A Thought Experiment

 

Let's do a thought experiment.

Suppose everyone is born with a small, low-res pixel square on her or his forehead, which allows us to display random, QR-code-like patterns. And suppose pretty much everyone quickly learns to be able to display any pattern if s/he sees it, and to invent new ones. Let's say, additionally, that we naturally sort these patterns into two buckets, A and B, and that some are obviously As, others obviously Bs, and yet others just a toss-up. People mostly agree which are the As and which the Bs, but not always. Finally, for now, let's say that encountering for the first time some small fraction of A-type patterns gives us a really nice, pleasurable shiver - a little shot of dopamine or endorphins. Sometimes, generating patterns on your own (seeing them with your mind's eye, if you like), you can find one which gives you this shiver, but it's not easy. This is all a bit weird, I concede, but not obviously impossible or without mundane parallels.

Pretty clearly, people would form a kind of unspoken contract where they would exchange their patterns - I'll give you my latest pleasurable patterns if you give me yours. People would naturally engage in pattern-trading as a social activity. People who often have new pleasurable patterns to offer would be sought-out as good company, those who always just offer-up the same old ones, not so much. Obviously, people who offer-up patterns widely agreed to be B-type, which we've stipulated never give the shiver, would be spurned. The whole point is to get the shiver.

Now, let's add two crucial assumptions. We're supposing people to have stored-up in their memories a personal stock of A-type patterns, hopefully some new and shiver-worthy to others, ready to exchange. First, let's now suppose that whether you recognize a new pattern to be an A or a B depends in part on what patterns you've encountered and judged to be an A in the past -on what you've got in your stock. Your experience colours your judgement. And second, let's suppose that people have some small latitude to revise their estimations as to whether patterns are A's or B's. They're not completely malleable, but they can generally tweak things a bit. It does, though, take some effort to change - there's a personal cost.

The first thing to observe is that small divergences would potentially amplify. Even two people who would, without this assumption, completely agree on what's A and what's B, would, if they somehow came to diverge in what they had in their personal stocks (a 'mistake'?), disagree on new patterns dependent on their divergent stored patterns, and this disagreement would propagate and grow.

The second thing to notice is that agreement would be valuable. My chances of getting a shiver from one of your offered patterns will be importantly greater if you and I agree than if we are widely divergent, and vice-versa. Shiver-worthy pattern discovery would come to be a collective undertaking, one whose productivity would be directly dependent on people being aligned in their personal stocks of patterns.

The people in this scenario would naturally compile a kind of shared catalogue of pleasurable patterns, and would, upon finding a new personally pleasurable one, strive to have it included in the catalogue. Having my patterns in the catalogue would mean that others would pull in the same direction as me, and increase the chances of my getting more shivers down the road. Having it excluded would mean either that I would have to put in the work to tweak my own stock, to come to see this as not really an A, or just to resign myself to missing out on all the pleasure to be got from the eventually accumulating divergent stock of patterns in the catalogue which I would disagree with. If you disagree with me about some new pattern, I would struggle with you to try to convince you that you are wrong and I am right, about the worthiness of this pattern for inclusion.

In short, people would naturally cooperate to accumulate a shared catalogue of patterns which would redound to the personal benefit of them all, but they would also compete to get their own patterns in the catalogue, where there's divergence.

It would be useful to have a name for patterns in the catalogue. 'True' is as good as any.

Is that worth a small shiver?