The Portal Community
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 generally endeavor to be
- Self-aware
- Metacognitive
- Meta-honest
- Adaptive
- Agentic
- Hopeful
- Self-teaching
- Self-critiquing
- Self-credentialed
- Hard-working
- Risk-managing
- 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 Zimbardo 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, facultatively 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
- realism | idealism
- tribalism | cosmopolitanism
- levity | gravity
- dreaming | doing
- tolerance | prejudice
- conservativism | liberalism | libertarianism
- game/frame acceptance | game/frame rejection
- femininity | masculinity
- violence | peace
- love | hate
- leading | following
- left | right
- religiosity | secularism
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 (e.g., 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
- Anti-Experts
- 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
- Toxicity budget
- Accuracy budget
- Inconsistency budget
We Downregulate
- Cynicism
- Chaos
- Sanctimony
- Specialization
- Excellence
- Consensus
- Groupthink
- Groupfeel
- Interpersonal Drama
- Lossy compression
- Chess-Opening Problems
- Muddling Arguments
We Exclude
- Anti-Collegial Snark
- Streisand Squeeze Strategies
- Cheap, Uncharitable Criticism
- Cheap, Uncharitable Trolling
- Meretricious Arguments and Framings
- Self-extinguishing strategies
- Utopianism
- Coercion
- Gaslighting
- Purity
- Vindictiveness
- Nihilism
- Duplicitousness and Insincerity
- Psychopathy
- Uncharitable or low-level (bot-like) Roasting, Dunking, and Dragging
- Destructive/Anti-social Gamer Culture
- Stalking
- Physical threats
- Misogyny
- Anti-semitism
- Impersonation
- Doxxing
- Harassment for sport
- Oversimplification
- Absolutist and totalizing ideologies