don't like how some things change". An AI may have written a better article (if this wasn't already AI generated).
One example is movies. How many new and innovative movies come out this year versus rehash and continuations of existing franchises?
This is like looking at the behavior of RL agents as their policies improve/stabilize.
As if too much [0]information is not information.
Or not enough depending how one interprets information
Or not enough depending how one interprets information
edit: typo left in for reflexive humor