Jul
21st
2022
Slides for my Trotcon presentation on the structure of fimfiction · 4:34am Jul 21st, 2022
My talk was about properties of the graph of who follows whom on fimfiction, and the causes and effects of those properties. Two new bonus slides here, on how fimfiction might explain why the US and Europe are so politically divided now.
I'm not gonna copy all the text into this post, but here are some teaser pictures, which are easy to paste in. You'll have to read the slides to understand them. (You can ignore anything in parentheses, but don't forget to read the speaker's notes at the bottom.)
I don't... know what any of this means. Physics and biology were never my strong suit in third grade, so I can't make heads or tails of this. I do see my name in a few of them. Does that mean I win the lottery?
All joking aside, dang, how long did it take you to make all of this?
Most intriguing stuff. I have to feel a little bad for your computer during the 131-dimensional analysis, but it definitely yielded some fascinating results.
Very nice to see this all put together. I like the broader point at the end about how barriers were mainly physical in the past but are now mental for most high tech societies. How was the talk received? Did you get any good feedback?
Your point about not giving fimfiction a single forum/BB is interesting. The dynamics of unitary fora tend to promote the creation of insular, single-viewpoint communities that rapidly exclude all viewpoints counter the prevailing consensus. I'm personally glad Fimfiction didn't take this path, even though the alternative risks the appearance of less desirable social groups within the broader whole. Insularity always leads to intellectual decay.
I was at the panel, and I found it very interesting how communities were divided. I haven't hear of some of those top authors either, thanks for taking the time to do all this!
I read the slides:
And still don't understand them. I assume this is because I use Fimfiction in the way that you define as wrong in the very first slide...
Mike
5674092
Why do you believe that? I saw it happen on LessWrong, but that was a website whose single viewpoint was firmly established by the site's creator long before anyone else was allowed to post. I've seen the opposite happen on Overcoming Bias, where nearly all the content was posted by Robin Hanson, yet comments disagreeing with Robin remained extremely common.
Also, I don't know whether to congratulate or scold you for using the correct Latin plural for "forum".
Which sounds exactly like the name you would pick if you were actively working towards being a counterpoint to this argument.
5674069
Well, you're the closest author to Pen Stroke in the MDS graph, which at least wins you some kind of honorable mention.
How long? If you count gathering the data... at least a year.
5674118
fib
5674118
Oops. I didn't mean what I wrote. I changed it to "The wrong way: Reading stories at random, by yourself, neither following users, nor reading or making comments or blog posts." That's not what you do.
Of course that isn't really a wrong way, but it is missing out on most of the fun.
5674081
I got a lot of questions & some good feedback, which I've now mostly forgotten because I didn't write it down. :P
5674145
Why do I believe it? I've seen it happen at least three times. That's enemy action, right?
I can't cite papers, but I think it's safe to say that, the more centralised a community is, the more likely it is to gravitate toward a consensus for allowable - and consequently unacceptable - behaviours or social expressions. The nature of communities being what it is, once a consensus on allowable behaviour is reached, the boundaries of unacceptable behaviour will be proscribed and an ideal of good social standing adopted, deviation from which becomes increasingly untenable (until, I suppose, rebellion kicks in and starts pushing against those boundaries). It's how social groups generally operate, from your basic civic idealists, to religion, to utopian communes. Cults as well, though they short-circuit the process somewhat.
Like I said, I can't cite chapter and verse, or name philosophers to back up my claims. I'm not a scholar; I don't retain that sort of knowledge, but I've spent a lot of time working with the sort of people who end up stuck in social situations that place unrealistic expectations on their behaviours. There's always a similar pattern of requirement to conform to a consensus, or face some form of ostracism. I would recommend reading Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer", though. It covers a lot of the same ideas, but explains them better.
I'm married to a latin scholar. It tends to rub off. I was also feeling a little pretentious. Scold away!
5674249
Well, your theory sounds plausible, though discouraging.
5674302
I wouldn't call it a theory, more an observation. And I wouldn't call it discouraging, either. As long as a community or society can maintain some level of intellectual and cultural diversity, it should be able to avoid what I've described.
5674249
It's that damned primate behavior. Someone really needs to do something about it. We should form a committee and choose a leader and D'OH!
...well, I didn't understand half of this, but that's probably OK, since half of it is enough to be pretty darn interesting.
5686031
Sorry; some of the graphs don't make much sense without hearing me explain them. Some don't make much sense even then.