
What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011) - aleyan
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783
======
vearwhershuh
I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional
politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-
preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens.

On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by
Bernays.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_\(book\))

It's short.

~~~
tryitnow
I don't know. I just don't see it.

Unlike in professional wrestling politicians, corporations, etc have real
conflicts over zero sum games. Of course, there are situations where there's
are incentives to cooperate.

As for his critique of neoclassical economics' reliance on perfect information
- that's already been addressed by many economists, Stiglitz, etc. It's
frankly banal to even bring it up any longer.

I just don't see this concept adding much value to a conceptual toolkit.
Whenever I try to apply it, it feels forced and it seems simpler concepts do
the job just fine.

For example, it's easier to just assume that sometimes competitors finds
situations where it makes sense to cooperate.

And it's simpler to assume that even staunch enemies want to appear
"gentlemanly" at times, either in public or behind the scenes.

Kayfabe seems worst that useless to me. It seems to violate Occam's razor. It
offers an elaborate explanation where a simply explanation would be just as
good.

~~~
rukuu001
> politicians, corporations, etc have real conflicts over zero sum games. Of
> course, there are situations where there's are incentives to cooperate.

I have a great example, called the ‘mating call of the banks’ (in Australia,
don’t know if there’s something similar elsewhere).

We only have four major banks here, and sometimes one or more of them wants to
raise interest rates out of cycle (ie without the Australian Reserve bank
changing official rates).

Of course, if only one of them raises rates, they’ll lose business.

And ultimately, they all want higher rates.

So one of them will book some media spots (easy if you’re a big advertiser)
and start talking about the state of the economy and how it’s out of step with
fiscal policy, etc etc.

That’s a mating call.

If some other bank’s talking head turns up saying the same thing, then that’s
another one. That’s a signal that at least two banks will raise rates
together.

Once they’ve done that, the other two will surely follow.

Publicly executed conspiracy to fix prices.

~~~
forgingahead
This is an interesting concept -- I would assume "mating call of the airlines"
is a similar phenomenon that exists in the US airline industry (pre-corona of
course) -- all want to raise fees / stuff planes, so there's this pantomime of
whatever ails the industry covered in the media, before one (and then all)
change policies that are pro-airline-profit but net-negative-passenger.

All this is possible of course due to the consolidation allowed over the past
15 years, but separate topic for a separate thread.

------
LolWolf
Upvoted due to the interesting story, but the point is conceptually unclear
(at least to me, but I'm quite slow) how _would_ this improve my cognitive
toolkit?

I understand the (one) example presented apart from wrestling, but it is not
quite obvious that the actual framework of Kayfabe immediately maps to it. It
feels like there are easier constructions that would explain this exactly as
well, if not better (perhaps most notably, the Prisoner's dilemma and the fact
that coordination games are hard[0]).

\---

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580](https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580)

~~~
alexpetralia
Put simply, one might think of kayfabe as a consensus on the agreement of
illusion; a suspension of reality.

Why would anyone do this?

For one, suspended reality allows us to be creative and simulate outcomes that
otherwise would not occur in real life.

But also, it can occur under information asymmetry. If something seems fake to
me, but I am not sure if _you_ believe it is fake or not (and vice versa), we
both might pretend something is real for the sake of not offending one
another.

This segues into another of Weinstein's terms (originally from Timur Kuran)
called "preference falsification": if no one has to falsify their beliefs, we
might just _state_ things we don't actually believe in, since we don't know
what other people actually believe, and we don't want to run the risk of being
ostracized.

Overall, these two concepts explain how otherwise tenuous theories can be
believed (or at least stated to be believed) by large groups of people.

~~~
qznc
We have much bigger illusions than wrestling. Ironically, a piece of fiction
made the point much clearer to me:

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need...
fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE
HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER
AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE,
ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE
IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE
UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”

― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Likewise, paper money:
[https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Paper_Money](https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Paper_Money)

~~~
cmgxyz
> TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE

This has always stuck with me. I’m not well enough read to know if he borrowed
it from somewhere, but I’m not sure Terry Pratchett ever wrote finer words
than those. Beautifully concise and apt summary of the human condition.

~~~
dmurray
A variation of that quote is in a book by Robert Ardrey in 1961:

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Ardrey](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Ardrey)

~~~
totetsu
and maybe related to Nietzsche's "Man is a rope"
[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/384722-man-is-a-rope-
stretc...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/384722-man-is-a-rope-stretched-
between-the-animal-and-the)

------
motohagiography
The writer was a guest on Rogan this weekend, and he was very engaging, he did
wander a bit. He has a particular kind of breadth-first associative
intelligence that can cause listeners to become almost hypnotized by all the
open cognitive loops his conversation creates, not unlike the kayfabe concept
he's touting.

