The Polytropolis: Many Words, Lots of Fart Huffing

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Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

Traditionally, a constitutional framework establishes a set of core principles of a governing organization, alongside a set of procedures and institutions designed to ensure those principles are kept faithfully. The US constitution's proposal for a tripartite separation of powers was (ostensibly) designed to establish Justice, ensure domestic tranquility, and so on.

In a mathematical spirit, we might abstract from the details of any particular constitution, and describe a more general relationship between core principles, governing procedures, and the dynamics of the polis. This meta-constitution that would allow for a description of any possible political body and how they might intersect with each other.

Welcome to the Polytropolis.

From poly = many; tropos = tropes; polis = city. Polytropolis: the city of many tropes

Introduction
To a first approximation, the Polytropolis is a very general model for discussing the relationship between identity, community, and politics. The model is constructive, rather than descriptive or prescriptive, although I hope to convince you that the model can be incredibly useful in both identifying and resolving political disputes that might seem intractable today. The model is constructive in the following sense: the fundamental task of every participant in the Polytropolis is to construct their own identity as they see fit. Participants are given extremely wide latitude in this task, and are encouraged to differentiate, specialize, and innovate: �Let your freak flags fly.� Everything that happens in the Polytropolis is a consequence of free identity construction at some level of organization. In this fundamental sense, the Polytropolis is designed around core values of direct democracy, radical inclusion, and intersectionality�although you can judge for yourself how well these values are realized in practice.

While individual participants are involved in the straightforward project of identity construction, the framework of the Polytropolis treats self-selected identity categories as equivalent to a kind of community membership. The Polytropolis gives these communities some inherent authority for establishing and regulating norms that govern its members, and each member has some direct influence in the establishment and regulation of these norms. In other words, there are two-way governing feedback loops between participants and the communities they voluntarily identify with. The Polytropolis also describes a method for nesting these communities in a natural way in order to highlight the structural relationships between communities. The value of the Polytropolis comes from the use of this intersectional community model for the political advantage and maintenance of the entire system. In this way, the Polytropolis can be understood as a universal political framework, since (almost) any other community or governing body can be made to fit within this structure.

To be clear: the Polytropolis is not a central governing body, and the model does not seek to put any particular person, group, community, or identity category �in charge�. On the contrary, the �city of many spaces� is designed to allow many �spaces� where different community authorities govern according to distinct organizing principles. The goal of this model is thoroughly pluralist and polycentric: to describe a political framework wherein as many communities�possibly distinct, partially overlapping, or in direct conflict�can nevertheless be configured as part of a unified and all-inclusive political structure. In this framework, no single body has a global monopoly on power or authority, although all participants have almost complete autonomy locally. Although I will describe some of what I imagine the structure of a Polytropolis to be, this is entirely for the purpose of illustrating the model itself. Which particular communities develop, and the details of their organization, will entirely turn on the efforts of the participants themselves, in much the same way that Tim Berners-Lee could not have predicted in the early 90�s what the eventual structure of the web would look like today.

In the simplest possible terms, the Polytropolis assumes that the function of political institutions is to decide who gets to decide. Someone must have final authority for decisions at various scales, and we build our institutions in order to resolve that ambiguity of authority. This doesn�t always work in practice, and our political institutions are constantly reconfigured in both composition and structure as these conflicts play out. In this sense, the Polytropolis can be understood as a universal method for conflict resolution, as a prerequisite for accomplishing any other political goals. While the Polytropolis is a very abstract model, it is neither utopian nor dystopian. The model is built with the recognition that conflicts between human communities inevitably happen at all scales. Sometimes these conflicts can have tragic results, but very often these conflicts can be resolved when all parties recognize the need for cooperation, mutual respect, support. The Polytropolis is designed to provide a context and framing wherein this cooperation can occur.

How does it work?

