The tree ring model of culture and politics

When I was growing up, one of the things that often puzzled me was the often-repeated claim that we live in a "deeply neoliberal society" that highly valued "deregulation".

在我成长的过程中，经常让我困惑的事情之一就是经常重复的说法，即我们生活在一个高度重视“放松管制”的“深度新自由主义社会”。

I was confused because while I could see a fair share of people arguing for neoliberalism and deregulation, it seemed clear that on the whole, the actual state of government regulation was very very different from anything that could remotely be construed as reflecting such values.

我很困惑，因为虽然我看到相当一部分人主张新自由主义和放松管制，但很明显，总体而言，政府监管的实际状况与任何可以远程解释为反映这种价值观的东西都非常不同。

The total number of federal regulations has kept continuously going up .

联邦法规的总数不断增加。

KYC, copyright, airport security and all kinds of other rules were continuously tightening.

KYC、版权、机场安全等各种规则不断收紧。

US federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have been roughly constant since WW2.

自二战以来，美国联邦税收收入占 GDP 的百分比大致保持不变。

If you told someone in 2020 that in five years, either the USA or China would be leading in open-source AI and the other would be leading in closed-source AI, and asked which would be leading where, they would have probably stared at you as though you were asking a trick question.

如果你在 2020 年告诉某人，五年后，美国或中国将在开源人工智能领域处于领先地位，而另一个将在闭源人工智能领域处于领先地位，并问谁会在哪里领先，他们可能会盯着你看，就好像你在问一个棘手的问题一样。

The USA is the country that values openness, China is the country that values closure and control, USA tech in general leans much more toward open source than Chinese tech, come on, it's obvious!

美国是一个重视开放的国家，中国是一个重视封闭和控制的国家，美国科技总体上比中国科技更倾向于开源，来吧，这是显而易见的！

And yet, they would have been completely wrong.

然而，他们就完全错了。

What's going on here?

这是怎么回事？

In this post, I will propose a simple explanation, which I call the tree ring model of politics and culture :

在这篇文章中，我将提出一个简单的解释，我将其称为政治和文化的树轮模型：

Each period of time adds a new ring to the tree, and while that new ring is forming there are new attitudes around new things being formed.

每个时期都会在树上添加一个新的环，当新环形成时，就会对正在形成的新事物产生新的态度。

Soon, however, the lines are frozen in place and become much more difficult to change, and a new ring starts growing overtop, shaping attitudes about the next wave of topics.

然而，很快，界限就被冻结在原地，变得更加难以改变，一个新的环开始超越，塑造了人们对下一波话题的态度。

We can analyze the above situations, and others, through this lens:

我们可以通过这个角度来分析上述情况以及其他情况：

More generally, the implication here is that it is difficult to change how a culture treats things that already exist and where attitudes have already solidified.

更一般地说，这里的含义是，很难改变一种文化对待已经存在的事物和态度已经固化的方式。

What is easier is to invent new patterns of behavior that outcompete the old, and work to maximize the chance that we get good norms around those.

更容易的是发明新的行为模式来击败旧的行为模式，并努力最大限度地提高我们围绕这些行为模式建立良好规范的机会。

This could be done in multiple ways: developing new technologies is one, using (physical or digital) communities on the internet to experiment with new social norms is another.

这可以通过多种方式来实现：开发新技术是一种，利用互联网上的（物理或数字）社区来试验新的社会规范是另一种。

This is also to me one of the attractions of the crypto space: it presents an independent technological and cultural ground to do new things without being overly burdened by existing status quo bias.

对我来说，这也是加密货币领域的吸引力之一：它提供了一个独立的技术和文化基础，可以做新的事情，而不会受到现有现状偏见的过度负担。

Rather than growing the same old trees, we can also bring life to the forest by planting and growing new trees.

我们不仅可以种植同样的老树，还可以通过种植和种植新树为森林带来生机。