Terence Tao on Nostr: Some loosely organized thoughts on the current Zeitgeist. They were inspired by the ...

Some loosely organized thoughts on the current Zeitgeist. They were inspired by the response to my recent meta-project mentioned in my previous post https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/115254145226514817, where within 24 hours I became aware of a large number of ongoing small-scale collaborative math projects with their own modest but active community (now listed at https://mathoverflow.net/questions/500720/list-of-crowdsourced-math-projects-actively-seeking-participants ); but they are from the perspective of a human rather than a mathematician.

As a crude first approximation, one can think of human society as the interaction between entities at four different scales:

1. Individual humans

2. Small organized groups of humans (e.g., close or extended family; friends; local social or religious organizations; informal sports clubs; small businesses and non-profits; ad hoc collaborations on small projects; small online communities)

3. Large organized groups of humans (e.g., large companies; governments; global institutions; professional sports clubs; large political parties or movements; large social media sites)

4. Large complex systems (e.g., the global economy; the environment; the geopolitical climate; popular culture and "viral" topics; the collective state of science and technology).

(1/5)