Ahh fuckit part of my @threadapalooza thread had a clear subtopic and wanted to be its own thread.

Here's the thread about "membranes" as a metaphor for groups of people.

15a/ Membranes. Monists go on about how everything is one, which is true in a sense but also have you noticed that some things are inside and some things are outside? The role of skin, or the walls of a house, or a windshield on a car, is it keeps inside in & outside out.
15b/ Membranes can be applied to groups, and we can talk about a few different kinds of membranes that you might see around a particular group of people:
- closed membrane
- closed web
- semipermeable membrane
- open network
15c/ Closed Membrane: eg a company, family or country. Maybe a way to join it, but you need an active & explicit invitation by the members, whether that’s a job application or a marriage or an immigration process. Lots of intentional community houses are also like this.
15d/ Closed Web: consider a friend group. You don't exactly need an invitation from everyone in the group to join, but you do need to make friends with *someone* in the group. Polycules (except polyfidelity) work similarly, usually.
15e/ Semipermeable Membrane: ~anyone can join; there might be a requirement like buying membership, but you can just do it. Or going vegan. Or there might be a requirement of actually showing up, like Kevin Kelly's description of the Camp 4 scenius: https://t.co/2OzvIg58K4
15f/ (note that semipermeable membranes do need to eject people sometimes, but only if the person’s presence is actively disrupting the group, either asshole-style or by undermining the norms, eg by arguing using blatant logical fallacies at rationalist parties)
15g/ Open Network: doesn’t have clear boundaries at all (not a membrane) and is more of a description of an emergent cluster in people-space. The region of twitter I hang out in is sometimes referred to as “strangely earnest twitter”.

https://t.co/doandfMsJF
15h/ How many ppl have heard of the phrase “strangely earnest twitter”, or identify with being part of it?

It existed before it had that name.

It overlaps with many other seemingly-unrelated twitter networks.

Rather than joining such a group, you find yourself in it.
15i/ There are probably more types than this, but this is an initial typology that seems helpful for thinking about the nature of groups. All of these types are necessary, *and* you're gonna have a bad time if there isn't clarity about the nature of a particular group/membrane.
Click below to return to the original @threadapalooza chain:

https://t.co/z4FO4Nacxu

More from Economy

I really think people have a very short-sighted view of the city and its key role in decades to come for the economy of 🇨🇳. Every so often, people have a handful of misconceptions about the city's future because they lack of basics in strategy 👇


https://t.co/6wuRzXGkYZ The West propaganda seems to make people think we are cracking down on 🇭🇰 people because we no longer need them and we will inevitably suppress their rights. Every now and then, I talk with people in 🇭🇰 who think the Great Firewall will extend to 🇭🇰

🇺🇸-led liberal order is very strong to come across 🇭🇰 people and make them believe what they want. Brainwashed people don't think rationally and fall for the lies and propaganda. This guy is one among so many others I met in 🇭🇰 who told me the same thing, that the city is doomed

They couldn't be more ignorant ! Unfortunately they will end up leaving the city and missing out on incredible opportunities... But they don't know that nothing will eventually change after 2047 ? 🙃Let me explain you why

I bet even after 2047 🇭🇰 will still enjoy a high degree of autonomy and freedoms that its mainland counterpart can’t enjoy : an independent legal and financial system, English as one of the official language, an access to the West internet, its traditional medias, etc.
Interesting thread, but I don't think ecosocialists or degrowthers are arguing that if German socialists had come to power the world would be green by now. Socialism is not automatically green. Eco-socialism is what it says - a green version of socialism - to be tested /1


The historical counterfactual also in not totally convincing. So let's assume Germany and Europe went socialist. The world economy would have evolved exactly the same way it did? 🤔 I doubt it, this is too deterministic. Examples: /2

We do not know if the transition from coal to oil would have taken place when it took place, the way it did. From Timothy Mitchell we know that oil was a fix for capitalism to bypass the labour strikes of coal workers. One would think that socialists would treat workers better /3

We also do not know if socialist governments would strong arm the Middle East the way capitalists did, starting wars to secure cheap oil, and setting up puppet governments. One would want to think that Rosa Luxembourg would not go down that path..../4

We also do not know if they would have continued colonial unequal exchange, extracting raw materials as cheap as possible from the rest of the world. Without cheap oil and cheap materials, it is anyone's guess if GDP and CO2 would be where it is now. /5

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