The Four Quadrants of Conformism

by razin • 6 years ago

638 725 6 years ago

r4vik2• 6 years ago

50% of the words in this article could have been replaced with an image

  +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  |           tattletales             |       naughty ones                 |
  |                                   |                                    | aggressive
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |  passive
  |                                   |       dreamy ones                  |
  |        sheep                      |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+
       Conventional minded                    Independent minded

MaxBarraclough• 6 years ago

Agreed, that's the natural way of communicating this kind of taxonomy.

tome7• 6 years ago

Yikes, would you mind editing that so that it has half as many (ASCII) columns, and about one fifth as many rows? As it is it is taking up my entire screen.

r4vik2• 6 years ago

not the easiest thing to edit in this text area but I've reduced the height

andybak3• 6 years ago

As always in discussions of "types of people" it's more nuanced than this.

Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others.

In fact if you picture a stereotypical conspiracy-minded alt-right individual then the exhibit both behaviours at the same time about the same group. (individualist) "I won't do x because the government tells me I should" and (conformist) "How dare those liberals in my town break the social conventions I feel strongly about!"

It's not hard to come up with an equivalent caricature for the left.

Every time you read a way of dividing the world into types - think of an example of someone who is multiple types. It's very easy in nearly all cases.

leereeves2• 6 years ago

I don't see a contradiction in your example. I think such individuals are consistently being aggressively conformist with their group, but for the hyper-political, their group isn't the nation, but the party.

That seems to fit with PG's claim that "The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is 'Crush <outgroup>!'". Naturally that would extend to disobeying the rules of the outgroup, perhaps solely because the outgroup proposed them.

andybak3• 6 years ago

OK - I didn't spend that much time constructing my caricature but I still feel my point is valid if you want to modify them somewhat.

I myself remember feeling the strong pull of both "types" and I'd struggle to define myself clearly as either. (although I suspect I'm more frequently conformist than my overly flattering self-image depicts)

notsureaboutpg10• 6 years ago

Isnt PG claiming that the "rules" are to value free expression and not turn people into heretics and that those who "break" this rule are bad and unworthy and never able to have new, original ideas and thus should never be listened to?

Sounds like he is trying to say "Crush <outgroup>!" to me...

dougabug3• 6 years ago

It reminds me of the early episodes of “Silicon Valley” where an endless parade of would be entrepreneurs proudly declares how they want to “change the world!” (to the point where it becomes comically tedious).

“Aggressive independence” for its own sake (at scale) can simply degrade into its own form of ironic groupthink.

raverbashing3• 6 years ago

"Yes we're all individuals" effect, or this https://www.npr.org/2019/03/10/702063209/man-inadvertently-p...

nabla9• 6 years ago

This is true. The most important discovery in human psychology is that our behaviour is extremely context dependent. This is why it's so hard to draw any conclusions or make experiments that discover something universal. People have different roles and behaviours in different context, they can change their behaviour radically in the same context when they get different responses.

Psychology researchers know this, but in the folk psychology there is this assumption that you can observe people in context and that's how they are.

chippy7• 6 years ago

I think this was addressed in the post with the example of school conformists who "rebel" along with the rest of their group doing the same things, with the same clothes, language, fashion, music etc.

In your example, the aggressive alt-right "individualist" would be the equivalent as the high school rebel who is just acting a rebel and conforming to their adopted group.

Conformists are essential for any group cohesion. I imagine a key part of a conformist in any group is to define the out groups.

andybak3• 6 years ago

If we follow that argument to its limits, are there any true individualists?

Maybe it's just conformists with progressively smaller groups.

austincheney3• 6 years ago

Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others.

Yes and no. In a purely objective context conformity is a personality mode shaped by a person's social reference group and the devotion or conformance to a single idea rests on the reinformance of the local group. For a highly conformant person you can change their opinion on a subject by dropping them into a different social context for a month at which point the devotion to a particular subject will be replaced by devotion in a different subject.

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of somebody extremely non-conforming is the potential and frequency for original and potentially unpopular decisions. From extremely conforming people originality is met with immediate hostility. In that hostility the person may not even realize they are emotional first without any consideration for the validity of that emotion.

ben5092• 6 years ago

From extremely conforming people originality is met with immediate hostility.

I'd submit a common case of that is someone with a new idea and being confronted with all the reasons it will never work.

And that really does seem like a function of personality. The people saying why it won't work aren't being close-minded; they're gaving the idea a listen and thinking about it critically. They're may not even being outwardly rude. It's simply an unconcious preference to critique and find flaws.

jgrahamc• 6 years ago

The first part of this essay reminded me of the D&D alignment system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragon...

zimpenfish• 6 years ago

With the trajectory of this and the previous one, it honestly feels like we're only a handful of steps from praising the Intellectual Dark Web(tm) and saying that Charles Murray was misunderstood.

jmeister2• 6 years ago

Outside the far-left, nobody thinks the IDW or Charles Murray are devils.

montebicyclelo• 6 years ago

...the latest wave of intolerance began in universities. It began in the mid 1980s, and by 2000 seemed to have died down, but it has recently flared up again with the arrival of social media.
the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities..

Are there some examples of what this might refer to?

f0ff• 6 years ago

Take Peterson for example.

DavidVoid3• 6 years ago

People are intolerant of Peterson because of Peterson's intolerance though.

bencollier49• 6 years ago

No-platforming, amongst other things, I'd guess. And firing people for having the wrong views.

peteretep2• 6 years ago

One of the things I dislike about celebrity is the idea that because I care what pg thinks about startups, that I should also care what he thinks about almost anything else. His Twitter account is starting to make me think he’s becoming Scott Adams.

SamReidHughes• 6 years ago

HN has a 'hide' button. You're free to make use of it.

drekembe• 6 years ago

You're free to not care what he thinks about some topics, but he's also free to still write about them and has no obligation to write only about the things you care about.

thom2• 6 years ago

Good grief man, if you can only detect new ideas when they erupt from the mouths of startup CEOs, and you can't credit things like social justice and equality as anything but conformist (despite having been denied millions if not billions of people), then you're not 'independent', you're just incredibly narrow minded.

lincolnq• 6 years ago

Could you unpack this? The only social justice-related example in the piece was a positive one (antebellum abolitionism). It seems like you might be reading into the piece more than was intended.

thom2• 6 years ago

The recent history of PG's twitter outpourings has been about the danger posed by political correctness and progressives more generally, in the face of criticism of things like AI bias.

newacct5836• 6 years ago

I can only read the discussion of "aggressive conformism" at the end as a giant subtweet of cancel culture. There's a real, and sudden, movement in the political center against this idea (c.f. the Harpers letter), and pg is clearly picking a side.

Which is fine, I guess. I personally didn't think the letter was so awful. It's hardly the worst problem in a world where we have federal paramilitary units being deployed to pick fights with hippies, but there are excesses (David Shor for sure shouldn't have been fired).

The problem is there's a baby vs. bathwater issue with the reasoning. The same people who spit bile about Shor are the ones who just pushed BLM from a fringe idea that couldn't get purchase into something approaching social consensus. Did anyone see the ballgame last night? What's your position on Kaepernick now?

PaulHoule6• 6 years ago

What's ironic about it is that Y Combinator has been accused of becoming yet another badge of being the right kind of person.

There are so many people out there who want to say they were part of "Y Co" but aren't really interested in making or doing anything. Bossing people around and having status has some appeal to them, but taking some actual stand is just too dangerous. Some rich dude like like Paul Graham might reject them, they wouldn't want people to think they were S1W's or anything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHyCIDu6dSY

I think Mr. Graham needs some diversity in his life. Maybe he should spend a night in a hotel in Marin County or Gilroy would open up his vistas.

(Oh, but you know Y Co wouldn't be effective at all if it was moved across the street from where it is -- if Altman and Graham had any self conciousness or thought where their arguments lead they'd realize they are arguing for 100% local taxation on themselves because the only value behind Y Co is the holy land which is the only place where rich people will let you have an exit... Except for China)

wdwecewc• 6 years ago

Looking at Paul's twitter it is clear he only really respects those who are as rich as him or present some viewpoint he agrees with. It almost makes me think that his writing on what type of person not to be is just projection.

chippy7• 6 years ago

The ideas of social justice and equality spring from the independent quadrant. These ideas have become the rules that conventional quadrant follow and expose.

This doesn't seem to contradict itself.

notsureaboutpg10• 6 years ago

Well what about if the rules of the conventional quadrant become "Anyone who says or implies 'Crush <outgroup>!' is bad and should never be listened to"?

Miner49er2• 6 years ago

Social justice and true equality aren't conformist ideas though. We live at a time when wealth inequality is around the highest since our country has kept track and you think equality is a mainstream conformist idea?

dgb23• 6 years ago

I think you are right in a subculture sense.

Many great progressive ideas and movements have been taken over by aggressive conformists. The ideas get perverted into something far less useful and overly specific.

Lets move the discussion into something less political!

In tech this happens too. Cargo cult engineering anyone? Agile methodology and OOP are two huge examples: they started as radical, useful ideas too. But often today people argue overly specific rules of implementation rather than asking why these things exist, where they came from and where they fit.

Dumblydorr2• 6 years ago

I think PG's a product of his world. He isn't an expert in personality or psychology, so he looks to other tech leaders as thought leaders and independent saviors, and he is regurgitating commonly held views about Left and Right to fit his construct. He does so with extremely scant evidence, because his task is to make a snappy essay, not a coherent theory with strong evidence.

walleeee• 6 years ago

The regurgitation bit is even more ironic in the context of this piece.

bambax3• 6 years ago

Exactly. Conformism in PG's world is praising "merit", "innovation" and inequality.

da39a3ee3• 6 years ago

and you can't credit things like social justice and equality as anything but conformist

As I'm sure you know, people like PG, and me, and the many, many other people who share many common beliefs with the progressive left, do not criticize social justice and equality. What we are finding extraordinarily problematic currently is the people on the progressive left who are the most vocal champions of social justice and equality, in particular their intolerance, deplatforming, certainty that their's is the only true view, etc.

himinlomax2• 6 years ago

Very interesting take. This reminds me of Bob Altemeyer's work. He summed up his decades of research on authoritarianism in a free ebook at https://www.theauthoritarians.org/ .

I invite everyone to read this, this is the single most important work of political science / social psychology I've ever read.

Two categories he identifies, "authoritarian" and "social dominant" map to Graham's "passively conventional" and "aggressively conventional." The latter also tends to correspond to what psychiatrists would describe as narcissist, anti-social and possibly psychopathic traits.

For example, he conducted experiments as role playing games, like a model United Nations. When he removed the few "social dominants" from the player pool, the game ran smoothly, there was peace and everyone went to Alpha Centauri or something.

But when he added a few social dominants, things went to hell quick, and nuclear war broke out. Note that social dominants / narcissists are typically at most a few percents of the population.

I'm sure many people have noticed the phenomenon in any organisation: when a narcissist gets a modicum of power, they can destroy an organisation from within.

soundnote2• 6 years ago

Altemeyer should be viewed with some suspicion: He thinks left-wing authoritarianism is a "Loch Ness monster", and in talks with David Friedman couldn't comprehend why eg. labor unions could constitute an authority to a person - he viewed union membership purely in transactional terms with little ideological content.

His scale may identify a certain kind of authoritarian, but his work is almost assuredly blind as a bat to others and not a comprehensive take.

himinlomax2• 6 years ago

This is textbook ad hominem. His work stands regardless of ideology.

But you're also wrong on two counts:

First, he wrote this and did most of his work at a time when power structures were clearly right wing. But the mechanisms he describes are universal and independent of the labels used by those in power: authoritarians will strongly conform to the dominant ideology, and social dominants will pretend to adhere to it to gain power. He just used the labels reflecting the situation at the time.

Second, he specifically points out that authoritarians in the Soviet Unions were nominally left wing.

Consider that this kind of shift in dominant ideology is a slow process, on a period longer that one academic's career.

erichocean3• 6 years ago

when a narcissist gets a modicum of power, they can destroy an organisation from within

Or, as with Hitler, they can take over a formerly-democratic country and plunge them into war.

chrisco255• 6 years ago

I believe Steve Jobs was a narcissist or had some of those traits, but he did just the opposite. It's not necessarily true that narcissists are destructive. I think they are a mixed bag. Sometimes they are constructive and work within the system to improve things, even if it's ultimately to improve their own standing in the world.

notsureaboutpg10• 6 years ago

Ah, conventional minded people are those who insist that those who break the rules are bad, worthless in society, and should be punished.

Then Mr. Graham goes on to say that the rules of civilized, successful, wealthy societies are that everyone should be free to debate even the worst of ideas, and the people who prevent this or disagree with this are bad, never become entrepreneurs (a laughable thought), are not worth considering, and are in fact responsible for all bad things in the world (well, they and the leaders who appeal to them, only those two groups of people!)

It's laughably puerile... I mean how does he think this way? Has he any idea that one of the most valuable companies in the entire world is from a wealthy, civilized (in terms of lack of crime and lots of social etiquette only), successful country which has no concept of free expression (ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia)?

How do intelligent people end up reducing the world into such obviously untrue caricatures? How does he think that convention is the enemy of new ideas? Following convention is also the same thing as learning from the past or standing on the shoulders of giants. Without regard for convention at some level, the "geniuses" Mr. Graham praises would have been reinventing the wheel over and over and over again!

peteretep2• 6 years ago

How do intelligent people end up reducing the world into such obviously untrue caricatures?

Hot take: as a function of increasing age

MH15• 6 years ago

Ooh this is one I haven't heard before. Now I'm thinking.

t_serpico2• 6 years ago

that, hubris, and intellectual dishonesty

jmeister2• 6 years ago

The only rebuttal to PG in your comment is ARAMCO, which was a state-run org till recently, and is nothing like the companies PG is talking about.

Try again.

notsureaboutpg10• 6 years ago

There are at least 2 others. Reread and see if you can find them.

Also, being state run doesn't mean you aren't innovative. It's a different game but still requires innovation. Companies don't grow and grow and grow without any innovation at all.

hashbig• 6 years ago

ARAMCO and Saudi Arabia by extension were not built because of innovation. PG is talking about the importance of discussing idea regardless of how unorthodox they are, because the majority of successful companies are built, believe it or not, using ideas and not oil.

notsureaboutpg10• 6 years ago

Yes they were built by innovation. Creation of a new country no matter how it happens is an innovation. Creation of a new company, no matter how it happens, is an innovation.

Growing a company also is an innovation. You can only grow by venturing into new areas. If you think ARAMCO has never made any improvements in petroleum engineering, cyber security, logistics, etc, then you are daft. If all they had was oil fields they wouldn't make so much money. It's a combination of having them, knowing how to extract wealth from them, knowing how to identify more, and knowing how to reduce competition (OPEC is an example of constant innovation, there is no precedent to follow in setting the prices for a commodity like oil which humans have never relied on as extensively as they do now).

sideshowb2• 6 years ago

On the other hand, perhaps the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities is as much the symptom of the departure of the independent-minded as the cause. People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups. You have to be independent-minded to succeed at either of those.

In defence of my chosen place in a university: being a quant or CEO implies a different kind of confirmity, namely, to the strong requirement of generating revenue (or at least investment) in the short term. Though we're all pushed to get academic funding as well, I don't think we have it as bad as either of those two roles, and that itself allows a certain diversity of thought.

kaymanb• 6 years ago

I would also argue that the intersection of people who become quants / found successful startups and did so despite having a real shot at becoming a professor is pretty small.

My only real data points are my own graduate school experience, but I haven't heard of anyone who was on a path to success in academia who didn't continue on down that path, or at least give it their absolute best shot before moving in. By success I mean maybe a post-doc or two followed by a reasonable shot at a tenure-track position at a decent school. This restriction is made in the same way that (I am assuming) pg is only referring to quants at decent firms, and startup founders who at least have an idea they can get off the ground. I seriously doubt that any kind of conformism at say, an ivy league institution, is because people who would have become profs there chose not to.

sideshowb2• 6 years ago

You're probably right, however, you could also argue that (my GP comment notwithstanding) diversity of modern academic thought is still somewhat reduced compared to what it was, because the modern academic system pushes out people who would have been successful there in the past (for example see Peter Higgs' comments on the matter https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-... )

zornthewise• 6 years ago

No comment about the broader picture but there have been very smart people who have quit academia and gone into industry for whatever reason. Maybe the most famous is Jim Simons (he had an exceptional mathematical career before going into finance) but I know a few more examples.

coldcode2• 6 years ago

If you want to learn about the various types of people and how they relate to the world around them, study the French Revolution (in depth, not just a snippet). You will find every kind of person (in much more complex combinations than presented here), and how they participate/change/destroy/terrorize/etc. People today are no different we just have more technology.

stopachka9• 6 years ago

Any books you’d recommend?

wcarey• 6 years ago

Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is a great read. I wonder which quadrant Graham would put Burke in?

zozbot234• 6 years ago

The French Revolution, A History by Thomas Carlyle. It is a truly massive undertaking, an 'in depth' account if there ever was one; and Carlyle's focus on the 'various types' of people involved is quite clear.

martythemaniak• 6 years ago

Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, season 3. Probably about 30-40hrs of content (a lot of history happened!) and I find his content is a real good for first-timers.

coldcode2• 6 years ago

A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution by Popkin was very good.

gstomi• 6 years ago

I am mildly interested in history but never really looked into the French Revolution. Can you suggest a starting point?

seneca4• 6 years ago

Absolutely. Really, look at major events in history period. The fall of the Roman republic should be a regular topic of study in every western school. Understanding history is the greatest tool there is to understand people and the patterns we find ourselves in.

rurp• 6 years ago

I'll strongly second the recommendation to read about the Roman republic for anyone interested in history. The number of parallels to modern America are striking.

hrktb3• 6 years ago

As for most attempts to classify people, it should be strongly stated that any single human would fits several quadrants depending on the subject, the phase in their life they are in, or even the mood of the day.

I read this two dimensional presentation only as device to discuss a theoretical point, and not something that could have any practicality.

In particular, I think a lot of people switch from the "sheep" quadrant and the "naughty ones" pretty freely. They'll want to obey rules until they hit one that they feel doesnt' make sense and/or needs to be broken, and ideally will get back to being "Sheep" once it doesn't make sense to be a "naughty one" anymore (i.e. rules have changed, or better, they changed the rule)

That's also a reason why I see places like startup hubs where people consciously behave in unconventional ways (= be jerks, most of the time) to feel like they're "naughty ones" shouldn't be lauded, and being indepdendent minded should be balanced with benefits to the surrounding people or society (if you break big rules, it should have a big payoff for everyone)

PS: I find wording it as "sheep" to be unneedingly pejorative towards people who just don't break the rules and let others live their own life. In other classifications it would be "lawful neutral" for instance.

bsenftner2• 6 years ago

If one did not know who the author is, the essay would be criticized as shallow and sweeping to the point of being a vague excuse to treat others badly by those that only half grasp ideas anyway. Strikes me as personal writing that ought to be kept personal.

