Not Gibberish

Transcript of Last Conversation, Sara & David

[David D Clark] 11:27:32
I want to really Yeah, I have played with a tool called Otter O. T.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:27:40
E. R. which is a mobile app, not a desktop.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:27:44
App, but it claims to be able to do live transcription of Zoom calls It would be interesting to compare it to what Zoom does, anyway. But it only works on mobile devices.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:27:59
So so what I was gonna say is that I find myself as an engineer, saying, if you're trying to understand the a system of the first question, can you measure it?

[David D Clark] 11:28:11
And what are the dimensions so I mean if you if you're talking about?

[Sara Wedeman] 11:28:16
A break. you want to say, you know, length with height, weight, failure under compression, and so forth.

[David D Clark] 11:28:25
And and I and I sort of want One of the questions I asked you was to so sociology.

[David D Clark] 11:28:28
Have any agreement as to a useful dimensions of of society to measure.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:28:37
But but there's another aspect of this which is it's clear that one of the things that characterize society is it's multi-scale, and this I think a good analogy here is this

[Sara Wedeman] 11:28:52
meteorology, where you have an afternoon thunderstorm at one scale, and you have hurricanes and another scale But but the important thing is that the what the meteorologists understand and what makes weather predictions so

[David D Clark] 11:29:12
difficult is all the scales interact and so there's this so-called butterfly effect.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:29:21
Where you know the the the butterfly effect is, you know, a butterfly, and South America can flood around and change the whole damn thing and clearly in society.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:29:31
You get this cross-scale effect, I would say that the equivalent in society to the butterfly effect would be the emergence of a trump or a putin a single person, because of his position and personality causes changes

[Sara Wedeman] 11:29:45
at all scales. and and when you come in with your your example of your playbook, of of inciting hate, your your functioning at a particular scale, you got it.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:30:03
I think that this tells me some This is really a very good point and I think what we're talking about.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:30:10
That. Okay. So there's the nature of the force you know across the top.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:30:15
The fields. right the nature of the force which they're different and overlapping, and then there's an intensity question

[David D Clark] 11:30:24
And there are probably other dimensions too. right so there's been I i'm taking notes and transcribing.

[David D Clark] 11:30:30
I don't know if that's completely crazy or what but no, no!

[Sara Wedeman] 11:30:36
It's fine but I thought about the Russians and you know, in a very operational sense, I as I said, you have no idea whether there are any papers that describe underlying theorizing the Russians do to try to understand

[David D Clark] 11:30:46
what they're doing, or whether it's entirely pragmatic.

[David D Clark] 11:30:51
They, they clearly act with the expectation that will have some some effect.

[David D Clark] 11:30:59
And there, and if you look at the hypothesis that what they're trying to do to the us is create polarization.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:31:08
Cause in returning a a

[David D Clark] 11:31:17
Erodes society, it wrote democracy they're causing.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:31:20
They're trying to cause effect at a fairly large scale And so so the interesting question is.

[David D Clark] 11:31:32
Is, that is to say, a playbook Doesn't give any insight about how the play emerged.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:31:48
Yep, what was the what was the what was the process that said, Oh, this is an effective thing to do, ?

[David D Clark] 11:31:54
And it'll have an effect at this scale add up.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:31:59
And you know, there are again again there's an analogy, weather. There There were people who for rain Makers intellectual. sense.

[David D Clark] 11:32:07
Now we talk about as somebody who causes money to fall out of the sky.

[David D Clark] 11:32:09
But but rain makers tried to start the the ones that we're not totally frauds.

[David D Clark] 11:32:16
Try to start cloud formation by creating up drafts which would eventually, if you've got them going, would cause enough updraft that you could get a thunderstorm out of it.

[David D Clark] 11:32:27
And of course the problem was, you had to pick if you're trying to cause rain to fall on this town.

[David D Clark] 11:32:31
You had to pick exactly the right place to to create the cloud or the rain would just go in the wrong direction.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:32:37
Assuming you managed to create it. But I think there is And so that's point is, I would say that the Russians may not have i'm overarching theory of society.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:32:56
I think it would be quite astonishing if they had any sort of overarching theory of society.

[David D Clark] 11:32:59
But but they clearly have a something ranging from it.

