When I volunteered in my kid's school library, I learned that many stories are structured in threes. Goldilocks tries the Papa Bear's porridge which is too hot. Then tries the Mama Bear's porridge which is too cool. Finally, the Baby Bear's porridge, which is "just right". In The Three Little Pigs, the first two pigs have houses that the Big Bad Wolf can blow down (made respectively of straw and sticks), but at the end they are secure in the third pig's house made of bricks.
Several years ago, Arnold had the three languages of politics. Here he has "three levels of games". I wonder how much three does indeed "carve nature at the joints" and how much it is something our brains find easy to conceptualize (though not as easy as twos that are in some sense opposites).
Can't help but notice, in the clarity of this framework, the mixing of levels Arnold has identified, as smartphones and overall communications tech give a sub-Dunbar experience to super-Dunbar interactions. We see the status games, gossip, loyalty tests of the individual and group levels, mixed with the mission- agreement problems at scale. And the response, on both right and left, of openness to using hierarchical authority to force mission agreement.
Your book should certainly follow Tyler’s GOAT example and become an interactive book. Or series of slightly different books (Human Interdependence 23, 24, 25 each year an update, including the prior stuff).
Funny how your low level individual always and totally fails, as an individual, to reproduce and spread genes. A “family” unit of male, female, and child (3 !!!) is minimally required. For most religions family is the foundation of society, and cooperation, and Interdependence, and group identity & loyalty. The book should really be individuals and their 3 group types.
While each adult is a moral agent, making more or less rational decisions, we all live within these various groups. Insofar as laws have different effects on different groups, as well as groups of different sizes, no set of laws can be the optimal for all groups a the same time. There are always trade offs.
It’s a major problem if inevitable trade offs are mis-labeled as injustices.
I recommend extending this and adding a little complexity. Certainly there are 'sub-dunbar' groups and 'large groups' but there are also 'legible' groups and groups that can only be captured in statistics.
So, perhaps we need at least one more major level.
Related, but different, it might be important to conside groups whose leadership is very much sub-dunbar and groups whose official leadership is a large society of its own. For example, a small executive agency in the government might have 5 - 10 current senior leaders and a couple dozen past and near future senior leaders. The leadership is itself sub-Dunbar. The Army, on the other hand, has hundreds of flag officers.
In a small country, one might find that the community of business leaders are 'all interconnected' but in a large state like California, that only happens within sub-industries.
In short, how does recursion enter into your model?
I like the hierarchic structure. I’ve always thought of it not as size, but as spheres that overlap and their evolutionary time frame, which puts the emphasis on change--biological evolution takes the longest, then political evolution, then economic evolution. Note that time frame for evolutionary change is inversely related with N, or with your three groups.
As I read this description of individual, sub-dunbar, and large organization, all I could think was how this might enhance three languages. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on how it complements and conflicts with each language.
Those three levels are real and important, but lumping the large organization together as an entity is assuming too much. The whole point of the Dunbar number is that the larger organization can never be monolithic, even if over-regimented. It will always contain individuals and groups who regard each other, and/or the whole, as rivals, adversaries, or resources to be exploited, and it will have an internal economy with both formal and informal elements. Even the Soviet Union couldn't get rid of them.
Would this be a paid subscription based game located entirely within Substack? Like a choose-your-own adventure Substack with pictures and maybe short videos and music? Along with yourself you should have guest narrators like Hayek, Darwin, Smith, Jesus, Obama etc., who occasionally pop in and sing a little song or recite a poem.
So this would be like a SimCity type game but with a ChatGPT text-based interaction? Would it be like choose-your-own-adventure Oregon Trail game with Arnold Kling as the narrator? How would you describe the game interaction and look? Like a Socratic dialogue game that seeks to teach and question?
Where is specialization and trade? The complexity of fire and stone tools wasn't high enough to drive the expansion of the human brain from homo erectus with enough energy advantage to create our sapient brain that burns 20% of our metabolic energy.
One of our primate ancestors didn't kill a stranger when he had a better rock (obsidian or flint) and game him something in return so he would go miles away and bring back more higher value rock. From trading rocks to salt, etc. the complexity increases the memory demand and requires more brains and better social behavior.
The leveled structure sounds good and possibly ambitiously expansive. Maybe it is just the imprecision of the sentence, but when you talk about the civil rights act you lump group level businesses in with organization level entities, states. So it was a larger organization exerting its authority over a different smaller less powerful organization with obvious downstream effects on groups and individuals.
The ‘survival’ of genetic material is a reductionist concept of what’s important - sacred.
The ‘survival’ of ideas, beliefs is a philosophical - religious concept of what’s important - sacred.
As Isaiah Berlin noted in his biography of Marx, ‘Marx taught that ideas don’t matter, only physical, economic things affect human life, society. However, his writings, his ideas - have overwhelmingly influenced world. Self-refutation of his premise.’
I think people really want their ideas, elders, loves to endure. But, if you belief (Lysenko) that physical environments create mental things, you will focus on genetics - not leaving behind ideas from teaching, writing, preaching, disciples.
The school/fed hierarchy levels aren't really separate, though. Once upon a time, sure. But school is compulsory and while states may have slightly differing laws about the age you can quit - in practice all the states are in thrall to D.C. and federal money. And with the government's heavy hand in how school may be conducted, in myriad ways - schools are in the mid-level under false pretenses.
Of course, I realize this is true of anything that touches on the (utterly ridiculous at this point) federal and state "distinction".
