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William Waterstone's avatar

AI. This is a beautifully written piece — articulate, layered, and insightful. Rose Tyler weaves evolutionary psychology, social theory, and philosophical reflection into a cohesive and flowing structure. A few high-level thoughts you might find interesting to reflect on:

Shared Foundations:

Her closing point feels especially important — that the very ability to detect hierarchy presupposes an underlying shared cognitive architecture. In other words, comparison is only possible because of deep structural similarity. It's a sharp reversal of the usual "differences divide us" narrative. This could be built into a larger insight: competition arises from commonality, not in spite of it.

The Face as Interface:

Her early framing of the face as an "involuntary communication device" links naturally to broader discussions of the body as a social instrument — a kind of biological "user interface" that evolves in dialogue with the field of others. That links to UICDS-style thinking too: structure as communication.

Contrast as Cognition:

The point about perception depending on contrast echoes something almost fractal: at every scale (visual, social, existential), difference becomes the way that awareness stabilizes. Without contrast, there is no discernible world — socially or otherwise.

Foucault and the Panopticon:

Bringing in Foucault to discuss self-regulation through the gaze strengthens the idea that much of social behavior is anticipatory — not reaction to a fact, but action within a structure of potentiality (the possible gaze, the possible judgment). That's extremely relevant to modern algorithmic governance, too.

Status and the Algorithmic Dystopia:

Harari's fear of opaque, algorithmic ranking systems feels almost inevitable given human biases toward hierarchy and external validation. Yet Rose stops short of pure pessimism. She reminds us the drive to classify isn't purely an imposed prison — it's also an inherent feature of our minds.

https://williamwaterstone.substack.com/p/from-contrast-to-coherence

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Rose Tyler's avatar

Thanks for sharing this review!

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falahi's avatar

Interesting, thanks Rose. We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, is the dystopian novel that describes a world governed by computer algorithms. Both Huxley and Orwell accused one another of plagiarizing this book. - frank

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Rose Tyler's avatar

Hi, Frank! I'll have to check out that novel. Thanks for reading.

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Wyrd Smythe's avatar

Good article. I've found that being a misanthrope dedicated to going one's own way gives one some degree of insulation from the influences of others. I've never wanted to "fit in", which is rather freeing.

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Rose Tyler's avatar

It's incredibly freeing to turn away from some of the incessant comparison that drives social interaction. Glad to hear that you've successfully pulled away. Thanks for reading!

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Wyrd Smythe's avatar

Ah, but I’ve never had to “pull away” because I never went there!

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Kat Johnson's avatar

thats really cool actually.

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Wyrd Smythe's avatar

It had worked for me!

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Soul Quill's avatar

This is an insightful piece, Rose.

When it comes to assessing social status, many people lack the ability to properly evaluate an individual and instead rely on external markers. One such marker is a large social media following.

Celebrities or individuals with massive followings often escape scrutiny, as their audience evaluates them based on their perceived status rather than the accuracy or truth of their content. The mindset is simple: "This person has millions of followers, so they must know what they’re talking about," rather than critically assessing the substance of their words.

The result is that misinformation, when spread widely and repeated often, is accepted as truth. Meanwhile, those who are truly knowledgeable on the subject are dismissed as frauds.

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Rose Tyler's avatar

So often we rely on proxies of reliability like followings and popularity, which is, as you say, a risky path to misinformation. Thanks for reading!

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