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Self improvement mindset make it feel like you're smarter for switching from X to Y.Some shit on others for doing X, boosting their own ego about Y (avoid guilt over feeling stupid).Now those doing X risk being shamed if they admit to having done X, so they keep doing X. https://t.co/vAAE0AaqLp

This is my theory about why mass collective shaming of people in power drives a feedback loop where those seeking to improve and gain power end up being biased toward not caring about what other people think. It's basically Gervais Principle effect, but on social political stage.

One application of this is Tim Harford's concept of "The God Complex" https://t.co/B1xBYnpaNHI think it is particularly relevant in business when hierarchic structures impose social chastising behavior to maintain ranks. Incentives 'saving face' behavior and drives busy bodies.

Once you start adding players into "you do X" game ala business, it looks like Gervais Principle. It highlights how the 'clueless' & 'losers' are effectively incentive to "keep doing x" via honor/guilt avoidance behavior of 'sociopaths' in leadership role.https://t.co/K9ORfMwJJF

You can see this at scale within institutions and their unspoken social hierarchies. If large corporations are efficient, is largely because the cogs in the machine are forced to stay in line thru this implicit standing-wave cultural effect.https://t.co/VA5ulFSHUD

There's an interesting frame in business literature that circles around this idea that explores how cultural paradigms are built.https://t.co/yEjQtqsKs1 and https://t.co/8aVtC7dsHuIt's framed as "Healing the Scars of History", which can be analogized to psychological injuries.

This can exist as a fractal within a business. Individual silos within an org can create echo chambers driving "don't rock the boat" and "It's just how we do things around here" & other forms of cultural stagnation.Note this is all ego protection driven: https://t.co/qTegNtVees

(Highly recommend checking out Daedtech's book. Mini review here: https://t.co/hm1HgRDYTo)

I don't see it just as a fractal, but as a sort of organ forming ritual - business units divide up work and managing scarce resources like status and prestige. With modern norms around job titles and HR roles being driven on the back of 'accumulated wisdom' from business school.

We have these massive educational institutions that, like a sort of wizarding school, teach you the magic words and spells to build your own little homunculi organization that, if successful, runs and performs your bidding.https://t.co/2E9p7WOQE2

Those magic words work because of something we overlook: people inside of the org actually making it run, and all the cultural seeds they brings to the table. A ritual of summoning a sort of self-organizing flesh-golem made of tech & human parts.https://t.co/AIIgMmhlPQ

At the local level these behaviors (guilt, shame, self-confidence, grit) look like stagnation or innovation. But at larger scale it looks like bureaucratic machines creating structure to castrate & neuter worker drones so they don't make their own hive.https://t.co/ytAwgsk50e

But to really pull this apart, we have to focus not just on the local organization, but the ecosystems in which it is embedded. These are what constitute the feedback loops that create the smaller bubbles of emergent order we call business.https://t.co/uI9ORAHDOG

But we almost always frame it from perspective of the self. Ideas like 'my family', 'friendship', 'our community', 'my social network', 'classmates', 'lover'. We don't really see organizations with human parts here because we're so much a part of it ourselves.

We easily see them when they're 'other' though. Entiativity effects and closeness blinds us from our own working.It's like the saying "you aren't stuck in traffic, you are traffic".We look up and see the milkway, not remembering we're IN the milky way.

So to reframe the OP tweet:'We' do x for 10 yearsYou realize x is stupidIf you stop x you could feel stupid for doing it for 10 years, or smart for stoppingyou could do x, or stop and do y.'WE' will still be doing xYou're alone doing y, or together doing x.

Schelling points in a collective goods game are always a trade off between cooperating with the group and defecting on your own. Sometimes cooperation is enforced thru the social systems and behavioral norms emergent out of the interactions between many.https://t.co/tzFQSWycoZ

Thinking about shelling points being driven by memetic desires being instilled into youth thru mass education.https://t.co/nIjdcyoXsC

@Jeanvaljean689 @ultimape @Conaw @GRITCULT @visakanv @KevinSimler @vgr @context_ing Maybe the metaphor we want here is "reunderstand" or even "learn" or something. Like, "I hereby modify this tweet because I have learned something and I don't want my previous understanding propagating" Although ofc ppl are traumatized around "learning" https://t.co/2UYIeSxWas

I am ashamed of being educated.Thinking is bad.No thoughts, empty brain only now.https://t.co/23pKLykhfJ

A sort of conformity force built in to our biology -> repeat the way our elders taught us or feel pain. Would normally be adaptive in our ancestral environment, but with modern educational systems & propaganda, it leads to the perverse states we see today.https://t.co/gif2565r8u

It is important that the masses be educated so they can vote. you see.https://t.co/8j3biLUWmD

I went to school and all I got was this bad case of IYI.I got better.https://t.co/kRIMYDfqpP

There is value in education. I am the last person in the world to speak against that. But there's a huge gap b/w learning something and being 'educated'. I hope to see a world where more people are given opportunities to avoid the credentialism trap.https://t.co/mczTqNspoN

Infected with an idea.https://t.co/9ne5OeRYJc

I wish this was boring. https://t.co/Mje0vEqkjX

In social spiders, if you do not contribute to the spider society you get eaten. The spiders are hungry, you see.https://t.co/enBQLl5tpd

Arachno-Syndicalism is when spiders branch out into satellite nests and support each other like tiny spider communes masquerading as a business entity within a larger economic system, kinda like a spider monastery.https://t.co/x7MC86KdeZ