1/ 2020 will see the dawn of the metatribe. Here is an ethnography.

2/ I first heard the term "metatribe" on the Intellectual Explorer's Club podcast in a conversation between @peternlimberg and @dthorson

3/ The metatribe is neither nihilist nor locked onto an ethical system. It has political opinions without being left, right, or center. These opinions are provisional, nondogmatic, but strongly investigated, so metatribers often appear to be "heterodox" or "Chad centrist"

4/ The metatribe is scientific without scientism. It is spiritual while being neither new age nor traditionally religious.

(Though there do seem to be a surprising number of practicing Catholics involved.)

5/ Metatribe members tend to be at the center of a Venn diagram with many circles, often dwelling at the edge of many subcultures at once, acting as nodes between them.

6/ Metatribe members tend to be multi-hyphenate: artist-scientist; dancer-entrepreneur; programmer-monk. Their work often synthesizes multiple disciplines at once.

7/ Dissatisfied with the partial map of the world from any one subculture or discipline, metatribe members have evolved to fill the spaces in between.

8/ For all this, you might expect metatribe members to be noncommittal to a cause. In reality, they're more likely to do cause prioritization. Popularly prioritized causes include existential risk and the meaning crisis.

https://causeprioritization.org/Cause_prioritization

9/ Some try to apply the label “metamodernism” to the metatribe. This could work in theory, but in practice, metamodernists are a sociologically distinct group that is only one part of the metatribe.

10/ There are many In-roads to the metatribe. They include:
• @lesswrong
• Daniel Schmactenberger
• Game B
• @Meaningness
• Michael Vassar
• Effective Altruism
• @SamoBurja
• Bay Area subcultures
• @EricRWeinstein's Portal podcast
• @LeverageRes
• Ephemerisle

11/ [cont.]

• @MonasticAcademy
• The Castle festival
• @ribbonfarm and @vgr
• The former "Thielosphere"
• @slatestarcodex
• Foresight Institute
• Take 3
• @vervaeke_john
• The Embassy Network
• @newmodality
• Postrat Twitter (eg @eigenrobot and @0x49fa98)

12/ Canonical texts of the metatribe include Dune, Thinking Fast and Slow, Foundation, the Sequences, The Matrix, and Impro. Yes, here is me shilling Dune again bc Herbert described the mindset of metatribe back in 1965. The culture has only recently caught up.

13/ The metatribe is an inevitable reaction to postmodernism and globalism. As the world fractured into a million narratives, the mind still strove for integration. I will do a separate thread on why I think the metatribe is coming together now.

14/ Toward the end of 2020 and start of 2021, the rise of remote work will finally enable the metatribe to gather from across the world to form in-person community. My group is working on this with our castle search & there are other efforts https://twitter.com/TylerAlterman/status/1303492867311230976

15/ In March, I gave a talk with Foresight Institute called “The renaissance came from the plague.”

16/ The renaissance came from the plague. A new renaissance will emerge from the new plague. The metatribe will lead it.

17/ Here's a follow-up thread on metatribe maladies and antidotes: https://twitter.com/TylerAlterman/status/1305580331924418562?s=20