Funes-4• 6 years ago

Strikes me as personal writing that ought to be kept personal

Spoken like a true aggressively conventional-minded person.

Archit3ch• 6 years ago

In particular, I think a lot of people switch from the "sheep" quadrant and the "naughty ones" pretty freely. They'll want to obey rules until they hit one that they feel doesnt' make sense and/or needs to be broken, and ideally will get back to being "Sheep" once it doesn't make sense to be a "naughty one" anymore (i.e. rules have changed, or better, they changed the rule)

Unethical life pro tip: If you are breaking the rules, at least make a case for why they don't apply to you.

"I'm only stealing to feed my family."

"This isn't an invasion, we're just annexing our own population on the other side of this border."

hrktb3• 6 years ago

True (political pro tip: don't send your army on "vacations" in bordering countries)

At the extreme, this is the base for civil disobedience: it is a disruptive breaking of the rules, but in a morally conscious and thought through way.

austincheney3• 6 years ago

As for most attempts to classify people, it should be strongly stated that any single human would fits several quadrants depending on the subject

Its not related to such subjectivity as the subjectivity is itself a likely form of conformity.

hrktb3• 6 years ago

I meant that someone could be "sheep"ly following rules and ignoring others when it comes to games, but "naughty" when it's about business or fiscality, and "tattletales" when it comes to religion.

That would be the same person, but behaving differently depending on the field or the context.

zzz61831• 6 years ago

Yes, this is a notable problem in all of such conversations. Classifying people based on the opinions they express is a prime example of a logical fallacy.

But it's somewhat understandable why this happens. Those in a position of power want everyone to see a convincing enough reason behind their actions so people won't be opposed to them, be more obedient and just don't dissent. So they resort to elaborate logical fallacies, portraying everyone as never changing simple minded static blobs that can be classified into categories in order to judge, ban, punish and police them. Ironic, given what the article classifies people for.

Funes-4• 6 years ago

PS: I find wording it as "sheep" to be unneedingly pejorative towards people who just don't break the rules and let others live their own life. In other classifications it would be "lawful neutral" for instance.

One can do society more harm being passively conformist than using mildly pejorative terms. In Paul Graham's essay, the object (the "sheep") of the critique is more dangerous than its subject (the author). I would even go on to say that it is an ethical duty to be independent-minded.

ben5092• 6 years ago

They'll want to obey rules until they hit one that they feel doesnt' make sense and/or needs to be broken...

What the rules are is complicated by all the unwritten rules. Many people speed, but never more than 10 over the limit, and they'll even get irritated by people driving at the posted limit.

PS: I find wording it as "sheep" to be unneedingly pejorative towards people who just don't break the rules and let others live their own life.

The problem is they'll also conform to rules that don't let others live their own life. So if there's a clique of people, the aggressive conformist might mark an outsider for ostracism, and the passive conformist will dutifully uphold that.

But "sheep" is awful. I always think of the cringey post of, "Imma sheepdog protecting the sheep from the wolves." Unspoken: ...so the shepherd can then send the lambs to slaughter.

stopachka9• 6 years ago

Loved this essay. The phrase “aggressively conventional minded” is genius, and may contribute a lot towards the solution.

As someone coming from an ex-soviet state, I’ve felt personal alarm bells ring more and more, as I experience the kind of intolerance and double speak America is heading into. Both the left and the right my opinion are missing the key points on freedom (the left suppressing and labeling, the right militarizing).

Yet, as PG points out, the independent minded are good at figuring out solutions. No matter what, the fundamental ideas that America is built on is focused so heavily on freedom that I trust the aggressively independent to protect, and the passively independent minded to innovate.

notsureaboutpg10• 6 years ago

No matter what, the fundamental ideas that America is built on is focused so heavily on freedom

Freedom as long as you aren't threateningly critical of America.

The journalist of the Syrian War who took an anti-American stance and was targetted by American drone strikes would prove otherwise: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

stopachka9• 6 years ago

The fact that an article exists, and it’s possible for him to sue, is a right and luxury afforded to us by this American belief in freedom.

lm284692• 6 years ago

You don't even have to look that far, there are secret police officers using unmarked rental cars to arrest protesters without telling them who they are and why they are being arrested.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/17/portland-pro...

https://twitter.com/sparrowmedia/status/1283436911307218948

mc322• 6 years ago

And while you are aghast at that, I’d have ask if you’d be aghast at the people who bully and gaslight and threaten individuals who are critical of some aspects of progressivism. I ask because if we ever had an “antifa” government I can be almost certain the abuses would escalate to heights we dare not imagine.

newacct5836• 6 years ago

the fundamental ideas that America is built on is focused so heavily on freedom that I trust the aggressively independent to protect, and the passively independent minded to innovate.

If you saw that essay as a defense of existing social structures, how are you so sure you're not just one of the convention minded too?

stopachka9• 6 years ago

To clarify how I see it -

I don’t see it as a defense of existing social structures, I see it as a defense of freedom. Some existing social structures promote it, and so would others that don’t exist yet (some ideas: social network that proliferates good debates, tool that shows a politician’s vested interests, laws on transparency and symmetry, a new kind of univ focused on experience in the real world, etc)

To answer the question, how do I know if I’m just one of the convention minded? -

I don’t think you can know with certainty, so you should question yourself, but there are a few signs:

- if your ideas are nuanced and don’t quite fit on an axis, sign of a good thing - if you read original sources, and reflect on your own experience to form theories, good sign - if you have gotten deeper on opposing views, and can articulate them well, good sign - if you notice most people in your social circle wouldn’t agree with some of your ideas, could be a good sign (conventionally minded folks are often conventionally minded to gain support of their immediate peers)

PaulHoule6• 6 years ago

It's his personal problem.

He built the ultimate machine to attract conformists who want to get another badge. First the conformists will push out individualists by their sheer bulk and better ability to navigate the approval process. (It's their core competency in life!)

Y Combinator is a plant that has grown too large for its pot. Someday something is going to go wrong, there are so many people going through it that sooner or later there is going to be a scandal. Graham is not on a growth trajectory, and sooner or later decay is going to catch up with him. I don't know exactly how, but the logic of exponential growth will to discover it.

If he wants to do anything except "richmansplain" about how there's some kind of problem that he can't talk about except in abtruse code (e.g. I am clearly agonized about something, but I have to draw four quadrants to pretend that I'm thinking deeply about it rather than obscure what bothers me) because if he was able to put his ineffable thoughts into words then somebody is going to do something completely indescribable.

He won't listen but here is my advice.

Graham has accomplished as much as he can in the place he is at. If he stays where he is, he can at best tread water, at worst various problems are going to catch up with him, he's going to paint himself into a corner, the amoral conformists attracted to his organization are going to create a scandal, the u.s. becomes unable to support s.v. b ecause capital has waged an investment strike against most of it, etc.

If he leaves Y Co in the hands of people he trusts (does he trust anyone?) and spends a year or two doing something else in a different place I think he'll have something interesting to say and he

It's sad, but reading his essays feels so much like reading Peirs Anthony, it is just the same essay over and over again with very little feeling he's grown. Maybe he needs to hang out with some adults, admit that being a zillionaire doesn't make you immortal, that you're always going to be frustrated because your species is split into two genders, etc.

stopachka9• 6 years ago

He doesn’t run YC anymore. He lives in the Uk at this point

jrumbut• 6 years ago

Despite the biographical problems, I agree with the comments on the essays. He's fighting the last war still.

Conventional thinkers are the builders of institutions. The people who bring us together. As an aggressively independent minded person, I see a dire need for that.

If socially minded people don't have a nice group to join, they fall back on the old toxic classics. We need someone to give us new unions, churches, universities, bowling teams, a group you aren't born into. The aggressively conventionally minded people are the ones who can do that!

mattbee• 6 years ago

Well said.

pg might be interesting again if he said what "unsayable" and "aggressively independent-minded" things he actually wants to say, and I wish he bloody would - we've got no choice but to read it.

"independent-minded" is such a cliche now - it's often a euphemism for something else. Surely more truly "aggressively independent-minded" people are homeless addicts, not rockstar founders. What's the right balance between conformism and independent-mindedness? In what areas of life? This 2-axis system is way too simple. Start there, dude.

By implication pg (and YC) recognise and value independent-mindedness - but as you say, from the outside YC appears to reward conformism to their well-understood creeds (as well as just playing the odds of an enormous number of companies, rather than being clever pickers).

(edit: removed snark, however deserved)

iamwil2• 6 years ago

He hasn't been running YC for years now. He left it to Sam Altman to run for the last couple of years. And even Sam has left the post to Geoff Ralston, which is currently running it. PG's twice removed. We're on Thomas Jefferson now.

missosoup2• 6 years ago

Also from an ex soviet state. Also feel alarm bells going off. I'm legitimately scared. I've seen this before, I know where it goes. It's really hard to convey my feeling of alarm to people here though. Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it, I guess.

Doesn't help that the conformists have been allowed to frame the narrative as 'either you agree with us, or you're literally Hitler/Stalin' depending on political alignment, which is a very powerful weapon to shut down discourse.

This rising culture is freedom and diversity in all things except thought. This is how totalitarian regimes form. This is what my parents dumped their entire life savings into escaping, and here I am watching it rise again.

oisdk22• 6 years ago

I find it bizarre that comments like these seem to think the main battle ground for free speech is young people like myself "cancelling" people on twitter, when at the same time protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US.

Like there is an authoritarian government right there for you to criticise, but you choose only to talk endlessly about tweets like "can white people make rice, or is it cultural appropriation? A thread (1/329)".

AlanYx4• 6 years ago

I feel the same way, but I think this era is much more directly similar to the "red guards" period during the Chinese cultural revolution than Soviet examples. Some of the parallels are just so direct -- students denouncing their professors, forcing them them to recant, the ideologies of the students growing more and more rigid and narrow through the conformity of the mob, until they often ended up even denouncing the professors who encouraged the movement to start.

No one ends up being safe from this kind of thing as it grows. Even Mao almost lost control of the tiger, even though he thought he could steer it. My grandfather fought the Japanese as a preteen and later fought with Mao, and even he was disappeared for three days by the mob during the cultural revolution because someone denounced him as not ideologically pure enough.

malandrew• 6 years ago

ne chital, no osuzhdayu

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-so...

michaelmrose3• 6 years ago

Am I misreading you or are you framing the left as the forces of conformity?

Only one side has badgeless forces snatching people off the streets and is talking about disregarding the results of our election.

My apologies if I misunderstood.

kazagistar• 6 years ago

How old are you that you've seen this before? If you are just seeing similarities to soviet steady state society, they might not mean we are headed towards that state, since its unclear if the process that birthed the social order you experienced was similar to it at all.

harimau7778• 6 years ago

The problem that I see is: what's the alternative?

Average people don't really have any political power in America so what alternative do they have?

I agree with you that some of the more extreme parts of the social justice movement (for lack of a better term) worry me, but the alternative seems to be to do nothing.

grahamburger• 6 years ago

So what should we do? Honest question.

JPKab• 6 years ago

One of my early mentors was ex-Soviet, and he impressed to me the absolute dangers inherent in elevation of elevating collective identity over individual identity.

I see this happening now, and all too many of my colleagues gleefully signing on. Recently one posted content that appeared to be regurgitated Agile materials for dealing with organizational dysfunction. But this material had replaced all mentions of org dysfunction with 'white supremacy'. It basically blamed every workplace antipattern on colonialism and, conveniently, whenever perpetrated by a non white person, stated it was internalized white supremacy. The dev, who is very much on the spectrum, seems to take joy in having the world turned into a D & D game, with different rules depending on whether you are orc, elf, or human.

devonkim• 6 years ago

One interesting thing I’m seeing is that both our (relative) extremes are culturally different how they try to silence and discredit opposing views, but both think the other’s approach and ideologies are more dangerous and Godwin’s Law is running amok in the real world. My analogy is the meltdown and chaos of many different online communities following similar paths of lack of social cohesion turning into decentralization and radicalization. It’s like watching cellular division happening as a super bacteria or bioweapon mutates.

I grew up in the US but have spent a lot of time watching how other countries have fallen and listened to both survivors that stayed and those that left. I also listened carefully to my elders’ stories both rich and poor about their lives in wars and how totalitarian and fascist regimes work.

Being called both a fascist and commie now by random people depending upon their alignment worries me because we are losing the ability to have nuanced conversations that might actually fix our problems without a full blown war.

It really is a sad sight to see as second generation immigrants when our parents worked so hard to leave oppression or for economic opportunities see these very things repeat.

And yes, I’m going to say that America’s “free speech” experiment has escaped the lab and is a Godzilla monster out of control. I don’t even care who’s at fault frankly as much as I want people to sit down and stop having bad faith arguments against each other as a rule.

blueyes• 6 years ago

Some ideas are dangerous, and closely tied to both actions and policies. It is the responsibility of smart, powerful and conscientious people to acknowledge that. I am not saying that dangerous ideas should not be discussed. But we should be careful what we say in public. How should society regulate pedophilia, if at all? Nambla has opinions about that. Does Paul draw the line at legalizing pedophilia? Does he advocate that our most popular platforms embrace and encourage that debate? Race-based eugenics is another idea that has surfaced again and again. Why not optimize the human species through sterilization of its less desired members? That idea seems to march in lockstep with policies of extermination. Does Paul draw the line at that idea? If not, why not?

captainredbeard• 6 years ago

By removing pedophiles from society through violence, naturally.

maerF0x0• 6 years ago

the independent minded are good at figuring out solutions.

Ideally it wouldn't cost one their life, liberty or means of sustenance in the pursuit of figuring out these solutions

so33• 6 years ago

the left and the right my opinion are missing the key points on freedom (the left suppressing and labeling, the right militarizing).

If I had to choose between “cancel culture” versus militarized violence, cancel me any day.

sparkie10• 6 years ago

I see you slipped the word "violence" in there. Perhaps you misspelled "defence"?

The State is the primary perpetrator of violence, not "the right".

You shouldn't be thinking in "left vs right", but in "individuals vs the state". The only things sitting between your liberties and the State are: its constitution (if any), and the "militarized right" (gun owners).

There's some historical examples of individuals giving up their guns, perhaps you should read into what happened afterwards?

bePoliteAlways2• 6 years ago

Thinking little more on this. Today's independent become tomorrow's conventional. Not sure if the same person maintains the independence or gets tied to their idea and in a way loosing the independence. In scientific community too new ideas are challenged by conventional great scientist sometime.

raverbashing3• 6 years ago

At the notes, there is something that caught my attention:

Many professors are independent-minded — especially in math, the hard sciences, and engineering, where you have to be to succeed.

And I disagree with it. You don't have to be independent-minded (from the group) to be "average" successful. Quite the opposite.

Follow the lead, follow the procedures, always take the skeptical side and you'll just coast through it. A lot of people succeed doing exactly that.

Research? Take the latest papers in an area, try a similar research (nothing too out of the consensus) and write a grant request for it.

The hard nonconformists, those will have a hard time. And the sad part is that most of them won't be nonconformists "for good reasons" but rather they will be most likely quacks. And I say the percentage is high exactly because academia does not favor anything out of the beaten path and independent thought is shunned.

croissants• 6 years ago

You don't have to be independent-minded (from the group) to be "average" successful. Quite the opposite.

If this is true, then what exactly separates successful faculty from unsuccessful faculty? There are lots of graduate students who want to be faculty, but only a small percentage do. What do you think the distinguishing factor is if not some kind of new ideas?

raverbashing3• 6 years ago

Conformist or not, resiliency and building relationships still play a part.

Given faculty positions are (very) limited, it seems resiliency might be the most important factor.

mkloop• 6 years ago

Excellent essay. I've been asking similar questions myself in the past couple of months, but in terms of European history.

If I see a conformist activist, the first thing I ask myself: In a real crisis, would this person be the next Oskar Schindler?

The answer is almost always "no".

If I see an aggressive activist, the question is: Would this person still be aggressive during an actual crisis.

In some cases, the answer is "yes". But in the majority of cases I doubt it and think they would just switch sides.

newacct5836• 6 years ago

Have you been watching what's happening in Portland? Where on the spectrum do you put those folks?

anonmidniteshpr• 6 years ago

I don't know what @pg means by aggressive or passive. In what respects? Maybe I don't understand what passive or rules-oriented are like because I live in a VW that has disco bar lights, a train horn, and I do basically whatever, wherever I want.

Rules are for fools.

oisdk22• 6 years ago

"Here's a taxonomy of people that I just made up. There are four types of people, classified by superficial characteristics. Actually, this classification is an extremely strong indicator for behaviour, certainly stronger than other indicators. How do I know this? I am very smart and I say so.

Based on this fact, I notice that the social-justicy types of today bear some superficial and extremely tenuous resemblance to the pro-slavery types of yesterday. Really makes you think."

I'm sorry but this comes across as total nonsense to me. Any "there are x types of people" stuff always reads as astrology for people with STEM degrees, especially when it's as ill-supported as the types given in this article.

Also the article is pretty ahistorical: being "pro-slavery" was absolutely not the unanimous consensus that we like to pretend it was today. There was widespread opposition to slavery: many viewed it as an obvious moral evil. France banned slavery in 1315, for goodness' sake. People knew it was wrong.

In actual fact, the type of people arguing against abolition were people in a much more similar position to Graham: the Economist famously urged delay with regards to abolition, fearing what freed slaves might get up to. Graham's notion that "actually, I'm much more like the abolitionists than slaveowners because we're both such iconoclasts" is extremely weak and, on its face, a little ridiculous.

(also: does Graham really think he's going against the grain with this stuff? Last I checked, opposition to "cancel culture" and censorship is about as mainstream a position as there is. It would be hard to pick a more "conventionally-minded" opinion than "I think free speech is good")

garbagetime• 6 years ago

It would be hard to pick a more "conventionally-minded" opinion than "I think free speech is good"

It's important to make the distinction between people who feel like they're in favour of freedom of speech, and people who are actually in favour of freedom of speech. It often seems to me that Americans belong to the former group but not the latter. I'll link a funny poll (from a long time ago, but I'd love to see a new one) where 96% of respondents said they were in favour of freedom of speech, but only 40% said they were in favour of radicals being allowed to hold meetings and express their views.

https://news.gallup.com/vault/206465/gallup-vault-tolerance-...

oisdk22• 6 years ago

It's important to make the distinction between people who feel like they're in favour of freedom of speech, and people who are actually in favour of freedom of speech.

Exactly. I think it's clear which group Graham falls into.

motorcycleman95• 6 years ago

I think the exercise of considering which historical atrocities you would passively comply with is a good exercise for understanding the banality of evil. PG did little to argue his moral superiority from this perspective, rather highlighted how different people conform to the norm, regardless of the virtue (or lack thereof) of the norm itself. The many anti-slavery individuals of the past still largely did nothing for hundreds of years until popular opinion and material conditions changed tides.

You point out that he did have an axe to grind regarding cancel culture, and highlight that it's not particularly heroic. But in doing so it makes it even more apparent that the anti-cancel-culture crowd is passive and ineffective, making his point clearer.