The Polytropolis has the following structure:

Each participant is modeled as a �bubble�, or a slightly deflated sphere.
Each point on the bubble is (potentially) associated to an identity category. There are an indefinite number of points on each bubble, and an open-ended number of distinct identity categories, and thus an indefinite resolution to each participant�s individual identity.
Participants that share the same identity category are associated together in a �ring�, or a slightly deflated circle (imagine a round table). This ring represents all members of that identity community with equal standing, and participants may be members of an indefinite number of rings.
Members of a ring might not know anything about each other except mutual community membership. In other words, each community is presumed to be anonymous, unless otherwise specified by the community itself.
As members of a ring, each participant has equal standing within the community to influence a set of norms, principles, governing methods, consensus procedures, and so on that specifies the specific values and properties that characterize the identity category as such. I will call this set the �community norms�, or just norms for short. In particular, norms specify a �zone of tolerance� which describes optimal, acceptable, and intolerable behavior from all self-identifying members of the ring. (Examples will be given below.)
A community ring is �deflated� to the extent that it falls short of the optimal expression of these norms. If the community is operating ideally according to the community�s own standards, the ring would be fully �inflated�, thus forming a perfect circle. Any deviation from those self-imposed standards is modeled as deformations of the ring from the perfect circle.
Similarly, a participant�s bubble is �deflated� to the extent that it falls short of the community norms associated with each point on the bubble. Since the participant�s membership in these communities is entirely voluntary and reciprocal (ie, democratic), this deflation represents the participant's falling short of community values they voluntarily identify with. In this way, the Polytropolis models both the norms of individual identity construction and the development of community standards simultaneously and in conjunction, so that each informs the other in a systematic way.
Deflation is not intended as a measure for retribution, punishment, or otherwise to impose particular behaviors on the system. Participants are free to associate or disassociate with community rings as they see fit, subject to the general constraints described below. You can always opt out of a ring, rather than conform to its norms. The inflation/deflation mechanic represents the feedback relationship between participants and their communities.
The Polytropolis links together communities at various levels of organization by identifying �kernels� of concern, or norms shared across multiple community rings. Just as bubbles influence the shape of rings, so rings influence the shape of the kernels to which they belong, via some self-imposed consensus procedure. Kernels provide a level of organizational abstraction removed from more immediate communities of engagement and identity construction, and highlights the natural structural relationships between community values.
Kernels in turn can be nested together to form higher order kernels of arbitrary abstraction. These nested structures provide a natural check-and-balance on integration and cooperation across large swaths of diverse communities. It also provides a framework for individual participants to directly engage the political process at various levels of organization across the entire Polytropolis.
Although there is no �top� to the structure, the Polytropolis allows communities and kernels to develop norms concerning the structure of the Polytropolis itself, and thus provides a method for all participants to directly engage in the self-organization of the structure at any scale.

There is obviously much more to say about the structure and dynamics, but that�s the skeleton of the system. It may be helpful to imagine the structure geometrically, as analogous to a dynamical version of the Hopf fibration, which associates interlocking circles with each point on the sphere. In the Polytropolis, points on different spheres (bubbles) are associated to points in the same circles (rings) in an interlocking structure of bundled kernels, so that at each level the structure might be deformed by the local values governing that part of the structure through the inflation/deflation mechanic.

https://twitter.com/EulerIsAPimp/status/544692247795871744

This extremely abstract structure provides a geometric way to associate the intersecting identities of potentially every human being and the communities to which they belong, insofar as they take up the project of voluntarily associating to particular community rings as an act of identity construction. Note that �voluntary� associations might still be implicit and automated, and need not necessarily require explicit consideration. For instance, I might explicitly agree to some process for automatically generating identity category associations and community memberships based on algorithmic analysis of certain aspects of my overt behavior. In this situation, I might be constructing my �bubble� only indirectly as I act in the world, and so I might spend very little time explicitly engaged in a conscious, deliberate process of identity construction.

However, while the Polytropolis does not require all participants invest explicit attention to this political structure, it certainly encourages participants to engage politics at all levels by providing many clear avenues for doing so. Participants construct their own bubbles according to norms of their own autonomous choosing, which in turn gives them direct influence in communities in which they have a direct, identifying stake. Since each level of organization is systematically tuned to their own norms, there are immediately clear interests and consequences for participants within these organizational structures, and thus clear voluntary motivations for cooperation at each level of abstraction. In this way, the structure of the Polytropolis can be used to �gamify� the political process in order to optimize the performance of their own bubble or any of the communities of rings and kernels to which they belong.

I still don�t get it. Can you draw crude pictures to illustrate the idea?

