📡 Inneresting #166 - Signal Boosting
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📡 Inneresting #166 - Signal Boosting
Don't just look for the helpers — be one.
Tyler Cowen wants you to encourage people to aim for larger goals. He’s arguing that helping people raise their expectations for themselves is an important step in moving toward tackling larger challenges.
But helping others can have other benefits. Ada Tseng shares advice from people in the film and television industry who say finding a community you can rise up together with is essential. Friends are there not only as your moral support system, but to help you find jobs and spot scams. Sam Rye takes another angle, comparing the mycorrhizal networks that connect trees and fungi together to share information and resources with human models that can fulfill a similar form of interconnected altruistic cooperation:
”Relational infrastructure refers to the social connections, interactions, and collective intelligence that underpin a community, network or group's ability to collaborate, solve problems, and drive change. It is an emergent framework of trust, shared values, and common goals that allows individuals, groups, and organizations to work together effectively, pool their resources, and amplify their impact.”
Cooperation is hardwired into humanity. Peter Railton explains the ways that cooperation and social standing are better indicators of a human’s potential to survive and pass on their genes than shows of individual dominance.
But it’s important to remember that even though helping other people can benefit you, people shouldn’t be seen as just a means to an end. For more on treating people with dignity and not just steps toward your own goals, Abigail Thorn’s channel Philosophy Tube offers a primer on Kant’s Moral Imperative:
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🤝 Strike Solidarity
With the WGA and SAG-AFTRA still on the picket lines, it’s worth considering Edward O. Wilson’s observations on the evolution of solidarity and cooperation:
”A conflict ensued between individual-level selection, with individuals competing with other individuals in the same group, versus group-level selection, with competition among groups. The latter force promoted altruism and cooperation among all the group members. It led to group-wide morality and a sense of conscience and honor. The competitor between the two forces can be succinctly expressed as follows: within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.”
As this Hot Labor Summer transitions into Pumpkin Spice Labor Season, remember that you can help!
If you are interested and able, join a picket line! The Writers Guild also has a list of other ways to help.
⏱️ Help each other write now!
Each week we post a comment thread for writers to meet up, cheer each other on, and put some words on the page with a Write Sprint.
What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
A sprint like that is a great opportunity to try new things, even if you delete them later! Give yourself the space to see what happens on the page right now instead of worrying about what it needs to look like when it’s finally polished.
Shout out to last week’s Sprinters Brian Matusz, Mark Leiren-Young, Aimee Link, and Elyse Moretti Forbes!
🎓 Helping students with Highland 2
Are you a professor who recommends your students download the Student Edition of Highland 2? We want to hear from you!
We want to share your experiences with faculty at other schools. Just reply to this email (or email Chris at inneresting@johnaugust.com) and tell us about why you’ve brought Highland 2 into the classroom and what your students think about using it!
And if you’re a professor or student who doesn’t already know, Quote-Unquote Apps offers a free year-long license for students to unlock all the pro features of Highland 2!
Students: All it takes to get started is to fill out your information including a picture of your student ID!
And faculty can sign up, too! Personal licenses for professors can use the same form as students.
Once you’ve received an email saying your application for a student license is approved, you’ll need to download the free basic version of Highland 2 from the Mac App Store and follow the instructions in your email to unlock the pro features.
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Saveydro collects examples for a discussion of the rules around how much (and what kind) of profanity you can use and still keep a PG-13 film rating.
What else is inneresting?
Pippin Barr creates an imagined Atari 2600 tie-in game for The Shining that you can play in your browser.
John Siracusa introduces “The Plumber Problem,” where your expertise on a subject forces you to notice an error in what you’re watching, and it breaks the movie or TV show for you.
Craig Mod describes the Japanese moviegoing habit of quietly remaining seated for the credits.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
Special thanks to Drew Marquardt this week for suggesting some of the links on the marquee topic!
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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art, Bluesky @ccsont.bsky.social, or Threads @ccsont@threads.net