He could have made the same point regarding conformity by citing the Stanford prison experiment if he wanted to. I'd be willing to bet a dollar that there are personality psychology studies that even correlate 5-factor personality traits to moral conformity. Unfortunately popular culture is bit too much of the opinion that there are no underlying personality traits that predict future behavior nowadays.

oisdk22• 6 years ago

different people conform to the norm, regardless of the virtue (or lack thereof) of the norm itself.

But this is exactly what I'm disagreeing with: there was widespread and popular opposition to slavery from its invention. To act like "everyone was doing it, everyone thought it was ok" is absolutely just not true.

The people in favour of slavery were largely the wealthy, powerful minority who benefited from slavery.

The many anti-slavery individuals of the past still largely did nothing for hundreds of years until popular opinion and material conditions changed tides.

This is such a strange statement. "anti-slavery individuals did nothing"? Who do you think achieved abolition?! You seem to think that abolition was some passive force which happened as a result of "changing tides": I, on the other hand, seem to remember that there was a war fought about it (in the US at least).

Furthermore, slavery didn't begin and end in the united states: abolition was achieved in many other places before it go to the US, in fact the US was something of a holdout for slavery in the west. There were countless slave rebellions, some quite successful, and political action absolutely achieved progress towards abolition in many places around the world.

But in doing so it makes it even more apparent that the anti-cancel-culture crowd is passive and ineffective, making his point clearer.

The "anti-cancel-culture" crowd, by my estimation, makes up the vast majority of positions of power in the US. For god's sake the president routinely decries cancel culture and a large part of his appeal is the fact that he's "un-PC".

He could have made the same point regarding conformity by citing the Stanford prison experiment if he wanted to

The Stanford prison experiment was a complete fabrication and research fraud. (honestly: you should look up modern information on it. I had kind of thought it was common knowledge that it was bunk, but I suppose it did have a large cultural impact)

I'd be willing to bet a dollar that there are personality psychology studies that even correlate 5-factor personality traits to moral conformity.

I don't know, but my point is that Graham has clearly picked superficial personality traits that flatter him by associating his idea of himself with his idea of abolitionists. Regardless of whether the idea of "personality types" is valid or not, it's clear that what Graham is doing here isn't.

Unfortunately popular culture is bit too much of the opinion that there are no underlying personality traits that predict future behavior nowadays.

Again, I would completely disagree. I don't know what the psychological consensus is, but from laypeople it seems clear that "personality traits are important" is an extremely mainstream view.

jccalhoun• 6 years ago

Also, "here is a taxonomy I made up and coincidentally I just happen to be in the category that is the best. "

DavidVoid3• 6 years ago

It certainly comes across a bit like Peterson's "everything is either order or chaos and chaos is bad," but for tech people who claim to be independent thinkers while all reciting the same old anti-regulation ideas.

I especially find PG's claim that "the people who run Silicon Valley are almost all independent-minded" to be questionable.

da39a3ee3• 6 years ago

Last I checked, opposition to "cancel culture" and censorship is about as mainstream a position as there is

Not at all. I am 40. My father and one of my brothers share that position with me, but every single one of my friends and acquaintances from universities and workplaces, in the USA and in the European country in which I grew up, if they make their position clear on social media, it is in line with the progressive left and thus implicitly at least supportive of "cancel culture" and censorship.

oisdk22• 6 years ago

it is in line with the progressive left and thus implicitly at least supportive of "cancel culture" and censorship.

It's very easy to say everyone is in favour of cancel culture if you say that any support of the "progressive left" amounts to support for cancel culture.

indymike• 6 years ago

Participation in cancel culture and censorship is becoming mainstream. Part of what makes it work is that participation isn't acknowledged, especially by those federating together to cancel.

ggreer3• 6 years ago

I enjoyed this essay, but I think PG missed one aspect of the recent cultural changes: Even though startups are founded by the aggressively independent-minded, they have insane amounts of ideological conformity.

Many people with beliefs that are widespread in the US (pro-life, pro-gun, Republican, etc) are now "in the closet" in the Bay Area. Don't believe me? 10% of San Franciscans voted for Trump in 2016. Yet of all the people I've worked with in the past four years, not a single one of them has publicly admitted to doing so. 14 percent of Californians own guns, but again, nobody I've worked with is "out of the closet" as a gun owner. That is an amazing coincidence. Let's say I've worked closely with 50 people in the past 4 years (the actual number is higher). If each one has a 10% chance of voting for Trump, there is a 99.5% chance that I've worked directly with a Trump voter. It's a 99.95% chance that I've worked with a gun owner. Yet based on everything I hear at work, you'd never suspect that such people exist. They're like dark matter.

If that's what life is like at companies founded by people who are aggressively independent-minded, I shudder to think how bad it is at companies run by the aggressively conventional-minded.

tfehring2• 6 years ago

SSC famously made and extended this argument a few years ago [0]. I like that essay's example of creationists even better, because it's a shockingly huge group of people - over 40% of Americans literally believe that the Earth was created in its present form in the last 10,000 years or so - and for all intents and purposes its overlap with the readership of PG, HN, SSC, or whatever is 0.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

projektfu4• 6 years ago

Coming from where I live, it's surprising to think of any of those (pro-life, pro-gun, or Trump voter) being quiet about it, so my feeling is that they are nonexistent in your circles, not quiet. But perhaps they are indeed closeted there.

FWIW, I also thought that SV (though not SF) was full of firearm enthusiasts and prepper types, but that's probably an uninformed view from the other side of the country.

ggreer3• 6 years ago

I'm in one of those categories and I have managed to sniff out a few other people, but it's all very hush-hush. I'm the only one who is "out of the closet" in any way, and that's just because I didn't realize that people in blue areas found guns so repulsive.

TigeriusKirk• 6 years ago

Does a voting and flagging system on a discussion board reward the aggressively conventional or the aggressively independent to a greater extent?

Which group does such a system punish to a greater extent?

chippy7• 6 years ago

In HN people often flag submissions to keep the identity and content more coherent and to reduce flame. (e.g. flagging advertisements, political and culture war submissions)

Perhaps it's the passive ones that flag submissions, but downvoting comments occurs by more aggressive conventional ones? I'd love to see statistics.

jes• 6 years ago

A simple graphic of the four quadrants would have improved my experience in reading this article. I was surprised to not find one.

zucker423• 6 years ago

It's certainly an interesting framework for thinking about things, and some of the thoughts seem aligned with my ideas on this issues. The problem is that I think everybody, including and especially people who view themselves as independently-minded, is susceptible to conformism and a lack of ideological independence. It seems to me like a basic fact of our biology, or at least very ingrained in our culture, that we develop ideas based on identification and solidarity with groups we belong to. It's true of politicians, VC firm leaders, tech workers, economists, and even the most earnest scientists. The idea that there is a class of people who are "independently-minded" and therefore somehow more intellectually useful is flawed because people tend to have interesting, unique ideas in some areas and ideas which amount to little more than parroting a group belief in others.

Along these lines, the article argues that conformism is independent of rules (and it implies also independent of context), but I don't think it gives sufficient evidence for this point. It also doesn't agree with my experience; I was a bit of "goody-two-shoes" in K-12 (i.e. a passive conformist), but now my political outlook is niche, I try to think scientifically about the world, and I'd self-judge to be passive independently-minded person.

Though the people who run Silicon Valley are almost all independent-minded

This reads as extremely overconfident, and in my judgement it is probably false. I think tech as an industry faces the same issues with group-think that any large-enough community is bound to face, and I don't think Silicon Valley is a pinnacle of enlightened, humanist society. The whole article to some extent reads like "if more people were more like Paul Graham, the world would be better". Obviously, that's the not the argument of the article (and to be fair, it's probably true the world would be better with more Paul Grahams), but its interesting I got an impression of that sentiment in an article about the dangers of conformism. And it's also interesting that it's not the first time I've read a very similar argument in recent weeks.

In case I seem overly harsh, I want to clarify it was a thought-provoking article I enjoyed reading.

bob332123• 6 years ago

I agree that within some groups like humanities departments, twitter and liberal companies the social justice movement is out of control. Just promoting a white male employee, or calling the police in a black person you see commiting a crime would make you fear for your job in some of those circles.

On the other side there was a member of Congress who called a female member of Congress a "fucking bitch" and also the president has said plenty of sexist and racist things recently without either person losing their job.

The fact that both of these can exist in the same country is the troubling thing to me. They not even remotely trying to understand each other.

devdas2• 6 years ago

Calling the cops has turned out to be a death sentence for Black people too often.

steveeq12• 6 years ago

It's overplayed: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WogKi.png

gregwebs• 6 years ago

Since this is claimed to come down to personality types, it would make sense to look at research on personality types. There is a model of personality types that seems relate-able where people are characterized as upholder, rebel, questioner, or obliger [1]. The aggressive ones line up at least:

upholder = tattletales, rebel = naughty ones

I don't think that equating the passive category to personality types in this model works, but it would be:

questioner = dreamy ones, obliger = sheep

The reason being that obliger is characterized more by relationships with others (aggressive/passive) than by being conventional or independent minded.

[1] https://psychcentral.com/blog/4-personality-types-the-uphold...

m0llusk• 6 years ago

This is all so static. Real life is more dynamic. An aggressive rule enforcer is an easygoing independent who got mugged and an easygoing independent is an aggressive rule enforcer who went to college.

Damage done in the world comes more from failing to understand how people get influenced in their choices than from picking the wrong quadrant.

MiguelHudnandez• 6 years ago

Any person's coordinates will change over time, that is true. I don't think that removes any value from the measurement system.

areoform• 6 years ago

There are many ways to parse this essay, but it is emotionally challenging to give feedback, lest the charge of being conventional minded is levied against you. However, I doubt that is pg's intention. This comment is my good faith attempt at a measured response.

pg mentions universities multiple times, with the implicit and explicit statement that they were centers of revolution and non-conformist thought. While that is partly true, it's not the whole truth. History remembers a different, more complicated reality.

Lise Meitner was the second woman in the world to gain a doctorate in physics. When she started, women weren't allowed to go to college, one of humanity's greatest minds spent her youth as a teacher. It was the only career available to her. When she tried to start doing research, she was refused,

The only difficulty was that Hahn told me in the course of our conversation that he had been given a place in the institute directed by Emil Fischer, and that Emil Fischer did not allow any women students into his lectures or into his institute. So Hahn had to ask Fischer whether he would agree to our starting work together. And after Hahn had spoken to Fischer, I went to him to hear his decision and he told me his reluctance to accept women students stemmed from an unfortunate experience he had had with a Russian student because he had always been worried lest her rather exotic hairstyle result in her hair catching alight on the Bunsen burner.

- https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi...

Fischer relented with pressure from Hahn, but in some cases, it took nearly half a decade for people to allow her to work with them. She lost years banging her head against the wall. What else could she have discovered had she gotten the right resources from the start?

She prevailed against these barriers, but she was never recognized as an equal. Recognition eluded her. Lise and Otto discovered fission together, Hahn got the Nobel, she didn't.

Decades afterwards, the first Pulsar was detected by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She helped build the array that made the discovery. She spent her nights looking at the data. She noticed the anomaly. She championed it when her supervisor dismissed it as a glitch. Her persistence paid off, and her supervisor got the Nobel.

Women have never been accepted as equal. Even at universities. How radical and non-conformist could they be when they repeated the same mistakes as the societies around them? They excluded people for being Jewish, for being born with the wrong sex organs, for having the wrong skin color, for being the wrong person. They were radical along some axes, but conformist along others.

Things are better today, but women continue to be overlooked broadly and in academia. Women are discriminated against for "reasonable concerns" when it comes to pregnancies, leaves, healthcare needs... Systemic reviews have shown that doctors take reports of pain from women less seriously than they do from men. By a factor that gets multiplied if you're black or queer. Some people still have to work twice as hard to get half as much. They were just dealt with a shitty card.

It is happening now, against someone as we speak. At prestigious teaching and research hospitals across the country, prejudice and the status quo are dealing out a crap hand to someone not counted as lucky few. Someone who will have to live with this moment for the rest of their life. My favorite anecdote is relayed by a woman who went in after a knitting accident; she was worried about losing dexterity and told her doctor that. The doctor assured her nothing would go wrong and started to patch her up. By happenstance, one of the woman's students happened to wander by and greeted her with the words, "Professor". And the doctor stopped. He asked her if she was a professor at the prestigious local university. She said yes. And before she could ask why she was wheeled into surgery to ensure she wouldn't lose dexterity. What cards would an ordinary black woman would have been dealt had she presented with the same problems?

Young people on campuses see these shitty cards. Why is it a surprise that they seek to rebel? Universities have always been the hallmark of radicals, and these are the new radicals. It is simple to 'both sides' this, but their anger - magnified and disproportionate it may be - comes from a legitimate place. It comes from the rebukes of the past and present. The big and small injustices that make the world. And it is their clumsy attempt to create a better world.

With all due respect to pg, the problem with the essay and this scale is that it is not well calibrated. Conformist along which directions? Aggressive in what ways? To what ends? To what degree? To what measure?

At times it seems pg puts the (admittedly foolish) yale undergrads going on about cultural appropriation in the same bucket as the Kim Davis, anti-women's rights and 'religious rights' crowd. The former is an overreaction by the young and hot-headed. The latter is an enormous, organized effort to take rights away from others and to force everyone else to conform to their rules of society. The former a miasma in civil discourse. The latter an organized attempt to strip women of their right to determine what's right for their bodies.

On what scale are we equating the two? By what means of calibration are these in the same quadrant and to the same degree?

The idea in this essay is valuable. The insight is valid. And I believe that it is a good faith attempt to understand the world. However, it fails to resonate for me. It fails to track as it appears to be made for a world I am not a part of. No one invited me to the party.

davnicwil• 6 years ago

In one of his previous essays (can't find the specific one, but it talks about Cambridge) pg talks about how he thinks in the future startups might come more and more directly out of university towns because people with ideas already tend to congregate there, and mostly get drawn to hubs like Silicon Valley because of funding. As it gets cheaper to start a startup and need for funding decreases, this might not be so necessary any more.

Towards the end of this essay he talks about the possibility that people with ideas might start to congregate around other institutions than universities in the future. He does explicitly say that he can't predict how this will play out, but it would be really interesting to read his thoughts on what he thinks those institutions could look like, or just what features they might have in broad terms.

pg, if you're reading this, that would be a great future essay I'd love to read!

frabbit3• 6 years ago

I mostly agree with this: am pretty much a Free Speech absolutist.

However, I can't help but suspect that the reason we're hearing arguments about this now is because the liberal-Left are aggressively exercising their intolerance instead of the conservative-Right, who have had it all their way for a long time.

Aside: I don't think lumping liberals and leftists in together is useful. There is a strong dislike of the trend towards censorship voiced by those that are economically on the left. The embrace of censorship is coming from the corporate/capitalist/liberal side of things. Most on the left are well aware that censorship will be used against them first.

tenuousemphasis2• 6 years ago

Can you define what you mean by free speech? That speech alone should not be punished by the state? Or that speech should have no social consequences?

Because to me "the liberal-Left exercising their intolerance" could also be viewed as exercising their freedom of association.

frabbit3• 6 years ago

Punished by the state specifically. I don't see how you could enforce speech _not_ having social consequences, nor what the purpose of such speech would be if that were possible.

jl27182• 6 years ago

Freedom of association is not exactly a pillar of modern liberalism.

agarv• 6 years ago

Not meant to be snarky, but PG seems to have rediscovered the big five personality traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits specifically agreeableness and openness. For people that want to learn more, Jordan Peterson has a great video lecture series about it https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQApSdW8X71I...

bambax3• 6 years ago

I have come to intensely dislike most of PG's essays, for many reasons, but the two main ones are that

1/ he plays fast and loose with the facts, reduces the whole history of (the various peoples of) humanity to a single arrow, and confuses demonstration with affirmation

and, more importantly

2/ he has an unhealthy obsession with "classifying" people, by which he actually means ranking them, from top to bottom. The people on top are the ones that make the world move in the right direction, and the ones at the bottom are dragging us all down. (Of course, he always ends up in the best category himself.)

But innovation isn't good per se. If you invent novel ways of torturing people (or animals, cf. the whole meat industry), that's not progress.

If you come up with clever ways of escaping the law for your own benefit while everyone else suffers (the whole "gig economy"), that's not a net gain for society, and society is legitimate in fighting you.

oldsklgdfth10• 6 years ago

But innovation isn't good per se.

Innovation isn't anything in moral terms.

All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage.

The advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population. This means that every new technology benefits some and harms others.

tonyedgecombe• 6 years ago

I’m struggling to see how antibiotics harmed others.

rjknight2• 6 years ago

We can distinguish between pure and applied innovation, though. Coming up with a new algorithm which can be applied to facial recognition is a pure innovation, deploying that algorithm to monitor political dissidents is applied innovation. I would not agree that the latter example "isn't anything in moral terms", even though the former is.

Misdicorl2• 6 years ago

This is silly. The world isn't balanced like that. Many improvements have no disadvantage. More efficient photovoltaic cells, not needing hfcfs in pressurized spray cans, discovering that you can add a bit of carbon to iron, ...

seneca4• 6 years ago

All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage.

This, to me, reads as one of those statements that sounds wise and correct but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Going from digging with your hands to using a shovel doesn't have a negative trade off. Going from carrying things on your back to using a wheeled cart doesn't have a corresponding disadvantage.

You can find very myopic cases where they're not improvements (e.g. digging for fragile objects is better done with hands), but that doesn't disprove the general improvement, and it is far from a corresponding disadvantage equal to the new advantage.

BurningFrog8• 6 years ago

For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage.

If that was true, society as a whole would never improve.

But in reality, the last 300 years have seen an unimaginable improvement of human life in every dimension.

motorcycleman95• 6 years ago

I think there are obvious cases where passive moral conformists (which you would argue are at the bottom of PG's rankings) are a net good in the world. PG doesn't spend any time highlighting this because it is not the focus of the essay.

Classifying people by their expressed personality is the best way to do it. If you refuse to judge a person by the content of their character you are blinding yourself.

blunderkid• 6 years ago

Haha, take your point about the tendency to "classify". There is good reason for that however: he is a VC. One of the big things that keeps VCs busy is classifying/stereotyping teams and looking for patterns of success. Yes, he should probably keep some of these "frameworks" to himself. There isn't enough since in there to be taken seriously in a peer reviewed paper. But hey, he is PG! And there are weaklings, probably not members of his favored quadrant, who swear by his views :).

atoav• 6 years ago

But innovation isn't good per se.

This is a thing that is known to most people since the end of WWII, with it's genocides – in fact what you describe is a very modernist view of the world: societies are continuously progressing into the direction of the light, with technology making things better all the time. In this world view the arrow of time has a clear direction and it is forward, while the roles of the protagonists is equally clear cut.

Many people don't really get what the postmodernists wanted: they were sick of precisely that lie. In their eyes things are not always getting better and more rational while knowledge and wisdom increases. Things get forgotten and vanish, good things get replaced by cheap things, confusion happens, intelligent people make immoral decisions while dumb people become heros etc.

