Nice piece. As Kurt Vonnegut said (taking a huge weight off _my mind), “we are here on earth to fart around, and don’t let anyone tell you different”.
Planet of the Squids!
As a long time reader (lurker?) and very occasional commenter, I like that I get exposed to topics that I either know little about, or are completely new to me. As an example, most of the math related posts go straight over my head, but sometimes one will tweak my interest and open up new things to think about.
It seems to me that creating sub-communities would reduce my exposure to ideas with which I’m not that familiar. If I’m basically subscribing to eg the buddhist-related sub-community, then I’m going to miss the occasional gem (for me) in the jeff_tk family related community. Or I’d have to subscribe to every sub-community, which seems like more admin hassle than just reading/scanning everything.
I’m curious as to what are considered to be the specific advantages (on LW) of creating sub-communities….
Very interesting post.
This may or may not be relevant, but your post reminded me of Venkatash Rao’s Gervais Principle, where he describes a hierarchy of sociopaths, clueless, and losers. It’s based on corporate hierarchy, but maybe it might also provide some illumination on bureaucracies?
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
John Michael Greer is (I think) very good on societal decay in general. I read him because he’s a good writer, and he challenges my assumptions in an interesting way, which is to say that his foundational beliefs are very very different from mine (and most people here, I would guess). But his writings on modern society and peak oil make a lot of sense. You can start here - https://www.ecosophia.net/ - and there may be a link there to his older blog, which was more collapsonomic-related.
So, you weren’t certain about the appropriateness of posting this here, and I agree that it’s not in the usual style of current LW content, but I think the message is important (and the tone requires a little detachment to read), and is something for any tight (online) community to be mindful of. Personally I found it to be a very good read, so thank you for bringing it to my attention!