Effort is evidence of broken feedback loops

original article by gordon brander: https://newsletter.squishy.computer/p/effort-is-evidence-of-broken-feedback

published in: july 19th, 2023
read in: january 27th, 2024

my highlights

Whenever we see something linear in nature, what we’re actually seeing is an evolving balance between reinforcing and balancing feedback. For example, more foxes mean less rabbits (balancing feedback), but too much predation will cause the rabbit population to collapse (reinforcing loop), causing the fox population to collapse (reinforcing loop), allowing rabbit population to surge (reinforcing loop).

Effort is evidence of broken feedback. Every tool is a feedback system between you and your environment. That includes our tools for thought. This suggests three different relationships we might have with our tools for thought: broken, balancing, reinforcing. Broken feedback: linear efforts yield linear returns Balancing feedback: linear efforts yield convergence Reinforcing feedback: linear efforts yield exponential returns Most note-taking apps have broken feedback. Step one, you write a note, step two… there is no step two! You cast your note into the abyss of Apple Notes. It will never return to you, unless you go back and deliberately look for it (effort)

The result is blank page anxiety, creative block. You have to expend effort. This is the feeling of broken feedback. Most of us try to overcome broken feedback through sheer force of will. I know people who sit down every Saturday and triage their notes from the week, manually closing the loop, like Spider Man holding that boat together

But applying linear effort to a superlinear force is a losing battle. Most of us aren’t superheroes. Our strength will eventually be exhausted.

Of course feedback can also work against you. A misaligned balancing loop might mean your linear effort produces no return at all. A misaligned reinforcing loop will overwhelm your efforts and may even manipulate you!

Social media, for example, constructs reinforcing loops around engagement. The reinforcing feedback loops of likes, reacts, retweets, and algorithmic feeds act like gain-of-function research for viral memes.

Anki uses balancing feedback to generate memorization.
Zettelkasten uses reinforcing feedback to generate ideas.

I suspect this kind of viral procreation favors small ideas with low information payloads and high contagiousness. Why? The same reason Goldberg’s Building Block Hypothesis selects for short genes. The more compact the meme, the easier to copy. The higher the contagiousness, the more often repeated.R-selected information organisms

This does seem to be what we see proliferating on social media. Exploitables, snowclones, #relatable content, hot takes, thirst traps, flamebait fishing for dunks, all under ruthless selection pressure to enhance virality.

The result is often memetic epidemics and audience capture. First we program our feedback loops, then they program us.

Agency is stored in the loops

Agency is not a function of effort or willpower, but a function of the feedback loops you garden around you

What are the feedback loops around me? What do they generate? What do they converge toward? Do they share my goals? Are my goals my goals, or the goals of the feedback loop? How might I construct my feedback loops to generate agency