The Potential Energy of Love
Epistemic Status: a fun model to play with
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A tiered society is one where there is a "sea" of difference between members of each tier. "Knowing" someone beyond the protocol-mediated rules requires taking a risk to cross this sea.
Think Aladdin and Jasmine crossing a sea of socio-economic status or Romeo and Juliet crossing a sea of generational conflict.
A tiered society is "tyrannical" because it exaggerates the differences between individuals and gives them no hope of leaving their assigned stories. (e.g. caste systems)
However the vast differences between individuals are also the source of the "story" potential that is necessary for love.
When distances are reduced and everyone is accessible via swipe, the love stories only have enough potential to generate high-school love. There are no epic tales of two individuals each willing to cross a sea of the unknown, risking death and ostracization, in order to see each other one more time. Just a fear of no longer being cool.
In the eyes of an algorithm, each meat-bag is just as capable as another meat-bag at delivering things to each other when GPS turn-by-turn navigation is provided. There is no specific reason why one is valued so much more highly than another.
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Not only does technology compress "space", it also compresses "time".
Wealth that would have been built over a period of multiple Game of Throne novels crossing the rise and fall of multiple dynasties, tales of human love, hate, and a sea of corpses is now reduced to buying the latest dog coin and sipping second-hand details of the SBF FTX trial from some AI powered newsletter that summarizes other summaries.
The stories we can tell in our own lives pale in comparison to the stories in video games or TV drama and we lose our sense of self-authorship.
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Technology has a homogenizing effect the same way a teenager with a gun is equal to a Kung Fu master or how a new driver can be equal to an experienced taxi veteran.
While there are obvious benefits, it also seems to flatten the topology of journeys and stories so that it becomes impossible to accumulate enough potential energy to have meaningful experiences of love.