Designing social movements
Synthetic biology for utopian egregores
May 1, 2021 — March 30, 2025
On the theory of designing the precepts of self-replicating social groups. Important in “community stewardship”. Probably uses tools from institutions, social norms etc.
To discuss: Bay area rationalists, the Marrickville Warehouse Alliance, weirdo Honduran charter cities, every Schelling model, (de-)radicalization pathways…
1 Set up
Say I want to bring about a new order of society. To do that, I need to recruit people to my cause. They must also wish to recruit new people to the cause, and so on. We must make sure that the cause we are working towards is the original cause, and not some other cause. And yet we must not be solely focused on the cause; we want to provide people human reasons for participating in something larger than themselves. At the same time, we want to make sure we are not too easily subverted, turned to some other end, or used by something else. We need to adapt to changing circumstances and make decisions both strategic and tactical. We want to respond to misconduct and to be able to hold people accountable.
This sounds like a complicated institution design problem. Hence, a notebook.
2 As community
4 On governance and accountability
See community governance.
5 On non-monetary economies
Governance of community as governance of (some real or imagined) commons.
5.1 Status within
See status for now. Later return to the idea of multiple hierarchies in The Melancholy of Subculture Society footnotes.
6 OODA loops in movements
See OODA.
7 Structuring
8 Institutions
Why Woke Organizations All Sound the Same: is a criticism of social justice agendas, but it is also a laundry list of theory-of-change ideas for persuading institutions to implement your preferred agenda, whether that agenda be socially just or socially unjust, or AFAICT not particularly concerned with justice.
9 Within wider society
Fascinating parallels in outgroups and mobilisation against other outgroups: Katie J. M. Baker on a lady manosphere analogue: Mumsnet
The more I learned about Mumsnet, the more the forum reminded me of my past reporting on the ways men are radicalized by the toxic online “manosphere,” where pick-up artists (PUAs) and men’s rights activists (MRAs) recruit followers by exploiting real fears (such as economic anxiety) and blaming marginalized outgroups (women, people of colour, Jews) for societal failures. As people get drawn into these communities, they become obsessed with a misguided sense of victimization and start to focus single-mindedly on their newfound worldview.
It seemed to me that was exactly what was happening on Mumsnet: some of these newly “gender critical” Mumsnetters were relatively privileged women who had never felt marginalized until they gave birth and came to feel isolated in their nuclear households and (rightfully!) outraged at the lack of support for mothers in the U.K. They turned to Mumsnet for solidarity, and somehow became fixated on trans women in the process
I take issue with some of the analyses in this article, of both Mumsnet and the MRAs, but the general thesis about the similarity in recruiting, onboarding and mobilising dynamics is interesting.
See also emancipating my tribe.
10 Movements For Good People
Over at institutions for angels I muse about movement design that presupposes its members are good.
11 Adverse recruitment
David Rosenthal on Cryptocurrencies argues
Libertarianism’s attraction is based on ignoring externalities, and cryptocurrencies are no exception.
Zing. All ideologies face a disjunct between what their core theorists advocate and what their recruiting implicitly advocates in terms of who gets lured in. The best version of communism is probably the one that wishes that lazy people who want free stuff would not join up and advocate it. And principled libertarian theorists presumably don’t want advocates who only joined for the freedom to pollute without paying and shoot things all day long. And yet, ultimately the movement may be dominated by the worst version of itself..
12 Moral cultures
There is a provocative article, Campbell and Manning (2014), which argues moral cultures of, in order, Honour, Dignity, and Victimhood (Crib sheet). Tanner Greer likes that take too.
Raises the question: “What is just?”
13 Hygiene and inner circles
Hypocrisy, mottes, baileys, inter-cultural etiquette.
Adam Elkus, Vampire-Hunting As A Vocation.
14 Glue beliefs
15 LARPing
Faking it until you make it, or just faking it?. See also prefigurative politics.
16 The cult spectrum
Young (2022) places the Children of God and the US military on a spectrum of cultiness and argues that both are exemplars of a particular type of group configuration.
17 Incoming
Not Liking Someone Doesn’t Mean They’re a Cop | Anarchist Archive
Fascinating analysis from a conservative perspective, Why is Everything Liberal?.
One person’s virtue signalling is another’s social accountability.
One person’s validation is another’s failure to provide social accountability.
Maurice Mitchell, Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority. Interesting analysis from Taleb about the leverage of intolerance. However, dictatorship oversells the strength of this argument. “Intolerance wins in inclusive groups” would be more accurate.
Understanding Sunrise, Part 3: Structure and Governance | Convergence
Tanner Greer, A School of Strength and Character
The Commons Social Change Library
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Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis
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Steven Buss, Politics for Software Engineers, Part 1, Part 3
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