Looping Effect
Tomorrow’s events:
Stoic Breath w/ Steve Beattie. EverydaySunday @ 10:00 AM ET.RSVP here.
Empathy Circle Training w/ Edwin Rutsch. October 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th @ 3:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Raw Relationships w/ Maybe Gray and Cody Taft. October 11th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Flowing With Unknowingness w/ Tyson Wagner. Every Sunday @ 8:30 PM ET. RSVP here.
Newly posted event:
What Get's Left Behind in Hallway of Hallways w/ Nora Bateson. November 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th. 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
Sex, Drugs, and Social Justice w/ ContraPoints. October 26th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP by clicking the image below.
The one and only ContraPoints will be visiting The Stoa later in the month. We will be discussing her latest videos. Bring your A-game questions. :)
***
October 10, 2020
I was in a private practice group last night with Theodore Taptiklis, the creator of a method called “Entangled Bodies” which was influenced by Tyson Yunkaporta’s work. Near the end of the session Theodore gave his analysis of each person in the practice group, and when he came to me he said I was somewhat of an enigma.
The session felt like it became a “Peter show” at the end because the focus was being turned on me, in order to figure out my apparent enigmatic ways. It makes me uncomfortable when this happens. I am not trying to be enigmatic, I simply have done a lot of interpersonal and intrapersonal work during my life. When this is coupled with my strong intuition, and a Stoic philosophy that engenders cognitive defusion and a para-egoic state, I am afforded optionality in social situations.
I am also very allergic to taxonomies, especially social ones. I feel like I am in an existential prison when I try to see myself through one. During that session people were trying to “place” me. Which is fine, but I am going to find a way to slip out of your placement eventually.
Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking writes about something called the “looping effect,” which is the idea that classifications change the people being classified, which then reinforces those classifications through self-fulfilling prophecies of those being classified. From the article Making Up People:
We think of many kinds of people as objects of scientific inquiry. Sometimes to control them, as prostitutes, sometimes to help them, as potential suicides. Sometimes to organise and help, but at the same time keep ourselves safe, as the poor or the homeless. Sometimes to change them for their own good and the good of the public, as the obese. Sometimes just to admire, to understand, to encourage and perhaps even to emulate, as (sometimes) geniuses. We think of these kinds of people as definite classes defined by definite properties. As we get to know more about these properties, we will be able to control, help, change, or emulate them better. But it’s not quite like that. They are moving targets because our investigations interact with them, and change them. And since they are changed, they are not quite the same kind of people as before. The target has moved. I call this the ‘looping effect’. Sometimes, our sciences create kinds of people that in a certain sense did not exist before. I call this ‘making up people’.
I did classify the shit out of people via the memetic tribes white paper, but I was aware of Ian’s work, and he was referenced in that paper. My secret hope with that paper was for it to serve as a psychoactive drug. The idea is to use the looping effect not to control people, but to shake people out of being egoically attached to their current ideology.
This all being said, when somebody understands me through a taxonomy—even if it seems somewhat accurate—that accuracy serves as an alchemic “forcing function” for personal transformation. When you get to a certain degree of meta, it's like an “escape velocity” looping effect occurs, which breaks down all taxonomies. The daemon does not like being kept in check via mental models.
This is all to say that one can be unconsciously influenced by the looping effect, and be imprisoned by it, or you can consciously play with the looping effect, and be liberated by it. I sense not having a fixed understanding of what kind of player you are, or could be, allows you to play the metagame well.
The metagame is about zooming out of the ecology of games currently at play, and allows you to have choice as to what game you want to currently play. Once you get advanced in your metagaming, you can make up new games, or redesign active games that are currently in play.
To reference Steven Lukes “three dimensions of power” model again: being a good metagamer gives you the capacity to redesign games on the spot if you can shape the three faces: 1) persuade the group on a propositional level, 2) call into question the agenda that influences what propositions get discussed, 3) challenge the ideology that upholds the agenda itself.
It might be a good idea to teach metagame somehow. People have been asking me for private lessons on things such as this, which I might start doing. Maybe I will adopt the model of Andrew’s philosophical counseling practice, which is based on the gift economy. I do like the idea of eventually having courses at The Stoa on subsets of the metagame, e.g. power literacy, status play, concept unfolding, etc.