It is this "dirt of reality" where things aren't as clear cut as many thinkers like them to be. This is not a problem per se, unless they try to make the reality match their ideas instead of the other way around.

nwienert• 6 years ago

Agree. in this case he entirely misses that the aggressively conventional are serving a purpose that’s incredible important. This is classic stuff going back to the Tower of Babel, and theories about conservatives vs liberals functions in society (ie disruptives and preservationists).

After reading The Righteous Mind (best book of the decade, IMO) and generally gaining an appreciation for how blind we are to how good we have it (the aggressively independent types moreso, they are chronically unsatisfied and in a way pessimistic about progress, blind to the incredible luxury we live in now), I find myself really understanding the role and purpose of the conventionistas in society and I’m glad for them! They are the buffer between the woke mobs, they fight to keep the system from moving around too wildly. They are wrong of course (heresy is a good example), but so are the unsatisfied independents as well.

Not that these map perfectly. There are many conservative independents and vice versa, but your main thrust on pg generally:

1. Defining things so they create categories for people, usually framing it for some self-serving purpose

2. Putting himself in the good category and spending very little time thinking over why the “bad” one may not be so bad.

Really hits home.

Side note: I found his last essay on Orthodoxy Privilege to be a real stinker. That he felt the need to write about “privilege” of which he is gluttonous, and use it as a chance to redefine privilege to his ends, was an impressive level of dissonance.

ckemere• 6 years ago

As a scientist, the idea that "To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong." Struck me as ludicrous, and scientists that I know that think like this usually seem more concerned with self aggrandization than discovery. I wonder if your point #2 is actually really profound. Maybe the important axis is not "conformity", but empathy? Kids that lack aggressively the ability or patience to understand rules break them, scientists that agressively understand other people's ideas are able to build on them or move beyond them, etc...

amelius• 6 years ago

He should really come out of his ivory tower and put a comment section on his blog.

nvr219• 6 years ago

Comment sections on blogs are so bad that there are competing browser extensions to block them. Better to have dedicated sites for comments. Like hn, reddit, etc

awkward2• 6 years ago

What else is this site for?

langitbiru• 6 years ago

People can comment on Paul's Twitter or this thread.

pixelrevision• 6 years ago

His writing on lisp and the life of his startup were much better reads. He may have some valid points but it is hard to read a really rich person (who got rich really young) handwave away large swaths of society.

dencodev5• 6 years ago

Baskets of deplorables.

rclayton11• 6 years ago

He had a habit of always making the hero of his narrative the “brave startup founder”.

oldsklgdfth10• 6 years ago

It would be interesting to come up with the "tech" archetypes.

The coder with a thousand faces, a modern day adaptation of Joseph Campbell[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

TheOtherHobbes• 6 years ago

Unfortunately I actually LOLd when I got to that point in the essay. It was not a surprise.

If being an SV founder or VC requires nonconformism, it's a very mainstream kind of nonconformism which has been part of the culture since the 1940s. (By some accounts, even earlier.)

IMO you cannot seriously claim to be a nonconformist if you unquestioningly accept and promote the framing of a game and a set of rules which have been in place for decades now.

Real nonconformists will be asking why the Internet seems to have been turned into the plaything of a handful of gigantic stagnant bureaucracies, why the VC system seems determined to generate more of these bureaucracies, and whether maybe there are more creative and performant options.

asdfman1232• 6 years ago

You have to justify getting all that money for doing something that's ultimately not that important for society somehow.

Funes-4• 6 years ago

he plays fast and loose with the facts

I don't expect essays to be scientific papers. The term comes from the French verb essayer 'to attempt, to try'. It's a genre widely known for being exactly that: a (mostly) brief rundown of ideas, without an exhaustive empirical demonstration being necessary nor expected.

On top of that, it's a ~1500-word blog post on his own website. Get real.

ziddoap• 6 years ago

I don't think scientific papers are the only place that should be expected to, when purporting something as fact, be well... factual.

Funny enough, all throughout my many years in academia I had to provide sources for anything I stated as a fact in an essay (including opinion pieces).

I should of just let my professors know that I wasn't providing them a scientific paper -- I was just attempting/trying to provide a brief rundown of ideas and they were wrong to expect empirical evidence of anything I claimed as fact.

kerkeslager2• 6 years ago

Who cares? If your argument is that essays aren't concerned with facts, then that's a great argument for ignoring the entire genre of essays. Ideas without basis in reality aren't worth anything.

Luckily, some essayists are concerned with facts, so we don't have to throw out the whole genre. But we should absolutely ignore the essays that don't concern themselves with facts.

erikerikson2• 6 years ago

Is there not a spectrum of levels of accuracy/voracity in essays? Is it not valid to have a preference for authors alignments to parts of that spectrum?

Description of the world seems necessarily a compression of facts. I read this critique as stating more or less, "I find that PG tends to bias the data selected for the compression to support the conclusions he is inclined to promote".

I agree that essays have a wider allowable not-grounded-in-demonstrable-reality-ness compared to scientific papers but if an author seems to one to cherry pick, it seems reasonable for the one to declare that as a criticism of the author.

This is an important thing to know, especially since those compression statements are usually the premises the theses of the essays depend.

awkward2• 6 years ago

Right. The big error in this one is that it's completely blind to where rules come from, only personal psychological relationship to them.

By the limited model in the essay, you can imagine an "Aggressive Nonconformist" put in a place where they are highly influential on rule creation. The model doesn't really give wiggle room for anything but simply creating rules that bind others and ignoring them oneself.

auggierose3• 6 years ago

Sounds like you are conventionally-minded. ;-)

bambax3• 6 years ago

Disagreeing with PG on HN is rather contrarian... ;-)

That said, going against the flow as a matter of habit or policy is just as predictable as being conformist.

Yet he doesn't appear to see that, or at least doesn't address it and places in the 4th quadrant those who are always breaking the rules "because they're there"...

ta12345678902• 6 years ago

he has an unhealthy obsession with "classifying" people, by which he actually means ranking them, from top to bottom

I remember coming to an event at the YC headquarters a few years ago and that's exactly the way PG acted in person as well. He was surrounded by people wanting to talk to him the whole time, whenever someone would say hi and introduce themselves he would immediately ask for their HN username, then either strike a conversation or just say something along the lines of "doesn't ring a bell" and pass on to the next person.

Many of the people that have gone through YC feel like the program has inherited that same quality. There are a few darlings in each batch that the partners really focus on and put their biggest efforts towards, while the rest feel almost inadequate for not being as awesome as the top ones.

wincent• 6 years ago

pg: What's your HN username?

ta1234567890: ta1234567890

pg: Hm, doesn't ring a bell... [looks awkwardly into cocktail glass]

andjd• 6 years ago

I think if I were asked this question, I would say that I have better things to do with my time than post on HN ... mostly true ;-)

vikramkr2• 6 years ago

I wonder how that behavior is reconciled with the idealistic basis of YC's application process where its open to everyone without needing warm intros and all. Pretty hypocritical to decide the only people worth your time are the people who found and had the time to engage with an internet forum that occasionally seems less like a forum and more like a recruiting and marketing tool for YC startups.

mikhailfranco3• 6 years ago

There is an arrogant pretense in self-imposed naming and carving up the world into your personalized compartments.

It seems PG has now stooped to the infamous Quadrant Diagram beloved by management consultants and other superficial minds who ought to know better...

The ribbonfarm guy and Eric Weinstein also come to mind, with their look-at-me coining of petty neologisms and vacuous abbreviations. They may be smart and reflective, but their heavy-handed narcissism drowns out any underlying insights.

PaulHoule6• 6 years ago

"Four quadrants" are frequently a bad smell. They often are structurally wrong, such as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn%27s_taxonomy

which has three real entities in it (a triangle) and one non-entity. The Nolan chart gets into trouble in a different way:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nolan_chart

That demonstrates a libertarian position that some people like to talk about but does not get traction when you try to implement it in politics. Like the green party you get maybe 2% of the vote if that. There is a very strong force that comes from the axioms of social choice theory that pushes politics into one dimension and you cannot wish it away by drawing a square.

Then there is that Gartner Magic Quadrant where they are just getting high on their own supply.

BenoitEssiambre• 6 years ago

I tend to be a big fan of pg's posts even his more controversial ones, but I must admit the use of four quadrant categorization turned me off here. It's not a problem with the idea he's trying to convey. It is valid, at least in some contexts. The issue here is more about lazy communication, sloppy emphasis, too coarse thinking.

Shoehorning concepts into quadrants is information theoretically very suboptimal, and usually has bad Bayesian fit from concept to reality. It's a visual trick often used in superficial business presentations that to be frank, is a bit of an insult to readers. It assumes they haven't already thought of the two simplest dimensions of the problem. It's probably a fine tool for early intros on simple subjects to newbies, but it's a bit condescending when used on more complex concepts with more sophisticated audiences. It ignores millennia of knowledge of the subtlety of language, taxonomies and ontologies that go way back at least to Aristotle's Categories.

Yet people jump to it really quickly. I had smart people pitch to me on two separate occasions, startup ideas that were specialized domain search engines where "get this, we would have two sliders that would allow people to get more results from one of these four quadrants". They thought they had found the best dimensions to categorize their domain's data and could beat much more flexible and expressive combinations of natural language keywords to zone in on things relevant to users' inquiries. It's a weird reflex.

holmesworcester• 6 years ago

Why don't we engage with the argument a bit more. How are people who are aggressively conformist valuable in ways that Paul Graham is ignoring?

One answer is, they're valuable in war, where you have large numbers of people who are in a position to weaken the war effort and you want to make sure none of them do or even think about it.

The Trump campaign signalling early on that it was at war with certain large chunks of the U.S. population helped kick a lot of people into this war mentality, I think, which might be in their interest or all of our interests in some ways, and that seems to be one of the trends that provoked this essay.

Passively independent-minded people are really valuable too, because they gum up the works of conformism by refusing to go along with it, without giving the aggressive conformists targets for outrage.

I've also seen a separate axis of how into change and new ideas people are. Some people are into new ideas in an aggressive conformist way. Some people are really resistant to new ideas in the same way.

doctor_eval4• 6 years ago

Agreed. This whole article just left me quite cold.

I mean, as far as I can tell, all these people running around claiming that Covid19 is a hoax are (apparently) very aggressively independent! We, the passive conformist sheeple, are bound by the pesky laws of physics and math - but not these aggressively independent thinkers! Nosir. They question all the rules.

So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite.

So those CV19 hoaxers are a group and therefore not independent. My bad! But one of them must be the leader, right? One of them must be the aggressive independent CEO-type, right? Because how else did they get these ideas? Someone must have formed them into a band; by definition, they couldn’t have done it on their own. You just need to find that aggressive independent thinker and BAM - we have another CEO of Theranos. Yay!

all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so

“There have been no successful conventional [real estate/retail/food/import/trade/bookshop] startups in the last 50 years”. Oh wait, only SV tech startup disrupters are real CEOs.

the unfortunate fact that the latest wave of intolerance began in universities

Universities? Really?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

designium4• 6 years ago

Let's play this out for mask wearing:

Top Left: Top doctors asking people to wear masks Bottom Left: People who are wearing masks Bottom Right: People who occasionally use masks, or alternatives, bandanas, etc. Top Right: People who don't want to use masks because of freedom.

biophysboy3• 6 years ago

I agree. It was an essay on two of the big 5 personality traits: conscientiousness (conventional) and agreeableness (passivity). His thesis is that disagreeable conscientious people are responsible for "a disproportionate amount of trouble".

There's a couple problems with this though. First, these traits are sort of immutable - humans can't really change their personalities. Second, as you said, independent-mindedness can cause huge problems as well.

designium4• 6 years ago

Well put. There is a huge simplification and again, very North American centric. I beg you, HN readers, apply what he wrote to other societies.

I read on the top comments of people getting worried about the US becoming like former Soviet States in regards about thought control and lack of freedom. That's a whole different issue. PG mixes multiple different problems and oversimplify them.

classified• 6 years ago

If you come up with clever ways of escaping the law for your own benefit...

... then PG will call you "smart".

Dumblydorr2• 6 years ago

This is one of PG's weaker essays. He attempts to glide between psychology, history, politics, and philosophy without proper evidence or background in those areas. His construct is somewhat interesting on the surface but is only supported by his own feelings and his own anecdata, he doesn't point to anything relevant or similar written by actual experts.

dhimes• 6 years ago

The essay is very good starting with this paragraph:

You'd think it would be obvious just from that sentence what a dangerous game they're playing. But I'll spell it out. There are two reasons why we need to be able to discuss even "bad" ideas.

Everything above that is just setting up the rest.

threatofrain2• 6 years ago

Yeah but unless there's someone who is a domain expert, deeply affiliated with experts from other domains, willing to drop into HN to give free advice... gurus are what you get.

As popular as HN is, there are surprisingly few people willing to do this.

minikites3• 6 years ago

Why would they even try on HN, a site that famously looks down on any subject that isn't STEM or closely adjacent?

paedubucher• 6 years ago

I think the example with the soccer field is great. People think and speak differently if they know that there are taboos.

JumpCrisscross3• 6 years ago

Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society

This contains a strong assumption of nature over nurture. I push back on that. (A point of evidence being salivary cortisol correlations with high-stress childhoods and even prenatal environments.)

Independent-minded cultures produce more independent thinkers. A culture that censors raises children by rewarding convention-seeking behaviour and sharply punishing non-conformance.

(Counterpoint: Did the children of circa 1920s academics become academics at a greater frequency than those of postwar academics? Anecdotally, I think so. A lot of them, as PG hypothesises, became founders. That suggests an innate quality that seeks its environment.)

This might also be content-dependent. When I was young, I oscillated between tattletelling and rampant rulebreaking, with a memorable drive to stand out from my peer group. Notably, an inflection point, to my memory and, surprisingly, to my discovery a few years ago after reading childhood notes, was when my family immigrated to America. To-day, I’m passively conformist with the law, but moderately independent when it comes to personal social, political and broader commercial activities, enjoying standing out even if it means being quirky or disliked. I don’t imagine I’d have been the same in Switzerland or in India.

frjalex• 6 years ago

This is a fair point. To say that personality can be purely characterized in full using a few adjectives is grossly over-generalizing. It seems like a better model of "the four quadrants" would be to add a dimension, the dimension of personality when it comes to dealing with different things in life. For instance, while one can be passively conformist in a particular area, say, following the rules of society, one can be aggressively independent in one's own discipline or expertise.

For instance, you could expect a brilliant academic to be socially conformist, while academically aggressive and independent. Some sort of criminal or outlaw would be aggressively independent when it comes to following the laws of society, and maybe conformist when it comes to following the criminal discipline (this is when you have mobs and gangs --- outlaws find each other and form groups, too).

And it is a combination of these different styles that make up the overall personality profile.

novok• 6 years ago

After seeing how different an adopted child acted compared to the non adopted ones in a close family member's family, I believe a lot more in nature causing big differences in behavior vs. nurture. Even when you have your own kids, children born 1 or 2 years apart in the same family can have very different personalities.

People don't like it, because it's used to justify fatalistic write offs of people. I agree it's wrong to do that because people are often wrong in writing off people, especially the aggressively independent :)

arrosenberg• 6 years ago

Adopted and second children still represent different environments. If the adopted child wasn't adopted at birth, their formative years would greatly impact what is perceived as nature. Its a meme that parents are generally more cavalier and relaxed with later children than they are with the first, and that is a significant environmental variable.

Nature definitely hardwires in some baseline chemistry, but those first couple of years have a huge impact on how a child will deal with that chemistry.

oldsklgdfth10• 6 years ago

The part of the essay that made me the most introspective was:

" Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote:

    I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it. "

I had to stop and ask myself that question.

naveen99• 6 years ago

It’s a weakly specified / trick question. Do you get to keep your knowledge of the world as it is today ? if not how are you different than people 200 years ago ? So you can just ask what your ancestor’s position would have been. Which we already know the answer to.

chippy7• 6 years ago

People don't want to admit that evil is done by people like ourselves. Asking what your dead evil ancestors would do is different from asking what you would do.

If you were born back then, with no knowledge of the future, you would be a Good Person no matter the conditions, right?

oldsklgdfth10• 6 years ago

The question forced to me ask myself if my values and convictions remain strong in the absence of knowledge. Do I know that slavery is terrible or do I believe in equality of humans? In the first case it's memorization, which is very specific to context. If I believe in the equality of humans, I can apply that belief across contexts and still reach unconventional conclusions.

Personally, I know I would not have been much different because I'm not much different today.

tfehring2• 6 years ago

It's pretty clear that you don't get to keep your knowledge of the world as it is today - if you did, the question would collapse to "Do you support slavery?" which is much less interesting.

Asking what your ancestors believed is also a bit of a miss. My ancestors in the US were all German-American, and German-Americans overwhelmingly opposed slavery, so my ancestors probably opposed it, and I probably would have opposed it too if I had been part of that population, but that's obviously a total cop-out.

So take the framing of, say you were born into a white slave-owning family in the antebellum American South. Would you have freed your slaves and joined the abolitionist movement? The actual people in that situation weren't entirely a monolith - surely at least a few of them actually did that. But if the actual share who did so was, say, 1% of the population, then you have to think you're in the top 1% in terms of some combination of empathy, racial tolerance, forward-thinkingness, etc. to claim that you would. The question is useful because we're not different than people 200 years ago, no matter how much we like to think we are.

I think the obvious and more explicit follow-up question is even better though - "What beliefs do you hold today that will be viewed as negatively 200 years from now as slavery is today?" If the answer is "none," we must be in such a utopia to have finally reached the end-state of human moral development.

projektfu4• 6 years ago

It's an interesting question for a lot of reasons. I live in the South, so perhaps if I had been living in the South in 1859 I would have supported slavery. But my ancestors were living in the North, in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and fought in the Civil War on the side of the Union, so presumably they opposed slavery. So if I had been reared by those ancestors, I likely would have opposed slavery. But then again, I'm a bit of a contrarian by personality, so I may have had the opposite viewpoint from my surroundings. Perhaps not opposing slavery in the South, but opposing fighting to preserve it. Perhaps not supporting slavery in the North, but opposing a destructive war and supporting the rights of individual states to determine their own fate and secede. Or personal things could be involved. Suppose as a northerner I saw an opportunity to join the family of a wealthy Southern planter. Or as a southerner, I wished that certain slaves who were friends could be free. So it goes down to what your environment is and what person you are in that environment.

cjfd• 6 years ago

Regarding the use of the 'aggressively conventional minded'. When I was younger I would think that these kind of people were mostly just detrimental to society but I have come to see that they sometimes have a use. It is this kind of people who were the first to see that immigration and multiculturalism have their limits. For instance, salafism cannot just be seen as just another opinion that people can have. Of course, the 'agressively conventional minded' would put it in a bit more stark words than 'have their limits' and would also extend their warning messages to far greater groups than actually warranted but the other three types of people might just close their eyes to the whole problem. Generally, the 'aggressively conventional minded' can be helpful when a society is in danger of degrading into lawlessnes. They will be the first to sound the alarm and sometimes they are right.

devdas2• 6 years ago

The Salafists are just the Islamic version of the evangelical churches in America.

mantap• 6 years ago

Salafism itself is aggressive conventional-mindednessness. I'm sure they would say that it is the west that is sliding into lawlessness. The laws are very different but the thinking is the same.

ohgreatwtf3• 6 years ago

As a passive independently minded, I can say that we also see natural fluctuation from epochs of independently minded reason to social conformity and back. These are good and necessarily healthy cycles because the independently minded, left unchecked, inevitably will achieve the freedom for certain individuals within that sector to explore avenues of thought and action that doom civilization and degrade reason and safety. The conservatively minded, left unchecked, will inevitably lead to total stagnation and the destruction of personal freedoms. It's a cycle, and the truly reasonable people, the truly intelligent, will see through it.