[David D Clark] 11:33:04
Intuition to a pragmatics or something like that that allows them to feel there being effective at a particular scale, which is a useful scale, and they're not trying to change the behavior.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:33:14
Of one person, or 2 person or 3 people so so it's not a micro thing like the thunderstorm in the afternoon.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:33:21
It's a they think they're functioning at a more substantial scale. And And that's Why, I find myself wondering about whether again sociology has ever thought about the scale the the multi-scale structure of

[David D Clark] 11:33:38
society. I mean, we know, roughly speaking, we have, we have communities.

[David D Clark] 11:33:45
We have what's what's the what's the the done bar number.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:33:48
You know how many people you can keep track of This is that done, Bar.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:33:53
He keep track of 150 people, or something like that?

[David D Clark] 11:33:55
We have all we have, for there are a variety of things floating around in this space that relate to sort of sort of random fragments of intuition about scale and you know the the But there's tremendous you know

[Sara Wedeman] 11:34:12
We talk in the United States about red States and Blue skate States as if, the States are useful, if arbitrary, boundary of of of diversity along a a bunch of spectra right?

[Sara Wedeman] 11:34:32
So you know this this so i'm not I'm.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:34:40
Not pushing back on on the idea that it's a playbook, but i'm i'm really trying to say how do you?

[Sara Wedeman] 11:34:44
How do you organize this? How do you? yeah, like the weather analogy so far?

[Sara Wedeman] 11:34:53
I mean i'm not I wasn't thinking of a playbook in the sense of good.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:34:58
I'm hooked on the form I was more like you need to actually be able to identify certain kinds of strategies.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:35:07
You know the inception and the target, the delivering mechanism.

[David D Clark] 11:35:14
And then think about what we can ascertain from the research of that mitigations right?

[Sara Wedeman] 11:35:22
And you know that's all I was thinking about because if it's multiply caused.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:35:25
Then you have to have more sort of strategies and tactics.

[David D Clark] 11:35:30
That was playbook with shorthand for that right right?

[David D Clark] 11:35:33
Right right. well, I mean it's not we're not we're not focusing just on specific.

[David D Clark] 11:35:41
Well, maybe we are. Maybe we are I started to say we're not focused on specific action.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:35:47
I was thinking about Facebook's desire to make you sticky and the things they do to cause you to keep going back to Facebook so that they can sell more heads to you and you've talked about moral outrage you've

[David D Clark] 11:36:04
talked about sort of period, you know, all this kind of things that they they've learned to emphasize, and you could say, well, they don't have a theory at all.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:36:15
They just have an Ai engine that just is constantly trying out things to see whether they work, and that's incredibly pragmatic.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:36:26
It's completely under theorized I think but yeah you're right.

[David D Clark] 11:36:29
You're probably right. this is very cool that you brought this up. Yeah.

[David D Clark] 11:36:47
Hi!

[Sara Wedeman] 11:36:49
Well, we need. We need some sort of framework when you're going off and reading papers.

[David D Clark] 11:36:54
We need some sort of framework in this into which to stick specific insights from the paper, and and and I don't know whether you're at the point.

[David D Clark] 11:37:05
Now or we're at the point now where it's beginning to be clear what that framework is.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:37:11
It's possible we have to spend there's there's. a sort of a equivalent here to rolling around in the day that I I was trying to understand I mean an entirely different area. I was trying to understand denial of service

[David D Clark] 11:37:29
and and I read a bunch of papers on denial of service attacks, trying to understand the scope of the space.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:37:37
And I finally came up with a model that I could sort of use to explain this, and I realized I had to go back to read the papers again, because I hadn't taken the right notes because what I was trying to

[David D Clark] 11:37:45
do in the beginning was, guess what was important. but until I had the framework. I I missed what was important in the paper, because that's what informs that that fits into this room.

[David D Clark] 11:37:56
So I end up reading a lot of the papers twice, which Oh, my God, this is such a waste of time!

[Sara Wedeman] 11:38:01
But it wasn't it's just frustrating It's not a waste of time.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:38:02
It's just frustrating that i've been here before, right you know, cause you have to think about it in the shower.

[David D Clark] 11:38:12
You have to think about it when you're walking around the block Oh, right, and everything I read.

