Straussian Memes(lesswrong.com)
lesswrong.com
Straussian Memes
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CAwnnKoFdcQucq4hG/straussian-memes-a-lens-on-techniques-for-mass-persuasion
55 comments
I kind of regret calling it Straussian because of the baggage that comes with that label. The key differentiator here compared to exoteric/esoteric is the stabilization mechanism: social costs to either upgrading one’s own understanding, or upgrading someone else’s understanding. That’s what keeps the readings differentiated and therefore the tiered structure stable. Keeping the structure encourages the memes survival, because it widens the acceptability of the message to meet audiences where they are. I think I need a few more examples and I ought to make this point a little more explicit.
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Right. See also Paul J. Bagley, "On the Practice of Esotericism," 1992. https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709872?orig...
I don't know what you'd call something structured like this, but I really love that advice:
"You can't change the people around you -
But you can change the people around you."
"You can't change the people around you -
But you can change the people around you."
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 layers of meaning accessible to different parties. It's straightforwardly a play on words.
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 layers of meaning accessible to different parties. It's straightforwardly a play on words.
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
"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
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?
- 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?
Only quibble is that these light me up the way Nietzsche used to ;)
>we have what we do
>we have what we do
I think one is more interpretation vs lexical similarity
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 minutes browsing, and I can’t even tell what charitable purpose or educational purpose they could be serving. There’s just no clear statement of purpose anywhere other than I suppose being really rational.
Who are these dudes?
Who are these dudes?
> Who are these dudes?
Top right in this picture: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GgTm194WIAEqak3?format=jpg&name=...
Top right in this picture: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GgTm194WIAEqak3?format=jpg&name=...
I can't tell whether your question here is satire. I want to believe it's genuine, by the power of HN norms, in which case congratulations, you are one of today's unlucky 10,000.
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/
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/
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/
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1YrANSmOGY
LMAO
This is not how I wanted to find out I’m stupid :((
The fact that the LessWrong crowd will reference a memeified version of Leo Strauss is very telling. To be anti-philosophy but really into Leo Strauss. Curious. I wonder where they encountered his ideas?
Edit: Not sure why I was being coy. I'm talking about the Claremont Institute.
Edit: Not sure why I was being coy. I'm talking about the Claremont Institute.
I would’ve preferred more examples.
Yeah if only to justify why a phenomenon deserves its own term and article. I wouldn’t even call the examples the author used memes.
> “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.
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.
-1? Semiotic hater, or clinical psychologist? The former doesn’t like language games, and the latter just doesn’t like any suggestion not backed by observation (god knows where they get their ideas).
I've called things shaped like this "polyentendre".
In my head I think of it has just really high linguistic compression. Minus intent, it is just superimposing multiple true statements into a small set of glyphs/phonemes.
Its always really context sensitive. Context is the shared dictionary of linguistic compression, and you need to hijack it to get more meanings out of words.
Places to get more compression in:
- Ambiguity of subject/object with vague pronouns (and membership in plural pronouns)
- Ambiguity of English word-meaning collisions
- Lack of specificity in word choice.
- Ambiguity of emphasis in written language or delivery. They can come out a bit flat verbally.
A group people in a situation:
- A is ill
- B poisoned A
- C is horrified about the situation but too afraid to say anything
- D thinks A is faking it.
- E is just really cool
"They really are sick" is uttered by an observer and we don't know how much of the above they have insight into.
I just get a kick out of finding statements like this for fun in my life. Doing it with intent is more complicated.
What the author describes seems more like strategic ambiguity but slightly more specific. I don't think it is a useful label they try to cast here.
In my head I think of it has just really high linguistic compression. Minus intent, it is just superimposing multiple true statements into a small set of glyphs/phonemes.
Its always really context sensitive. Context is the shared dictionary of linguistic compression, and you need to hijack it to get more meanings out of words.
Places to get more compression in:
- Ambiguity of subject/object with vague pronouns (and membership in plural pronouns)
- Ambiguity of English word-meaning collisions
- Lack of specificity in word choice.
- Ambiguity of emphasis in written language or delivery. They can come out a bit flat verbally.
A group people in a situation:
- A is ill
- B poisoned A
- C is horrified about the situation but too afraid to say anything
- D thinks A is faking it.
- E is just really cool
"They really are sick" is uttered by an observer and we don't know how much of the above they have insight into.
I just get a kick out of finding statements like this for fun in my life. Doing it with intent is more complicated.
What the author describes seems more like strategic ambiguity but slightly more specific. I don't think it is a useful label they try to cast here.
"Straussian moment" is a struassian meme
Another phrase that comes to mind is "Plausible Deniability": By uttering ambiguous sentences you can deny all but one possible meanings of what you say. And talking to different audiences at different times you can claim you didn't mean anything like what your citics are claiming you did.
But I like the idea there is a term for this, be it Straussian Memes or something else. What I didn't quite get is how "self-stabilizing" works?