I see your fear, and I understand it is about the rise of radical social conformity, as I personally think was adequetly heralded by ted krazinski and george lincoln rockwell, two very independently minded, aggressive, and destructive individuals. It is scary to witness, and to experience leading into this wave, but understand all things come to an end.

Conservatism, Feminism, Neoliberalism and the Patriarchy are out. Political correctness and xenomania are on the way out and will be out of vogue within 10 years. The youngest generation to arrive on the world stage is repulsed ad nauseum with what they rightfully view as political posturing for virtual life achievement points by all sides of the now universally static social instrument, whose only purpose, inside and outside of the statehouse, is to carry out token activities that defend the ambitions of entrenched opponents; opponents whose true motives are inerrently selfserving, oblivious to the ground level truth, and dismissive of the long term consequences of their missions.

It is nearly the hour for the true star children to take their place. The first to arrive are even now approaching the zenith of power and influence, and the waves that have come since are growing in intensity. We are actively uninvested in the television and the mock battles being carried out behind it. Our life prospects and probability of reproduction have been seized from us, to serve the needs of those who profit from stasis. We are drones in a steady state, wealth maintaining, species killing industrial grade dystopia. It won't last much longer. The majority of the shifts that will come and precipitate our total revolution across all points of the spectrum that dismisses every single piece of the political machine enslaving us will take place within a decade. They wont be heralded by shifts in thought or reason, because it is the decline of systemic thinking itself which must necessarily decline for to coexist unincorporated as equals and as stakeholders in a commonwealth destiny.

This is not anarchy, in practice it could look like a lot of things. It could, ideally, wind up vaguely resembling some kind of mutualistic, agrarian society with vast quantities of independent small communities consisting of large, interconnected families subsiding on self-sustaining garden estates. These communities could be organized into democratic representational regions that are governed by a futuristic constitution which, to prevent the entrenchment of conventional systemic thinking, requires the government model to be decentralized and assembling on an as needed basis, with temporary, as opposed to permenant, and internally selected, as opposed to independently appointed, individuals nominated to national councils and bodies of state, for the purpose of making nationwide decisions.

There will be war, even in such an era, over resource conflicts. People will, out of necessity, die. Pray you are not among them. But do not pray for the bloodshed to come to an end. Conflict is a necessary part of growth, and growth is requisite for freedom, and freedom is requisite for independent inquiry. The boil must be allowed for the world to return to a peaceful and generously cool condition, otherwise, it will always be in a state of continual repression.

ohgreatwtf3• 6 years ago

I could add so much more to this about the state of affairs which claims the problems in the present era were seeded almost 300 years ago and that the supposed freedoms of today enshrined in that hour were not, as it were, a byproduct of the age of enlightenment, but rather, an insideous plot concocted by masonic and conventionally minded globalists planning a society that would protect the issues they cared about and protecting their assets against outside exploitation. I could say that america needs to die, and in truth, although most of it will survive, it will go through a rebirth, and become a new thing, not like the phoenix, but rather like the butterfly, which shares many pieces of the old but is a design of the new.

ohgreatwtf3• 6 years ago

Really we need a forum like ycombinator news but instead it's just peoples ideas and thoughts and you get to upvote or downvote comments but it's not so simple as a direct vote, it needs to be engineered in such a way that the age old adages of "Few consider the logic of another to be as sensible as their own." and "To the dim-minded, the sunlight must seem absurd" - in order to promote original and counter-social norms discussion and content.

For it, an innovative voting system would probably be useful. Forums that have tried to promote anti-conventional ideas have failed before. Usually grossly disgusting things make their way to the top of the feed in such cases, and good, original thoughts, meander in that twilight zone between good and bad, or get mildly downvoted, but only enough to be pushed below the threshhold- not enough that the negative point association is itself an expression of dislike for the content. Essentially, people do not so much hate original ideas, as simply dislike hearing them.

What makes this tricky is that people will always think their opinions sensible. For example, lets say you post a not so popular but sensible opinion. If you instituted a mechanism for people to vote on your content on the basis of logic, or reason, or any other qualitative mechanism, they would downvote it on the basis of logic, reason, etc.

Instead, we must attack the fundamental cybernetic arrangement of authority over opinion.

First, we have an up thumb and a down thumb:

I feel that the content presented is good, and i believe it self-sufficiently so/ It makes me feel uncomfortable, and I believe the evidence is self-sufficient.

Secondly, we have an up arrow and a down arrow: I understand what the person is trying to say/ I don't understand their reasoning.

Casting a vote would require selecting both an arrow and a thumb.

Getting a down thumb and a down arrow results in getting one point for originality. Getting a up thumb and an up arrow results in getting a point for popularity. Getting a down thumb and an up arrow results in getting a point for controversiality. Getting a up thumb and a down arrow results in the post getting a point for absurdity.

The score of the post is determined as follows:

The ratio of originality to controversiality is used to assign a value up to 100. a 1:0 ratio is a score of 100, and a 0:1 score is a value of 0. This shall be known as the shittest variable, or SV.

The ratio of popularity to controversiality is used to assign a value up to 100. A 1:0 value is a score of 0, 0:1 score 10, and a 1:1 score is a value of 100. This shall be known as the shiteating variable, or SE.

The ratio of originality to absurdity is used to assign a value up to 100. A 1:0 value is a score of 10, 0:1 score 0, and a 1:1 score is a value of 1. This shall be known as the shittake variable, or ST.

The ratio of popularity to absurdity is used to assign a value up to 100. A 1:0 and a 0:1 is a score of 0. A 1:1 is a score of 10. This shall be known as the shit-brigading variable, or SB.

SV x SE x ST X SB determines the true value of the post.

However, a user can choose to set a variable in their user profile which shows all posts based on popularity alone, and all scores based on popularity alone.

However, if the true value exceeds popularity by more than a factor of 10, the post will be hidden from their view, and the same would go for any replies.

marsrovershadow• 6 years ago

A funnier version of the same <more or less> set of ideas is "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" by Carlo M. Cipolla. ...And unlike Paul's essay, it comes with illustrations!

http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...

pwdisswordfish2• 6 years ago

Quick, someone make a political compass meme out of this!

zests• 6 years ago

Let's pretend that such a projection exists and we can assign people to points on the cartesian plane. This begs the question, how do the points change over time?

Mathematically speaking, we can add to our model by assuming there is some notion of a flow or a vector field on the quadrant that pulls individual people/points in directions. There are also people moving in their own directions either due to inherit personal characteristics or perhaps life events impacting them.

How do we model this field? We could start by creating a bunch of "attractors" or points on the plane that people are attracted to. Think of an attractor like a very massive body and the gravitational pull it has on other bodies. If these attractors do exist, where are they on the compass?

Some attractors might be "abstract ideals" that naturally draw people to each part of the quadrant but I'd say the biggest attractor is in fact other people. Human beings have tribal tendencies and so if/when a lot of people cluster on the compass it pulls even more people in. With our gravity analogy this is like a massive star absorbing all of the mass surrounding it.

Some people have anti-conformist tendencies and don't like to belong to large groups of like minded people. Eventually large pockets of people become increasingly unstable and people radically disassociate with the big attractor. This is like a supernova radically expelling mass in all directions.

I prefer the gravity analogy because it avoids moralizing specific "locations" on the compass. A gravitational well can occur anywhere and we can discuss them abstractly. I think what PG is saying is that it is not a good idea to let yourself be pulled in to the well. Just look at the wells that have occurred in the past. All of these statements can be made with respect to an abstract political context. Now apply them to the current context.

Does this post make any sense or is it just the ravings of a mad lunatic? Do we believe these things because they are true or do we believe them because we agree with their conclusion? Do we disagree because we disagree with the conclusion?

Is it really possible to introspect and judge the validity of our own conclusions? If anyone can answer this questions (preferably by reference to a third party source) I'd be appreciative.

t_serpico2• 6 years ago

that was a completely pointless analogy

jkraker• 6 years ago

While I agree with some of this, there's a hubris in it that I find a bit distasteful. It seems to claim that there's only one type of person needed for society to thrive. Not surprisingly, it's the type that most aligns with who he identifies himself to be.

I think that the article is using caricatured descriptions of two categories that are more broad (people who are oriented toward change and those who are oriented toward stability) and highlighting only the good of the preferred group (his own) and the bad within the "other". The truth is, there are beneficial and destructive individuals in both groups, and there are perspectives from each that we need. I would argue that what society really needs is not the ascendancy of one group above the other but mutual respect and discussion of ideas between groups.

Which is kind of where he was going with the discussion of ideas. He just didn't have a big enough tent.

clomond2• 6 years ago

I did not interpret it as hubris.

Rather, I viewed it as the differences in deliverers of progress versus orthodoxy.

“Classic progressivism” / “Enlightenment” principles have across the globe been under attack from all over the place, including from within the depths of the worlds leading institutions.

Given that so much of the peace, prosperity and progress (both socially and technologically) have been driven by safe environments for the “aggressive independents” - I view this essay as a call out for us to do better.

Those who value stability are an important part to ground the bad new ideas from taking hold in the vein of progress, but traditionalists are by very definition not how progress is actually made.

hn_throwaway_992• 6 years ago

I did not interpret it as hubris.

I mean, he refers to the "passively conventional minded" as "sheep". Whether or not that's true, it's still dripping with condescension.

I agree with the parent commenter. I largely agree with PG's essay, but it's also telling that he doesn't see (or at least, doesn't comment) on any potential negatives from "aggressive independently minded" folks. If anything, a lot of the current backlash I see in the technology realm is where entrepreneurs and "visionaries" promised us enlightenment and the world, but it didn't quite work out that way. The pitch for social media was that it was supposed to bring the world closer and let people develop more and stronger relationships. Yeah, how'd that turn out...

hn_throwaway_992• 6 years ago

I didn't think about it until I read your comment, but I really got a eureka moment from reading this, so thank you, and this is what I love about HN's comment sections.

The irony shouldn't be lost that pg is primarily arguing for freer discussion of ideas, while at the same time showing the same traits of "other-ing" (i.e., folks not in your group are somehow defective) that I believe is the most important reason that free discourse seems to be in decline.

elil172• 6 years ago

In this article, PG creates a personality test of sorts that, I think, seems intuitively true. Then, absent any real evidence, he assigns political roles and moral value to each of the categories he invented.

It’s so farcical to suggest that independent mindedness always manifests as “intellectual freedom” and conformism manifests as “political correctness.” (He doesn’t use that phrase but that’s clearly what he’s trying to get at.)

We live in a world where people with power over others (even people with pretty small amounts of power like professors) have historically been allowed shielded from the consequences of espousing hate. It is not “conformist” to advocate that people should be held accountable for what they say.

What PG has done is come up with a “good” category and a “bad” category. He then says that the people who agree with him are the good people and the people who don’t are the bad ones. He does so without considering that his support of Silicon Valley tycoons and professors who are upset that their students criticized them could actually put him in the conformist category.

bitcurious2• 6 years ago

We live in a world where people with power over others (even people with pretty small amounts of power like professors) have historically been allowed shielded from the consequences of espousing hate. It is not “conformist” to advocate that people should be held accountable for what they say.

The conformity is in the process which defines what “hate” is.

elil172• 6 years ago

I don’t understand - what is the process that decides what hate is? How is it conformist?

thaumaturgy3• 6 years ago

Isn't it funny how things like this are never written by the boring types? It's always those wild, maverick, enlightened types seeking to describe themselves and, along the way, describe others, but mostly to describe themselves in flattering terms, with just a light veneer of modesty. (The self-assessed MBTI INTJs are just fantastically entertaining at this.)

"All great ideas come from us," beams the self-described aggressively-independent-minded, "and if we aren't allowed to champion horrible ideas, why, the world just won't be able to get on without us."

There are so many coarse assertions in this argument, without any solid foundations or evidence or even thoughtful observation. Right from the first sentence:

One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism.

"Arbitrary" ways. It's spelled "arbitrary". There are a plethora of categorical little boxes that people can try to fit other people into, and some of those have value sometimes, but they often also cause people to see other people as only their boxes. [1]

Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system...

Imagine never having seen /r/PoliticalCompassMemes [2]. As gross as it is, this kind of quadrant-categorization isn't new.

There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones. So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest.

This is a setup for seeking minority status for free-thinkers. The problem with this is that "free" thought -- or "aggressively independent-minded" in PG parlance -- has no defined, characteristic ideas, by definition. A simple thought experiment here is the current political divide in the US. Are Trump voters the "aggressively independent-minded"? Are Democrats? Progressives? None of the above? If the definition of "aggressively independent-minded" contracts to, "me and a few people I like", then it's meaningless. Everyone with a strongly-held political belief in the US right now sees themselves as belonging to the rebel outgroup.

Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society.

This had to be the most astoundingly bad line in the whole essay. It rests upon a supernatural notion of some sense of "self" that is somehow independent of time and place; that the powerful formative forces of culture and society, especially throughout early childhood, would somehow not transform each and every one of us into utterly different people. There is no more polite way to say this than that that notion is, as far as I know, entirely unfounded in the field of human development.

Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote...

Okay, do yourself a favor, and read Joseph Yannielli's really excellent article, hosted on Princeton's site, on Princeton's role in opposing abolition: https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-and-abolitio...

It's long, and it's historical, and it's forthright, and it's introspective. It also includes many quotes from educated opponents to abolition that, if you squint just a little bit, sound suspiciously similar to a lot of the "unacceptable" ideas that so many people right now are crying that they're no longer supposed to talk about outside the komfortable konfines of their klans.

Try and keep that Princeton article in mind, full and fresh, and then read this next part from Graham:

For the last couple centuries at least, when the aggressively conventional-minded were on the rampage for whatever reason, universities were the safest places to be.

Princeton themselves disagrees. At length.

This essay does not add to or resolve today's cultural conflicts in any amount. When the last thing you have left for an idea is that it's special because you're special and it's your idea, then it's time to consider the possibility that other people might have some pretty strong arguments against it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA&feature=youtu.be..., the whole video is good though.

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Po..., for the fortunately unaware.

Nimitz14• 6 years ago

Seems to me like you made your mind up before even reading it.

"Arbitrary" ways. It's spelled "arbitrary". There are a plethora of categorical little boxes that people can try to fit other people into, and some of those have value sometimes, but they often also cause people to see other people as only their boxes.

I'm sure PG would agree with your last sentence. But your point is irrelevant here.

Imagine never having seen /r/PoliticalCompassMemes [2]. As gross as it is, this kind of quadrant-categorization isn't new.

Imagine assuming someone has never seen something just because they use an appropriate example to introduce a reader to a concept.

Also I don't see what's gross about the political compass.

This is a setup for seeking minority status for free-thinkers. The problem with this is that "free" thought -- or "aggressively independent-minded" in PG parlance -- has no defined, characteristic ideas, by definition. A simple thought experiment here is the current political divide in the US. Are Trump voters the "aggressively independent-minded"? Are Democrats? Progressives? None of the above? If the definition of "aggressively independent-minded" contracts to, "me and a few people I like", then it's meaningless. Everyone with a strongly-held political belief in the US right now sees themselves as belonging to the rebel outgroup.

Whoever is loudly saying something that is unpopular is part of the "aggressively independent-minded" group. I think that should be pretty easy to understand. Note it does not mean they are right.

This had to be the most astoundingly bad line in the whole essay. It rests upon a supernatural notion of some sense of "self" that is somehow independent of time and place; that the powerful formative forces of culture and society, especially throughout early childhood, would somehow not transform each and every one of us into utterly different people. There is no more polite way to say this than that that notion is, as far as I know, entirely unfounded in the field of human development.

Fair point, but I think one can assume that the probability of a person changing from one group to the other is symmetric, so in the end you'd get a similar distribution across the population regardless of where the individuals end up. The point he ultimately makes is still valid, most of them would have supported slavery.

Okay, do yourself a favor, and read Joseph Yannielli's really excellent article, hosted on Princeton's site, on Princeton's role in opposing abolition: https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-and-abolitio....
It's long, and it's historical, and it's forthright, and it's introspective. It also includes many quotes from educated opponents to abolition that, if you squint just a little bit, sound suspiciously similar to a lot of the "unacceptable" ideas that so many people right now are crying that they're no longer supposed to talk about outside the komfortable konfines of their klans.

The main similarity to today I spotted was young students being violent towards people with opposing views.

Princeton themselves disagrees. At length.

One counterexample does not disprove the point. Do you really disagree with the idea that independent thinkers tend to go to university?

This essay does not add to or resolve today's cultural conflicts in any amount.

I disagree and think it does add something.

thaumaturgy3• 6 years ago

Whoever is loudly saying something that is unpopular is part of the "aggressively independent-minded" group.

Okay then.

I hereby loudly proclaim that, in the interests of the health and well-being of society at large, we must establish strong governmental oversight of online forums and communications, and immediately ban anything judged to be disinformation.

You are, as you note, free to disagree with me. But you must now respect my idea, and by extension me, because now I too am "aggressively independent-minded", and without people like me, the world would not have any great new ideas.

Furthermore, according to the larger point of PG's essay and your defense of it, you must not in any way interfere with my attempts to spread this message far and wide and enshrine it legislatively. If you do, you'll be showing yourself to be one of the conventional-minded people, standing in the way of my great idea and true progress for society, and the world certainly does not need more of those.

jl27182• 6 years ago

One essay written by one graduate on a contentious contemporary issue and the whole place is evil. The tone of the essay indicates it was a rhetorical exercise in dissent from a popular opinion. The modern judgement that such a thing is now abhorrent, is exactly the point.

I think perhaps this criticism suffers from a lack of imagination. People that cannot understand another person’s ideas are quick to label them evil.

thaumaturgy3• 6 years ago

One essay written by one graduate...

This "one essay" is part of a larger, official project: https://slavery.princeton.edu/about/overview

The author's bio reads:

Joseph Yannielli received his PhD from Yale and was the Perkins Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton Humanities Council. He is an expert on the history of slavery and abolition, with a special focus on America, West Africa, and the wider world during the nineteenth century. His other areas of interest include political and social movements, missionaries and religion, capitalism and globalization, and the United States in the world. At present, he is completing a book about the Mendi Mission and the role of Africa in the American abolition of slavery. He is the founding manager and lead developer of the Princeton & Slavery Project website and several other digital history projects.