[David D Clark] 11:38:17
I I find my taking little notes is trying to have this sort of come into focus.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:38:21
But we did write you sorry you did right the part of the performance proposal on disinformation that has had at least some organization to it.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:38:35
And I wonder whether that organization is it's a useful thing to go back to well, I think it's worth looking at.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:38:44
I will also tell you that I think gotten a lot more information.

[David D Clark] 11:38:49
Since then. Oh, i'm sure you have right yeah per usual And, by the way, I apologize for my dog's whining. there's a gas truck across the street. I couldn't even hear it Oh.

[David D Clark] 11:39:06
good. Well, Lisa, you know the only time that it's like a pack of wolves attacking someone is usually, when Fedex comes right.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:39:17
Yeah. I I hear what you're saying I do think we need frameworks.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:39:24
Another open question is Of course. what is the goal you know i'm mitigating a harm is kind of like a awfully large and unspecific.

[David D Clark] 11:39:37
Well, we've been very bold at the actionable goal. here, which was to come up with design principles design patterns that could lead to a more benign experience.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:39:53
And you know, and I think I think we have lurking around here little bits of intuition about this.

[David D Clark] 11:40:02
They have to do with damping amplification in certain contexts.

[David D Clark] 11:40:08
I keep coming back to the dynamics of the system which I think, I think the dynamics of the system may actually the the most important dimension, more than say, the specific semantics of the system.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:40:23
And I think that's a Can you real that back and tell me again what you mean concretely.

[David D Clark] 11:40:31
So what I mean by the semantics of a system is exactly what feature it supports.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:40:35
So in Twitter you used to be able to send a 144 characters, and they change that so forth, and so forth.

[David D Clark] 11:40:45
So so there's there's there's there's what you can do in the system which is what I was calling the semantics and then there is what I call the dynamics of the system, and

[David D Clark] 11:40:54
there's a there's up there's a fairy ill formed intuition. The people occasionally say which is dynamics, trump's, semantics, and what they mean by that is the most important thing about twitter

[David D Clark] 11:41:09
is not exactly what you can say in a tweet but how fast it propagates, and how many times it goes, and how it and how it and how it how it gets amplified as it goes out, and and if it's

[David D Clark] 11:41:21
true that dynamics is more important than semantics.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:41:25
The precise behavior of the system. Then that says that the more important tuning dob is the tuning job that controls dynamics.

[David D Clark] 11:41:32
So here's what i'm thinking based on what you're saying.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:41:36
If you don't mind I just like I had a thought you know I, and what leaning towards pretty convinced that there's something about the emotional content of the things that take off where the dynamics you know go

[Sara Wedeman] 11:41:53
full force, and that it it's emotional so the question like you know.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:41:59
The same thing is with you know the hate stuff there's like all these endless pictures of pets and babies and gag me.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:42:07
I'm sorry I Can't help myself you know if you ever look at Facebook.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:42:12
I mean people are like running huge long obituaries for their dog, and everybody's crying all over.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:42:21
Then I mean that's you know more of a bonding experience than anything else.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:42:26
But the intensity is commercially desirable because obviously it's breads fast and you sell more advertising.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:42:37
But you you want to be able to find this i'm thinking, making this up as I go along.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:42:44
But you want to be able to find emotionally. gripping stuff that people will share that doesn't lead them to like.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:42:51
Try to kill other people, for example, or to bully them.

[David D Clark] 11:42:58
Well, as you said, the the fascination on Facebook with cute cats which at some level is harmless, positive.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:43:13
Have a nice day kind of fun stuff, but you know adorable pets that that to me is the well you may have.

[David D Clark] 11:43:24
You may, you may get a visceral. the negative visceral reaction to adorable pet videos, but the number of them that are floating around there.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:43:32
Just me. i'm just not like after the people, you know.

[David D Clark] 11:43:35
Yeah, but that's. Okay, again, maybe that's good but but but the cuteeness factor, you know is the opposite of the the hate factor. and But I think you're right i'm sorry i'm Sorry

[Sara Wedeman] 11:43:48
app Susan's rule emotion is central say Yes, David emotion is central.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:43:55
I absolutely agree to that. Yes, and we can't kill the motion we just wanna have more right.

