Simler uses the example of academic research to demonstrate how this works in “Going Critical.” He distinguishes between Real Science, or “whatever habits and practices reliably produce knowledge,” and careerists, who are “motivated by personal ambition.” Careerists “gum up the works” of Real Science communities, promoting themselves instead of

There is no wishing away the existence of the public online web. If we don’t like what we see, we simply have to learn how to engage with it more deeply and meaningfully. We must pick up a paintbrush, find a blank canvas, and paint the world as we wish it to be. Instead of hiding in our safe and quiet communities, we need to summon the courage to

This strategy – presenting as individuals in public, while keeping group membership private – helps ideas spread in a Dark Forest landscape where the public is highly sensitive, and often hostile to, the tribes they don’t belong to.

We had entered, briefly, the era of “memetic tribes,” a term coined by Peter Limberg in 2018 to refer to this rapid speciation of internet-first subcultures. Limberg defines memetic tribes as “a group of agents with a meme complex…that directly or indirectly seeks to impose its distinct map of reality – along with its moral imperatives – on

Some taboos – such as stealing, cheating, or lying – don’t budge within most networks.

Girard believes that humans are governed not by intrinsic personal preferences, but aspirational “models,” towards which we unconsciously orient our behavior. In Girard’s framework, desire is formed from the balance of three positions. There is a subject (the person who wants something) and an object (the thing they want). But most compelling is

The world, after all, is more than just what we inherit. It’s what we choose to notice, nurture, and build. Everything around us – for worse, yes, but also for the better – is made up of where we direct our attention. If we learn to channel it wisely, we can decide what type of future we want to see.

Because every taboo – regardless of its content – is an existential threat to the network, we must be careful about what we permit to enter its bloodstream. The rejection rate of taboos is high, but the payoff for patience is that when they do stick, their influence can be strong and enduring.

27% of music tracks streamed today are new or recent; that 83% of Hollywood revenues come from franchise films; that increasingly, the most popular video games – Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario Bros – are old; and that these trends are accelerating.