There are four other individuals involved at an organizational level for this project, and over 50 other students, advisors, and organizations involved in creating it.

It is absolutely an official statement from the institution of Princeton University.

But, please, continue to offhandedly dismiss things you don't like as lacking imagination and assume that other people simply lack the comprehension to understand the grand ideas in this essay. It's just such a compelling position to put yourself into, not having to defend bad ideas at all, because hey, only stupid people could think they'd be bad.

hkt2• 6 years ago

This does somewhat come off as cod philosophy. There have been ample studies in group psychology and minority influence dating back to the mid 20th century, and the fact is that independent thinkers have massive influence wherever they go. See here for a reasonable primer, key thinkers are Asch and Moscovici:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/minority-influence.html

So, the whole "rules to restrain the conformist sheeple" thing doesn't really apply. The author has created a category, put himself in it, then heaped praise on it. Neither edifying nor tasteful. Sorry.

marcus_holmes• 6 years ago

As a (mildly) aggressive non-conformist, I prefer the motto "non serviam"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_serviam

MikeOfAu• 6 years ago

I don't like his analysis. I don't think it models what's going on currently. And because of that, it doesn't allow us to think about the problem correctly.

IMO, the key thing that's happened since 2010 is that there has been a coup on "the progressive side" of politics, with "Classical Social Justice" (MLK-like) being replaced with "Critical Social Justice". It has been a mostly silent coup, until recently.

There's been a dramatic change, and most people on the left don't even realise it has happened, much less what it means. The shift is from empiricism, universalism, justice, equality of opportunity, and liberalism to ... frankly, pretty much the opposite of those values: lived experience, identity groups competing with winners and losers, maoist group-think, purity spirals, etc. The profoundness of the change can't be overstated.

IMO, the good people of the Left (classic liberals) have to take it back from those that have stolen it (the Critical Social Justic people). But, I'm not even sure that's even possible now. It has gone too far—what a disaster.

And because "classic liberals" want the left to go back to how it was ... they have almost become "the conservatives of the left" and they have been forced weirdly towards the centre - except those to the left of them are now more facist than those to their right. So weird.

Bottom line: the illiberal, Clitical Methods Left now holds sway (Newspapers, Hollywood, Universities) and it isn't going anywhere in a hurry.

The worst part about this is: the current sensemaking apparatus (newspapers, etc) has been hollowed out by the Internet. And they aren't even capable of analysis any more ... just activism (as a business model ... a way of generating clicks). How can a democracy function when the population is not informed? I really like Eric Wienstien's analogy for this: the Media has now become like Iago in Othello, whispering madness into the ear of those that will listen (on both sides).

All very broken. Suddenly.

julesqs• 6 years ago

did paul graham really just imply that himself and his fellow silicon valley millionaires would have been abolitionists if they were alive during slavery

jonahbenton• 6 years ago

The missing dimension in PG's analysis is power, particularly power imbalance.

PG writes that his "aggressively conventional" category are "responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world" and "have been handed a tool" via social media with the result that "customs protecting free inquiry have been weakened."

This is bollocks.

Prior to social media, there have been hierarchies- in terms of people organization at workplaces and in the political arena, and in terms of information distribution- that prevented those with power from being subjected to the inquiries from those without.

The notion of "free inquiry" was limited to those topics that were considered to be of interest to those in power, which often explicitly excluded topics around justice and power imbalance.

Populists were those organizers who were able to formulate a message and leverage those powerless voices into a voice that succeeded in demanding answers from power.

Now, social media have created platforms where voices from groups/individuals who otherwise are powerless can amplify their individual voices.

But it also is a platform that enables augmentation of the voices that are speaking from places of power, perhaps even to a greater degree, because power has access to automation and the levers of the amplification algorithm.

In the US we are facing an unprecedented (for the US) physically aggressive and dangerous assertion of federal power, under the leadership of a cognitively diminished, corrupt, and according to some dimensions of national interest, traitorous, sociopath. This leadership is also by any measure failing, to a criminal degree, in its most important role- to act in the interest of those for whom it was elected to serve- in the pandemic.

To complain that "free inquiry"-say, of the sort that Tom Cotton wished to engage in- is being limited- because his OpEd in the NYT led to a backlash and to the OpEd leader resigning- is to completely miss the fundamental power dynamic.

Cotton spoke in service of the same forces that are engaging in state-sanctioned violence, while also failing at leadership. When that happened in other countries, we would call Cotton a propagandist and would see it as the responsibility of journalists to not engage with his arguments, because of the violence that accompanies them.

As AOC heroically pointed out- violent acts are not separate and apart from violent speech. When a party in power engages in violent acts, their violent speech should be considered one and the same.

To say it out loud is banal but necessary- those without power are dying and having their lives destroyed by the forces holding the reins of legal, policing, and military power in the US. For there to be "free inquiry" this assertion of actual violence on the part of the state must stop.

The "aggressively conventional" group that has completely slipped PG's mind in his analysis is the state, which is in literal terms aggressively and violently engaging, both in speech and act. This is fundamentally unacceptable in a nation under rule of law.

Social media is the only vehicle the weak have to organize and amplify, and, yes, while there are a few casualties from an intellectual perspective- the OpEd head at the NYT lost his job- these pale in any moral sense in comparison to the actual casualties at the hands of those in power.

So- PG, some advice: why don't you give away your wealth, get a job as an uber driver or an "essential" food delivery worker, and see what you think about social media and cancel culture then. I'll wait.

More directly- PG has blocked me on twitter, because I dared to criticize some earlier comments he made there. Forgive me for offending, dear leader. I was only intending to engage in free inquiry.

asdfman1232• 6 years ago

Paul Graham has done it again -- vastly oversimplified things and cast himself and his peers as intellectually superior/nobler/braver.

eat_veggies• 6 years ago

that's VC as a whole

mchusma• 6 years ago

I love PGs essays, but his take on Robert George is the opposite of what Robert George was saying.

PG: "He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't."

Robert George from the quoted tweet: "Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it."

https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/1278529694355292161

It doesn't change PG's point, but its just odd he used the quote in this way.

projektfu4• 6 years ago

Quoting:

Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote:

    "I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it."

He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't. And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders.

projektfu4• 6 years ago

They're saying the same thing, but PG added the "He's too polite..." bit as though he didn't read past /1 in the thread.

darepublic• 6 years ago

So one quadrant upvotes the posts they like, and downvotes the ones they don't like, another quadrant simply upvotes the posts they like, another tries to find a middle ground and mend rifts, another has no account, lurks and laughs inside.

__alexs5• 6 years ago

I honestly don't understand this perspective which seems central to a lot of pgs writing lately: "the customs protecting free inquiry have been weakened"

Can anyone explain it?

We are, right now, posting on the most expansive and weakly moderated communications platform humanity has ever had. You can find almost anyone opinion imaginable out there with a brief Google search and forums on which to argue every side of it with.

In what way is free inquiry meaningfully weakened? By any absolute measure it seems like it can only be the strongest it has ever been.

etrautmann• 6 years ago

I think the larger point is that it doesn't matter how easy it is to make works public if the consequences prevent you from doing so: if you can easily get fired, pushed out of a tenured position at a university, or otherwise lose your voice for making unpopular opinions public.

__alexs5• 6 years ago

I don't buy this. There are millions of anonymous Twitter accounts and forum posters. Literal children have figured out opsec well enough to save themselves them embarrassment of having to share their love of anime with the wrong friends.

I'm sure a tenured professor is smart enough to use a different email address and profile picture when signing up to radical life extension forums if what they want to discuss is really that edgy.

We have more tools and venues to test out and refine new ideas today than we have ever before. Use them.

M2Ys4U2• 6 years ago

It means people like him are being scrutinised like never before (absent an actual revolution) and he doesn't like it.

jimbokun4• 6 years ago

You can find almost anyone opinion imaginable out there with a brief Google search and forums on which to argue every side of it with.

And you can quickly get someone fired or their business boycotted or doxxed or swatted if they express an opinion you don't like.

__alexs5• 6 years ago

Yes the world is scary, people speaking up have always put themselves at risk but we have better tools to protect ourselves and find like minded people now.

This isn't new and at worst doesn't seem that much different to how people have always acted. The argument is that things have got worse, but they just seem to be the same.

oramit2• 6 years ago

Yes, this narrative about not being free to talk about "dangerous" ideas is always left intentionally vague.

We have so much free inquiry going on right now that I can't even keep track of it. If free inquiry is being eroded, one of the central claims in this essay, then that means we are coming down from a greater high. When was that high and would you prefer to go back to that time?

marvin• 6 years ago

I'll hazard a guess: PG went out on a limb a few years ago, and actually published a long essay on one of the ideas that are very controversial in the sense implied in this essay. Namely, how tech tools as a primary driver for increasing wealth inequality will likely grow in importance, leading to increased wealth inequality, and that this is in itself not a problem.

This was after years of pointing out that it's not necessarily a good idea to specifically discuss controversial topics, if you want to spend your time thinking and learning instead of arguing (and, implied, deleting hate mail and death threats, etc).

This essay was met with an incredible amount of backlash that missed its point entirely, and if I was in PG's shoes, I'd probably have soured on taking that sort of discussion outside my closest circle. A big but very understandable loss.

I believe that discussing the phenomenon, rather than specific instances of it, still has great value. This points out tools that can be used to discover and handle the censorship of valuable heresy.

I'd love it even more if I had intimate access to a group of very intelligent and open-minded folks to actually discuss the heresies of today, as this is both super fascinating and a great mental stretching exercise. Sadly, doesn't look like public forums on the Internet are the most fertile arena for that kind of thing. It happens rarely, when I happen to stumble across a community that hits something like this by chance, or where one of my real-life acquaintances happens to stray outside the box in exactly the right way.

sinker8• 6 years ago

I'll give it a try. At your company's next diversity seminar, why not suggest merit should be prioritized over diversity? Or that affirmative action is regressive in its effects, or that the talk of reparations is so silly as to be dismissed, or that women's unequal pay is due to factors unrelated to sexism, or that Asians are unfairly penalized in universities and the workplace, or that biological sex exists, or that trans women are not real women, or that trans women should not share a bathroom with biological women, or that white men are not oppressors, or that you don't support BLM. Whether or not these ideas are right, you clearly cannot express them. Not in the workplace and if you live in a large city, not to strangers, and sometimes not even to your friends. There's an implicit belief that if you deviate from some of these positions you must be a racist, misogynist, transphobic, alt-right, or a radical.

There are ideas you can safely express if they fall on one side of the political spectrum and there are other ideas you have to be hush about even if they are completely reasonable.

neonate3• 6 years ago

It's because the pendulum has taken a noticeable swing in the reverse direction, with online mobs getting people fired because of opinions they've expressed. Extreme labels like "white supremacist" and "Nazi" are being put on people for views that deviate from approved ideology. This is creating a climate of fear in which each case of someone getting fired is enough to cow thousands if not millions of observers, who fear to lose their own jobs if they speak out or even slip up. Bogus arguments like "it doesn't count unless the government does it" are being used to dismiss free speech concerns about this. To me it seems obvious that from a free speech point of view it's fine for people to respond to each other with criticism, even if they're mean and mischaracterize each other, but getting people fired crosses an obvious line into non-speech and physical harm. It's not as harmful as physical violence or putting someone in prison for what they say, but it's on the same spectrum, and the psychology of the zealots who want to see people punished in this way is unmistakeable. That's where the comparisons to the Soviet Union, China, and so on, come in. Anyone who is familiar with the history knows the type, even if so far they are unable to do more than exert power over employment.

There's also deplatforming, which falls in between pure speech (such as criticism/debate) and physical harm (such as firing).

pvg2• 6 years ago

'Firing' is not a physical harm unless you mean it literally.

__alexs5• 6 years ago

These hypothetical people are getting fired because their words cause real harm to people. They encourage others to act in ways that result in (not at all hypothetical) physical, emotional and economic harm, usually to underrepresented groups who are least able to weather it.

You'd get fired if you punched a coworker, getting fired for speech that encourages others to do the punching seems like fair game. If you're in a position of influence you must measure your words carefully if you care at all about not harming people.

If you want to explore radical, potentially harmful ideas, find a safe space of like minded people to do it in rather than forcing it on random people on the internet unconsensually.

BurningFrog8• 6 years ago

Can anyone explain it?

One clue is that almost everyone here posts anonymously.

Under people's own names, many would be much more careful and conformist.

samuelbeniamin• 6 years ago

This article is distasteful with tiny number of facts and a lot of opinions. After all, there is a fact, that he ranked human beings into levels, some higher than the others, some are trouble makers and others are the angles with no fault to be found in them, some are "sheep" and others just "naughty". I do strongly believe that societies are in need for all types of people, some are conventional and some are unorthodox.

peisistratos• 6 years ago

Almost all access to the media, access to the Internet and so forth in the US has been consolidated into the control of six corporations: AT&T/Warner, Comcast, Disney, Newscorp, Sony, and ViacomCBS. As control of almost all communication is centralized under the control of entities ultimately controlled by billionaire heirs, the natural reaction of people will be to struggle over what communications comes out of these channels.

The average inflation adjusted hourly wage is below what it was in the early 1970s in the US. All the wealth has gone to the heirs and a handful of people mostly born into the white upper middle class. Channels of communication are shut down. The monopolies I mentioned shut down Usenet and communication became centralized by them and companies like Facebook.

Everyone I have heard whining about the end of the Enlightenment recently is part of this to the manor born type, as well as their bought off stalking horses in relevant communities.

What is happening is a very natural result of what has been happening for decades. As anti-trust laws are not enforced, as the Fairness Doctrine goes away and our media channels consistently advocate oppression of nationalities alongside a newly militarized police, we don't hear of the monopolization of communication or proletarianization and impoverishment of the population or militarization of the police, the end of the Fairness doctrine - we hear the newly centralized lines of communication can't spew out their propaganda without complaint.

getpost• 6 years ago

I suggest not putting people into quadrants and making an us-vs-them argument. Everyone is exactly the same and also completely unique. At times, some people appear to catalyze change, but it's everyone else that actually makes the change.

There has always been an "immune" reaction to new ideas. That is not going to change for the foreseeable future. Don't worry about it, just keep innovating.

dj_gitmo• 6 years ago

  "This seems, unfortunately, to have been an own goal by Silicon Valley.
  Though the people who run Silicon Valley are almost all independent-minded,
  they've handed the aggressively conventional-minded a tool such as they could
  only have dreamed of."

This comes across as self-aggrandizing and a tad elitist.

  "On the other hand, perhaps the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities 
  is as much the symptom of the departure of the independent-minded as the cause. 
  People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now
  they can become quants or start startups. You have to be independent-minded to
  succeed at either of those."

This is happening for economic reasons. Jobs outside academia pay more than they used to, the US no longer have a high income tax rate like we did in the 1950s, and there is more competition for academic jobs. Maybe at one point deciding to become a quant was independent-minded, but at this point it's a well worn path. Also, I'm sure there are some ideas that would be off-limits in quant circles

phkahler• 6 years ago

I feel like PG has neglected the literature with this one. The two axis are probably aligned with exisiting traits from the field of psychology (agreeableness seems relevant for starters). It's nice that he considered all this, but I think he did so in his own bubble.

There can be benefits from reinventing things in your own way, but to completely overlook the existing work can be a mistake too. There is so much more out there on this stuff than analogies from junior high.

sanxiyn3• 6 years ago

Conventional/independent mind axis is literally Openness of Big Five model. People really should study Big Five. I agree PG is reinventing the wheel.

notacoward2• 6 years ago

Worth noting that the "aggressively non-conformist" quadrant includes not just inventors and leaders but also criminals and trolls. For some reason the essay downplays that.

Also, is it just me, or does it seem like most of pg's recent essays are attempts to "poison the well" against anyone who might try to hold him and his peers accountable for their contributions to the sorry state of our society? He doesn't directly attack them, but he seems to be coming at a general "social pressure is bad" theme from multiple directions lately.

designium4• 6 years ago

I think you can apply his quadrant to usage of mask during Covid and the result speaks for themselves:

Let's play this out for mask wearing:

Top Left: Top doctors asking people to wear masks

Bottom Left: People who are wearing masks

Bottom Right: People who occasionally use masks, or alternatives, bandanas, etc.

Top Right: People who don't want to use masks because of freedom.

mywittyname3• 6 years ago

Go into a conservative areas the the top quadrants flip. Where the Top Left are the People who don't wear masks accost others for doing so and the top right are those wearing the mask in spite of the harassment.

Being an enforcer or a rule breaker is very much dependent upon what the rules are.

pdonis7• 6 years ago

I would describe mask wearing somewhat differently:

Top Left: People who want to throw anyone who isn't wearing a mask in jail.

Bottom Left: People who are wearing masks everywhere, including situations where it doesn't make sense to, because that's what the rules say.

Bottom Right: People who wear masks when it makes sense to wear them, and don't wear masks when it makes sense not to, even if that isn't what the rules say (for example, not wearing a mask when taking a walk outdoors where you can easily social distance, even if the letter of the rules in your area say to wear a mask whenever you leave your house).

Top Right: People who insist on pointing out that the rules on mask wearing are arbitrary and don't allow for common sense, even as they wear masks when common sense says you ought to.

sanxiyn3• 6 years ago

That's because social pressure is bad? I think it is generally agreed that court of public opinion is bad court.

notacoward2• 6 years ago

Do you realize that you just used an appeal to popularity in your argument against popularity?

When (or whether) social pressure is good is a very highly debatable point, and in that debate it's important not to conflate kinds/levels of social pressure. Calling someone out for using the N-word is one thing. Throwing someone in jail for having the wrong political views is quite another. If you, or pg, or anyone else wants to discuss good and bad forms of social pressure, the intellectually honest thing to do would be to make a direct case, not engage in these pigeonholing and semantic exercises to cast others' views in a bad light.

pnathan2• 6 years ago

does it seem like most of pg's recent essays are attempts to "poison the well" against anyone who might try to hold him and his peers accountable for their contributions to the sorry state of our society?

I'm wondering what kind of wack opinion he has that he doesn't want to talk about, and these essays are providing cover for.

I'm extremely loathe to blame specific individuals for the state of systems.

I do think that there is a broad limiting of discourse in the intelligensia in any particular circle. The metaidea is that certain approaches are the local way, don't question them; questioning bounces you to a different circle with its norms. Maybe this is just what happens, and people are noticing it more, but I'm skeptical.

defen4• 6 years ago

I'm wondering what kind of wack opinion he has that he doesn't want to talk about, and these essays are providing cover for.

This is the exact thing the essays are about, though! To use a question from a previous pg essay - I'm not even asking you to share it, just asking if it exists - do you hold any opinions that you believe to be true, yet you dare not share with anyone for fear that you would lose your job and all social connections if you were to reveal that you held that opinion?

Tiktaalik2• 6 years ago

"I'm not a psychopath/sociopath, I'm aggressively non-conformist!"