Sure, here you go:

I have a lot more to say. In my next post, I want to work through some vignettes describing different kinds of political conflicts that might arise, and how the Polytropolis would help to resolve them. I want to specifically talk about what happens when a splinter faction (of cat people) reject their community norms and attempt to construct a distinct, adversarial community. But this is a lot to chew on already, and I�m happy to take questions, comments, and goony insults as I prepare the next section.

Lain Iwakura fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Feb 17, 2017

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 23, 2024 15:13

Migishu: Oct 22, 2005; I'll eat your fucking eyeballs if you're not careful; Grimey Drawer

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:37

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

Please do not call it by any other name as "Polytropolis" is the one true name I have given it.

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:38

WrenP-Complete: Jul 27, 2012

I'm here too and so is the bot.

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:39

Migishu: Oct 22, 2005; I'll eat your fucking eyeballs if you're not careful; Grimey Drawer

GOON PROJECT (do not ask what project is (it's polytropolis))

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:39

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

Coming up with crazy proposals is my hobby, and it's hard to find good inspiration online without souring the pot. But I like to watch hobbiest videos online. I spent the other day watching a dude who makes cheeses in his fridge. I watch because I enjoy; I'm not even trying to cultivate the hobby myself. But just from the videos I can pick up on dozens of implicit norms that I'm unconsciously replicate in my own behavior. For instance, he did not wear gloves while molding his cheeses by hand. If I were to make cheeses, I'd likely not wear gloves either. If the video hobbyist had worn gloves, I might have thought about doing it too. This isn't some deep aspect of my identity, either as a person or a cheese hobbyist. Nevertheless, it is a community norm I might adopt and perpetuated myself, unconsciously conforming to the community norms I've seen others in the community display.

Okay okay, all this stuff is tedious to think about explicitly, but our brains are obviously tracking it on this level of detail. The Polytropolis gives control at this level of detail. But exercising that control is not required for every person. Identifying as a cheese hobbyist is not the same thing as expressing explicit endorsement of every norm in the community. However, that identity does change how evaluate my behavior relative to norms. I might decide to act some way because I identify as a cheese person; after all I'm watching the YouTube videos partly to watch what the other cheese hobbyists do. I might also run into a cheese hobbyist norm that makes me want to distance myself from the label. If I found out cheese hobbyists had gangs of thugs attacking the lactose intolerant, I might stop identifying as one.

In practice, the Polytropolis works like this. I see a group I might want to join. I interact with the group and learn some of their ways, and I notice how their norms map onto my own. [Here I might use the app to note the alignment of norms with my own.] Call this the "pre-identity" phase. If I like the group, I might decide to identify as a member. Here I initiate identification, where there is a mutual assessment and mapping of norms. You have a chance to size up the group more explicitly, and they have a chance to size you up too. This identification step is the only explicitly necessary part of the process. Coming out as a cheese hobbyist is a big step, and takes courage and careful consideration. But if you trust the group, you might just take the already-curated norm icon from the group, that the collective has already worked out and edited Wikipedia-style to represent the core believes of the cheese hobbyist. This icon is what the dude in the video believes, and I trust him to represent the community, etc. So I don't pay it much mind and just slap the label on. "I am a cheese hobbyist". Just saying it feels liberating. The post-identification step allows rings to reject members, or members to split from rings, after identification has completed. This must be accomplished by specifying the particular norms under conflict, which in turn might alert their kernels of some potential dispute that needs adjudication. The process of accepting splits/rejections is how the norm structure of the Polytropolis is populated. This is checking the app in case of a conflict, or potential conflict.

This requires some explicit attention to identity, but in a world of stable rings and kernels it should be pretty smooth to manage, and require checking your bubble rarely. I estimated earlier in the thread that you'd check your bubble less often than you reach for your wallet, which still sounds right to me.

