SpaceXponential

@spacexponential

Conscientious Questioner

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The upshot is this: Communities and cults are both valid and reasonable ways to organize social structures. Flat communities worked well in the early internet of high barriers to participation and limited people and content. Hierarchical cults work better today, when the internet has a plethora of content and people, and all those barriers have... See more

The Information • Clubhouse and the Future of Cult-Driven Social Platforms

"I believe," he writes, "that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, new friends." The point is that a cappella harnesses the creative intelligence of a whole group. By contrast, says Eno, high art is about separating geniuses from foot soldiers. "A cappella subverts that: it's highly composed music but there's no... See more

Stuart Jeffries • Surrender. It's Brian Eno

Perhaps the most admirable part of Bohm’s theory of dialogue—and one that influences how we think of Are.na as being used—is that he conceived of a very simple structure that allowed for emergent possibilities to develop. It’s so easy to treat technology as though it can prescribe a solution to a particular problem (now more than ever). Software

Charles Broskoski • Bohm Dialogue

We think of ‘facts’ as being somewhat equivalent to data — they’re observations, which in theory anyone could verify.

But observation is just one of three essential ingredients required to make a Fact.

The other two are:

1) Context omission, and

2) Trust, in the one omitting the context.

Mike Elias • Wittgenstein’s Revenge

I think of my friends with wild creativity and technical skills, who aren’t at all interested in participating in the conversation in the art world, with no intention to be remembered for their art, or anything. Something about the idealism of web3, its insistence on a narrative of revolution now, its urge to change the course of history right... See more

Wendi Yan • An Artist in Crypto

The main thing crypto challenged me to consider was the definition of art itself. What I consider to be art is different from what the crypto world calls art. To me, art is more than an aesthetic image. Inputting a prompt, generating an image with a style transfer, for example, isn’t enough to be art. Drawing, and then generating, a thousand... See more

Wendi Yan • An Artist in Crypto

Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society. In a comment to Vox that recalls the first post-Babel diaspora, he said: " The... See more

Jonathan Haidt • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

And therefore, on the collective level, crypto has predominantly encouraged creations, but not creativity. Crypto rewards popularity and suggests that popular content, regardless of its intention, is inherently more valuable and deserving of rewards – not only (sometimes ridiculous) monetary rewards, but also the rewards of being written into (art)... See more

Wendi Yan • An Artist in Crypto

But this arrangement, Rauch notes, “is not self-maintaining; it relies on an array of sometimes delicate social settings and understandings, and those need to be understood, affirmed, and protected.” So what happens when an institution is not well maintained and internal disagreement ceases, either because its people have become ideologically... See more