@DisruptionJoe@cerv1@kevinrolsen it strikes me that the infinite game of sybil resistence also differs greatly depending on when the blue/red teams have live players on them vs not.
There are two attributes that are necessary for a player to be considered live: tight coordination and a living tradition of knowledge.
Another sign of a live player is exceptional individuals gravitating towards them. Such individuals tend to be good at assessing others, and will tend to seek out others who are also exceptional. If they cluster around a person or group, there is something exceptional about that person or group.
This is probably important in building the movement too!
TIL about live vs dead players - powerful concept!
Societies with few live players will stagnate; societies with many live players will develop and adapt.
In the case of sybil resistance, I worry about sustaining the blue teams. I’m curious what happened at Twitter and why they effectively gave up trying to fight the bots. There was a point in the early days of email when even PG was motivated to write an essay about spam; now we accept it as a part of life.
Zooming out, this quote definitely resonates:
Another sign of a live player is exceptional individuals gravitating towards them. Such individuals tend to be good at assessing others, and will tend to seek out others who are also exceptional. If they cluster around a person or group, there is something exceptional about that person or group.
There’s also something to be said about the places where these people cluster.
Alex Danco had an incredible take on “scenes” on the Infinite Loops podcast. The basic idea is that certain unlikely places (not necessarily physical places) have an outsized influence on culture. Schelling Points.
The main example he gives is CBGBs as a venue in the 70s for punk/new wave. Why did Talking Heads, the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, etc all breakout of the same shitty club at roughly the same time? David Byrne’s autobiography also has an incredibly detailed chapter on what made CBGB’s floor plan perfect for a music scene.
Alex gives five conditions for scenes emerging. (I did a tweet thread on this a while ago.)
The right people are meeting, repeatedly, in a constrained space. It doesn’t need to be a physical space, but some of the best examples are.
People have to really want to be there. Scenes don’t work if you’re showing up because it’s your job or for some other extrinsic reason.
There’s a strong concept of forward progress. Everyone is striving for the same outcomes. This makes it competitive, but also not zero sum.
People’s status and worth are expanding rapidly, but also very indeterminately. Scenes have clear markers of status and hierarchy. Like it or not, this condition is critical. It drives people to advance in the social hierarchy and the status ladder of the scene.
The highest status thing to do is leave the scene. People want to belong to groups unless you’re in the top half of the group, in which case you simultaneously want to lord over the group, but also not be in the group anymore because it’s bringing you down.
Anyway, I like the combo of Live Players + Dank Scenes.
Thanks for sharing that article. I read it sometime in 2020/2021 and forgot the name…It has been quite interesting witnessing the sociopaths enter crypto tbh…it felt on point back then and now (after the big FTX issue) it became clearer than ever.
I read it sometime in 2020/2021 and forgot the name…It has been quite interesting witnessing the sociopaths enter crypto tbh…it felt on point back then and now (after the big FTX issue) it became clearer than ever.