Similar things come up in the theory of musical composition where you create
and resolve "tension," and you can drive the listeners perceptions by loading
them up with mental anchors to notes and then resolving them all at once. If
you learn to play any Bach, you can begin to see and articulate how he
discovered it. Eric Weinsteins example of pro wrestling is identifying where
it appears in narrative, but there are analogous concepts in areas like so-
called, "neuro linguistic programming," where ideas are "stacked," and then
collapsed into a conclusion. I only know about that part of it because I have
some very diverse and interesting friends.

As a writer, I use a similar technique all the time, but in smaller more
digestible loops, and only rarely with enough to take the reader into that
kind of "hall of mirrors," effect great fiction writers use, where each new
sentence introduces plot elements that cascade back through the story and
closes loops on ideas you have already set up. Mystery novels are a the most
simple example of it, where at the end _it all falls into place_.

Great auteur films like 13 Conversations About One Thing, and any Cohen
Brother's pic uses a similar device.

Anyway it's fun and addictive, and while I'm sure smarter people than me have
a more coherent theory of it, I can see why this fellow thinks it's important.

When you think about it, how our mind works is fundamentally the only actual
problem. Everything else is just an artifact of it.

~~~
lukifer
Eric Weinstein also has a podcast of his own, the most recent episode of which
features his original lecture detailing the Geometric Unity model he discussed
on Rogan (though even the dumbed-down version flies right over my head):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg)

> He has a particular kind of breadth-first associative intelligence that can
> cause listeners to become almost hypnotized by all the open cognitive loops
> his conversation creates

Well said. Eric is also gaining a reputation for coining labels, the best
known being the "Intellectual Dark Web", alongside lesser-known acronyms like
EGO (Embedded Growth Obligation), GIN (Gated Institutional Narrative), and
DISC (Distributed Idea Suppression Complex).

~~~
4thwaywastrel
Had the disorienting experience of listening to this very episode while
absently browsing hacker news and reading this comment

------
sigil
Eric Weinstein is a delight to listen to: a polymath, a contrarian, a great
interviewer, really gifted verbally. I'm a Portal subscriber and I've listened
to his Rogan interviews all the way through. That said...

I have the sinking feeling that you're right about the breadth-first thing,
and it's about to become a bigger issue. Back in the 80s Weinstein was working
on an alternative Grand Unified Theory. When his work was marginalized, he
never really got over it, and he's now using his platform (an important
platform for many other reasons!) to try and right that wrong. To that end, he
just published a 2013 talk he gave at Oxford on this theory. [0]

What he _has not published_ in all these years, afaik, is an _actual math
paper_ describing his theory. This is the mark of a charlatan. I fear for
Eric, and for all the other positive things springing up around The Portal, if
it's discovered he lacks the depth and rigor we've all been assuming he has.

In other words, he could turn out to be not just a "breadth-first associative
thinker," but someone who lacks the self-awareness to know when he's out of
his depth; a dangerous know-it-all. Eric if you're reading this: publish the
paper the damn paper -- with the help of a mathematician or physicist if
needed -- or drop it.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7rd04KzLcg)

~~~
knzhou
PhD student in theoretical physics here. I will confirm: Weinstein _is_ a
charlatan, and all of us know it. As far as I can tell, the only people who
believe in him are non-physicists who consume exclusively pop science. In
other words, he's acting as the literal definition of a dishonest public
intellectual.

It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency
and real expertise.

~~~
crispyambulance
> It's just sad, and it really shows the yawning chasm between verbal fluency
> and real expertise.

I agree, if by "verbal fluency" you mean stringing together heavyweight jargon
and concepts like Eddy Van Halen doing a guitar riff.

Even in a colloquium filled with subject matter experts that kind of pace is
off-putting and raises red-flags instantly-- but this guy does it when
communicating with the general public, fully knowing that people are going to
be lost in a matter of seconds.

