[Noisebridge-discuss] I'm going to go all meta here

[Quinn Norton]

On Sep 30, 2009, at 5:16 PM, aestetix aestetix wrote:

>
> 	• I think it's harmful and dangerous to view Noisebridge as an  
> amalgamous mob that will eat, destroy, and shit out anything you  
> give it. This isn't Lord of the Flies, it is a community of self- 
> empowered folks who work on cool projects. The most important thing  
> to remember is *trust*, which is why I completely disagree with  
> Jason Dusek's argument. If you do not trust others to treat your  
> things well, why are you here?


This gets into an interesting point about the sociology of  
Noisebridge, especially viewed as a common interests village. The  
trust within the social network is the most likely candidate for the  
magic pixie dist that makes NB work, and work shockingly well. There  
are multiple ways to create that trust network, the one we're most  
familiar with in society is through rules and enforcement. It's the  
transference of trust. I trust you because I trust Mr. Man over there  
with a gun to shoot you if you break the social contract.

The thing about rules, locks, controls, punishments and logs is that  
they have a lot in common with gestation. You *can* actually be a  
little bit pregnant- it just doesn't stay that way.

Rules are dominant social prions, polymorphs that metastasize in small  
cultures. You can have none or you can have a lot, a little always  
turns into a lot. Which isn't to say rules are bad, they just don't  
share space with metastable social structures based on appealing to an  
environmental level of ethics and socialization, the appeal to which  
creates the environment. This is true for Noisebridge, it's been  
tested on children in developmental psych, it works on traffic  
patterns, and 12 step groups. You can't mix the two approaches. Our  
approach requires constant vigilance- the other approach eventually  
requires guns, though usually hidden behind a justice system. They're  
still guns. (Mind you, I *like* guns, I'm just noting maintenance  
conditions.)

The one worry I generally have with our system is that it's got a  
known vuln, through it come up rarely. It's vulnerable to a true  
pyschopath, who will have no ability to obey the social conventions,  
having only an abstract ability to perceive them. True psychopaths are  
rare, and even when they emerge they usually don't deal death blows  
because someone ends up menacing them away (almost like an immune  
function, I swear, it's fascinating.)  By psychopath here I mean  
clinically- someone highly egocentric, incapable of empathy, with  
limited theory of mind. Not bastards, but people actually lacking in  
these mental functions. Bastards are much easier to deal with.  Rules  
systems are highly robust in deal with psychopaths, I'm fairly  
convinced these days the concept arose as a response to keeping the  
occasional psychopath from having disproportionate effects on  
otherwise stable social structures.

I've spoken to people about my nervousness about what I think of as  
the known vulnerability of the Noisebridge system, but it's certainly  
of no immediate concern. No one anywhere near that destructive has  
really gotten very involved with NB.

The other thing that could collapse it is that it's an island of  
alternative social structure embedded in an environment of these  
metastasizing prionic rules based social structures. When something  
goes wrong it's perfectly rational for anyone to say 'there outta be a  
law!' without realizing how radically that would ultimately change the  
whole thing. Many people come to NB specifically to exist outside of  
the dominant structure for a time, and I think it would be a shame to  
change Noisebridge, just because there's a surfeit of the other model,  
rather than because Noisebridge is Inherently Better. Whether it is or  
not I have no real opinion, but it's a bit of a sparkly purple fairy  
unicorn, so I want to keep it like that, personally.

With that it occurs to me there's another class/study group/drinking  
society/whatever I'd like to start at Noisebridge. I'm thinking of  
calling it the "Postmodernist Support Group". Who would be interested  
in that? I mean, who besides Shannon?

Quinn