What I'd like is for TV-anchors to get wise and start asking their interviewees "What EXACTLY do you mean when you use this term ...". But I guess they won't because they too are happy to spread a meme which multiple different communities can like because they understand it in the way they like.
But I like the idea there is a term for this, be it Straussian Memes or something else. What I didn't quite get is how "self-stabilizing" works?
What I'd like is for TV-anchors to get wise and start asking their interviewees "What EXACTLY do you mean when you use this term ...". But I guess they won't because they too are happy to spread a meme which multiple different communities can like because they understand it in the way they like.
> Another phrase that comes to mind is "Plausible Deniability": By uttering ambiguous sentences you can deny all but one possible meanings of what you say. And talking to different audiences at different times you can claim you didn't mean anything like what your citics are claiming you did.
This is the core rhetorical tactic of the progressive left in a nutshell. Linguistic superposition, equivocation, Schrodinger's definition - whatever you want to call it, it's the ability to have your cake and eat it too by simply changing your definitions, or even someone else's, post hoc.
Let us take a moment to be reminded of the English Socialism of Orwell and doublespeak.
This is the core rhetorical tactic of the progressive left in a nutshell. Linguistic superposition, equivocation, Schrodinger's definition - whatever you want to call it, it's the ability to have your cake and eat it too by simply changing your definitions, or even someone else's, post hoc.
Let us take a moment to be reminded of the English Socialism of Orwell and doublespeak.
> the core rhetorical tactic of the progressive left in a nutshell
I live in Wyoming and have MAGA and ultra-progressive friends.
Multiple messaging is a hallmark of all elites. Sometimes it’s functional: being able to say something sharp that if repeated is ambiguous is a skill. Anyone who has any power or authority wields it. It is so common to suggest requirement. (Other times, multiple messaging lets one apologise in a public setting without making things awkward.)
In many respects, it’s an essential feature of commanding language. Compressing multiple meanings into fewer words is the essence of poetry and literature.
I live in Wyoming and have MAGA and ultra-progressive friends.
Multiple messaging is a hallmark of all elites. Sometimes it’s functional: being able to say something sharp that if repeated is ambiguous is a skill. Anyone who has any power or authority wields it. It is so common to suggest requirement. (Other times, multiple messaging lets one apologise in a public setting without making things awkward.)
In many respects, it’s an essential feature of commanding language. Compressing multiple meanings into fewer words is the essence of poetry and literature.
> In many respects, it’s an essential feature of commanding language. Compressing multiple meanings into fewer words is the essence of poetry and literature.
Aye, perhaps prompting is the be-all-end-all skill, after all: the ability to distill out an idea into its most concentrated, compressed essence, so it can be diluted, expanded, and reworded ad infinitum by the LLMs.
brb while I search for the word prompt that generated the universe...
Aye, perhaps prompting is the be-all-end-all skill, after all: the ability to distill out an idea into its most concentrated, compressed essence, so it can be diluted, expanded, and reworded ad infinitum by the LLMs.
brb while I search for the word prompt that generated the universe...
> the ability to distill out an idea into its most concentrated, compressed essence, so it can be diluted, expanded, and reworded ad infinitum by the LLMs
Nobody said people haven’t rendered themselves unable to understand poetry or literature through the ages. Nor that these skills haven’t had a distinct class mark to them.
Same here. Someone who relies on LLMs to speak and read will not be able to compete in a live environment. (Someone who uses them as a tool may gain an advantage. But that’s predicated on having the base skill.)
Nobody said people haven’t rendered themselves unable to understand poetry or literature through the ages. Nor that these skills haven’t had a distinct class mark to them.
Same here. Someone who relies on LLMs to speak and read will not be able to compete in a live environment. (Someone who uses them as a tool may gain an advantage. But that’s predicated on having the base skill.)
That's an interesting image, having a mobile connections to AI and having it tell me what I should say in any interactive situation. But, I don't think you would get much respect from other people if that is all we do. Gaining the respect of others I believe is the way to succeed in life.
Further much anybody could repeat that, make AI responsible for all their speech, and even actions. But less we use our own brains, the less we learn, and thus cannot gain a competititve advantage over other AI-users. The most rewarded original thoughts and ideas probabaly need to come from outside of AI since AI is trained on people's original text outputs.
Further much anybody could repeat that, make AI responsible for all their speech, and even actions. But less we use our own brains, the less we learn, and thus cannot gain a competititve advantage over other AI-users. The most rewarded original thoughts and ideas probabaly need to come from outside of AI since AI is trained on people's original text outputs.
"Core rhetorical tactic of the progressive left". Or the conservative right, depending on which side of this divide one happens to stand on. And speaking of Orwell, he was pointing out the doublespeak of the Fascists, not the socialists.
Fascists are the ones who want to manipulate other people to their Fuhrer's will. To do that they must manipulate language. Whereas "socialists" are about the common good, which can only happen through peaceful co-existence, which can only happen though democracy.
