The Rigidity of Network Thinking
Networked pattern matching is an amazingly powerful way to make sense of the world. It is also dangerous and rigid.
Our minds have been rewired due to our interaction with the network. In response to this new environment, our minds have unconsciously adapted new ways of thinking and interacting with each other.
This isn’t the first time. Previously examples include:
Language. 50-150,000 years ago.
Visual tradition (stories, cave drawings). 30,000 years ago.
Oral tradition (stories, epics). 10-20,000 years ago.
Writing. 5,000 years ago.
Written tradition (written stories). 2,700 years ago.
Print (books, pamphlets, etc.). 586 years ago.
Networks. 27 years ago.
Each of these developments, and many smaller iterations in between, did more than simply provide us with a new tool. Each iteration changed the way our minds operated and how (with great difficulty and trauma) our societies were organized. For example, each development changed how we:
Processednew information and learned from it.
Communicated with each other and ordered society.
Accumulated knowledge and passed it on intergenerationally.
Moreover, based on the timeline, the pace of these jumps is accelerating, and it may only be decades before we find ourselves beset by the next one. With this time pressure in mind, let’s dig into what the network has done to us.
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At the individual level, the advent of networks has led to subtle changes to our neural structures that have had major impacts on how we think (McLuhan: “the medium is the message”). Here are a few:
In response to the volume and velocity of our information flow, we have shifted from print (reading in isolation) to scanning for patterns.
Scan —> find new information —> fit that information into a pattern.
Due to the easy availability of information, online services, and AIs, we have learned to offload thinking to the network.
GPS navigation. A shift from doing the thinking to watching for errors or unusual routing.
Search. Knowing something exists is often more important than knowing it.
We have found ways to teach ourselves and capture information for intergenerational transfer.
Finding out how others solved a task (discussion boards, etc.) or posting a question to your networks.
Recording a YouTube video on how to accomplish a task.
These changes at the individual level won’t stop there. They are also in the process of forcing a shift in the orientation of society’s tectonic plates. In the past, this has led to societal collapse, enduring wars, and recurrent unrest — until older methods of social, economic, and informational organization are successfully retired, and we find new, stable, and more powerful solutions to replace them.
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Here’s a great example of how network thinking has created new raw forms of social organization. Let’s dive into how it impacts us as individuals and our society.
It is becoming harder to change someone's mind, get them to soften their stance, or agree to compromise. It’s getting so bad that people seem unable to even agree on basic facts anymore, making coherent social dialogue impossible. This is because people increasingly rely on pattern-matching networks to process new information and make sense of the world.
Pattern matching networks are an outgrowth of the pattern matching we do at the individual level. Since the networked world's information flow and complexity are too much to handle as individuals, so we do it as a group. Over time, these networks have developed into massively co-curated patterns, where millions of people find new information, connect it to a pattern, and share the results online. Within hours, due to this group effort, the best connections to the pattern are unearthed (depending on the connection’s resonance with the network) and turned into “accepted” facts.
Here’s how pattern-matching networks impact our behavior as individuals:
The network is blind to any info/event that doesn't fit the pattern.
No portion of the pattern can be questioned (since it puts the entire pattern at risk).
The pattern is socially policed and protected.
Extreme interpretations of the pattern are rarely punished or retracted (this makes them similar to popular conspiracies).
People are assigned an affiliation with a pattern network based on what they say or do, and curators of an opposing pattern are attacked on sight.
People rarely build their own pattern; they usually fall (or are pulled/pushed) into one.
Connection to the pattern is rewarded (likes, follows, defenders, etc.).
Patterns are the basis of networked tribal identity (discarding it means a loss of identity).
Discarding a pattern-matching network means losing the ability to quickly make sense of a complex world (loss of coherence).
Opposing dominant pattern matching networks is dangerous (it has consequences in the real world).
Often, you can determine network affiliation based on who or what the subject “reflexively” hates.
Here’s how pattern-matching networks impact our society:
Dominant pattern matching networks are increasingly protected, amplified, and supported by networked corporations and the government.
News organizations adapt their stories based on how the pattern-matching networks “interpret” the news (for example, Twitter is upstream of the news media).
Networked pattern matching is now the basis of most political activity, replacing substantive discussions about the economy, foreign policy, and more.
Nations go to war based on the actions of these networks (example: the Swarm’s disconnection of Russia)
A connection to a network is now the basis for identification as an enemy of the state.
Pattern matching networks are aggressively intolerant and willing to embrace violence if it advances the network.
Networked corporations will increasingly take actions demanded by the dominant pattern-matching networks to generate legitimacy.
“The Long Night” happens when a pattern-matching network becomes so dominant that it becomes part of the network's infrastructure and is enforced by AIs, and all dissent is instantly quashed.
John: What is the opposite of The Long Night, i.e. a healthy ecosystem with multiple competing sense-making networks? And, is such an ecosystem even possible, or can their only be one "alpha predator" that emerges based on winner take all dynamics, similar to those that exist in tech?
Have you spent any time thinking about how networks amplify dysfunction? i.e. the 'accepted truth' is something that is unenforceable or technical impossible to implement in reality and thus the network then produces dysfunctional outcomes where viewpoints or ideas in the past might be shut down, examples might be anything from mass shooters to current aspects of the failing energy policy in the EU.