Free-Floating Social Patterns

RoadmapThis post is part of a sequence on the gears of social reality. Roughly speaking, I want to explain the core mechanics of social reality in way that's fully grounded in physical stuff and patterns in the physical world. A core claim of this sequence's model is that the main "objects" of social reality are free-floating concepts and associations. For example: the association between red roses and romantic dates. These associations are real patterns: the same associations appear in many human minds. But they're patterns which live primarily in humans' heads, and aren't fully determined by humans' goals. Erase the association between red roses and romantic dates, and it won't spontaneously grow back; something else will fill the niche of roses. Consequently, free-floating associations are easier to change in some sense than most other large-scale patterns in our world. If I want to change the association between red roses and romantic dates, a marketing campaign or even the right meme might do the trick. Because free-floating concepts and associations are relatively easy to change, there's a whole layer of social interactions aimed at manipulating them. That, I claim, is the central game of "social reality". But in order to talk about that game and its rules, we first need a clear grounded explanation of what free-floating social concepts and associations even are. That's the purpose of this post: to explain what free-floating social patterns are. "Free-Floating"Recap from the previous post: • Social constructs are real patterns out in the world, which exist because humans make the pattern exist - for instance, minivans and pickup trucks are vehicle-clusters with real predictive power because of which vehicles humans choose to make.• We can change the social construct by going out and changing things in the real world. Many humans, or a few well-resourced humans, could change which vehicle-clusters exist by changing what vehicles are produced.• Changing a social