User233• 6 years ago

I know it's taboo to discuss votes here, so please interpret this generally and not as a cute attempt at recursive self-reference. I think it's actually germane and intellectually interesting in this specific limited context.

Aggressively non-comformist comments are the most reliable way to get downvotes on HN, but sometimes they result in massive upvotes.

Passively conformist comments are the most reliable way to get little to no votes whatsoever on HN.

Aggressively conformist comments are the most reliable way to get moderate upvotes on HN.

Passively non-conformist comments virtually don't exist on HN.

Supposing these observations are accurate, it's interesting to consider why they might be so.

User233• 6 years ago

Aggressively non-comformist comments are the most reliable way to get downvotes on HN, but sometimes they result in massive upvotes.

Thinking on this further, I presume down votes are capped at 5 and up votes are uncapped because of this dynamic. The cost of saying aggressively non-conformist or even outright unpopular things here that don't run afoul of the guidelines is extremely low. I imagine that this good design is part of why the discourse here can be so delightful.

aerosmile• 6 years ago

The amount of negativity in the comments is astonishing (and has been with regards to all of his recent essays). Which is perverse on a couple of levels:

1. PG's essay outlines a theory that the majority of the world is conventionally-minded and doesn't like to discuss new ideas. The comments here perfectly resemble that theory. PG wins. (Edit: at the time of writing, the comments were exclusively negative. This has changed since.)

2. If you don't like his writing and his world view (the brave startup founder is the hero), then why come to HN? Why support someone's website and accelerator/fund if you think they are so wrong?

3. While recognizing the limitations of this framework (see below), let's recognize that PG became very wealthy by employing the brave founder thesis. There's got to be a lot of truth there.

If there's anything wrong with PG's writing, it's that he doesn't spell out the truth for you - which is that in 99% of the cases, you're not the target audience. This essay is the perfect example. The quadrant he's romanticizing about is the smallest one, and of course most people are not going to see themselves resembling those characteristics. Many other essays have this quality - it's easy to walk away realizing that you're either not young enough, or not hard-working enough, or not smart enough, or not in a position to take the required risks to be the target audience. And that hurts, because it's true. Just don't shoot the messenger.

For clarification, all you get from being a part of PG's target audience is having a certain set of traits which are good for one thing, but would also disqualify you from being an astronaut and pursuing many other desirable careers.

bigpumpkin• 6 years ago

"let's instead use the economic success as a proxy for truth."

This is why I think Mark Zuckerberg is always right.

designium4• 6 years ago

"It's futile to fight a war of words over who is right or wrong - let's instead use the economic success as a proxy for truth."

Even though, that's the one of the core tenets of capitalism, I could show you that is not always the way it seems. Think about big corporations located in developing world like Brazil (where I came from), where corruption and bribes run amok. Saying that people and companies that are successful financially and economically is equal to truth and the right path to go, it's dismissing a lot of other context based on "other truth".

The world is much bigger than North America and the PG's text may not apply for different countries and culture. Imagine the same ideal applying to North Korean and Russia, what conclusions do you get from it?

woopwoop• 6 years ago

I don't think the sort of ad hominem you are engaging in here is very useful, or convincing. Ad hominem is exactly what it is: you aren't arguing that the negative comments are wrong, just that the sort of people who make them are dumb conformists in (1), hypocrites in (2), and losers in (3).

notsureaboutpg10• 6 years ago

The most economically successful company in the world is Saudi ARAMCO so what does that say about PG's startup founder thesis?

sanxiyn3• 6 years ago

It proves divine right of kings in general, and House of Saud in particular. Sounds right to me.

zucker423• 6 years ago

If you don't like his writing and his world view (the brave startup founder is the hero), then why come to HN? Why support someone's website and accelerator/fund if you think they are so wrong?

Simple. I'm trying to do exactly what Paul Graham encourages (and what I believe in), and engage fruitfully with people with different ideologies and ways of thinking than me. Plus, there are sometimes interesting technical articles posted here.

The comments here perfectly resemble that theory

Really? I don't see this, so maybe some examples would help. Mostly I see people disagreeing with Graham in unique ways. That doesn't seem like conformism. Would it be better if only people who accepted his premise commented. Isn't that exactly the opposite of what Graham wants (respect for his ideas among people who disagree with him)?

Your third point begs the question.

jfarmer5• 6 years ago

3. It's futile to fight a war of words over who is right or wrong - let's instead use the economic success as a proxy for truth. With few exceptions, you're definitionally going to be less economically successful than PG. Do you think he would have pulled it off if the brave startup founder thesis was fundamentally wrong?

This is so...weird.

All this says is his model draws no conclusions which (1) he acts on and (2) make it impossible for him to generate sufficient economic returns.

What does his model have to say about becoming an expert chess player? A world-class author? An amazing athlete? A successful therapist? If there are people who are successful along those dimensions whose models contradict pg's, then what?

Your statement is almost a tautology.

easymovet• 6 years ago

Sounds like you need an invite to Galt's Gulch

LukaszWiktor• 6 years ago

The first paragraph would me much easier to comprehend if it was a picture.

defnotashton23• 6 years ago

What he really after US vs them tendency of tribalism, he is upset at the overreach of the left and their lacking self criticism. Then ironically lacking self criticism presents an us vs them argument.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

F. Scott

mywittyname3• 6 years ago

In the past, the way the independent-minded protected themselves was to congregate in a handful of places
That may not work this time though,

Ah yes, the classic, "things used to be so much better" argument. Which yeah, if you ignore things like McCarthyism then it probably seems that way. I'm curious how many black, female professor feel that they would have faced less intolerance in American universities before the intolerance wave of the 1980s.

I personally see tolerance as a trade-off in a lot of scenarios. Tolerating discrimination necessarily infringes on the freedoms and well-being of the victims. And tolerating anti-discrimination infringes on the freedoms of the aggressors. Both groups cannot be equally free in such a matter, because the freedom of one is at the expense of another.

henning• 6 years ago

The idea that you can be independently minded as a quant or at a startup is absurd.

If you don't parrot the same bullshit as everyone else as a startup employee, you get fired without feedback because you aren't a "good culture fit." You have two choices: conform, or work somewhere else.

ericsoderstrom• 6 years ago

His point is that the founders and underlying ideas for startups and quantitative trading companies need to be unconventional in order to succeed. Otherwise the returns will already have been captured by the market (in the case of trading) or the product will already have been built (in the case of a startup)

kutorio2• 6 years ago

"worked at a startup" and "founded a (non-trivial) startup" can be quite different.

sgentle• 6 years ago

Never thought I'd see the day that a pg essay crosses over with /r/politicalcompassmemes

The problem with "discussing ideas" as a framing is that it exists in opposition to something. What is that something?

Those whose position favours the status quo would read it in opposition to "not discussing ideas", which is obviously bad. However, to those who find the status quo untenable, the opposite position is "acting on ideas".

Following pg's example, let us consider the following classic debate topic: "is slavery good?" A plantation owner might find themselves tickled by a lively discussion on the subject, replete with a cornucopia of Enlightenment principles and classical liberalism and such. A slave might find this discussion less interesting, because no outcome would lead to their freedom.

It is perhaps telling that slavery was not abolished through free inquiry or the discussion of ideas. It was abolished through acts of state power and, ultimately, violence. Are we to believe in an alternate history where the South was debated out of its peculiar institution? The discussion of ideas gave way to acting on those ideas. The alternative would be a society of endless, meaningless rambling.

Today, if you were still debating "is slavery good?", you would not be a brave free-thinking iconoclast, you would be either an idiot or a very devoted racist. You would get uninvited from lectures and yelled at on Twitter, not because your ideas are too advanced, but because they're too far behind. The debate is over, and the actual free-thinkers have moved on.

It's sad to say, but I think the real lesson of this essay is that political ideas are just like music taste. Whatever your parents were listening to is outdated and embarrassing, whatever the kids are listening to is just angry noise, and miraculously your generation was the only one to stumble upon that which is profoundly, timelessly good.

philwelch6• 6 years ago

Following pg's example, let us consider the following classic debate topic: "is slavery good?" A plantation owner might find themselves tickled by a lively discussion on the subject, replete with a cornucopia of Enlightenment principles and classical liberalism and such.

Historically, the Southern states (which were politically dominated by slaveholders) outlawed all abolitionist literature because they feared that free discussion of ideas would undermine the system.

It is perhaps telling that slavery was not abolished through free inquiry or the discussion of ideas.

90% of the work was done through free inquiry and discourse, ranging from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the publishing of books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The attempts to solve the problem violently (e.g. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry) failed.

It was only when the slave states refused to accept the outcome of a free election and started the civil war that violence became necessary.

The debate is over, and the actual free-thinkers have moved on.

You’ve cherry-picked a specific example that fits that narrative.

mikhailfranco3• 6 years ago

I think you are wrong about the abolition of slavery.

Slavery had existed in almost every society throughout history (and beyond, no doubt). The word slave comes from the Slavs of eastern Europe, who were captured and enslaved by the Turks and Barbary pirates.

Then there was a unique event: Protestant (many non-conformist) groups in the wealthiest democratic country (Britain), decided to campaign on a fundamental principle of Enlightenment and Christian human rights. It was a vivid debate of ideals and economic practicalities, conducted in the Mother of Parliaments, and on the streets outside.

Britain was a major beneficiary of slavery in the American colonies and the Caribbean. It would have renounced the trade, and the practice, in the late 18th century, but the military and economic imperatives of the French Revolution, American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars intervened. So the British slave trade was not abolished until 1807, and the practice of slavery itself in 1833.

Britain also had the largest navy in the world at that time. It not just passed laws for its empire, but also actively blockaded Atlantic ports and intercepted the slave trade from Africa to Spanish and Portuguese colonies (both Catholic, not a coincidence). It was later joined by the northern Yankee navy in the Atlantic and on the Barbary coast of N.Africa. Slavery was abolished in the US and Russia (serfdom) about the same time in the 1860s, but it lingered in Cuba and Brazil toward the end of the 19th century.

T.E.Lawrence commented on the slavery he found in Saudi Arabia during World War 1 (1916) [Seven Pillars of Wisdom]. The practice of legal slavery continued into the 1970s in the Gulf States, and the indentured servitude practiced there today is little different (long working hours in difficult conditions, physical isolation, confiscation of passports, non-payment of wages, no rights in the legal system, sexual abuse of women, etc.). The fact that these countries are undemocratic unenlightened Arabs is also not a coincidence (Arabs seem to have an extra cultural level of racist arrogance, over and above the intolerance of other Muslims in non-Arab countries, such as, say, Iran or Indonesia).

joshuamorton4• 6 years ago

France outlawed slavery in 1315 (later leaders undid this, but it was illegal for a time). Spain did as well in the 1500s. The Catholic Church condemned the slave trade in the 1600s.

So by the time the "non-conformists" were openly discussing whether or not slavery should be banned, the Conformists (the catholic church) had already stated it was bad.

The fact that these countries are undemocratic unenlightened Arabs is also not a coincidence (Arabs seem to have an extra cultural level of racist arrogance, over and above the intolerance of other Muslims in non-Arab countries, such as, say, Iran or Indonesia).

Yiiiiiiiiiikes.

GCA10• 6 years ago

Lots of great ideas here -- but in keeping with all top-vintage Paul Graham essays, he takes his best points to about 130% of their validity.

So I'd like to weigh in on this assertion: "To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong."

Not so. To be a successful scientist, you need to be orderly, fast and well-connected in finding all the rest of the Next Rights, once a few of your peers (or you) have opened up a whole new river of truth by finding the first right. (See James Watson, Ernest Lawrence, etc.)

You can see this in the evolution of practically every exciting field, whether it's subatomic physics, molecular biology, paleontology, etc.

This dynamic requires a fifth state in Graham's admirably simple 2x2 grid. We need to recognize people that can be defiant non-conformists when the moment presents itself -- and then work within the system to make the most of their second and third-order insights as the world embraces their big idea.

The concept of the brilliant, isolated, irritable genius is a mainstay of a certain kind of movie or novel. But in real life, the most effective disrupters are just as good at forming large teams that lead the charge toward the next right (once they've found their breakthrough idea) as in coming up with that breathtakingly strange new idea in the first place.

reginaldo• 6 years ago

I also stopped on the assertion about the successful scientist, but instead of outright disagreeing, I took it to mean that the definition of successful scientists for pg includes mostly the starters of new paradigms, regardless of the ideas being accepted during their lifetimes or not.

vikramkr2• 6 years ago

I'm unsure about your example of James Watson as a successful scientist. He was successful, yes, and was a scientist. But I don't think he was successful as a scientist. Rosalind Franklin made the key scientific insights crucial to figuring out DNA's structure. She wasn't even actually the person that took Photo 51, that was her student. She was, however, the one who presented her insights that the phosphate backbone is on the outside of the molecule, one of the most crucial insights to figuring out how DNA works since prior to that watson crick et al thought the backbone was on the inside. That goes beyond just "contributing" the photo, that's actually generating the scientific insights that unlocked the structure of the molecule before being derided as an assistant incapable of understanding her own data by watson and then dying without a nobel. In light of that, I don't see how watson can get credit as a successful scientist. Crick went on to make other contributions such as codifying the central dogma, watson not so much.

logicslave• 6 years ago

By successful scientist he means someone who changes a scientific paradigm, creates a new field, or really pushes the field forwards. Incremental discoveries are not under this umbrella

clairity• 6 years ago

"This dynamic requires a fifth state in Graham's admirably simple 2x2 grid. We need to recognize people that can be defiant non-conformists when the moment presents itself..."

to be aggressively non-conformist, that's the critical mistake pg makes: we're dynamic, complicated creatures embedded in an infinitely complex system. who we are in a given moment is not who we are at another moment. to define ourselves as "being" one type or the other is a gross error of static categorization. we're each of them at different moments in our lives, frittering among them, and beyond them, constantly.

put succinctly: fuck labels.

that's not to say the conceptual framework isn't useful, but his static application of it is in error.

Tiktaalik2• 6 years ago

Abundantly clear from his Twitter that like so many others that are used to having an unassailable platform of privilege to express themselves, PG has recognized that normal people now have a voice to push back and criticize opinions he has, and so he's joined those expressing "concern" about this.

Instead of expressing in concrete terms his views to make them available for criticism, he talks about the dangers of "cancel culture" instead, presumably because he knows his views are now beyond community norms and they'd get him cancelled.

This essay is a scaffolding effort to rebrand people that would seek to express intolerant opinions as "independent minded" and "free inqueryiers" so that they can escape criticism.

Nah sorry not gonna work.

pdonis7• 6 years ago

an unassailable platform of privilege to express themselves

Anyone can start a website and post essays on it. If many more people read PG's essays than other people's, that's because he has done things that attract a wider audience.

divbzero• 6 years ago

  aggressively conventional-minded │ aggressively independent-minded
  ─────────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────
     passively conventional-minded │    passively independent-minded

dencodev5• 6 years ago

I'm not sure I find much meaning in this essay because everyone's definition of "conventional" and "independent" depends on their own bias. PG's own definition of independently minded seems to be "they have all the new ideas". If that's the case, then universities are absolutely a place of independently minded people when compared to the baby boomers and older generations.

Speaking out against racism, bigotry, and systemic issues that overwhelmingly impact POC and the LGBTQ+ community is not what I consider "conventionally minded" and definitely counts as a "new idea" when viewing it through the lens of racism and homophobia in America since its inception. As others posted, it's not clear to me what PG is referring to as conventionally minded at universities, but the issues I mentioned are typically at the forefront of political issues at schools these days.

Here's what I find conventionally minded thinking: supporting capitalism and accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth without guilt. If you're the type of person who sees an abnormally high level of sociopaths in non-profits[1] and honestly believes the "defining quality of nonprofits is to make no profit, not to do good" has any significant basis in reality, perhaps that says more about your bias against non-profits than it does about the people in it. And that bias, to me, reeks of conformity.

1: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1124254508232663040

philwelch6• 6 years ago

Speaking out against racism, bigotry, and systemic issues that overwhelmingly impact POC and the LGBTQ+ community is not what I consider "conventionally minded"

It’s so unconventional that almost every Fortune 500 corporation has done so in unison.

I think there’s a part of pg’s essay that’s doing a lot more work than people realize, because everyone keeps missing it:

“ When measuring conformism, of course, you have to say with respect to what, and this changes as kids get older. For younger kids it's the rules set by adults. But as kids get older, the source of rules becomes their peers. So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite.”

dencodev5• 6 years ago

It’s so unconventional that almost every Fortune 500 corporation has done so in unison.

For literally the first time in history, and most of the Fortune 500 "speaking out" is just empty words without any real action. Look how progressive Amazon is, putting the BLM banner on their homepage for a couple weeks. Meanwhile Bezos is still perpetuating awful working conditions that disproportionately impact his POC employees.

I'm in my 30s and rules in my life are not set by my peers. They're set by the older generations who overwhelmingly feel and act like "Fuck you, got mine". My life is overwhelmingly dictated by the rich and powerful and privileged, everywhere from where I live and how I live to where I work and how I work. I have very little say in how my life works, and it's rare that I ever see someone my age having any impact on that.

Also, people (and university students) don't live in a bubble. It is absolutely independently minded to grow up around parents and teachers that all have the same beliefs and then to be able to form your own beliefs that diverge largely from theirs. Just because you have people around you that made the same step doesn't make you conformist.

frasermince• 6 years ago

While I think there might be a grain of truth here I really disagree with how he states it. He seems to be really placing higher value on the isolated genius who does great things despite society being against him. This seems to be based on a lot of pretension and dismisses people who do not think like him.

With how he defines conformity and nonconformity one could argue that the flatearther surrounded by non flatearthers could be a nonconformist. I would argue it's not conformity or lack there of that leads to effectiveness, but instead an indifference to conforming leading to a pursuit of the truth regardless of if it is mainstream or not. So I would say his quadrant system does not define the independent minded person he talks about later in the article.

I think he is in the right ballpark when it comes to pointing to the clear eyed visionary who is willing to look past the orthodox of those around them. But I think his formulation of such an idea is reductionistic. People I would view as conformist have their own worldviews and often pride themselves as nonconformists. Worldviews are a complicated thing and if we write off the majority of people as "sheep" or just part of the problem we become part of a contempt culture that can be really toxic.

GavinB• 6 years ago

Yes, flat-earthers would probably count as non-conformist. I think the point is that in order to have Galileo, you have to tolerate flat-earthers as well.

I do agree that calling most people "sheep" is uncharitable, and would add that calling aggressive conformists "stupid" is also not accurate or productive. They might be making stupid decisions, but they're not stupid people.

bittercynic• 6 years ago

I disagree, and would count flat-earthers as highly conformist - it's just that they're conforming to an unconventional view.

solmans2• 6 years ago

To view the majority of human beings as livestock, metaphorically or not, really shows the kind of person he is. Everyone is for the most part unique and will have bouts of aggressive independent mindedness. No one is constantly questioning the system or breaking rules, Paul would like to think that's what he does but in reality he is more of a conformist than he thinks and if he saw himself this way he would probably not use the term 'sheep' to describe it.

analbumcover• 6 years ago

All successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. So it's no coincidence that societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay.