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:41

WrenP-Complete: Jul 27, 2012

I have a clean copy of the whitepaper doc.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oEf7pL9NCTnNwqaw-GgLL6FT5E1yo1RrlCrq1wW72D8/edit?usp=sharing

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:42

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

WrenP-Complete posted:

I have a clean copy of the whitepaper doc.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oEf7pL9NCTnNwqaw-GgLL6FT5E1yo1RrlCrq1wW72D8/edit?usp=sharing

Please use the correct URL:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/103Zv5_fJO7r-uBajm3s31YptCMcTOKLd0G2tElaWinE/edit#heading=h.7e4pg6k4fzt1

I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable in this thread. But given the abuse I'm facing in this thread, and the extent that you've contributed to that abuse, it is hard to take your concern troll seriously. You've personally attracted the racists from YOSPOS into this thread. In the Polytropolis document, they've smattered a few Spanish phrases ("si se puede"), which is an obviously racially motivated attack. You've encouraged this behavior and said nothing against it. You don't seem all that concerned about creating comfortable environments in this thread.

When you first pointed out the language, I responded by asking you to appreciate the context in which the term was being used, and the specific stereotypes it is designed to trigger. My language did not attack you personally, or gender stereotypes generally, and was not being used in a hypothetical scenario designed to highlight the problematic language. You repeatedly ignored this context in order to rally the bandwagon attack. You've also encouraged attacks on my mental health as a professional psychologist, and you've said almost nothing in my defense. The resulting environment has been repeated racially motivated attacks by the very people you invited to this thread. This is another context which you continue to ignore.

In fact, the best the thread could really manage in response to an immediate case of racial abuse was to say "I don't think that's helping the RELENTLESS ATTACK ON OSI BEAN DIP". Come on, racists, there's better ways to contribute! In this environment, expecting me to sympathize with your discomfort is pretty damned upsetting. You're watching someone who needs an ally being beaten down, and you contribute to the beat down with a concern troll about language that wasn't in any way directed at you. loving please.

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:43

Migishu: Oct 22, 2005; I'll eat your fucking eyeballs if you're not careful; Grimey Drawer

tl;dr

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:43

WrenP-Complete: Jul 27, 2012

OSI bean dip posted:

Please use the correct URL:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/103Zv5_fJO7r-uBajm3s31YptCMcTOKLd0G2tElaWinE/edit#heading=h.7e4pg6k4fzt1

I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable in this thread. But given the abuse I'm facing in this thread, and the extent that you've contributed to that abuse, it is hard to take your concern troll seriously. You've personally attracted the racists from YOSPOS into this thread. In the Polytropolis document, they've smattered a few Spanish phrases ("si se puede"), which is an obviously racially motivated attack. You've encouraged this behavior and said nothing against it. You don't seem all that concerned about creating comfortable environments in this thread.

When you first pointed out the language, I responded by asking you to appreciate the context in which the term was being used, and the specific stereotypes it is designed to trigger. My language did not attack you personally, or gender stereotypes generally, and was not being used in a hypothetical scenario designed to highlight the problematic language. You repeatedly ignored this context in order to rally the bandwagon attack. You've also encouraged attacks on my mental health as a professional psychologist, and you've said almost nothing in my defense. The resulting environment has been repeated racially motivated attacks by the very people you invited to this thread. This is another context which you continue to ignore.

In fact, the best the thread could really manage in response to an immediate case of racial abuse was to say "I don't think that's helping the RELENTLESS ATTACK ON OSI BEAN DIP". Come on, racists, there's better ways to contribute! In this environment, expecting me to sympathize with your discomfort is pretty damned upsetting. You're watching someone who needs an ally being beaten down, and you contribute to the beat down with a concern troll about language that wasn't in any way directed at you. loving please.

lmao
<3
:snugs:
:wren:

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:45

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

Climate change denial exists because it is in the interest of the oil companies that it exists. They can spread propaganda with their unlimited resources and get a lot of uninformed people to have strong opinions about it, and then make a big huff about those opinions to their politicians.

Like I said, this is a DDOS attack on government. The law is decided by a few politicians, and you can overwhelm them by sewing enough dissent in the public to affect their election chances. The politician doesn't have to listen to the experts, they have to listen to the voters, and the voters are stupid and easy to manipulate. But those stupid, low information voters only power is their vote. They don't actually control anything else useful or relevant to the future of the climate, except they vote on the guy who decides it all. It is a huge weakness.

This isn't a weakness of democracy. This is a weakness of central government, because it dramatically lowers the barrier to corruption to a few very weak points. If the decisions were made by the experts, and people's opinions didn't matter, then there wouldn't be a controversy in the first place, and climate change denial wouldn't be a thing.