We've got to be careful here though. I do not want The Stoa to teach things like this without teaching virtue. Untethered from virtue these things could be used by those who are inspired to do evil.
***
patreon.com/the_stoa
ewly posted event:
What Get's Left Behind in Hallway of Hallways w/ Nora Bateson. November 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th. 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
Sex, Drugs, and Social Justice w/ ContraPoints. October 26th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP by clicking the image below.
The one and only ContraPoints will be visiting The Stoa later in the month. We will be discussing her latest videos. Bring your A-game questions. :)
***
October 10, 2020
I was in a private practice group last night with Theodore Taptiklis, the creator of a method called “Entangled Bodies” which was influenced by Tyson Yunkaporta’s work. Near the end of the session Theodore gave his analysis of each person in the practice group, and when he came to me he said I was somewhat of an enigma.
The session felt like it became a “Peter show” at the end because the focus was being turned on me, in order to figure out my apparent enigmatic ways. It makes me uncomfortable when this happens. I am not trying to be enigmatic, I simply have done a lot of interpersonal and intrapersonal work during my life. When this is coupled with my strong intuition, and a Stoic philosophy that engenders cognitive defusion and a para-egoic state, I am afforded optionality in social situations.
I am also very allergic to taxonomies, especially social ones. I feel like I am in an existential prison when I try to see myself through one. During that session people were trying to “place” me. Which is fine, but I am going to find a way to slip out of your placement eventually.
Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking writes about something called the “looping effect,” which is the idea that classifications change the people being classified, which then reinforces those classifications through self-fulfilling prophecies of those being classified. From the article Making Up People:
We think of many kinds of people as objects of scientific inquiry. Sometimes to control them, as prostitutes, sometimes to help them, as potential suicides. Sometimes to organise and help, but at the same time keep ourselves safe, as the poor or the homeless. Sometimes to change them for their own good and the good of the public, as the obese. Sometimes just to admire, to understand, to encourage and perhaps even to emulate, as (sometimes) geniuses. We think of these kinds of people as definite classes defined by definite properties. As we get to know more about these properties, we will be able to control, help, change, or emulate them better. But it’s not quite like that. They are moving targets because our investigations interact with them, and change them. And since they are changed, they are not quite the same kind of people as before. The target has moved. I call this the ‘looping effect’. Sometimes, our sciences create kinds of people that in a certain sense did not exist before. I call this ‘making up people’.
I did classify the shit out of people via the memetic tribes white paper, but I was aware of Ian’s work, and he was referenced in that paper. My secret hope with that paper was for it to serve as a psychoactive drug. The idea is to use the looping effect not to control people, but to shake people out of being egoically attached to their current ideology.
This all being said, when somebody understands me through a taxonomy—even if it seems somewhat accurate—that accuracy serves as an alchemic “forcing function” for personal transformation. When you get to a certain degree of meta, it's like an “escape velocity” looping effect occurs, which breaks down all taxonomies. The daemon does not like being kept in check via mental models.
This is all to say that one can be unconsciously influenced by the looping effect, and be imprisoned by it, or you can consciously play with the looping effect, and be liberated by it. I sense not having a fixed understanding of what kind of player you are, or could be, allows you to play the metagame well.
The metagame is about zooming out of the ecology of games currently at play, and allows you to have choice as to what game you want to currently play. Once you get advanced in your metagaming, you can make up new games, or redesign active games that are currently in play.
To reference Steven Lukes “three dimensions of power” model again: being a good metagamer gives you the capacity to redesign games on the spot if you can shape the three faces: 1) persuade the group on a propositional level, 2) call into question the agenda that influences what propositions get discussed, 3) challenge the ideology that upholds the agenda itself.
It might be a good idea to teach metagame somehow. People have been asking me for private lessons on things such as this, which I might start doing. Maybe I will adopt the model of Andrew’s philosophical counseling practice, which is based on the gift economy. I do like the idea of eventually having courses at The Stoa on subsets of the metagame, e.g. power literacy, status play, concept unfolding, etc.
We've got to be careful here though. I do not want The Stoa to teach things like this without teaching virtue. Untethered from virtue these things could be used by those who are inspired to do evil.
***
patreon.com/the_stoa