The Future Belongs to the Weird

metalman

WOW! , a complete history, manual, and set of rules for bieng wierd, almost like a beurocratic normalisation of wierdnesz, which is of course the standard method of the normys when they notice that the strategy of useing the same tactics is failing (and quickly at that) and they need new ideas to steal. good luck with that.

WCSTombs

Interesting essay! Yeah, I think there's some truth to the premise. As it becomes cheaper and cheaper to exploit predictable patterns, a person's value-add needs to include unpredictability. That's a necessary and not a sufficient condition, though, since you can be unpredictable and still mostly useless. > Obviously, there is nuance. You can take this argument to the limit and say that ultimately the world is made of only two things: Chaos (a.k.a. the vast seas of Wolfram's computational irreducibility, a.k.a. pure noise, a.k.a. quantum randomness) and Logos (the small islands of compressible patterns). Within computational irreducibility, there's pure noise as well as universal computation, which is neither meaningfully predictable nor random. Since you mentioned Wolfram, in terms of elementary cellular automata, it's the difference between rule 30 and rule 110. The latter seems to me to be on the boundary between Chaos and Logos, and where I would expect to find the human intellect. (I think this is also largely the same distinction I made above where unpredictability can be useful or not.) Since you also mentioned the economy and the possibility of UBI...I also don't know the answer, but I think it's worth thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which to me is pretty tightly coupled to weirdness. Moreover, I think societies similarly have their own hierarchy of needs, but that's something I don't understand very well. In any case, weirdness seems to be coupled to both of these, in that it best flourishes at the higher levels, when the more fundamental needs are mostly taken care of. At the lower levels, there's too much pressure to reduce social friction to cooperate with others for the sake of survival, and you just can't really afford to be too weird. I don't know if UBI is the answer, but there may be some benefit to just solving the lower levels of the needs hierarchy so we can move past this.

gizajob

Nah, it belongs to the slop consuming unthinking normies. More and more apparent by the day. Wishful thinking that it belongs to the weird.

Animats

That was a Millennial generation thing. Back in 2002, "Be Your Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd" by Speak and McNally, was arguing for that. They pushed heavy self-promotion. That got us the "brogrammer", "move fast and break things", and startups that tried to buy market share with venture capital.

dudisubekti

> but the general rule for the vast majority of the population was: don't be weird, or get killed. I suspect this is a very Eurocentric view. Take India for a counter-example, it has always been full of weirdoes starting their own cults.

metalman

that was revolting to read. unbelievable cinical double speak.it leaves all real control to industry and is DESIGNED to make "repair" a bespoke boutique privlage. what was that very reliable french device that was used as "the argument that ends all debate", many I am sure could are likely still operable even aften centuries of sitting, but even if out of commisioncan be quickly returned to service to trim beurocratic and industry excess at the source.

NotGMan

What we call "normal" is the historical convergence to behaviour that allows a civilization to thrive and survive long term. Change that and the weirdos will create a society that will die out. See: modern liberal society and feminisim which leads to population collapse and destruction of the civilizations that embrace it.

Razengan

Said this on another post: With AI eventually making everything anyone can think of, it'll come down to who has the better ideas, or at least the most weird ideas that AI can't think of (yet)

forestrywat

We sure do punish people for being weird, and it's definitely seeing an increase. Ask any gay, trans, disabled, neurodiverse, furry, anarchist, or other outsider group whether life has gotten easier lately. Guarantee it's almost (but not quite) universally no.

altho123

>Unusually weak? They will not want to feed you. Unusually strong? They will send you to fight an impossible war. Unusually clever? They will accuse you of witchcraft and burn you at the stake. Yes, there were some exceptions (for example, "freaks" kept as curiosities by the kings), but the general rule for the vast majority of the population was: don't be weird, or get killed. To me that sounds like a very post-romantic interpretation of the past, where everything that happened before now, the enlightened times, was savage,cruel and retrograde. It's my understanding that things were a lot more subtle than that and that's a very simplistic approximation. I don't think Da Vinci, Vauban Euclid or Grosseteste were burnt to the stake, not even Galileo was.

a2ff6eeb0

If the future belonged to the weird, everyone would dogpile on it, and it would no longer be weird. Either the weird will become mainstream, or it isn't the future.

miesman

“When the going gets weird,the weird turn pro.” Surprised I didn’t find this quote from Hunter S Thompson in the comments yet.

GMoromisato

It's not about being weird--it's about change vs. stasis. The problem with weird is that not everyone can be weird, almost by definition. Moreover, people get things done collectively, and for that to work, the group (at whatever size) has to push in the same direction. Pushing in the wrong direction just to be weird will cause the group to fail. Instead, I think, the future belongs to those who help change the present. At the limit, any existing process can be done by AI, given a goal. What AI cannot do (and must not do) is come up with new goals. Coming up with new goals must always remain a human prerogative. We don't need humans to work the assembly line--we need humans to make the assembly line better. AI can't do that alone because it cannot define "better". Humans must decide what "better" means. Do we want the assembly line to be faster or use fewer resources? Should it continue to produce this product or work on a new one? Should we build a bigger assembly line or turn the whole thing into a park? As long as the world keeps changing, we will need humans to direct that change. People who fear change, who want everything to stay the same will have the hardest time in the future. Those are the people who will be replaced by AI. The future belongs to those who change the present.

gnarbarian

when the going gets weird the weird turn pro.

pards

> You can't out-cog a robot This is such a great way to summarise the issue facing rank-and-file employees. If your job is predictable, repeatable, systematizable then you're "competing against the price of electricity [and GPUs]"