Depends of course on which definition of "socialism" you use. Didn't Hitler call his movement socialism as well? But I always associated "socialism" with "being social", which means taking into account other people's benefit as well, instead of trying to overpower them with propaganda and double-speak (and of course, violence).
If the goal is unlimited power to your party, to your leader, it would only make sense to lie to people as much as you can, to mislead them. To double-speak to them. If your goal is peaceful co-existence, then not so much.
And where there's smoke there is fire. Where there's Double-Speak, fascism is not far away.
Ironically Double-Speak succeeds because people are social beings, they really WANT to agree with others.
Depends of course on which definition of "socialism" you use. Didn't Hitler call his movement socialism as well? But I always associated "socialism" with "being social", which means taking into account other people's benefit as well, instead of trying to overpower them with propaganda and double-speak (and of course, violence).
If the goal is unlimited power to your party, to your leader, it would only make sense to lie to people as much as you can, to mislead them. To double-speak to them. If your goal is peaceful co-existence, then not so much.
And where there's smoke there is fire. Where there's Double-Speak, fascism is not far away.
Ironically Double-Speak succeeds because people are social beings, they really WANT to agree with others.
It's really quite potent in terms such as "racism" or "gender" which have seen unilateral attempts at redefinition.
"Illegal alien" is one of the greatest accomplishments of language engineering and was unambiguously successful.
When the left tries this today it results in equal and opposite backlash and has no effect in terms of policy, winning elections, and that sort of stuff, but it certainly can be a motor that keeps online bubbles bubbling.
When the left tries this today it results in equal and opposite backlash and has no effect in terms of policy, winning elections, and that sort of stuff, but it certainly can be a motor that keeps online bubbles bubbling.
I think there is no equivocation or ambiguity here, unless you are me at age 5 asking why aliens have landed in Mexico.
I would hazard that you are underestimating the impact of these rhetorical tactics, but I've not the energy to aggressively litigate and cite this point further.
I would hazard that you are underestimating the impact of these rhetorical tactics, but I've not the energy to aggressively litigate and cite this point further.
The effectiveness of these tactics is incredible, it helps people who build an identity around marginalization to always feel marginalized. If they ever won anything it would threaten their whole reason for existence.
Again, I think this is likely seen differently depending on which side of the political spectrum one stands, and what sources of information one attunes to. I agree that both 'racism' and 'gender' have become flash-points for discord, and that one can point to the left as trying to change the definitions. But I can think of other words that the right is equally guilty of attempting to re-define. For example, 'woke' was a term originally rooted in African American communities meaning awareness of systemic injustice, but is now used by the right as pejorative for anything they disagree with. (Including the existence of systemic injustice, sigh.)
The fact that this is not called Paganini Memes has me upside down
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.
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.
I wish atheist would just stop writing about Christian practices. Particularly screenwriters. It’s better that your audience assumes you are ignorant than to open your mouth and prove them right.
It's classic Bay Area monoculture, like that Paul Graham essay about "things you can't say". People are deferential to it because LessWrong is a hugbox or because Graham is rich but in that monoculture people are used to laughing at jokes that lack a punch line and thinking that makes them "insiders", "cool", or "smart", compared to people in flyover states, the East Coast, and the rest of California who can't see the Emperor's clothes.
The article itself is an example of something that overlaps to some extent with its subject without being an example of the subject, like all the examples in it. It's an intriguing idea, like "things you can't say" but without examples it falls flat but that won't bother the rationalists anymore than they are bothered by Aella's "experiments" or allegedly profound fanfics or adding different people's utility functions or reasoning about the future without discounting. It's a hugbox.
Or maybe it is something they can't find any examples of it because humans can't make them, only hypothetical superhuman AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI
The article itself is an example of something that overlaps to some extent with its subject without being an example of the subject, like all the examples in it. It's an intriguing idea, like "things you can't say" but without examples it falls flat but that won't bother the rationalists anymore than they are bothered by Aella's "experiments" or allegedly profound fanfics or adding different people's utility functions or reasoning about the future without discounting. It's a hugbox.
Or maybe it is something they can't find any examples of it because humans can't make them, only hypothetical superhuman AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI
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)
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)
Everybody's mileage will vary on this ... I spent a lot of time in the year after I read Paul Graham's essay on "things you can't say", searching for things that I thought matched the criteria he set out, and found a few. But it's not that the words may never cross my lips, I can say these things within some small circle of people, but would definitely not be saying them in public without being prepared for an onslaught of negative attention. Some examples of 'cancel culture' are proof of this. Donald G. McNeil comes to mind.
That said, I'm not impressed with the notion of Straussian memes and agree that way better examples are needed to give the idea some validity.
That said, I'm not impressed with the notion of Straussian memes and agree that way better examples are needed to give the idea some validity.
[deleted]
They may be a converse of the Scissor Statement, which has a dual meaning that is irreconcilable between the separate interpreters. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190508)