... so yeah, that and NO FREAKING PAPERS. It's a bit disconcerting for a
theory that purports to unify relativity with quantum mechanics.

~~~
knzhou
Exactly, he was obviously intentionally trying to overwhelm people with
jargon. That drives me crazy. Other physicists don't do this, because it
serves no purpose aside from making the speaker look smart, and we have other
priorities.

------
allemagne
Kayfabe is also apparently a convenient method for sidestepping an entire
discipline for ideological purposes.

>Perhaps confusing battles between "quantum" and "classical" physicists could
be best understood as happening within a single "orthodox promotion" given
that both groups suffered no injury from failing (equally) to develop a
unified theory of gravity.

------
ljw1001
Pretty sure this is the least likely concept to improve anyone's cognitive
toolkit on the entire list. Its presence almost seems like an inside joke.

------
futureproofd
Eric Weinstein most recently explained his Kayfabe theory on the Joe Rogan
podcast, in this Episode:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf0_nMaQ6tA)
He also makes reference to this particular article.

~~~
cronix
A bit shorter, and more focused from a different interview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsgWSPWX-6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsgWSPWX-6A)

~~~
BrandonM
I found the video to be worthwhile overall. For anyone looking for the
Kayfabe-specific part, though, it starts at about 23:40:
[https://youtu.be/bsgWSPWX-6A?t=1420](https://youtu.be/bsgWSPWX-6A?t=1420)

------
softwaredoug
AI is a kind of kayfabe?

\- Marketing depts want to sell AI solutions as it’s higher perceived value

\- Execs/managers want to check an AI checkbox to show their using the latest
tech

\- Practioners want to grow AI skills to find interesting opportunities and
stand out from regular devs

\- Academia wants to talk up their AI solution to get more attention and
funding (and find jobs!)

\- The media wants to write about robots taking over the world

Whether or not there’s real value when any particular machine learning
solution on any given domain problem is seen as less important than the
signaling that we’re all using cutting edge tech. We all just participate in
the mutual deception.

------
ajuc
Less cool word for it: conspiracy.

I guess it's a particular kind of conspiracy, so maybe it's useful to have a
word for that? But I don't think it describes the political scene well.
Politicians from opposite parties aren't rehearsing debates with their
opponents and choosing who wins before the debate starts.

There's some level of "cover your ass" and "don't annoy too many people" that
makes accountability almost impossible, but kayfabe isn't the right analogy
IMHO. It's not intentional cooperative theatrical performances, it's just an
effect of incentives being what they are.

------
mirimir
Before reading TFA, I was thinking "What's their agenda?" / "What's in it for
them?" / "What's their bias?" etc.

But this is a deeper cut.

However, in looking for kayfabe, there's the risk of conspiracy thinking.

~~~
qnsi
I used to follow him on Twitter but got a conspiracy vibes from him. Got the
same in this post. After other noted here that he has some kind of Grand
theory of physics, that sadly experts dont agree with, I mentally classify him
as a crackpot from now on

------
iron0013
Kayfabe is such an important concept in this historical moment! To me, the
“audience” is the most interesting component, and the “performers” are almost
irrelevant, except to the extent that they must provide some fantasy that
(ever so nominally) purports to be reality (or lies purporting to be truth).
The psychological process by which the audience fully commits to and
“believes” the fantasy, while at the same time being fully aware on some level
that the fantasy is obviously untrue is fascinating, and deserves much more
attention and research. Obviously, this is closely related to the idea of
doublethink, but kayfabe gives more agency to the audience. Rather than being
forced to engage in doublethink by big brother and an authoritarian
government, kayfabe “believers” are all together with each other the agents of
their own delusion. I think the biggest contributor to whether someone “buys
in” to a kayfabe fantasy is their capacity for conformity; seeing the rest of
the crowd treat the obviously untrue fantasy as if it were reality gives the
individual permission, or “cover”, to participate in the fantasy themselves.

I’m guessing anyone reading this knows what non-wrestling kayfabe scene I’m
talking about—except maybe those who are already participating in it
themselves—and even for those folks, well, it all depends on what “knows”
means, doesn’t it?

------
scythe
>The decades old battle in theoretical physics over bragging rights between
the "string" and "loop" camps would seem to be an even more significant
example within the hard sciences of a collaborative intra-promotion rivalry
given the apparent failure of both groups to produce a quantum theory of
gravity.

