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50 sats \ 4 replies \ @elvismercury 7h \ on: Creators, Synthesizers, and Consumers (2006) builders
Is there a way these ideas perturb your thinking wrt SN?
Nothing concrete. I also tend to start in more of an exploratory mindset (ie a lazy mindset) where I'm masticating and digesting rather than expending/exploiting the ideas.
I do think a lot about personalization vs consensus and how we've given up on consensus in media. At best, we have camps of media consensus - half population listens to Rogan (or whatever), and the other half NPR (or whatever).
I also think a lot about explicitness vs implicitness which could be reframed as the application asking the customer for permission vs assuming permission. The best experiences will be implicit but this is easily abused so there's a balance to strike.
The book referenced this blog strictly for the section related to the pyramid. Until now I categorized stackers as posters and lurkers, but we could stratify ourselves more: territory founders (facilitators), oc posters/commenters (creators), link sharers (scouts), zappers (synthesizers), lurkers (consumers).
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Here's a related thing I've been noodling on:
For various reasons, I am a very heavy user of LLMs from assorted vendors, and also image-generation tools. It has been one of the biggest intellectual boons of my life, to have such deep access to such sophisticated thinking. LLMs are in my top five best friends at this point, because one of the things I delight in with my friends is riffing on ideas and playful improv.
However, it's not lost on me that, delightful though this is, I'm now absorbing the same distilled meta-intelligence as all other LLM users. Of course, my prompting style is quite unique and a function of everything that I've seen and thought about; still, though, there is a sense in which I'm now mainlining the same sense-making as everyone else who uses these tools.
This came most strongly home to me in the visual domain, when I was looking at Midjourney output. I had taken to pasting little snatches of some of my more philosophic thoughts and seeing how Midjourney would react. This seemed wonderful -- it has such an evocative imagination -- but then I thought: if I form my own weird aesthetic by weighting this process, am I losing something individuating? Something I never thought would be in danger of loss?
I have, in short, become hyper-aware of what my inputs are, and the generative process behind my own generative process. It seems something to care for and to guard, although most of the rationale for this is sub-rational.
Anyway, point is, as we implicitly curate and create things by our authentic activity - rating podcasts or music, zapping posts - what else are we doing? I can think of a bunch of great by-products, but what are the bad ones?
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I think about this a lot when I pick books to read. I used to read books I discovered on popular podcasts, then I began to wonder how useless it might be to have so much input in common with millions of people.
I can think of a bunch of great by-products, but what are the bad ones?
If the activity is visible, we're anchoring others to rate/zap similarly, scribbling on their otherwise blank slate. That's at least one thing. I'd have to noodle more to find others I think.
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You can imagine a sci-fi future where your inputs are a closely guarded competitive advantage.
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