The Polytropolis gives authority to the experts. It is also democratic, in that it allows the people to decide who the experts are. But this decision is modulated by the organized alliances of all the other communities, which makes it more likely that the better view (and not just the popular view) wins the day. In the Polytropolis, you don't just have to convince a bunch of average people that climate change is a hoax. You'd have to convince the organized alliance of all the dedicated experts working on climate change. If you can convince them, you probably deserve to win.

So anyway, a bubble is a data structure. A piece of software. The data structure is a 2-sphere, with the surface of the sphere covered in norm "pixels". The task is to map new patterns of norms ("logos") onto the surface. You can download the logos from the web (although you may have to jump through some hurdles before they give you the dl link). The logo is also a pixel map.

You can just plop that pixel map in a blank space on your bubble, if you like, and link it to a fresh public identity. The effect is what looks like a new person who represents that one ring. But a public identity + one logo is not a very trustworthy thing.

You can do better by working out a way to map that identity to other norms already on your bubble. This is the process of "identification", where you assert two pixel values are equivalent, or within tolerance. You can do this manually, but there are also APIs that autolink norms in the standard ways. You have an app for taking a logo and linking it to other norms on your bubble.

Now you have a public identity linked to one logo, but the norms of that logo are linked to other logos on the bubble. Now when you reveal that public identity, I see a matrix of associations to all the communities you belong to that share (within tolerance) this particular set of norms. In other words, what I see now is a public identity linked to an integrated collection of communities. This makes you more trustworthy, relative to how much I trust the communities I see you are a member of. Again, you can maintain lots of disjoint public identities. But the more deeply integrated those identities are with the rest of your communities, the more reasons an average person might have to trust you.

The maximum trust comes from revealing not just a public identity, but also a private identity, which includes several "central identity" markers (like name, age, address) that are usually suppressed with public identities. Private identities are only exchanged when any anonymity is too high a cost, and such situations are rare.

I learn about rings by paying attention to the world and seeing which groups do what things. When my interest is peaked I might do some research, find the ring's website, and start petitioning for membership. The mechanics of the Polytropolis come into effect once I initiate the process of identification. All of this is just data.

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:47

WrenP-Complete: Jul 27, 2012

https://twitter.com/eripsabot/status/832705405469880321

# ? Feb 17, 2017 22:59

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

Plenty of adults self-identify as hobbyists of various kinds. They also self-identify with their careers, their relationships, and a bunch of other things. If the system were just about your cheese hobby, it doesn't matter. But if the cheese hobbyists were explicitly allied with a bunch of other communities with a broad base of shared interests, then taking on that identity explicitly has explicitly political implications. Again, this is already true of the psychology of social identity. People in this thread who have never reflected about the importance of social identity might find this confusing, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Maybe you don't care about the political dimensions of your identity. Or maybe you want to support your hobbyist group, and claiming the identity explicitly is a relatively easy method of support with all the hassle of your supermarket club card.

This thread has literally found itself arguing that something with the convenience of a wallet is "garbage", and it expects for me to take its criticism seriously.

# ? Feb 17, 2017 23:30

WrenP-Complete: Jul 27, 2012

OSI bean dip posted:

Plenty of adults self-identify as hobbyists of various kinds. They also self-identify with their careers, their relationships, and a bunch of other things. If the system were just about your cheese hobby, it doesn't matter. But if the cheese hobbyists were explicitly allied with a bunch of other communities with a broad base of shared interests, then taking on that identity explicitly has explicitly political implications. Again, this is already true of the psychology of social identity. People in this thread who have never reflected about the importance of social identity might find this confusing, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Maybe you don't care about the political dimensions of your identity. Or maybe you want to support your hobbyist group, and claiming the identity explicitly is a relatively easy method of support with all the hassle of your supermarket club card.

This thread has literally found itself arguing that something with the convenience of a wallet is "garbage", and it expects for me to take its criticism seriously.

Please, tell me more.

# ? Feb 17, 2017 23:54

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

WrenP-Complete posted:

Please, tell me more.

