ckai
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I was not commenting on goodness or badness, just simulacraness.
Are you saying that assigning titles according to a system that you think is how titles should work makes the title a more accurate truthful signal about actual social reality than assigning titles according to the way titles are generally assigned industry wide?
It seems to me that this is not the case, because assigning titles that are inaccurate (according to industry standards) in either direction causes confusion. In the case of title deflation, the excerpt above suggests that it makes it harder for people with lower titles than their actual responsibility to interface with those outside the company, get meetings, etc. The inaccurate signal imposes a cost.
It seems to me that they're both doing exactly the same thing: assigning titles according to a method that's not industry standard for reasons of their own. Maybe industry standard is more meaningfully simulacra level 3 (in the social truth sense) than either of them?
The efficiency of a process is the rate with which it turns what you have into what you want.
This definition seems to imply that what you have is not what you want (fair enough, I guess), and that the process is a means to get what you want, and the process itself is also not a part of what you want.
Since life is a process (I do not believe that the one who dies with the most toys wins), efficiency under this definition is trading away a part of life for some end result that you want. (And I think that people tend to object to efficiency in human things, not in... (read more)
I'd also say it's kind of sweet that you assume that people who are pursuing the arts find it to be rewarding, or that the camaraderie that keeps these communities knit together is a pleasant experience.
Actually, that was an element that you introduced. "We don't want people working a job primarily because it's fun and they like their coworkers." and "the occasional bright spots of camaraderie when they do manage to get some sort of project going"
But given your description of "a slowly-developing psychological exaggeration of how meaningful their 'work' is", I guess I'm more inclined to give the people being described the benefit of the doubt than you are, which... (read 400 more words →)
I know a successful author who says he started writing because he noticed authors get more attention at cons. FWIW. (I'm pretty sure he gets something out of the work itself, and yet, this is the story he tells.)
Observing this discussion, your point seems to be that there are some people in the world who do things because they are fun rather than because they are worthwhile (IYO), and that the world as a whole would be better if these people were less able to have fun so that they would be more motivated to do worthwhile (IYO) things. Given this, I don't suppose my anecdote actually changes anything about the main... (read 444 more words →)
You could see it as a portrait of a man who's stuck at simulacra level 3 (in the masking the lack of reality sense, not so much the signaling sense, though you can also watch him deciding which signals to send and which he's just going to ignore even though he knows he should send them). He not only lacks the epistemic tools to see reality except in glimpses before retreating to his fortress of banality, but is scared of reality and so doesn't want to, despite his near-constant boredom and misery. And so he dies in confusion, a banal, narcissistic void in the center of the story.
(Although if you consider that... (read more)
Yes, I agree with that. Of course it's meaningful! It wouldn't be a reflection of reality if it wasn't. But meaningful isn't the same as complete or undistorted.
For example, I think it's meaningful (maybe not the most insightful thing that could possibly be said, but meaningful) to talk about the original Star Trek in terms of head, heart, and gut as reflected in the characters of Spock, McCoy, and Kirk. I don't think this covers everything that Star Trek is, or everything that those characters are, or everything that real people can be, but it's an interesting pattern (and from there one can have some fun considering felt senses and gut feelings,... (read more)
But The Gervais Principle is a model of a tv show, not directly of reality. I haven't seen the particular show, but most tv shows are not trying to model reality, but reflect it, and distorting it is fair and even expected. There's an argument to be made that the distortions are what makes it interesting.
Do you see this differently?
I'm reminded of this:
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you-broke-the-future.html
(And no worries.)
If I understand the sort of thing you're talking about correctly, I like Miles Vorkosigan's solution (from Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold):
"The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."