Tag: strategic interaction
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Lewis & Clark Linguistics
This is a lightly edited version of a talk given at Fluidity Forum in September 2023. Expect scattered transcription errors. A few years ago, some friends and I started a group called The Inexact Sciences, or TIS for short. We run a group blog called tis.so that some people might know. And we took as our…
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Against “Self-Expression”
This is the tenth installment in a ten-part series. All Communication is Manipulation All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation Consensual and Nonconsensual Manipulation ACiM is a Natural Extension of Cybernetic Theory Response to Simpolism on ACiM A Landscape of Communication All Is Well E28: Functional Railroading All Is Well E28: “My Hands Are Tied” Girls S2:…
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Strategic Conceptualization
When consequences are the result of categorization, people will perform categories to attain their desired consequences. Categories carry with them a mix of connotations (social reputations) and decision rules (conventions for associated practice). Decision rules, that is, are domain-specific actions conditionally undertaken on the basis of whether a object or event under consideration is ruled…
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Précis for an action-oriented theory of language
What is a word, or message, or utterance? It is a move by an agent (~superorganism) undertaken in order to transform the environmental state, in a desired direction, by means of altering another agent’s information state. This transformation may occur directly, if the targeted slice of environment happens to be that agent whose informational state…
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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…
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Language Games: Work, Play, Simulacra
Our speech may not be rational, but it is motivated. When we choose to speak, we speak for reasons. Our perceptions alter our models, alter our decisions, alter our actions. Our actions alter others’ perceptions alter models alter decisions (ad infinitum). Advertising is communication with specific, narrow motivations: envisioned ends which, in conjunction with player…
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Girls S2: Lip Service
This is the ninth installment in a ten-part series. All Communication is Manipulation All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation Consensual and Nonconsensual Manipulation ACiM is a Natural Extension of Cybernetic Theory Response to Simpolism on ACiM A Landscape of Communication All Is Well E28: Functional Railroading All Is Well E28: “My Hands Are Tied” Girls S2:…
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Epistemic Strategies pt. 2: Clarity, Withheld
There is probably no contrast more striking, in the comparison of the mixed-motive and the pure-conflict (zero-sum) game, than the significance of having one’s own strategy found out and appreciated by the opponent. Hardly anything captures the spirit of the zero-sum game quite so much as the importance of “not being found out” and of…
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Short-term, long-term in selection games
Natural Hazard prompts in the Pfeilstorch server: “The biggest problem with misrepresenting who you are in dating is that you might succeed.” Generalized: “The biggest reason to not strategically misrepresent yourself in a selection game is that you might succeed.” What properties of a selection game determine if or when this is good advice? Selection…
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All Is Well E28: “My Hands Are Tied”
This is the eighth installment in a ten-part series. All Communication is Manipulation All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation Consensual and Nonconsensual Manipulation ACiM is a Natural Extension of Cybernetic Theory Response to Simpolism on ACiM A Landscape of Communication All Is Well E28: Functional Railroading All Is Well E28: “My Hands Are Tied” Girls S2:…
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All Is Well E28: Functional Railroading
This is the seventh installment in a ten-part series. All Communication is Manipulation All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation Consensual and Nonconsensual Manipulation ACiM is a Natural Extension of Cybernetic Theory Response to Simpolism on ACiM A Landscape of Communication All Is Well E28: Functional Railroading All Is Well E28: “My Hands Are Tied” Girls S2:…
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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…