[David D Clark] 11:44:02
But but again, the point is your comment about moral outrage implied to me that in fact, I don't know how they're negatives. the right word. But i'm just gonna say negative emotion.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:44:19
May actually have more so thrust behind it then then cute this emotion.

[David D Clark] 11:44:23
I think you're right? I I know your life actually so look out to get the windings to stop because it's irritating me.

[David D Clark] 11:44:33
Okay, : right there, just let them out the side door.

[David D Clark] 11:44:37
Yeah, yeah, so that he can play yo. Okay, you can play bouncy dog

[David D Clark] 11:44:51
Oh, frogs, or frogs, or frogs.

[David D Clark] 11:44:57
Singapore. Never allow your words to leak out when there's live transcription going on.

[David D Clark] 11:45:06
Why do I always sing songs about frogs? But I have nothing else to do.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:45:10
You can go. read this later and laugh at me. What are you talking to?

[David D Clark] 11:45:14
I was I I started singing, and I realized it was live transcribing my words.

[David D Clark] 11:45:18
And when you look at what I was singing you're going to think i'm a very silly person.

[David D Clark] 11:45:21
So I put in a note to the live transcription saying you're going to think i'm a very silly person when you look at my notes, because the words that were leaking out had to do with a with a ditty

[Sara Wedeman] 11:45:28
about frogs. I want silliness it's a very fine quality in a person. but I watch the words going by on the screen.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:45:37
I said, Oh, blowing into nowhere.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:45:54
We're talking about negative trends yeah emotions they do they absolutely do negative paranoid right?

[David D Clark] 11:46:03
So I assume there's documentation on this there's lots of stuff to site as a foundational piece of of citation of material that's not interesting point to make It's it it has to do I I don't know this this old

[David D Clark] 11:46:18
saying, you know, lie can go halfway around the world while truth is still putting its shoes on.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:46:23
Yeah, and and and I don't know whether that's the same thing.

[David D Clark] 11:46:27
But there's there's there's something

[David D Clark] 11:46:34
I mean there there could be a measure of just a

[David D Clark] 11:46:41
I don't know how the right where i'm going to say power.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:46:44
If you look at a given Facebook post or a tweet there there might be a a sort of a metric which would be it's.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:46:56
And I I I just pick the word power but it's the it's the thing that causes it to have thrust, which is the thing that drives the dynamics so .

[David D Clark] 11:47:06
More people forward it, More people like it. It gets both forwarded and feedback, and and obviously people who are interested in controlling the dynamics want to find the things that have the most power.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:47:21
And then couple a message that they want to that to that tweet, especially with the contrast between all the cute pets.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:47:33
And you know the conspiracy. theories is that nobody is organizing people to do anything about cute pets, whereas the conspiracy theories, you know they're having meetings.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:47:45
They're getting ready. they're arming themselves they happen they're forming malicious.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:47:50
So there's a behavioral direction element that is

[David D Clark] 11:48:11
Facebook doesn't care as long as it keeps you occupied and there is a rhetoric we are unpaid workers of the world, because we're we're we get Facebook for free the the what

[David D Clark] 11:48:35
we're doing is we're we're we're add watching.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:48:38
That is our job to watch ads and and we're not being paid to watch ads.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:48:44
They give us Facebook for free. But the the important from Facebook's point of view, whether the thing is positive and the thing is negative.

[David D Clark] 11:48:55
We are being paid in emotional gratification. Yes, Yes, and and I found myself thinking about the Romans and and bread and circuses.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:49:05
So, hey? let's go to the call see him and watch some lions ripped Christians apart, and and it was the exact same thing.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:49:10
I mean the Roleans. The Roman use of bread and circus was absolutely social control.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:49:17
Keep keep keep people from getting rest of cause. they have this vast unemployed population that they had to.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:49:25
Damp down. Well, this is brilliant because it's a it's about a motion as a form of currency

[Sara Wedeman] 11:49:40
And the manipulation of emotion for social control

[David D Clark] 11:49:49
So

[David D Clark] 11:49:56
I I don't know what to do except continue to have conversations like this for a few weeks, until things begin to structurally begin to gel.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:50:08
I mean, you know, I think i'm thinking about this a lot myself, you know, because I don't feel like we're really doing anything, even though that's not true.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:50:20
If we don't have some little written you know object and I I was thinking, Well, could we write or could I write little blurbs about each of these things, something that we can have a compendium to go back and look at our

[Sara Wedeman] 11:50:36
thinking or just, you know, to take it out of. You wanna have these at this stage of the game, especially.

