# Site

## Pages

- [Page not found](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/404/): That page doesn't exist, or it has moved since you last looked
- [Assessment](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/assessments/): Every piece of graded work in the course, what it is worth, and when it is due.
- [Auto-Ethnography of Your Own Involution](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/assessments/assignment-1/): Document and analyse one real instance of your own effort rising while your progress didn't, using the semester's own vocabulary to name why
- [Intervention Design: Breaking the Loop](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/assessments/final-project/): Design a real or speculative intervention into a zero-sum system from the semester, and defend that it changes the mechanism rather than the paint
- [Lectures](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/): What is covered, week by week, and which topics each lecture draws on.
- [Involution 101: Geertz's Rice Paddies](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-01/): Where the term comes from — agricultural intensification that adds labour without adding yield — and why it outlived the paddies
- [Diminishing Returns Before It Was Cool](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-02/): Involution had a life before the internet — in peasant economies, guild ladders, and the slow inflation of "entry level"
- [内卷: A Case Study in Viral Sociology](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-03/): How a term for over-farmed rice paddies became the word millions of Chinese internet users reached for in 2020
- [The Unpaid Internship Industrial Complex](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-04/): Credential inflation as involution — more qualifications required for the same job, with no corresponding rise in what the job pays or does
- [996 and Its Discontents](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-05/): Presenteeism and performative overtime — the 9am-9pm, six-day culture that turns "working hard" into a signal rather than an output
- [The Red Queen in the Boardroom](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-06/): Zero-sum competition through a game-theory lens — why running faster doesn't get you ahead when everyone else is running too
- [The Content Treadmill](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-07/): Social platforms reward volume and recency over quality, turning attention into another arena where more effort buys the same reach
- [Publish or Perish (Also This Course)](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-08/): Academia's own involution — citation counts, grade inflation, and a syllabus that gets more detailed every year without teaching more
- [Tang Ping and Its Critics](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-09/): Lying flat, quiet quitting, and FIRE as exit strategies from zero-sum competition — and the critiques of each as private fixes to public problems
- [Trainees, Testing, Real Estate](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-10/): Three case studies in comparative involution, checked against each other for where the mechanism actually holds and where it's just a metaphor
- [How (Not) to Fix a Zero-Sum Game](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-11/): What intervention-design theory says about changing incentive structures versus just redistributing who suffers under them
- [Closing Lecture: Getting Off the Treadmill](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/lectures/week-12/): What actually changes, and what doesn't, once you can name the loop you're standing on — a wrap-up, not a solution
- [People](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/people/): Who teaches the course, and how to reach them.
- [Aaron Jin](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/people/aaron-jin/): Convenor, lecturer, and tutor — the entire teaching team of Advanced Involution, and the reason the course only requires one.
- [Idris Fenn](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/people/idris-fenn/): Tutor emeritus who ran the even-numbered weeks' crits, named the mechanism that ended his position, and was measured against it anyway.
- [Marisol Quaye](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/people/marisol-quaye/): Founding convenor emerita, who designed the course's escalating arc and was covered out of the job that delivered it.
- [Policies and support](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/policies/): The course-wide rules for late work, extensions, academic integrity and getting help.
- [Seminar: Naming Your Own Involution](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/01-name-your-own-involution/): The opening session — find one place in your own life where effort has been rising while the result hasn't, and bring it
- [Crit: First Review](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/02-first-review/): The second session — the instance you named in week 1 meets a skeptical room for the first time
- [Crit: Spot the Involution](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/03-spot-the-involution/): Bring one system you're part of and argue, to a skeptical room, whether it's involuted or just competitive
- [Crit: Your Resume, Annotated](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/04-your-resume-annotated/): Bring a resume — yours, a friend's, or a fictional one — and annotate every line that exists to compete rather than to inform
- [Seminar: Confess Your Overtime](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/05-confess-your-overtime/): A closed-room session benchmarking self-reported hours against verifiable output — separating activity from impact
- [Crit: Auto-Ethnographies](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/06-show-and-tell-auto-ethnographies/): Assignment 1 is due this week — a short session to present the instance you've been tracking since week 1, before it's marked
- [Crit: Engagement Farming](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/07-engagement-farming/): Take one account, feed, or creator and run a growth-loop audit to diagnose whether their posting behaviour is involuted, and by whose metric
- [Crit: Grade Your Own Syllabus](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/08-grade-your-own-syllabus/): A continuous-improvement review of the course's own KPIs — does this syllabus show evidence of impact commensurate with its workload, or merely evidence of activity?
- [Crit: Lying Flat, Discussed](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/09-lying-flat-discussed/): Three ways of opting out, weighed against what each one actually costs
- [Crit: Three Case Studies](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/10-three-case-studies/): Compare involution across three unrelated domains and test, carefully, whether they share one mechanism or only a resemblance
- [Studio: Design an Intervention](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/11-design-an-intervention/): Workshop a real or speculative fix to one zero-sum system from the semester, ahead of committing to it for the final project
- [Final Crit](https://comp4020-agentic-coding-studio.github.io/comp4020-ass2-AaronJin0323/sessions/12-final-crit/): Present your intervention to the room and face the same test the course opened with