I've yet to see anyone demonstrate a basic grasp of how conflicts are resolved in the Polytropolis. Half of you seem to think that I've just ignored all conflicts, the other half seem to think I'm appealing to Superintelligent AI to resolve them.

I've been very clear that conflict resolution derives from the nested structure of kernels. It is this nesting structure that allows the system to self-govern, and which is designed to prevent system-wide bifurcation even while local splitting is encouraged. Kernels help to resolve the exact nature of the conflict (it "localizes" conflicts), and they make clear exactly what is at stake in any given conflict.

I don't see any commentary so far that has even begun to appreciate this aspect of the proposal, much less tried to poke holes in it. In other words, so far everyone is attacking a strawman. I'll try to respond to everyone's comments to make this explicit.

The "cat sweaters" vignette is meant to play through exactly this scenario, so you should be able to answer this question for yourself. But I'll play through the scenario myself so you can check your own work.

Remember, "The Police" are a kernel of vigilantes who self-identify as Police and meet the conditions on membership decided by the consensus of the kernel. All structures in the Polytropolis are self-governing, including the Police: so they set their own standards for performance and operation. We can imagine lots of local police squads that form local rings, with some procedures that are unique to that local operation. On its own, that looks like the Mad Max roving militias, which I agree are a Bad Thing. But for political legitimacy in the Polytropolis, each ring consolidates those local, self-governed norms into a "kernel of concern" that is shared across the entire (higher order) community of Police rings. It is sharing this kernel that binds all the local structures together, and distributes the legitimacy of each onto the others. If my local police are fully autonomous and hang free of every other norm I care about, then I wouldn't have any reason to trust them. But since the Polytropolis shows the local ring's consistency with a kernel shared by all (or most) other police forces, where I can see clear cases of overlap with those kernel norms and my own, then my reasons for trusting my local chapter extend to my reasons for trusting the entire policing community, and in the Polytropolis itself. Conversely, the Police have a strong incentive to conform to the wider norms of the Polytropolis in order to gain the trust and authority of this functional role.

(Let me be clear that I am not friendly to cops, and I don't think our current policing system deserves even a modicum of public trust. I think the whole system is rotten, and that cops tend to be fascist bullies who deserve no power or respect. I am no advocate of the police state, and the Polytropolis is not designed to be a police state. However, I think there is a social need for public safety services, analogous to the need for EMTs: there are some situations that require the response of trained professionals committed to working in the public service. In my ideal Polytropolis, the Police would have a social presence functionally equivalent to the Black Rock Rangers.)

Okay. Let's assume, for the sake of addressing this specific case, that the Police have already settled into a kernel consensus that is widely endorsed by the rest of the Polytropolis. In other words, most people believe that you can just call "the police" and some local person will show up and act in good faith with respect to the kernel of norms expected of all police operating within the Polytropolis. This is not a good assumption generally, but for the sake of this example let's assume the rest of the Polytropolis works as stated.

Now, imagine there's some event where a vigilante cop kills a person that divides the community. Most cops think the case is perfectly acceptable and within the community norms, but a small minority of cops think that the officer in this case went too far and crossed the line of tolerable. On this minority group's view, the cop committed murder. So here we have a disagreement of norms. What happens next?

Well, it all depends on how strongly the minority group feel about the case, and how disruptive to the community structure they want to be.

The least disruptive option is for that minority group to further specialize into a proper subcategory. "Look, most cops think this behavior is okay, but WE don't. That's what makes this sub-identity unique. If you agree with our methods, don't just call the Police, call P* and make sure innocent people aren't murdered (given our definitions for these terms)". This option generates a distinct subcategory that further specifies the values and identities of that particular group. It is possible that the general Polytropolis tends to agree with P*'s more focused values, and tends to call them more often than the normal Police. In this case, you can see P losing influence and P* gaining influence as the norms of the broader community are refined into alignment with P*. If the specification is popular enough, it is possible the P (the entire policing community) eventually reaches a consensus to conform to P*'s more refined norms. On the other hand, it is also possible that the Polytropolis doesn't really care about the distinction, and P* is only used by the small fraction of the population who take that issue seriously. Either way, though, as a subgroup P* is simply a refinement of P, and doesn't on its own present a direct challenge to P; indeed, each continues to employ and contribute to the legitimacy of the other, so there's a direct incentive to work together, despite the disagreement. So P has no real reason to discourage the creation of P*. Since, by assumption, P is fundamentally interested in serving the Polytropolis, there's an institutional incentive to let P* (and P**, and P*** etc) develop naturally and "compete" in a marketplace of norms to see which set is ultimately most compatible with the Polytropolis.

