The Age of the Phrase vs. The Network State:

Truth is upstream of everything and why building The Network State (and other forms of progress such as science) requires better information diets

TLDR:

• We live in the Age of the Phrase

• The Age of the Phrase (as it relates to content) is mostly antithetical to The Network State, technical truth, and microhistory

• The Age of the Phrase has a far reach, affecting journalism and scientific publishing

• The solution is to improve our information diets and reform social media and associated business models

We live in the Age of the Phrase, and we have to play the game as content creators because we all suffer from too much content

So just finished up week 1 of the 1729 Writer’s Cohort (cohort #2). And it was a huge success! I’m feeling like I’m able to refine my writing process and get my ideas out there - even though they’re not perfect, so that’s great. One of my favorite things about the cohort is the feedback process, and the subject of this week’s piece is actually rooted in some of the feedback I got last time. Even though my reviewers liked my piece, they also thought I could do more to make my piece “skimmable” and have fewer walls of text. They’re absolutely right about that, and I think regardless of the content, the more attractive and approachable you can make it for consumers, the better you’ll be able to stick. But it got me thinking more about why exactly we live in a world where content creators have to make their content more “skimmable”? We talked a little about this, and just the sheer amount of content on the Internet makes it impossible to keep up with everything - skimming has sort of become part of 21st century content consumption for a lot of people. It reminds me of Balaji’s quote about the “Age of the Phrase”:

I think it rings true. Please note: for the purposes of this piece, when I say “Age of the Phrase”, I’m really keying into this idea of skimmable content, 280 characters on social media - the other parts of this age as they relate to crypto / AI are interesting - but I’ll take a view that is narrowly focused on content creation / consumption. The invention of the Internet, the proliferation of content, the fact that creation / distribution costs are near 0 makes it so that we live in an age of information overload, and thus, we also live in the Age of the Phrase, where ideas need to be compressed and it feels like there’s a need for them to get shorter and shorter to get any attention / traction / distribution. It’s why news has so many soundbites, it’s why clickbait is scattered across the Internet, it’s why Facebook wants to turn into TikTok - content is getting shorter.

The Network State, and associated concepts like microhistory and technical truth, seem antithetical to the direction we are headed with the Age of the Phrase

My issue with this is it seems to be that the Age of the Phrase is antithetical to the creation of the Network State. Zooming in, the Age of the Phrase, and the behavior of consumers on the Internet, is antithetical to the creation / consumption of microhistory and technical truth. For more detail about the relationship between The Network State, technical truth, and microhistory see my last piece - but in general here’s the summary below:

The past is colliding with the future, The Network with The State, and the theory is that we need to create microhistory and technical truth in order to make it to the future. As an aside, I believe Balaji is working on two fronts, working on the side of changing macrohistorical narratives - i.e. he believes in the power of storytelling and narrative and the phrase/tweet, and he’s using his model of history and his media distribution to change the narrative and shape the future; at the same time he absolutely believes in microhistory and the proliferation of reproducible, verifiable, high resolution, and high fidelity data within every industry allowing us to fight political power with technical truth and build towards human progress - so it’s not a simple picture - but I’m personally more interested in the side of microhistory and technical truth because it’s ultimately where I want to be.

My own model also includes this idea that 1729, and aligned people, organizations, and technologies are all part of a Kanman Filter that uses microhistory to optimize our trajectory to get to our desired destination - which are things like The Network State, transhumanism, etc. Microhistory gives us a higher fidelity view of our past, our present, and a tighter confidence interval around our trajectory into the future. Microhistory powers the Kalman Filter. When you move from microhistory to macrohistory, you lose information fidelity, you move to a higher level of abstraction, a higher level of generalization - it’s what happens when you summarize a 500 page book in a few words or a phrase. In my opinion, the Age of the Phrase is solidly aligned with macrohistory, and whatever comes next will be aligned with microhistory so that we can push forward. See below for a summary of the analogy between the Kalman Filter and our community landing the The Network State, or read my previous piece for more detail. 

But going back to the problem, the problem is that this Age of the Phrase that has swallowed culture, content, and ecosystem is antithetical to creating microhistory and technical truth, and therefore antithetical to The Network State and progress in aligned domains like science and innovation (e.g. transhumanism).

