Ideas and culture

Curious article by Michael Nielsen. Article titled “How to make memory systems widespread?” but it can be generalized to promotion of many ideas or techniques. The main thesis that for an idea to be successful, the culture should be formed around it. This is especially true for ideas where benefits are not immediately obvious. The best examples given, besides the author’s subject — memorization techniques, are yoga and meditation.

All thee suffer from the same problems. They are internal and instrumental.

Internal means that it is extremely difficult to measure or demonstrate that yoga or meditation are doing for you. In a sense, you can not brag about it.

Both are also instrumental, that is, you are not doing it for the sake of it. They are means, not the ends.

Plus, they require skill and practice to get any benefits. You need to put in the hours. Otherwise, it is difficult to feel any benefits even internally. There is a steep learning curve to them. So that haters gonna hate, skeptics gonna … scepticize.

All that makes it difficult for innovative and useful ideas to get adoption.

Yoga and meditation overcome the problems by sharing know-hows and knowledge between each other and everyone who would listen. This helps refine the ideas and practices and makes it easier for novices to get started and benefit quicker.

Alternatively, you can hire some TikTok influencers, but the result is not guaranteed.

Give it a read.