Category: Blog
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Value Clarity 2.0
C. Thi Nguyen’s “value clarity” concept (advanced in 2020’s Games: Agency as Art) is a useful one, whose basic idea goes like this: Nguyen believes games “work” (compel us) largely by providing value clarity for their players—that is, game worlds are characterized by artificially narrow and unambiguous set of priorities and purposes over which the…
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Baselines for the would-be strategist
There’s a set of strategy maxims that get passed around Pentagon powerpoints, Greek history textbooks, and business school seminars which can be considered platitudes of the field. I think they probably boil down to about a dozen guidelines—I’ve gotten them down to fifteen here, but think good synthetic work could manage single digits. Don’t tilt…
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A landscape of communication
Previously, on communication as manipulation: “Consensual and Non-Consensual Manipulation,” “All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation,” “All Communication is Manipulation,” “Linguistic Fit,” “Is strategic interaction Machiavellian?” and “ACiM is a Natural Extension of Cybernetic Theory.” Sure, we can bite the bullet that communication is manipulation—but what does that actually look like? We’ll time-travel to the early 2000s,…
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220120
and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner…
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ACiM is a natural extension of cybernetic theory
Previously, on communication as manipulation: “Consensual and Non-Consensual Manipulation,” “All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation,” “All Communication is Manipulation,” “Linguistic Fit,” “Is strategic interaction Machiavellian?” and “Economics Thinking.” At the core of cybernetics is the idea of agents—synthetic and organic, human and machine and animal—as servomechanisms, or “servos.” Servos are machines which use feedback to correct…
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All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation
I want to establish, from the get-go, the uncontroversial, borderline tautological aspect of what I mean when I say “All communication is manipulation.” As a recap on what I mean by “manipulation,” I define the word as “the alteration of an agent’s behavior.” When we sum up these uncontroversial aspects, I think we’ll find that…
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All Communication is Manipulation
All communication is manipulation. Some manipulation is mutually advantageous. Alternatively phrased, the purpose of communication, broadly, is the alteration of others’ actions. Or, Communication is defined by its interest in altering the receiver’s actions. Actions, expressions, and speech that do not attempt to manipulate receivers’ behavior are not, properly considered, communication. It’s clear how this…
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Linguistic fit
Previously, on communication as manipulation: “All Communication is Manipulation,” “Is strategic interaction Machiavellian?” and “Economics Thinking.” When I say “All communication is manipulation,” it is sometimes protested that many utterances are advanced without a clear goal in mind. The first issue here is that one need not hold a desired outcome consciously in mind in…
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On the vibe shift pt 2: Nameless / Faceless
“The key contribution of angelicism01 is not artistic anonymity but artistic anonymity as a delivery system for extinction qua extinction into the cultural algorithm.” Angelicism01 The Prince cried out for joy: ‘Good friend, I’ll giveWhat you will ask: guide me to where I live.’The man pulled back his hood: he had no face—Where it should…
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Zoom Call #1
And I said, I said, ‘a simple point that people forget to explain to outsiders about the consumption of random/plain/goofy/noisy artifacts is that it’s not the random/plain/goofy/noisy artifact that is doing the work but the 3000 years long acummulation of techniques for attentively scrutizing objects (which developed as a corollary of 3000 years of creating…
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All Is Well E17: Acculturation as Brainwashing
It’s great how Mingyu (or the CC translator) chose “brainwashed” here, because that’s what piety is, a cultural expectation that gets drilled into you while your brain is in a formative state, that’s enforced through social pressure and shame. “Brainwashing” as we think of it is just rapid re-acculturation—to a new hierarchy, a new set…
Suspended Reason 