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by SubiculumCode 3535 days ago
I do not think decision making is a good model for this concept. Culture is. In particular: Traditionalism vs. Progressiveism as cultural influences: the former acts to not overfit current conditions, while the latter tries to fit current conditions. Both influences have been critical for human survival.
2 comments
ThrustVectoring 3535 days ago
Control theory is a better model for Traditionalism vs Progressivism, in my opinion. Traditionalism works to add damping to the system of cultural expectations, preventing overshoot and oscillation, while Progressivism provides the proportional response necessary to track the cultural ideal.

Crucially, this shows the difference between Traditionalism and just having a lot of cultural context. Culture itself is just weight - more of it is harder to change, but it's the same difficulty no matter how fast you go. Traditionalists, on the other hand, will fight you harder the more quickly you're changing cultural facts.

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rhodri 3535 days ago
good observation. makes me think also about the tendency of computers and the internet to actually slow us down in our work!

their general-purpose nature means that our minds take on the additional complexity of context switching as we use our tools for multiple simultaneous tasks, and indeed this generality means that they can be quickly adapted to new contexts. contrast this to specialist tools which, once learned, provide significant increases in efficiency in the specific context to which they have been adapted (including the benefits of increased concentration owing to lack of distraction!) but cannot always be re-engineered easily to suit new contexts.

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TeMPOraL 3535 days ago
To be honest, it's the fault of current UX trends of making everything so dumb that people can be "proficient" in a program within first few seconds of seeing it for the first time. General-purpose computer is perfectly able to switch between many highly-specialized tools on the fly. It's just that powerful, efficient tools are rarely built nowadays - they've been replaced by pretty looking toys that sell fast.
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