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Culture.md

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··· 15 15 - You want an environment [where cultures improve and compete](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/12/17/societies.html), but not on the basis of violent force, and also not exclusively on low-level forms of memetic fitness (eg. virality of individual posts on social media, moment-by-moment enjoyment and convenience), but rather on some kind of fair playing field that creates sufficient space to showcase the longer-term benefits that a thriving culture provides. 16 16 - Truly instantiating a culture with any level of depth requires not just talking about the culture's themes, but actually living them. This requires deep immersion, instantiating the culture's values and aesthetics and practices at a level that goes far beyond a few decorations and posters. 17 17 - [Cultures are not museum pieces](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/12/17/societies.html). They are the working machinery of everyday life. Cultures are there to serve their people, not touristic onlookers appreciating their existence from far away. 18 18 - - Cultural innovation works better when it arises out of a collection of habits, attitudes and goals that are shared by a particular group, and adapted to the group's needs—not through over-indexing on legibility and explicit ideology. 18 18 + - Cultural innovation works better when it arises out of a collection of habits, attitudes and goals that are shared by a particular group, and adapted to the group's needs. Over-indexing on legibility and explicit ideology often leads to problems. 19 19 + - [Universal culture is the collection of the most competitive ideas and products](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/). It's what spreads when barriers to communication fall. It's distinct from any traditional culture (including Western). Universal culture is high-entropy: it survives and spreads without protection. All other cultures are low-entropy: they survive only if someone keeps pushing energy into the system to protect them. 20 20 + - Universal culture has adapted to diverse environments through social atomization: everybody does their own thing, and the community exists to protect them and perform lowest common denominator functions everyone can agree on.

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Plurality.md

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··· 22 22 - Exponential technological growth, by designing property rights that force rising tides to lift all boats. 23 23 - Valuing excellence and expertise, through mechanisms like prediction markets with per-person subsidies. 24 24 - Local experimentation in social media, blockchain ecosystems, and local government. 25 25 - - [When different people disagree about how things should be done](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/12/17/societies.html), it's healthy to have a bias toward solutions where both versions exist at least somewhere, and people can freely choose between them. Peacefully making something small in a corner somewhere to see how it plays out is the most productive and least risky way for any actor to implement their vision—it provides rapid feedback about whether ideas actually work in reality. 25 25 + - [When different people disagree about how things should be done](https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2025/12/17/societies.html), it's healthy to have a bias toward solutions where both versions exist at least somewhere, and people can freely choose between them. Peacefully making something small in a corner somewhere to see how it plays out is the most productive and least risky way for any actor to implement their vision. It provides rapid feedback about whether ideas actually work in reality.

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Politics.md

reviewed

··· 30 30 - Most political debates are people with different time horizons talking over each other. 31 31 - [Liberalism has a few big economic problems](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/); [[coordination]] issues (Moloch), irrationality and lack of information. 32 32 - You are not an individual self in the first place, you're an ecosystem of parts. It's teamwork all the way down! 33 33 + - [We tend to support small, far-away, or exotic groups trying to maintain their culture](https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/25/how-the-west-was-won/), but treat our outgroups' cultural preservation attempts as ignorance or xenophobia. Consistency would mean either extending compassion to all traditional cultures resisting universal culture, or consistently supporting universal culture's attempt to impose progress everywhere. 33 34 - The costs of regulations are regressive: [much more easily absorbed by big companies than startups](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/). The problem with banning and regulating things is that it's a blunt instrument. 34 35 - _Could laws be self corrected?_ When a law is approved, If X is not archived in Y time, withdraw law. Many of the problems people worry about probably won't exist in 10 years. There are likely new problems you could never have guessed would come up. [When writing a policy, include a few internal facing failure signals and a few external facing failure signals that make clear the policy isn't working anymore](https://bellmar.medium.com/the-death-of-process-cdb0151a41fe) and might be better to revisit. 35 36 - Sometimes the more important thing is not [[Making Decisions|better mechanisms for the final decision-making step]], but better mechanisms for [discussing and coordinating](https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1433396553591320578) what to propose (explore the space) in the first place.