[David D Clark] 11:50:46
The conversations are all important. but at the same time.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:50:50
There's a piece of it that has to do with at least recording what we're thinking.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:50:57
What we're seeing what we're looking at that we will most likely one.

[David D Clark] 11:51:01
Excuse me to drawn later. Yes, I'll be like Bill on make a website. Ha, ha!

[David D Clark] 11:51:08
Ha just joking. I know how to make a website though i'm sure you do.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:51:16
But that's not quite what we need Well, We we need some sort of shared repository of thought fragments, I mean i'm looking now at my notes.

[David D Clark] 11:51:30
You know, Basically, I was organizing them around notes that I had on awesome general thoughts about theory questions I had about society, relevant comments about technology and and behavior.

[David D Clark] 11:51:46
So I mean there are areas where i've been as I read read things.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:51:50
I just been chotting down notes as I think of them, and at some point I can try just translating those into fragments which would be which would be fine.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:52:02
Yes, go ahead written words very seldom turn out to be totally useless. They just don't know where they're supposed to live.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:52:14
So I added something. What are the desired outputs?

[David D Clark] 11:52:17
And how do we measure them right? But but I think I think this question of measurement.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:52:23
I I found myself coming back to it as a fundamental challenge to sociology, and maybe i'm wrong, and maybe i'm under selling the field.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:52:31
But you know how can you how can you if you can't measure something.

[David D Clark] 11:52:38
You're understanding of it? There's a there's a great quote, Who is it?

[Sara Wedeman] 11:52:41
Is it Lord Rumford? I should go find that quote Well, if you you know, if you can't if you can't measure something, your understanding of it is a very is of a very poor quality.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:52:58
Thank you I will pick that with an einstein quote which is just because it you can measure it doesn't imply that it's meaningful.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:53:07
And just because it's meaningful does not imply you can measure it.

[David D Clark] 11:53:11
Yes, that's that's just fine absolutely equally true.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:53:17
But especially because sociology is in the great era of sociology which is frankly over.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:53:27
I have to be honest with you I that's my observation.

[David D Clark] 11:53:33
You know some of the concepts were so carefully crafted and complex that I don't know how the hell you would measure them right.

[David D Clark] 11:53:48
Now is a critical concept. I don't even remember what that is, Victor Turner, and he posited that in society.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:54:02
There's always deep tension because of social stratification, and that unless you let off the steam from that you are gonna have a revolution one way or the other.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:54:16
And he said that in many societies they have built in certain kinds of festivals or rituals, where the social order is up ended, and his favorite example was the holy festival.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:54:28
H. Oli in India, where for one or 2 or 3 days all bets are off, and you know untouchables can throw paint in P.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:54:38
And stuff on you know, bombings and people get dressed up, and they like.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:54:43
The social order result Topsy Turkey, and he called

[Sara Wedeman] 11:54:49
The state of in between this when that occurs limality, which means it's a it's a state of passing from one thing into another.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:54:59
And then he he said, that when you have these social structure you know events where this you know, this sort of normal life is off like when there's a convulsion, and it's planned for then there's something called

[Sara Wedeman] 11:55:17
communitas, which is people, feel a great sense of connection.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:55:22
So noality is that in between undefined topsy, turvy and communities is the emotional experience of it.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:55:28
To try to put that in a measurement

[David D Clark] 11:55:40
I personally think it's a brilliant idea detail.

[David D Clark] 11:55:45
Well, i'm i'm i'm sort of wandering off into A.

[David D Clark] 11:55:50
So I have to have to go round, round, around, around, around, around, around, around the rosebush.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:55:57
The idea of a time and a place where the role you play in society is up ended, or suspended, or something like that is a space that we are now exploring with great richness because of online spaces where you can role play

[David D Clark] 11:56:32
and so it is. Look, Go, look at second life, where yeah, people in second life became sufficiently attached to their other people in second, life that they They married them in second life with having no idea who they were it?

