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I think while the effect was first noted in a relatively small community, the idea applies broadly to all sizes of open public forum, especially where things are organized chronologically. There's difficulty in developing and establishing cultural norms when there are constant new arrivals who can't have learned from past developments. That's what the term represents to me.


Yeah, I also don’t see why such patterns should apply differently to any community past a sufficiently large Dunbar number, modulo some tribal factor. Humans simply haven’t evolved to differentiate between a tribe of three thousand, or three million.

Want proof? Tell me how many people might read this comment and agree with it.

Humans are bad at large scale pattern recognition and suffer from extreme proximity bias. It’s why filter bubbles exist.

For the same reason, it seems dangerous to promote the idea that it’s even possible to “have a conversation as a society.” If any such conversation is taking place, surely its level of inherent selection bias would render any of its conclusions irrelevant. Only a participant or biased observer could claim otherwise.

Society has a filter-bubble deficiency. For a global population nearing ten billion humans, the number of distinct information channels is alarmingly low in comparison. It’s not possible to have an honest “conversation as a society” in such an asymmetrical information environment.


But there is no single public forum on Facebook and no single culture.




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