But maybe P* stakes the case more seriously than that. Maybe P* believes that P is going around slaughtering innocent people, representing a serious threat that deserves immediate attention from the broader Polytropolis community. So we can ask: who else has a stake in this particular norm surrounding murder? Presumably there are civil and human rights communities that have spent time developing these ethical norms explicitly; if the Polytropolis is working as stated, then we'd expect these independent communities to have an interest in these policing standards. If the policing kernel is presumed to have legitimacy, that can only have come through the endorsement of those norms by these other communities. So they generate a natural way to appeal to the broader structure of the Polytropolis to resolve the dispute. Again, perhaps these distinct communities align with P, or perhaps they align with P*. The political process of the Polytropolis works itself out at each stage by deciding these potential alignments and identifying with some community or other. If P* has a legitimate complaint, then we'd expect the civil rights communities to take it seriously, and for the Policing community itself to take this pressure seriously by its own self-governing norms.

Finally, remember that the Police are part of the facilitation branch, which is an entire collection of kernels dedicated to the smooth operation of the Polytropolis itself. The facilitation branch is filled with people whose express concern is to resolve disputes of exactly this form.

Hopefully this gives a better picture of how the system works?

# ? Feb 18, 2017 00:00

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

What the gently caress is this

# ? Feb 18, 2017 00:18

WrenP-Complete: Jul 27, 2012

Captain Foo posted:

What the gently caress is this

a fever dream?

# ? Feb 18, 2017 00:21

Captain Foo: May 11, 2004; we vibin'
we slidin'
we breathin'
we dyin'

WrenP-Complete posted:

a fever dream?

Those at least have the chance of being interesting

# ? Feb 18, 2017 00:23

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

Captain Foo posted:

What the gently caress is this

lol the Polytropolis is not about making me rich or famous. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone. If I were worried about my ego I wouldn't be posting here. The insults and abuse are pretty rough on the ego, to be honest.

I'm trying to put an idea on the table that I think is novel, useful, and that isn't on the table already. I've cited many sources of inspiration for the idea, and the basic principles of the thing aren't particularly hard to understand, I'm just trying to put them together in a way that makes sense to me, given the things that I know. I don't know everything, I'm not particularly smart, and I struggle with basic communication. But a normal person can find themselves in the right position to have a good idea and then try to share it with the world. There's nothing wrong with that.

I'm part of many social media and technology groups on facebook, and lots of people are trying to organize solutions (and money) to do what we've been doing for years. I'm sick of it. I know we can do better. I don't want to be rich or famous, I want a global human community that can do big things like deal with climate change and prevent fascism from seizing control and starting nuclear wars. I genuinely believe the Polytropolis can help make that happen.

I am trying to help. This is the best I can do. I am not related to this person's thread.

# ? Feb 18, 2017 00:27

Migishu: Oct 22, 2005; I'll eat your fucking eyeballs if you're not careful; Grimey Drawer

Captain Foo posted:

What the gently caress is this

it's u

# ? Feb 18, 2017 00:31

Lain Iwakura: Aug 5, 2004; The body exists only to verify one's own existence.; Taco Defender

Here's how I'm thinking. I'm not thinking "Hey, I have the secret magic thing that will save everything!" Instead, I'm thinking "there's a serious lack of ideas going around, and everything we're trying isn't working. People have a tendency to moderation, even when it isn't working. So if I have a radical idea, let me throw it in the pot and stir it up and see if it helps."

I first came up with the Polytropolis in November after the election, and I found it useful and interesting enough myself that I thought I'd share it with the forums to see if it sticks. Sometimes memes are sticky, sometimes they aren't, and it has very little to do with the person who made them. My friends are bored stiff listening to me yammer, and social networking is shriveling like the blogosphere. But the internet's thirst is never quenched. Feed me! it cries. And feed it I will.

# ? Feb 18, 2017 01:07