[Sara Wedeman] 11:56:48
Was a commitment. It was a very severe, serious, emotional commitment, completely divorced.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:56:56
And so and now we're talking about virtual reality, and all this kind of stuff.

[David D Clark] 11:57:03
And and it seems to me the whole, the whole question of role, play, or cost player whatever, as a a way of stepping out of one place in society.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:57:16
Now what happened in in second life was a a tremendous development of communityas in this virtual world.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:57:32
And it's and and and I think I think I bet it would basically be a survey process.

[David D Clark] 11:57:38
But you know i'm going back to dunbar that says you know there are 5 people with whom you can have a deep emotional attachment, and there's I don't remember the numbers.

[David D Clark] 11:57:46
But no, he said, you know, committed committed deepest commitment.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:57:52
5 family group, 15 tribe, 150 or something like this.

[David D Clark] 11:57:57
I don't know I may i'm not even. I may not even be remembering dunbar right? I mean, there's this famous number that people can keep track of 150 people yeah, But I think the guy who

[Sara Wedeman] 11:58:09
came up with that numbers named dunbar to be yeah I Can't remember I that's just came out of my head. I don't know where it is.

[David D Clark] 11:58:18
You know, if you if you went online, if you went into a space, I mean, there is this: There is this book by a sociologist who spent a year living in second life.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:58:26
Oh, my God! Oh, it's a wonderful book it's called coming of age and second life!

[Sara Wedeman] 11:58:32
Oh, my God, I have ever missed that ringsdorf bookstore plugs some facts. but if you look up coming of agent second life, you'll get his name, and and it's a fascinating

[David D Clark] 11:58:43
book, because he went into there declaring that he was a a sociologist or an anthropologist.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:58:49
Observing, and he said, You know he wanted around a second life.

[David D Clark] 11:58:52
So can I talk to you, and like, just like coming of age.

[David D Clark] 11:58:58
He interviewed people, and he observed, but he but he but he was a participating observer.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:59:03
I mean an observation it's an anthropology method. Yeah.

[David D Clark] 11:59:05
And and and that's what he did and rainstorm anyway.

[David D Clark] 11:59:11
Any any talked about some of these issues, Like people becoming sufficiently committed to each other, they felt the only way to express their emotion was to marry them.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:59:20
In second life, you know it's a ceremony, involving witnesses, and the whole call sort of thing.

[David D Clark] 11:59:26
And it's it's! just we talked about social disorder and second life.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:59:31
Oh, gosh! Oh, go ahead! They had civil protest it's wonderful!

[David D Clark] 11:59:37
They? they they decided to. They needed to make money. Linden is the company.

[Sara Wedeman] 11:59:41
Then then a second life, London, lab, and they they so they decided to put a tax on created objects that were sold in, and people protested that this was taxation without that was a huge protest, and and and to protest this

[Sara Wedeman] 11:59:56
a place. If you, if you're a new beat of second life, you you come into the second life in a particular place.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:00:01
Sort of a default location to start.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:00:05
And so they all went there with their avatars. held up protest signs that say no taxation, and they set their advertise on fire.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:00:12
So when you popped into second life, you were surrounded by burning people, holding burning Avatars, holding signs that said no taxation was a civil protest, and it worked had their pictures of people setting setting fire

[Sara Wedeman] 12:00:27
to themselves, and so forth. which of course, in second life doesn't hurt at all, but it's got tremendous emotive symbolism.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:00:35
This is evolution, if you're after your avatar, which, of course, using the tools of second life, you could animate very nicely because it was a maker space.

[David D Clark] 12:00:42
And so there's all kinds of there's all kinds of just fascinating stuff there.

[David D Clark] 12:00:46
But it seems to me that this this question of community community toss again.

[David D Clark] 12:00:55
It would have to be something done through some sort of survey process.

[David D Clark] 12:01:00
But it seems to me, if you if you talk to these people who feel tremendously committed to there church, or there's social group, or the flat earth, or their fellow flat earth, or something like this, that there's a measurable

[Sara Wedeman] 12:01:19
quantity there. Now, this this question of lumina lemonality limitality next world in in Celtic.

[David D Clark] 12:01:35
Oh, okay, Okay, that's Well, mental is that the thing over the top of the door.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:01:42
Lemon anyway. the analogy there's There's gotta be some There's gotta be some way to conceptualize that.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:01:54
And oh, there it is. are you are you because the internet's giving you many more ways.

