Tag: signaling theory

• Detectives & Dramaturgy

  1. There are two potential explanations for why Tana French’s “literary thriller” In The Woods portrays human interaction and detective work how it does. The first is that she read Erving Goffman’s microsociology work, internalizing its principles. Alternatively, she trained and worked for over a decade as an actor. Goffman is famous for the dramaturgical…

  suspendedreason

  May 5, 2022

  Essays

  ambiguity, dramaturgical theory, Erving Goffman, generalized reading, opticratics, selection games, signaling theory, stamp collecting, strategic interaction, surrogation, Tana French

• Surrogation, or why we can’t have nice things

  X: Representation and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. Y: True, but but anything before that probably couldn’t be called the human race.

  suspendedreason

  July 22, 2021

  Blog

  artificial intelligence, Campbell's Law, degenerate play, games, generalized reading, Goodhart's Law, institutional theory, Karl Friston, Markov blankets, mesa-optimization, microsociology, representation, selection games, signaling theory, strategic interaction, surrogation, wireheading

• Epistemic Strategies, pt. 1: Contests of Assessment

  This is the first of a two-part essay on strategic manipulations of other agents’ epistemic states. Part One lays the groundwork by tying together theories of metonyms, expression games, and signals vs. cues. Part Two lays out the epistemic axes of legibility vs. illegibility, commitment vs. flexibility, and ignorance vs. knowingness, and the situations in…

  suspendedreason

  May 12, 2021

  Essays

  abduction, epistemology, Erving Goffman, generalized reading, intrinsic empowerment, keeping upwind, metonyms, OODA loop, perception, predictive processing, signaling theory, sociality, strategic epistemology, strategic ignorance, strategic interaction, Thomas Kuhn, William James

• Letter to Tamler Sommers and David Pizarro

  “In each part of the poem, the goddess of cancer orders the evolving entities to compete, but the goddess of everything else recasts it as a two-layer competition where cooperation of the internal layer helps win the competition on the external layer.”  A Sextant Colder Honor culture isn’t dead, just mutated. Alternate titles: The Public-Private…

  suspendedreason

  May 5, 2021

  Essays

  Batesian mimicry, C. Thi Nguyen, Campbell's Law, capital, coordination, Dave Pizarro, David Simon, extend and retreat, Friedrich Nietzsche, game theory, generalized reading, glory, Goodhart's Law, Homer, Jerry Muller, mimicry, mutualism, Neil Postman, opticratics, optics, prestige, reputation, signaling theory, strategic interaction, surrogation, Tamler Sommers, The Wire

• The Dark Miracle of Optics

  Epistemic status: Very little of my thinking here is original. Details are greatly simplified in the name of brevity (e.g. tit-for-tat is used to stand metonymically for complex cooperation patterns). Alternate titles: In the beginning, there was the defection. We can treat a prisoner’s dilemma as an elegant stand-in for coordination more generally. A one-off…

  suspendedreason

  July 10, 2020

  Essays

  bullshit, gamification, generalized reading, institutional theory, Jean Baudrillard, mimicry, opticratics, optics, signaling, signaling theory, simulacra, strategic interaction, The Wire, Zvi Mowshowitz