“The shouting equilibrium” by KatjaGrace

Imagine eleven people each have a message that they think should get 10% of a group's attention. They aren’t being crazy selfish and attention-seeking - just on average a little over-emphasizing the importance of their own information. So adding up all the message importances as rated by their owners, it gets to a little over one. Now the people get to share their message with some meta-information about its importance - for instance, they can say it more or less loudly. What happens? Lets say they all say it at a loudness that corresponds to ‘should get 10% of the attention’. The listeners then divide their attention between the messages, and each one gets 9% of the attention. The speakers realize they spoke a bit too quietly for the importance of their message, and turn up the volume. But the next time, they find that the ambient volume has increased, and their new volume again only gets them 9% of the attention. So they increase it again. Eventually, everyone is shouting as loud as they can, just to get what seems like a rightful look in. I see this pattern in lots of places. Too [...] --- First published: June 24th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Qwj8qao6BujcKkmT2/the-shouting-equilibrium --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.