When I volunteered in my kid's school library, I learned that many stories are structured in threes. Goldilocks tries the Papa Bear's porridge which is too hot. Then tries the Mama Bear's porridge which is too cool. Finally, the Baby Bear's porridge, which is "just right". In The Three Little Pigs, the first two pigs have houses that the Big Bad Wolf can blow down (made respectively of straw and sticks), but at the end they are secure in the third pig's house made of bricks.
Several years ago, Arnold had the three languages of politics. Here he has "three levels of games". I wonder how much three does indeed "carve nature at the joints" and how much it is something our brains find easy to conceptualize (though not as easy as twos that are in some sense opposites).
Can't help but notice, in the clarity of this framework, the mixing of levels Arnold has identified, as smartphones and overall communications tech give a sub-Dunbar experience to super-Dunbar interactions. We see the status games, gossip, loyalty tests of the individual and group levels, mixed with the mission- agreement problems at scale. And the response, on both right and left, of openness to using hierarchical authority to force mission agreement.
https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-gossip-trap
Yes, good call!
Your book should certainly follow Tyler’s GOAT example and become an interactive book. Or series of slightly different books (Human Interdependence 23, 24, 25 each year an update, including the prior stuff).
Funny how your low level individual always and totally fails, as an individual, to reproduce and spread genes. A “family” unit of male, female, and child (3 !!!) is minimally required. For most religions family is the foundation of society, and cooperation, and Interdependence, and group identity & loyalty. The book should really be individuals and their 3 group types.
While each adult is a moral agent, making more or less rational decisions, we all live within these various groups. Insofar as laws have different effects on different groups, as well as groups of different sizes, no set of laws can be the optimal for all groups a the same time. There are always trade offs.
It’s a major problem if inevitable trade offs are mis-labeled as injustices.
I recommend extending this and adding a little complexity. Certainly there are 'sub-dunbar' groups and 'large groups' but there are also 'legible' groups and groups that can only be captured in statistics.
So, perhaps we need at least one more major level.
Related, but different, it might be important to conside groups whose leadership is very much sub-dunbar and groups whose official leadership is a large society of its own. For example, a small executive agency in the government might have 5 - 10 current senior leaders and a couple dozen past and near future senior leaders. The leadership is itself sub-Dunbar. The Army, on the other hand, has hundreds of flag officers.
In a small country, one might find that the community of business leaders are 'all interconnected' but in a large state like California, that only happens within sub-industries.
In short, how does recursion enter into your model?
I like the hierarchic structure. I’ve always thought of it not as size, but as spheres that overlap and their evolutionary time frame, which puts the emphasis on change--biological evolution takes the longest, then political evolution, then economic evolution. Note that time frame for evolutionary change is inversely related with N, or with your three groups.
As I read this description of individual, sub-dunbar, and large organization, all I could think was how this might enhance three languages. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on how it complements and conflicts with each language.
Those three levels are real and important, but lumping the large organization together as an entity is assuming too much. The whole point of the Dunbar number is that the larger organization can never be monolithic, even if over-regimented. It will always contain individuals and groups who regard each other, and/or the whole, as rivals, adversaries, or resources to be exploited, and it will have an internal economy with both formal and informal elements. Even the Soviet Union couldn't get rid of them.
Would this be a paid subscription based game located entirely within Substack? Like a choose-your-own adventure Substack with pictures and maybe short videos and music? Along with yourself you should have guest narrators like Hayek, Darwin, Smith, Jesus, Obama etc., who occasionally pop in and sing a little song or recite a poem.
So this would be like a SimCity type game but with a ChatGPT text-based interaction? Would it be like choose-your-own-adventure Oregon Trail game with Arnold Kling as the narrator? How would you describe the game interaction and look? Like a Socratic dialogue game that seeks to teach and question?
Where is specialization and trade? The complexity of fire and stone tools wasn't high enough to drive the expansion of the human brain from homo erectus with enough energy advantage to create our sapient brain that burns 20% of our metabolic energy.
One of our primate ancestors didn't kill a stranger when he had a better rock (obsidian or flint) and game him something in return so he would go miles away and bring back more higher value rock. From trading rocks to salt, etc. the complexity increases the memory demand and requires more brains and better social behavior.
The leveled structure sounds good and possibly ambitiously expansive. Maybe it is just the imprecision of the sentence, but when you talk about the civil rights act you lump group level businesses in with organization level entities, states. So it was a larger organization exerting its authority over a different smaller less powerful organization with obvious downstream effects on groups and individuals.
Arnold
The ‘survival’ of genetic material is a reductionist concept of what’s important - sacred.
The ‘survival’ of ideas, beliefs is a philosophical - religious concept of what’s important - sacred.
As Isaiah Berlin noted in his biography of Marx, ‘Marx taught that ideas don’t matter, only physical, economic things affect human life, society. However, his writings, his ideas - have overwhelmingly influenced world. Self-refutation of his premise.’
I think people really want their ideas, elders, loves to endure. But, if you belief (Lysenko) that physical environments create mental things, you will focus on genetics - not leaving behind ideas from teaching, writing, preaching, disciples.
Always enjoy your work.
Thanks
Clay
The school/fed hierarchy levels aren't really separate, though. Once upon a time, sure. But school is compulsory and while states may have slightly differing laws about the age you can quit - in practice all the states are in thrall to D.C. and federal money. And with the government's heavy hand in how school may be conducted, in myriad ways - schools are in the mid-level under false pretenses.
Of course, I realize this is true of anything that touches on the (utterly ridiculous at this point) federal and state "distinction".
At the group and organizational levels, punishment for violating norms should include expulsion.
When can we pre-order the book? And the game, too? Speaking half in jest, half seriously.
Yes, by all means.