"Learning To Navigate Context" ... vs "New Culture Is Always Putting An End To Much Of Older Culture"

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



A really interesting article here (below).

In general, this navigation essay touches on how much of the cultural-baby to throw out with the cultural-bathwater, with every, asynchronous step in generational turnover. Yes, there's always more ritual than most appreciate, which can theoretically be shed, but differentiating cultural baby-fat from a pound of cultural flesh, and when to shed it ... can easily get to be rather dangerous.

One has only to study embryology to appreciate the 2-stage art of recombination PLUS fabrication. We all know that lemons occur, despite all efforts at assembly line control.

That's before some people even realize that human culture is in a state of continuous, interleaved cultural-embryology. 

Many things not necessary for adults are QUITE necessary for different stages of development, whether during early embryogenesis or during childhood. In general, the more you know, the less you need ... but ONLY after you've learned that much. :)

Then, finally, you realize that WE need recombinant kids just to parse the unpredictable things your aggregate will need next.  That occurs even though you no longer personally need kids, and you eventually realize that at some point, your aggregate no longer needs YOU!

Get over it.

Hence, "oops" occur every generation within groups, and every singe time groups meet and merge. That's why large, current cultures spend as much or more time looking back as we do looking forwards. Recovering from our own mishaps is a large part of cultural as well as individual survival. Eventually, every individual metaphorically hammers their own thumb hanging a picture ... and every culture shoots a million of it's own feet. It's how we recover & adjust that counts.

In the end, we're all still Context Nomads, individually & culturally, and there are endless, unique tricks & shortcuts to optimally dealing with every context. The glory of survival really does go to those who re-orient and re-adapt soonest. That process goes on regardless of which individual or distributed thumb was hammered, or which pound of component or cultural flesh was usefully or harmfully shed.

Of Metaphysics and Polynesian Navigation

(hat tip Kevin, in a prior comment)

Basing Policy on "GPD" - Group Public Discourse As A Dynamic Measure of Cultural Adaptive Rate

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)




How useful is GDP as a policy metric? Not very. Even the most rudimentary analysis shows that reliance upon GDP as a metric is embarrassingly naive.

In fact, even the simplest thoughts constantly remind us of the utter failure of the economics field to stay relevant to national demands, let alone national options. Let's try some added perspective. Look at our situation this way.

The culture of a nation-state is an organism, as alive as any one of it's citizens.

How do nation-states survive? By the agility of their national behavior, of course.

Given of course, that the agility of other nations changes, how do we keep the Adaptive Rate of our nation chugging along, within striking distance of the leaders in this endless marathon of human evolution?

Semantic Debt and Situational Awareness - As Opposed to Mad Hatter Policy

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Unemployment falls but hiring slows

We're living a Semantic Nightmare on Elm Street? Yes, and it's in more than just your [bad] dreams!

Is that a perfect way to confuse an audience?

Gotta conclude that that's the goal?

These marketing campaigns never happen by themselves.

Didn't FDR have a quote on that very topic? "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

Brad Lewis writes "Part of this ends up being highly contested territory because we [lazily] distinguish between those looking for work and those who [supposedly] are not."

Of course, but when the semantics don't follow the direction of the conversation accurately enough, or soon enough ... group coherence evaporates, and entire electorates lose their orientation to reality. Without adequate agreement on the definition of basic terms, national alignment and policy agility is not possible. Isn't our goal an informed, not a mis-informed, electorate? Midway through WWII, did our DoD brass say the following? "Tell all military staff something different, or at least ambiguous. Then let's see where they all go, what they do, and what happens." Hell no! Team navigation doesn't work when every crew member thinks everyone else's feedback means something other than what was intended.

Our Semantic-Debt burden highlights both the art of and risk of politics as indirection. We have to be free to quickly mis-direct one another ... SLIGHTLY ... in order to quickly trigger distributed exploration of new situations. Yet, we must all the while be careful to remain within survivable tolerance limits. There's only so much group confusion we can tolerate, before distributed misdirection overwhelms collective intent. Call that burden our Semantic Debt, and keep it paid down.

To keep adjusting to new situations, organized groups must wipe the semantic-debt clean periodically, just to clear the air and regain NET situational awareness.