Not being mathematical doesn't seem to stop me playing around with ideas that are mathematical in nature, and one I keep returning to is standard deviations. Last night I wrote a post looking at content rewards in regard to the Pareto principle and it got me thinking about what that content might contain and the ramifications of it in the current social climate.
Essentially, no matter when something is recorded, it can be dredged up and weaponized at any point in the future and we have seen this often regarding old tweets for example. Something that someone said ten years ago can be applied as if valid today, without taking into consideration any factors that might influence in between, like new knowledge gained through experience.
Imagine if a scientist was bound to the outcome of the first experimental attempt and from there, could never move on and you will see how ridiculous this approach is. For all of us who live, life is a very large experiment and as we progress through, we change over time - the "I will nevers" as a child get replaced with maturity, and the "I wish I hadn'ts" could creep in to the mental vernacular. Holding anyone to their past without considering their current status is going to cause massive problems.
What has this got to do with Standard deviations?
Well - I am glad I asked.
Standard deviations look at how far from the average something might be, with the further away from the standard zero point, the more deviant. Socially, being a "deviant" is pretty much doing what others are not, and while the term might seem negative as it is usually applied to sexual preferences, pretty much everyone deviates away in multiple areas, some more significantly than others and in areas that are more influential. For example, in IQ, strength, speed, humor, looks… you know, everything, - And a person is made up of a million traits where in some they are average and some they may even be exceptional - Like Einstein.
Often though, to be socially exceptional requires have a high degree of deviation in what a society in general considers important, like those traits above. Any one individual however might not care for instance, about how fast their partner can run, but while watching the Olympics, running speed will get a higher weighting. This means that there must also be context to surround the individual exception for it to be considered. A high IQ that is never applied remains a high IQ, but if it is used to for example, cure a disease, it becomes socially significant.
When it comes to the online world of digital content, part of the context is going to be who says what, with already established personalities having more influence over the social spread than unknowns. This has always been the case, but these days essentially everyone has some kind of platform, regardless of who they are or what they believe, and this creates its own issues, especially if bad ideas get traction.
But, there is nothing wrong with bad ideas.
We all have bad ideas and it is part of the process to having good ideas, as are having average ideas that lead onto developing them into great ideas. Ideas are not static things, they are organic and dynamic in nature and change over time, which is why holding a person accountable today for an idea they had in the past can be a very poor position as ideas can mature into something quite different once new information and experience plays its part.
The problem is that if people are information siloed, which can happen through fear of things like ridicule and punishment, ideas are sectioned off from competing ideas and the chance to evolve them. This means an idea can remain static and valid in a person's mind, even if it is not in reality.
On top of this, there is the social acceptance of ideas (which I tried to visualize in the chart below) where the more divergent an idea is, the higher the resistance to it becomes. A highly divergent idea doesn't mean a bad idea because it isn't accepted, as in general, people support their own averages, the familiar and what doesn't challenge their comfort zones.
I was thinking about this in regards to my own ideas that I have put onto the blockchain here and wonder how future history will treat it, considering I know that there are many thoughts with varying degrees of deviation away from the average in both directions, good and bad.
I have submitted 3,596 posts and 27,646 comments with a conservative estimate that the top-level posts alone will have over 3 million words or the equivalent of 30+ 300-page novels. That is a lot of information to trawl and pull back in the future when it suits and while I am sure that there are likely moments of brilliance and a great deal many positive quotable thoughts, I can guarantee that they aren't all gold.
This is where the selection bias would come into play, as those who are charitable will find a mountain of examples, passages, ideas and phrases that could build what I would consider a relatively impressive body of work. But at the same time, my worst days are here too, the 4am posts from my daughter's bedside, the comments made after discussions with my wife over money problems, the articles written from hospitals.
Who am I - The content of a single article or a spectrum seen through all of the ups and downs a life sees? While cherry-picking an article from my past will give one view, it will never tell the whole story, in the same way a single tweet should never define a person's life - in the positive or negative.
As far as standard deviation of ideas, I do not know how far away from the average I may be, but from time to time and like most people, I will diverge from the social norms. However, as a Steem content contributor, I am likely quite unusual considering the volume of content I produce and then also from the perspective of variation of topic for a single account. On Steem it makes my account scarce in some way, which could be indicative of some value mechanisms also - since there is demand for at least some of the range I offer.
Just like in any life, an account is a living, breathing thing when looking at the evolution of the content it houses and generates. And then from there, there is the influence it has on the content generation across other accounts through the introduction of ideas that might not have been earlier considered or, the support and motivation required to delve a little deeper.
This is the lifecycle of ideas and while there is going to be the full spectrum from terrible to incredible, one single idea never stands alone, it is always influenced by the past. What I find might be interesting in the future of blockchain technology is that some of the ideas of today could evolve into world changers of tomorrow and be traceable back close to the source.
I wonder if decades from now someone will chance upon my ideas here and trace them to the current conditions. Will I be celebrated, or crucified? That is never my choice as to which, it is up to society and their own normal distributions. What I do know is that a phrase without context of the conditions at the time can be seem much worse when uttered in the conditions of today. It is easy to look to the past and admonish from the position of the present where conditions and attitudes have changed, but that past is what got us to here today.
That also means of course, the future is going to be built on what we do now.
It is this last statement that I think I adhere to, as while I might be some degrees of wrong today, the intention is one of continuous improvement toward being a little better tomorrow. A snapshot of wrong is always wrong, but when considered along the evolving stream of knowledge and experience, wrong today could be brilliant in the future - and this is not bound to an individual's thoughts - it is the dynamic flow of an everchanging community. An endless conversation across time between people who will never know ach other, never meet, but will still share ideas and build upon the voices of others.
This is normal human distribution.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