In string theory we quantize gravity by attaching voodoo parameters to
particles, and manipulating those parameters so that they forbid the
gravitational ultraviolet catastrophe. In LQG or NQFT we attach voodoo
parameters to spacetime, forbidding tiny singularities. We can also attach
voodoo parameters to gravity itself and get the theory of asymptotically safe
gravity. I think that would be four theories. Anyone who finds better-
justified voodoo parameters should be welcomed into the ring, but that is very
difficult.

Personally I find the voodoo parameters in NQFT to be the least weird, but
Connes (a leading proponent) earned some raspberries for his oh-wait-I-
didn't-mean-that revision of his prediction of the Higgs mass (
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1208.1030.pdf) ).

------
baxtr
Could this not be summarized as “organized fake rivalries to create
entertainment while the audience doesn’t care”. Thus, it’s not applicable to
politics unless it’s organized. This is not an emergent system property, but
must be designed and organized in order to happen.

------
whytaka
Other than the obvious application to the Democrat/Republican rivalry
puppeteered by corporatists, the other application that came to mind is
Youtube celebritydom.

------
User23
I had a similar experience when I read Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit. It's one
of those concepts that is obvious in retrospect, but really helps clarify
understanding. His conceptual framework of bullshit as communication that is
intended to persuade with no regard either way for truth has certainly helped
me read this article.

------
machinelearning
Does this mean Tiger King was all a Kayfabe?

~~~
alexandercrohde
Maybe you mean this as a joke but it absolutely was. At one point Joe mentions
he and Carole made a lot of money off each other. He ran a whole internet show
on the premise of vilifying her, and her whole "Cat Rescue" zoo couldn't exist
without the likes of him.

They both denounce each-other but depend on each-other. Though I suppose
Kayfabe would maybe imply some mutual understanding of this interdependence
and some agreed-upon boundaries.

~~~
rikthevik
Sort of like Batman and the Joker?

~~~
kadal
"you won't kill me out of some misguided sense of self righteousness and I
won't kill you because you're just too much fun"

I had the same thought

------
markc
Are you telling me that Blake and Adam weren’t actually rivals??!!

------
whodidntante
"The falseness of a judgement is not necessarily an objection to a judgment:
it is here that our new language perhaps sounds strangest. The question is to
what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps
even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the
falsest judgements (to which synthetic judgments a priori belong ) are the
most indispensable to us, that without granting as true the fictions of logic,
without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the
unconditional and self-identical, without a continual falsification of the
world by means of numbers, mankind could not live - that to renounce false
judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life. To recognize
untruth as a condition of life: that, to be sure, means to resist customary
value-sentiments in a dangerous fashion; and a philosophy which ventures to do
so places itself , by that act alone, beyond good and evil." Nietzsche, Beyond
Good and Evil

Society is based on shared concepts/stories, the effectiveness of that society
is based on the value of these shared concepts, not their truth/untruth.

On a small scale: Washington and the cherry tree Daily conversation (How are
you ? Good !) Santa Claus Public persona of hollywood stars, entertainers,
politicians, etc. etc

On a large scale: Freedom/Democracy Capitalism/Socialism Religion

------
mrfusion
This really puts into words/framework what I’ve been thinking for a while.
Thanks for sharing.

------
block_dagger
The Elephant in the Brain is a good read that generally supports this article.

~~~
qnsi
does it really? I am in the middle of reading it The Elephant in the Brain and
I agree with the parts I read.

I strongly disagree with Weinstein and think he's spreading conspiracy
theories

------
TheDesolate0
RTFM

------
gHosts
I'm astonished that a search of the comments here produces no hits for that
master of modern Kayfabe... Trump.

~~~
danieltrembath
Or that the article author is Managing Director of Thiel Capital.

I'll grant this is getting into Ad hominem territory, but I point it out
because an 'it's all just a performance' viewpoint seems kind of worrying when
you wield signifiant influence.

~~~
tomhoward
Weinstein is very publicly in opposition to Thiel over the suitability of
Trump for the presidency, but the fact that they both think about a concept
like kayfaybe and its influence on serious public affairs, indicates something
interesting about how they think about the forces at play in the world.

------
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------
cairo_x
> a world in which investigative journalism seems to have vanished and bitter
> corporate rivals cooperate on everything from joint ventures to lobbying
> efforts

Says the man behind Thiel capital.

