seems that a high level of activity, or enthusiasm for social comparison isn’t necessarily accompanied by a high level of work on the details of what motivates it. Say of the latter the processes, even mechanisms, what purpose they might serve of different scales, even incidental purposes, if you can tolerate for a moment something incidental having a purpose.

to dumb this down take anything that might lend to envy, jealousy (or avoiding it in such a way that might cause it elsewhere) to be the focus. Still that’s a broad field.

in a way enthusiasm for social comparison and abstraction of the details of how it works and what it does or may do are opposing forces. You might see the latter likely brings restraining views, ideas, mediating mechanisms. Inhibitory aspects, repressive even (mostly quite normal and healthy).

there’s this territory to do with activity of social comparison and its correspondence with effect, that within the scope of known intentions, and there’s that outside intentions.

an enthusiasm for social comparison isn’t necessarily going to give you an equal enthusiasm to delve the motivations in detail (of self). A compensatory enthusiasm could be to instead focus on the motivations of others, in detail, even if just speculations.

there’s no question humans learn from social comparison, but the lesson isn’t more of it is always better. It’s not a comparison machine searching for a relative infinity.

it’s not even the limits imposed by economy of mind, no it’s more that some things, many things need be left to stand alone, perhaps most of the time.

so, to my question…

has anyone ever seen social comparison the weapon, and weaponized?

Can you dumb it down a bit more, perhaps? I’m not following.

mollwollfumble said:

Can you dumb it down a bit more, perhaps? I’m not following.

> has anyone ever seen social comparison the weapon, and weaponized?

Isn’t that the same as propaganda? A common weapon in almost every war.

mollwollfumble said:

mollwollfumble said:

Can you dumb it down a bit more, perhaps? I’m not following.

> has anyone ever seen social comparison the weapon, and weaponized?

Isn’t that the same as propaganda? A common weapon in almost every war.

i’d expect it’s there, well-under the threshold of extreme, as in war, that it serves in behavior controls of every-day-life.

the question though, for me, is more interesting from a philosophy perspective, if you like. Probably better said a psychology question, even social psychology. To the workings of some territory of mental activity.

my view is there is no ideal thinking machine (including that organic, of minds), that the act of social thinking is very soft territory, perhaps even rubbery. Minds have ways of tidying it up, my view is that it’s universally a fudge.

thinking machines never do any better than fudging this territory.

the gift in the flaw needs a massive fudge, a shared fudge.

> that the act of social thinking is very soft territory, perhaps even rubbery

In the presence or absence of mass media? In the presence of mass media there is a common talking point either for or against. And by that I include social media going back to smoke signals. Without mass media, the common framework for social discussion becfomes limited to personal observation.

> the common framework for social discussion becfomes limited to personal observation

to go down that track for a moment, there isn’t much that doesn’t come down to personal observation, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

to the idea of common framework, that’s interesting, because that imposes comfortable limits on the depth of abstraction, if you will.