Mimetic Traps(briantimar.github.io)
briantimar.github.io
Mimetic Traps
https://briantimar.github.io/notes/mimetic/mimetic
26 comments
Sure, but how many jobs have you had where everyone needed to make quarterly numbers, to the detriment of building something for something for future generations? Money shouldn't be the sole signal of success in society. We have enough (too much of) that already.
I think there's a larger issue of flawed heuristics for progress. The kind of memetics this article is talking about is one such heuristic. Going for the money is another.
They are both potentially flawed in their core if the expectation is that they will solve our societal issues. They are both memes in that they are evolved to propagate themselves. And that's what they do best.
They are both potentially flawed in their core if the expectation is that they will solve our societal issues. They are both memes in that they are evolved to propagate themselves. And that's what they do best.
It's probably not an accident that vigorous contempt for everything relating to markets and price signals runs high in academia, where differences in pay across occupations are considered a form of structural oppression.
The highest paid folks in my university’s engineering department are making $500k
It is often useful, when climbing a ladder, to ask if you want to get to the top of that ladder. I have had to do this twice in my career and in both cases made a switch to a better timeline. It's not easy to introspect but is extremely valuable to do
You want to be a little careful with how deep you dig the "does this really matter?" hole, otherwise you discover it's very dark down there with no reachable bottom. You risk concluding that nothing matters.
Or actually go all the way and come full circle. Nothing matters, but you can't escape doing something so might as well do something that matters.
In my experience, deconstructing meaning and value have been most instrumental to me personally finding good ways of constructing meaning and value.
Anyway, thanks for the comment. I love these conversations.
In my experience, deconstructing meaning and value have been most instrumental to me personally finding good ways of constructing meaning and value.
Anyway, thanks for the comment. I love these conversations.
> Nothing matters, but you can't escape doing something so might as well do something that matters.
This goes straight into Google Keep for a rainy day
This goes straight into Google Keep for a rainy day
I found this website useful in navigating that balance: https://meaningness.com/eternalism-nihilism-and-meaningness
Yeah, don't stare too deeply into that abyss.
Meanwhile, I am trying to move out from the industry into the academia (physics), as what I am curious about is not satisfied by the industry jobs. To each their own, I guess.
To be fair, it sounds like you haven't experienced what it is like to be a full-time academic yet. Anecdotally I hear many more complaints from friends who are in academia than in industry. Low pay, bureaucracy, and rocky path to tenure come to mind...
It’s about the same everywhere.
Bureaucracy perhaps but without doubt the politics in academia are some of the most unpleasant you’ll ever encounter.
I’ve encountered truly rotten politics in industry, too. My experience though is about 6 summer internships and one relatively friendly PhD so maybe I have a rosy picture.
I think bureaucracy is not specific to academia but is rather something that just arises when a group of people try to coordinate work among themselves.
Can’t say I’ve ever thought of Twitter as a way to avoid mimetic traps.
I'd go one further, I think Twitter is a mimetic trap.
edit - and HN definitely is ;)
edit - and HN definitely is ;)
Yeah, I liked the read but the two tips I somewhat disagree with is the twitter tip (because honestly, even if you use twitter right, there is a low signal to noise ratio) and the price signals for failure/success. Sometimes its better to to accept a title change to create the illusion of a meteoric rise even if the compensation doesn't immediately follow. Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just makes me shudder
Same here.
> Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just makes me shudder
Yeah. I maintain that currently, the marginal RoI on sales&marketing is greater than on actually doing something useful - it's too easy to bullshit people into giving you money, so making money is only weakly correlated with doing something useful.
(I know this hinges on the definition of "useful" and I haven't put enough time to clarify it even for myself, but roughly: for me, something useful means making people happier or suffer less, or increasing the pool of knowledge about the world humanity has. Making people suffer, or part with their money for very suboptimal reasons, has negative utility.)
> Also, that specific point makes me think of sales which just makes me shudder
Yeah. I maintain that currently, the marginal RoI on sales&marketing is greater than on actually doing something useful - it's too easy to bullshit people into giving you money, so making money is only weakly correlated with doing something useful.
(I know this hinges on the definition of "useful" and I haven't put enough time to clarify it even for myself, but roughly: for me, something useful means making people happier or suffer less, or increasing the pool of knowledge about the world humanity has. Making people suffer, or part with their money for very suboptimal reasons, has negative utility.)
What a grim mindset. OTOH I really underachieved at uni by not taking it seriously, and the whole system would fall apart if everyone had behaved like me.
Powerful and insightful article, resonated with me a lot.
> Academics have uniformly rather low salaries, increasing our tendency to focus on social status as a measure of success. Salary gradations are useful for disrupting mimetic effects because they tie effort expended directly to units of universal economic value — convertible to kilos of rice, oil, and stuff in the physical world. A price is a lifeline to reality: all else being equal, the job with the lower wage is probably less valuable. Without this signal, the goals of a peer group are easily decoupled from the outside world, making it easy to drift into time-wasting pursuits.
What a concept, endeavors detached from price signals and the specific distortions he faced in his academic “market” if you will.