The Portal Community: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:56, 11 September 2023

We are friends and collaborators of Eric Weinstein. Our community is a self-selected group of high-agency misfit mutants who are interested in diversifying humanity beyond this solar system via new fundamental physics. In the spirit of The Portal, we are always looking for a way out of our perennial problems.

We Prioritize

Our Core Traits

We endeavor to be

Self-aware
Metacognitive
Meta-honest
Agentic
Hopeful
Self-teaching
Self-critiquing
Self-credentialed
Hard-working
Earnest
Of Good Humor
Collegial
Imperfect
Curmudgeonly
Loyal to Friends
Loyal to Loyal Opposition
Kind, Decent & Compassionate toward others
Flexible of Mind
Generous of Spirit
Tasteful
Curious
Radically Creative
Radically Conservative
Project-driven
Ambitious
Courageous
Imposters
Responsibly Heretical
Asch, Milgram, and Stanford negative
Long Heroism, Short Martyrdom
Long Good, Short Nice

Harmonizing Tensions

We recognize that reality presents many natural, necessary tensions. While much of the world fights mindlessly over permanent positions that lack all contextual awareness, we see Superpositions and trade-offs. As it is said in Ecclesiastes and Pete Seeger's song, "To Everything There Is a Season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." We do not accept the middlebrow binaries, dilemmas, and trilemmas foisted upon us by activists and politicians. Instead, we strive to find efficient frontiers that adaptively balance these tensions through ongoing internal dialectic. Here are some areas that we believe would benefit the most from an emphasis on harmonization and Regulated Expression:

arrogance | humility
analysis | intuition
excellence | genius
inclusion | exclusion
diversity | commonality/interoperability
pluralism | leadership
shunning/cancellation | redemption
institutions | disintermediation
egalitarianism | recognition of differential contribution
listening | ignoring
senior leadership and wisdom | removal of those who stopped renewing
authoritative sources | heterodoxy
welcoming strangers | prioritizing family and old friends
ridicule | civility and comity
modernity | tradition
centralization | distribution
transparency | opacity
depth | breadth
individualism | collectivism
romanticism | rationalism
objectivism | relativism
risk-taking | risk-mitigating
realism | idealism
tribalism | cosmopolitanism
levity | gravity
dreaming | doing
tolerance | prejudice
conservativism | liberalism | libertarianism

For a short list of current societal dilemmas that would benefit from this approach, see Societal Superpositions.

We Value

Our Time
Abstraction
The Language of Reality (Differential Geometry)
Giving credit and attribution where due
Correcting misallocation of credit
Balancing Type I & Type II Error
Camping and Decamping
Creative competition and rivalry (e.g. RNA Tie Club, The Dozens, Cutting Contests, Guitar Battles, Poetry Slams)
Ideas over instantiations
Ideological Dining a la Carte
Evolutionary thinking
Adaptive Valley Crossing
Critical feeling
Independent, Critical, Rigorous, First Principles thinking
Constructive Criticism & Dialogue
Public-Spirited, Ethical Elitism
Pro-social Freedom of Expression
Bespoke, High-level Curation (e.g. Z3nBlack)
Genius-level, Pro-social Trolling (e.g. Tom Lehrer, Gilbert and Sullivan)
Radical compression with minimal distortion
High signal with minimal noise
Technical language and reserved terms, where appropriate
The Double Island Rules
Estufagem processes

We Allow Ourselves

Hypocrisy budget
Injustice budget

We Downregulate

Cynicism
Chaos
Sanctimony
Specialization
Excellence
Consensus
Groupthink
Groupfeel
Interpersonal Drama
Lossy compression
Chess-Opening Problems

We Exclude

Anti-Collegial Snark
Cheap, Uncharitable Criticism
Cheap, Uncharitable Trolling
Meretricious Arguments and Framings
Self-extinguishing strategies
Utopianism
Coercion
Gaslighting
Purity
Vindictiveness
Nihilism
Duplicitousness and Insincerity
Psychopathy
Uncharitable Roasting
Dunking and Dragging
Destructive/Anti-social Gamer Culture
Stalking
Physical threats
Misogyny
Anti-semitism
Impersonation
Doxxing
Harassment for sport
Muddling Arguments
Oversimplification
Absolutist and totalizing ideologies

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 * [https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1471139657878732805 Self-critiquing]
 * Self-credentialed
+* Hard-working
 * [https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1210236694382944258 Earnest]
-* Of Good Humor
+* [https://twitter.com/ericrweinstein/status/1079821584234250240 Of Good Humor]
 * [https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1570050696376094720 Collegial]
 * Imperfect
@@ Line 44: / Line 45: @@
 == Harmonizing Tensions ==
-We recognize that reality presents many natural, necessary tensions. While much of the world fights mindlessly over permanent positions that lack all contextual awareness, we see [https://theportal.group/35-superposition/ Superpositions] and trade-offs. As it is said in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes_3 Ecclesiastes] and Pete Seeger's song, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0xzyhoeu1Y "To Everything There Is a Season], and a time to every purpose under heaven." We do not accept the middlebrow binaries, dilemmas, and trilemmas foisted upon us by activists and politicians. Instead, we strive to find efficient frontiers that balance these tensions through ongoing internal dialectic. Here are some areas that we believe would benefit the most from an emphasis on harmonization and [https://thebasics.guide/gene-expression-regulation/ Regulated Expression]:
+We recognize that reality presents many natural, necessary tensions. While much of the world fights mindlessly over permanent positions that lack all contextual awareness, we see [https://theportal.group/35-superposition/ Superpositions] and trade-offs. As it is said in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes_3 Ecclesiastes] and Pete Seeger's song, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0xzyhoeu1Y "To Everything There Is a Season], and a time to every purpose under heaven." We do not accept the middlebrow binaries, dilemmas, and trilemmas foisted upon us by activists and politicians. Instead, we strive to find efficient frontiers that adaptively balance these tensions through ongoing internal dialectic. Here are some areas that we believe would benefit the most from an emphasis on harmonization and [https://thebasics.guide/gene-expression-regulation/ Regulated Expression]:
 * [https://youtu.be/LJxBnSyH0T4&t=7050 arrogance | humility]
@@ Line 66: / Line 67: @@
 * individualism | collectivism
 * romanticism | rationalism
+* objectivism | relativism
+* risk-taking | risk-mitigating
+<!-- * sobriety | inebriation
+* wild | domesticated-->
 * realism | idealism
-* tribalism | cosmopolitanism
+* [https://youtu.be/i1uOeQQ-xGs&t=217 tribalism] | [https://x.com/ericrweinstein/status/1658486278772637706 cosmopolitanism]
 * levity | gravity
 * dreaming | doing
 * tolerance | prejudice
+* conservativism | liberalism | libertarianism
 For a short list of current societal dilemmas that would benefit from this approach, see [[Societal Superpositions]].
@@ Line 78: / Line 84: @@
 * Our Time
 * Abstraction
+* The Language of Reality (Differential Geometry)
 * Giving credit and attribution where due
 * Correcting misallocation of credit
@@ Line 93: / Line 100: @@
 * Pro-social Freedom of Expression
 * [https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/971898487532003329 Bespoke, High-level Curation] (e.g. [https://twitter.com/z3nblack/status/1009252420780617728 Z3nBlack])
-* [https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1603986754603999232 Genius-level, Pro-social Trolling] (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer Tom Lehrer], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan])
+* [https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1603986754603999232 Genius-level, Pro-social Trolling] (e.g. [https://x.com/ericrweinstein/status/1318821540167778305 Tom Lehrer], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan])
 * Radical compression with minimal distortion
 * High signal with minimal noise