The Age of the Phrase impacts journalism (especially investigative journalism)

Some more concrete examples? There are numerous examples in both media / journalism and science where you can see this sort of thing happening. It’s now (I believe) common knowledge that the Internet, as well as the rise of incumbent social media and associated business models, have led to a decrease in the quality of journalism. Investigative journalism, I would argue the subset of the discipline that spends extra resources going after a tighter record of events (akin to microhistory) and attempting to find the technical truth rather than the narrative - has been dying for a while. And it’s been dying because the social media platforms incentivize clickbait, soundbites, and now TikTok videos. That’s what our media consumption has become. Is it any surprise then that it seems like the media is aligned with the establishment or other political entities to play a part in their political power games? More and more the mainstream media feels like it’s just on the side of reinforcing political power, or pushing forward other agenda, rather than finding the capital T truth. Probably Balaji would argue this has been going on for a long time as in the Gray Lady Winked, but the fact that the Age of the Phrase is a thing means there’s even less of a lens into what’s true and what’s false, and people and organizations are less willing to do the work to find out. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Age of the Phrase is enabling the polarization we’re seeing in politics and thus mainstream media (or the reverse: enabling the polarization in media and thus politics). 

The Age of the Phrase impacts academia, even scientific publishing in the harder sciences

Perhaps more surprising is that this sort of thing (i.e. narrative, storytelling, political power) and the Age of the Phrase in general, seems to have infiltrated academic institutions, including some of the harder sciences - places that you may have presumed to hold microhistory and technical truth sacred. Recently David Friedberg on the All-in-Podcast talks about a groundbreaking discovery that a famous, peer-reviewed Alzheimer's paper may have used fraudulent data - billions of dollars of funding and countless hours of further research and resources have gone towards building on this theory that is looking like a fake. He talks about yet another recent study that demonstrates a lack of scientific evidence proving a long standing theory (that has been translated to real prescription drugs) that serotonin has a significant effect on fighting depression:

50 second YouTube clip: Friedberg on serotonin research and incentives + JCal on similarities with investigative journalism

You can see how the Age of the Phrase, and more generally a fixation on narrative and storytelling in lieu of the details, can really hamper scientific progress, even in fields like synthetic biology, which align with some of the transhumanist ideals of the 1729 community. 

30 second YT clip: Friedberg on synthetic biology and storytelling in science

Chamath Palihapitiya does a good job summarizing the implications of this, getting this stuff right doesn’t just affect what people believe or don’t believe, and it doesn’t just affect an allocation of capital - rather, the implications are on the scale of “the trajectory of the human race”:

35 second YT clip: Chamath on impact on trajectory + Friedberg on bad science collapsing markets

As Balaji says, “Truth is upstream of everything”.

Is the Age of the Phrase a problem for the Network State and future progress? Let me know your thoughts. It seems to me that we need to improve our information diets and create better information processing ecosystems.

Hopefully you’ve been able to follow my train of thought here, that the “Age of the Phrase”, a lack of technical truth relative to political truth in media, science, institutions etc. can lead to a lack of: A.) the type of content that either is or furthers technical truth / microhistory and / or B.) a willingness for people and communities to be good information processors and process this content effectively. It ultimately affects our ability to move towards progress, it affects our ability to reach The Network State, to innovate in science / transhumanism, etc.

Balaji has some great models for this in this talk where he talks about how our information supply chain is broken, and how a concept called the “Ledger of Record” is the solution.

In my next piece, I’m planning to talk a little bit more about the fundamental reasons behind the Age of the Phrase, perhaps a bit about the role that social media and social media design plays, the role of the advertising business models - and some thoughts about how much of this is on us, i.e. what we as individuals and a community can do to improve our information diets and create an ecosystem for better information processing, what we can do to get out of this Age of the Phrase mentality, and push forward with microhistory, technical truth, and progress.

In the meantime I’m super curious to hear from you - do you think it’s possible to get past the Age of the Phrase or is it here to stay? Do you think the Age of the Phrase, and the corresponding content and behavior that comes out of it is a net good or a net bad? Would love to hear different perspectives and discuss with you in the comments!