[David D Clark] 12:02:03
2 engage with people on footing. That is in some sense somewhat under your control.

[David D Clark] 12:02:14
That that's why I was looking at you know on the Internet.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:02:17
Nobody knows your dog it's A it's a breakdown of the it provides a possible breakdown of the sense that you are trapped into your class.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:02:30
Structure. Well, yeah, I mean So you know there's a lot This is more from anthropology, and I notice you're looking at your watch.

[David D Clark] 12:02:45
So it's 12. O, 2 yeah, and I just heard susan come in the door with Dana, and we have to have lunch, cause I have another call at once.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:02:47
So yeah, we're gonna have to wrap up. The thing is, you know, sociology is more kind of grand theory, and anthropology is starting from the ground up participant observation.

[David D Clark] 12:03:02
You know. So and in anthropology, particularly. there's a lot of writing about rights of passage, which yes, liminal phases.

[David D Clark] 12:03:13
Yes, absolutely that's that's absolutely right That's absolutely right.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:03:23
Call, though there is have to think about that. I made a right of.

[David D Clark] 12:03:33
Passage was stage and growth. It was up, you know. it was.

[David D Clark] 12:03:35
It was manhood. It was a step you didn't take you didn't revert to childhood.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:03:40
What's, what's interesting about. some of these other things we're talking about it that they are alternative stages that you could put on and take off So you can you can dabble in them you can partake, of

[Sara Wedeman] 12:03:52
them you can. second festival is Dead series in India.

[David D Clark] 12:04:05
Oh, yeah, you can't take it on and put it on you you're gonna be participating.

[David D Clark] 12:04:10
Oh, absolutely I understand. father was melted with yellow paint and hydra back right delightful picture my mind right? as people who are outside the the the frame of reference find these things particularly offensive

[David D Clark] 12:04:32
Alright. Anyhow, I mean I mean the British the British in the cluster Ohio structure where they had they had a they had a day, I think it was saying, Stephen's day.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:04:41
Oh, yeah, Where? where the servants got to I remember now You're?

[David D Clark] 12:04:49
Yes, okay, when there's this there's this deliberate reversal of the role models and and and it's supposed to be fun, and everybody's supposed to you know you talk about the Lord

[Sara Wedeman] 12:05:03
of misrule. Who could could dictate what people had to do?

[Sara Wedeman] 12:05:08
And it was it was this. It was again a kind of a decompression.

[David D Clark] 12:05:12
As you say, it was a a release and but but and i'm.

[David D Clark] 12:05:19
Sure people have written about the role of fantasy i'm. Sure, this has to be a whole just a whole sub genre of I don't know where it is.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:05:25
Sociology, whatever on the role of of fantasy.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:05:30
And okay, yeah, I gotta go have lunch. because lunch calls me. And then I have another call at one feeling if you're feeling better, it's possible we might want to talk later this week I don't know

[David D Clark] 12:05:42
this week got particularly full of students that want to talk to me.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:05:46
But let's see how you're doing it a couple of days, and see whether we ought to have another conversation that Yeah, i'm i'm i'm excited i'm on it one reason we're having so

[Sara Wedeman] 12:05:58
much trouble getting started, because this is actually really hard because that's it?

[David D Clark] 12:05:59
What an Ec proposal is all. Oh, this is really hard.

[David D Clark] 12:06:04
We have we have, we have been amazingly ambitious here and i'm so excited.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:06:06
But yeah, of course it's hard but but that's what's but that's what excites?

[Sara Wedeman] 12:06:13
Yes, absolutely. I just turn this off right away, because I need to make sure that I can find the transcript on my computer.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:06:21
You can go, but just don't close it out because I don't wanna lose it.

[David D Clark] 12:06:28
And I don't exactly how to find it yet. yeah There's some way to do that, but I don't know what it is.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:06:33
Okay, i'll leave this running, but i'm gonna go down and talk to Susan and Dana about that lunch.

[Sara Wedeman] 12:06:38
Okay, Nothing. Okay. So i'm shrinking the screen I'm going to find this Doc

[David D Clark] 12:09:19
They were voting