I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens.<p>On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)</a><p>It's short.
Upvoted due to the interesting story, but the point is conceptually unclear (at least to me, but I'm quite slow) how <i>would</i> this improve my cognitive toolkit?<p>I understand the (one) example presented apart from wrestling, but it is not quite obvious that the actual framework of Kayfabe immediately maps to it. It feels like there are easier constructions that would explain this exactly as well, if not better (perhaps most notably, the Prisoner's dilemma and the fact that coordination games are hard[0]).<p>---<p>[0] <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580</a>
Eric Weinstein is a delight to listen to: a polymath, a contrarian, a great interviewer, really gifted verbally. I'm a Portal subscriber and I've listened to his Rogan interviews all the way through. That said...<p>I have the sinking feeling that you're right about the breadth-first thing, and it's about to become a bigger issue. Back in the 80s Weinstein was working on an alternative Grand Unified Theory. When his work was marginalized, he never really got over it, and he's now using his platform (an important platform for many other reasons!) to try and right that wrong. To that end, he just published a 2013 talk he gave at Oxford on this theory. [0]<p>What he <i>has not published</i> in all these years, afaik, is an <i>actual math paper</i> describing his theory. This is the mark of a charlatan. I fear for Eric, and for all the other positive things springing up around The Portal, if it's discovered he lacks the depth and rigor we've all been assuming he has.<p>In other words, he could turn out to be not just a "breadth-first associative thinker," but someone who lacks the self-awareness to know when he's out of his depth; a dangerous know-it-all. Eric if you're reading this: publish the paper the damn paper -- with the help of a mathematician or physicist if needed -- or drop it.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg</a>
The writer was a guest on Rogan this weekend, and he was very engaging, he did wander a bit. He has a particular kind of breadth-first associative intelligence that can cause listeners to become almost hypnotized by all the open cognitive loops his conversation creates, not unlike the kayfabe concept he's touting.<p>Similar things come up in the theory of musical composition where you create and resolve "tension," and you can drive the listeners perceptions by loading them up with mental anchors to notes and then resolving them all at once. If you learn to play any Bach, you can begin to see and articulate how he discovered it. Eric Weinsteins example of pro wrestling is identifying where it appears in narrative, but there are analogous concepts in areas like so-called, "neuro linguistic programming," where ideas are "stacked," and then collapsed into a conclusion. I only know about that part of it because I have some very diverse and interesting friends.<p>As a writer, I use a similar technique all the time, but in smaller more digestible loops, and only rarely with enough to take the reader into that kind of "hall of mirrors," effect great fiction writers use, where each new sentence introduces plot elements that cascade back through the story and closes loops on ideas you have already set up. Mystery novels are a the most simple example of it, where at the end _it all falls into place_.<p>Great auteur films like 13 Conversations About One Thing, and any Cohen Brother's pic uses a similar device.<p>Anyway it's fun and addictive, and while I'm sure smarter people than me have a more coherent theory of it, I can see why this fellow thinks it's important.<p>When you think about it, how our mind works is fundamentally the only actual problem. Everything else is just an artifact of it.
Kayfabe is also apparently a convenient method for sidestepping an entire discipline for ideological purposes.<p>>Perhaps confusing battles between "quantum" and "classical" physicists could be best understood as happening within a single "orthodox promotion" given that both groups suffered no injury from failing (equally) to develop a unified theory of gravity.
Pretty sure this is the least likely concept to improve anyone's cognitive toolkit on the entire list. Its presence almost seems like an inside joke.
Eric Weinstein most recently explained his Kayfabe theory on the Joe Rogan podcast, in this Episode: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA</a> He also makes reference to this particular article.
AI is a kind of kayfabe?<p>- Marketing depts want to sell AI solutions as it’s higher perceived value<p>- Execs/managers want to check an AI checkbox to show their using the latest tech<p>- Practioners want to grow AI skills to find interesting opportunities and stand out from regular devs<p>- Academia wants to talk up their AI solution to get more attention and funding (and find jobs!)<p>- The media wants to write about robots taking over the world<p>Whether or not there’s real value when any particular machine learning solution on any given domain problem is seen as less important than the signaling that we’re all using cutting edge tech. We all just participate in the mutual deception.
Less cool word for it: conspiracy.<p>I guess it's a particular kind of conspiracy, so maybe it's useful to have a word for that? But I don't think it describes the political scene well. Politicians from opposite parties aren't rehearsing debates with their opponents and choosing who wins before the debate starts.<p>There's some level of "cover your ass" and "don't annoy too many people" that makes accountability almost impossible, but kayfabe isn't the right analogy IMHO. It's not intentional cooperative theatrical performances, it's just an effect of incentives being what they are.
Before reading TFA, I was thinking "What's their agenda?" / "What's in it for them?" / "What's their bias?" etc.<p>But this is a deeper cut.<p>However, in looking for kayfabe, there's the risk of conspiracy thinking.
>The decades old battle in theoretical physics over bragging rights between the "string" and "loop" camps would seem to be an even more significant example within the hard sciences of a collaborative intra-promotion rivalry given the apparent failure of both groups to produce a quantum theory of gravity.<p>In string theory we quantize gravity by attaching voodoo parameters to particles, and manipulating those parameters so that they forbid the gravitational ultraviolet catastrophe. In LQG or NQFT we attach voodoo parameters to spacetime, forbidding tiny singularities. We can also attach voodoo parameters to gravity itself and get the theory of asymptotically safe gravity. I think that would be four theories. Anyone who finds better-justified voodoo parameters should be welcomed into the ring, but that is very difficult.<p>Personally I find the voodoo parameters in NQFT to be the least weird, but Connes (a leading proponent) earned some raspberries for his oh-wait-I-didn't-mean-that revision of his prediction of the Higgs mass ( <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf</a> ).
Could this not be summarized as “organized fake rivalries to create entertainment while the audience doesn’t care”. Thus, it’s not applicable to politics unless it’s organized. This is not an emergent system property, but must be designed and organized in order to happen.
Other than the obvious application to the Democrat/Republican rivalry puppeteered by corporatists, the other application that came to mind is Youtube celebritydom.
I had a similar experience when I read Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. It's one of those concepts that is obvious in retrospect, but really helps clarify understanding. His conceptual framework of bullshit as communication that is intended to persuade with no regard either way for truth has certainly helped me read this article.
"The falseness of a judgement is not necessarily an objection to a judgment: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements (to which synthetic judgments a priori belong ) are the most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the world by means of numbers, mankind could not live - that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do so places itself , by that act alone, beyond good and evil." Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil<p>Society is based on shared concepts/stories, the effectiveness of that society is based on the value of these shared concepts, not their truth/untruth.<p>On a small scale:
Washington and the cherry tree
Daily conversation (How are you ? Good !)
Santa Claus
Public persona of hollywood stars, entertainers, politicians, etc.
etc<p>On a large scale:
Freedom/Democracy
Capitalism/Socialism
Religion
Kayfabe is such an important concept in this historical moment! To me, the “audience” is the most interesting component, and the “performers” are almost irrelevant, except to the extent that they must provide some fantasy that (ever so nominally) purports to be reality (or lies purporting to be truth). The psychological process by which the audience fully commits to and “believes” the fantasy, while at the same time being fully aware on some level that the fantasy is obviously untrue is fascinating, and deserves much more attention and research. Obviously, this is closely related to the idea of doublethink, but kayfabe gives more agency to the audience. Rather than being forced to engage in doublethink by big brother and an authoritarian government, kayfabe “believers” are all together with each other the agents of their own delusion. I think the biggest contributor to whether someone “buys in” to a kayfabe fantasy is their capacity for conformity; seeing the rest of the crowd treat the obviously untrue fantasy as if it were reality gives the individual permission, or “cover”, to participate in the fantasy themselves.<p>I’m guessing anyone reading this knows what non-wrestling kayfabe scene I’m talking about—except maybe those who are already participating in it themselves—and even for those folks, well, it all depends on what “knows” means, doesn’t it?
> a world in which investigative journalism seems to have vanished and bitter corporate rivals cooperate on everything from joint ventures to lobbying efforts<p>Says the man behind Thiel capital.
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