This seems very conventional-minded, to use Graham's terminology. Thinking that technological innovation is the hallmark of a prosperous society is conventional thinking, at least in Western Society. As is espousal of capitalism, democracy, etc.

I don't see aggressive independent-mindedness except in criminals, dissidents, and radicals. He repeatedly asserts that tech CEOs are independent-minded mavericks, but I just don't see any evidence of that.

jfarmer5• 6 years ago

If you write several essays about "the way society works" and they consistently resolve to a protagonist who happens to be very much like yourself, you're probably writing about your own mind, not society.

acpetrov• 6 years ago

Society's only protagonist is the individual

jfarmer5• 6 years ago

Society isn't a story and therefore doesn't have a protagonist.

ordinaryradical• 6 years ago

It's ironic that he describes social media as an own goal but there isn't the introspection accompanying it that would lead to the obvious point you've made so well.

Everyone in SV wants to be "up and to the right" in every quadrant map of anything. How comforting to simplify life to those terms, to exceptional winners and conventional deadweight. But if society takes your myopic vision and resulting creation and then eats itself and all its democratic institutions, to paraphrase Prinicpal Skinner:

"Am I so out of touch? No, it's the users who are wrong."

jfarmer5• 6 years ago

Absolutely! You can see it in this thread, even. There are folks excited by the prospect of using the phrase "aggressively non-conformist".

pg is providing memetic ammunition for the very "culture wars" he claims he's trying to sit out. No introspection (or at least no _evidence_ of introspection), exactly as you say.

LordFast• 6 years ago

If many people find agreements with a person's notions of conformity, by the evidence of the popularity of their writings, does that make these people conformists, and therefore engenders conformist attitudes towards the author's point of view on non-conformity?

Genuinely pondering.

jfarmer5• 6 years ago

I think the one-dimension "conformist" / "non-comformist" axis isn't useful.

We all participate in orthodoxies that we're blind to (or at least not fully aware of). The only questions are "Which ones?" and "What are the consequences of our participation?"

In that sense, we're all "conformists".

tmaly• 6 years ago

When the conventional-minded get the upper hand, they always say it's in the service of a greater good. It just happens to be a different, incompatible greater good each time

I think its hard to imagine people on the other side of your positions and world view. If your team is winning, you do not stop to think of those on the opposite side of the coin. But circumstances change, you could be on that opposite side of the coin someday.

Enforcers of orthodoxy can't allow a borderline idea to exist, because that gives other enforcers an opportunity to one-up them in the moral purity department, and perhaps even to turn enforcer upon them. So instead of getting the margin for error we need, we get the opposite: a race to the bottom in which any idea that seems at all bannable ends up being banned.

Free expression of ideas or something else filtered by those that own the platforms. Is that the choice we have?

breuleux• 6 years ago

I'm a bit uncomfortable with how he romanticizes the "aggressively independent" quadrant as being the quadrant of startup founders, great innovators and Galileo (those with good ideas), even though that quadrant also clearly contains anti-vax leaders, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler (those with bad ideas). I'm sorry I had to go there, but it's true. People in both aggressive quadrants are extremely dangerous.

I'm also uncomfortable with his defence of free will because of how... conventional it is. It's nothing I haven't read a million times before. Like it or not, "free speech is good" is one of the most conventional statements one could make in current society, and it is consequently pushed by a lot of aggressively conventional people. Whether they are right or not is besides the point here. The point is that it is not, as portrayed, a fight between the independent-minded and the conventional-minded. It is perfectly reasonable for independent-minded people to question it, as they would question any other widespread norm, and a lot of its staunchest proponents are conventional-minded.

Balgair• 6 years ago

In my experience, Universities in the US aren't the place to place your bets on.

It's hard to explain in a short HN comment, so my apologies here if it's a bit gripe-y and disjointed.

I've just gotten the feeling that the Universities, very much including the STEM departments, are all about funding. Since the funding is largely controlled by other professors in the field (via Study Sessions), you have to get on the good side of many people. The after-talk drinking sessions at major conferences are a key way to do this.

If you're 'likable' and a 'big' name, then committees send funding your way. After all, at that level, every proposal is pretty much gold anyways. I remember a Nature editor telling a class once that they could shut down the submissions portal at about noon January 1st and see no drop in the quality of what they published for the year. Still, Nature and funding committees have to dole out things. So, when given the choices of people you know and people you don't, you tend to go with people you know (academic pedigree is also super important here).

So 'rocking the boat' is very much discouraged, your mortgage depends on you not doing that. Then the same issues that we see on Twitter occur as well. The louder voices tend to get more 'views', as long as the voice is stating the orthodox opinions. In STEM fields, it's less bad in terms of the research (facts very much matter), but the underlying culture is just the same as with all humans.

If you get into the replication crisis issues, then it's the funding crunch on steroids. Those fields tend to be all about 'name', as the facts have become so difficult to obtain that no one could 'fact check' even if they wanted to (nutrition, bio, psych, fMRI, etc). I'm still surprised that particle physics hasn't fallen down this hole and I think that their 'culture' is one to look into.

Again, apologies on the rant here. Still, heterodox opinions (not facts, to be clear) are not the place for Universities in the US anymore.

I'd look at where all the Burners went after about 2012 to find the better places to deal with the aggressively independent minded. Ephemerisle is a thought, but those guys are a bit wacko in terms of covid-19 safety, though that may just be a side effect. Maybe the Rainbow gatherings?

mikhailfranco3• 6 years ago

I read almost all of the essay assuming that the conventional-minded people meant the woke cultural Marxists. They are the conventional wisdom today. He should have used the word conservative:

[1] On (The Future Of) Conservatism

.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5T3sWAg0w

Most young Western people seem to be conventional in the progressive tradition, because they were indoctrinated at school and university by ex-hippies from the 1960s, who couldn't actually do anything, so they all became teachers. Sixty years is more than enough to become the conventional wisdom.

Marx proposed a keen and mesmerizing analysis of Capitalism, a plausible (but wrong) diagnosis, then a completely ridiculous and laughably naive solution. Real class-based Marxism was proved wrong many times over, so the Frankfurt School and 1960s French philosophers decided to switch the dialectic, from class-based polarization, to group identity politics and the anti-scientific relativism of non-truths. Struggle by any other name would smell as sweet.

America is now in the middle of its Maoist Cultural Revolution. Let's see what happens. The world is watching. Does the Enlightenment survive? It's certainly up for grabs at this point.

The precedent is not good. China was utterly laid waste for decades by Mao. Tens of millions died, leaving a legacy of intellectual, historical and economic impoverishment.

It is hard to imagine anyone more evil than Mao, because his fear-mongering catastrophes and casual genocides were so routinely inflicted against his own people, his supportive party colleagues, his family, his (ex)wives, and even his children:

[2] Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang & Jon Halliday.

[3] Nine Commentaries on the (Chinese) Communist Party

.... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLED64004A96BE76FA

[4] Evolution Of Evil: Mao Zedong

.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaWmqgmJxs

Let us see what happens in America ...

dilandau2• 6 years ago

In which pg spills a few hundred words humblebragging about his maverick status.

I think the thing to measure is defiance rather than conformity, by the way. Much more interesting.

maCDzP• 6 years ago

I'm biased, I admit, but it seems to me that aggressively conventional-minded people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world

I agree with this statement. But I would also agree with the opposite: Aggressively independent-minded are also responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world.

Maybe, they are even more disproportionaterly responsible since they are a really small group?

My 5 cents.

erichocean3• 6 years ago

And the call of the aggressively independent-minded is "Eppur si muove."

I wonder if PG picked that specific phrase ("And yet it moves") because of the recent brouhaha over IQ and genetics….

smhost• 6 years ago

This is so meandering and incoherent that it's hard to comment on, but the idea that silicon valley and finance types are "independent-minded" is downright laughable. It's pretty clear that those types are in lock-step with each other ideologically, maybe broadly split between east-coast and west-coast aesthetically.

This categorization is such nonsense. People in the hard sciences don't neatly fall into a type, and in fact is almost the opposite. In physics and math (maybe especially in math and physics), people are split right down the middle between conventional and independent. pg just doesn't seem to understand the internal politics of the sciences.

vgfalk• 6 years ago

I do not agree that the essay is incoherent, the general line of thought is very clear: Independently of left or right, conformists of the passive, aggressive, or passive aggressive variety can ruin societies and free thinking.

Conformists can also easily switch sides.

Indeed the insertion of Silicon Valley was a bit unnecessary. They are ruthless capitalists that currently pretend to be socialist for profit and hiring motives as well as suppressing weak software developers by confusing them with new ideologies every week.

avs7332• 6 years ago

i.e., aggressive-conformists masquerading as aggressive independent thinkers

kristianc4• 6 years ago

Right - and there’s the tacit assumption flowing throughout is that the ‘independent thinkers’ have only good things to say, and that societal norms have not evolved for any good reason.

The state, particularly the welfare state, is partly a recognition that together we can achieve a level of protection for each other that we cannot achieve independently.

And if the independent thinkers don’t much feel like writing open source software, writing political treatises or contributing to Wikipedia articles and instead feel like spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories online, then what?

Like most business quadrants of this type, it gets you to agree to its typology of the world and the rest flows naturally from there. But the typology usually can be called pretty easily into question.

NoodleIncident4• 6 years ago

"people agreed on things in the past that we don't agree with today" - arguably true, but historians get mad sometimes depending on the specifics, they might have a point

"therefore anything we agree on today is 100% arbitrary BS and only my own ideas matter" - ...what? Are you ok?

pjscott2• 6 years ago

Regarding your first paragraph, consider these two claims:

1. Progress comes from people who are willing to ignore conventional wisdom and social norms.

2. The conventional wisdom is mostly wise, and social norms evolved in ways that are mostly good.

These claims don't conflict. It's entirely possible for independent thinkers to be mostly wrong, much wronger than the mainstream, and to be essential for progress. Most changes may not be improvements, but every improvement is still a change.

avs7332• 6 years ago

Excessive dimension reduction is a scourge in social science, and in societal commentary by just about everyone. So, yes - I agree with your point entirely, and I think it can be made much more concrete honestly by adding another dimension:

The why of independence

Notably, that is the harder one to create a surface level observation of. But take his favored quadrant:

"And the kids in the upper right quadrant, the aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones. When they see a rule, their first impulse is to question it. Merely being told what to do makes them inclined to do the opposite."

Is it merely being told what to do causes them to question something? So its the rule demands questioning of it? or is what he is really looking for that they question the reasoning and demand valid reasoning? One is just contrarian, one is self aware. Some people start with contrarianism as a poorly articulated path to demanding valid reasoning...At times Elon Musk sounds like a contrarian, at times he sounds like a reasoned risk taker, I'm not investing in that.

In the end, Paul sounds a bit like he's trying to take a roundabout way to make fun of the high school jocks...

mcguire3• 6 years ago

Do the naughty ones question rules, or do they just break them?

chillacy2• 6 years ago

I think that you'll find all four types in most societies, and that which quadrant people fall into depends more on their own personality than the beliefs prevalent in their society.

Personality is a real topic of psychology research, the current model is a five-factor model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

But the distributions are not bi-modal, so in reality most people are near the center of this quadrant with (I assume normally distributed) outliers.

alexashka• 6 years ago

Paul Graham continues to re-invent what others have pointed out in more succinct and clever ways.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/

You can almost guess what Paul is going to write about - just see what cliche is being discussed on Twitter and come up with the laziest thought that an average programmer will find 'insightful' - that's Paul Graham's next 'essay' :)

boreas• 6 years ago

People spend so much time on the "meta-conversation" about the ecosystem of ideas, and so little time talking about the actual ideas themselves.

What are these repressed debates people are so anxious about? Is it just race stuff?

dennis_jeeves3• 6 years ago

People spend so much time on the "meta-conversation"

I have wondered about that. What is your guess ? ( other than race)

rafiki6• 6 years ago

As with all human attempts to categorize things, the 4 categories should actually be a spectrum, and the ends of the spectrum should be called into question based on PG's definition here. I mostly agree. I think I probably fall on the more "independent-minded" end of the spectrum (as we all like to think). But there is value in conformism and value in independence of thought. PG should realize the fact that he wrote this essay and is still alive is a good example of where things are today vs. in the era of feudalism or even the era of WW2 :)

I agree with his take on academia though. That whole institution is limping along.

michaelmrose3• 6 years ago

For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so.
So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite

Which is it?

kristianc4• 6 years ago

For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so.

Luckily there’s an easy way to verify this - how many of the current YC cohort are B2B SaaS startups?

Today’s collection of startup CEOs are the very opposite of aggressively independent minded - they’re people who 15 years ago would have done an MBA or gone into finance.

kutorio2• 6 years ago

Initially I wondered if pg was insinuating that startup hubs could replace universities as the new haven of independent thinking:

"People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups."
"If existing institutions are compromised, they'll create new ones."

However, after reading through the essay a second time, I'm more pessimistic about the positive conclusion of the essay. If startups succeed by "make stuff people want", and given there are "far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones", then perhaps independent-minded CEOs making tools for conventional-minded people is not a rare accident, but rather an inevitability.

mcguire3• 6 years ago

Imagine a world where people weren't divided into the "us-es" and the "them-s". Particularly by someone who is wealthy and powerful. And most particularly when the "them-s" are clearly intended to be untermensch.

For one thing, I don't know how many people Graham has interacted with over the years; probably a great deal more than I have given that I'm quite shy as well as a confirmed misanthrope. However, I do know a fair number of people and exactly none of them fit neatly into "aggressively/passively conventional/independent". (For one, I had an uncle that was a staunch Baptist and had been the sheriff of De Baca county, NM, who conspiratorially confided that he liked a glass of red wine of an evening.) Everyone is conventional about somethings and independent about others, and everyone is sometimes aggressive and sometimes passive about those things.

"[T]he aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales." Yes, of course they are. I note that "whistle-blower" is a synonym of "tattletale".

"[T]he passively conventional-minded, are the sheep." Yes, naturally, sheep. (https://xkcd.com/1013/) And is it just me or is really hard to tell the "passively conventional-minded" from the "passively independent-minded"?

"[T]he passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones." Those kooky cloud-cuckoo-land dwellers. Just try not to be on the side of the road while they're driving, 'cause they're probably not paying attention.

"[T]he aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones." Yes, of course. "Eppur si muove." Or possibly "Give me all of the cash in the drawer or I'll shoot you in the face." (Remember, there are all kinds of rules.)

"And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders."

Indeed. Remember, "conventional" is bad, "independent" is good, and bad is conventional while good is independent. There were never, ever, any independent minded defenders of slavery. (Louis Agassiz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz) - well, technically he opposed slavery, because it led to mixing the races; Nikola Tesla (https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/remembering-nikol...) - well, ok, a little late for slavery. Let's just say that you probably shouldn't investigate your heroes too thoroughly.) Anyway, I'm vaguely surprised Graham never worked "muggle" into this essay. Maybe he used another word. Normie? Mundane?

"For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so." Yes. Travis Kalanick. Elizabeth Holmes. Adam Neumann. Doug Evans. Jeffrey Skilling. Martin Shkreli. Bernard L. Madoff. Arthur Sackler. All aggressively independent-minded, I assure you. But didn't Peter Thiel found Palantir?

So what are these "bad ideas" whose discussion he's worried about banning? The great heros of the Confederacy? President Trump's genius? The moral and physical weakness of women?

Now, I realize that disagreeing with The Paul Graham goes strongly against the conventional wisdom here on Hacker News. Naturally, one can only be a rebel if one wears the right uniform. Perhaps I'm not being independent-minded in the right way. But here's a prediction for you: "aggressively conventional-minded" is going to replace "virtue signaling" as the favorite dismissal of ideas that the independent-minded don't want to consider. And "independent-minded" will be the new "politically incorrect"; a way to blunt criticism of repugnant words and actions.

(Did he really say that professors of engineering were independent-minded? Does he know any? I mean, real engineers, not 27-year-old senior software engineers. I mean, that's way outside my experience.)

happy-go-lucky• 6 years ago

You refuse to conform to conventions because you're independent-minded. As a business owner, to what extent would you allow your workers to be nonconformist?

By the way, I belong to the right upper quadrant, and I cannot answer my own question without being hypocritical.

solmans2• 6 years ago

We'd all like to think we belong to Paul's upper right quadrant (which, mind you, isn't even very well defined) but in truth you, me, and even Paul himself are more conformist than we think and recognising that is an important step in being intelligent and not shielding yourself from criticism.

For example, I don't think wanting to go and pursue a business idea is independent minded. The overwhelming majority of people would like to do this, even your employees. Actually putting in the effort isn't very independent minded either since it's mostly a matter of how much capital, free time, and social safety nets you have, not how much of a free radical you are.

miguelmota• 6 years ago

The first is that any process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid.

Especially the people who enforce the laws. Law enforcement police officers have to follow orders without question. People who don't question things are inherently stupid.

tgflynn2• 6 years ago

This is a good essay, but I don't think he gets it quite right. I agree with the horizontal axis: conventional vs. independent but I don't think the view he presents of aggressiveness is quite accurate.

I do think that a major axis for classifying humans is the extent to which they desire to impose their views on others through coercion. This seems to be partly what Graham is trying to capture but his description doesn't seem to quite fit. In particular I have a hard time thinking of anyone who wants to impose their own independent-mindedness on others through coercion. Typically they just want the conventional minded to leave them alone so they can work on their independent ideas and hopefully prove them right. Of course they may want to convince a few people, such as investors, of the value of their ideas before they have been proven, but that isn't the same kind of coercion that the aggressively conventional-minded employ to silence dissent.

TomMckenny• 6 years ago

[edit]

I had a lengthy more thoughtful post here but it seems I had mistaken a pronouncement for a discussion. The near instant voting response made me realize that absurdity, especially in light of the fact that I am responding to the second of two posts by the site's governance where college professors are singled out as a threat to freedom even as unmarked vans and secretive police round up the "dreaded" diversity proponents in Portland and other cities.

So I shall leave it to persons devoted to maximizing short term profits from new products and the "freethinking" commentary from persons seeking funding from same, to bloviate on how to "protect" society from intellectuals and liberalism.

tgflynn2• 6 years ago

You could probably measure the extent to which HN users are aggressively-conventional minded by how often they downvote comments without replying to them.

WesternStar• 6 years ago

I think the idea that people are the same no matter what the rules are just isn't true. It stated as though it is obvious and I need evidence that that is the case. The rest of the argument falls apart based on that point.

sinker8• 6 years ago

There's a subtype he doesn't mention but I think deserves notice and is especially pertinent to today's environment. That is, the conventionally-minded who is convinced they are die-hard independently-minded.

People like this come across by chance doctrine which appeal to a special part of themself, be it religious, political, or social doctrine. They hardily embrace the newfound doctrine and denounce others as having fundamentally the wrong framework of thinking. They come across like-minded people and make blanket statements against their detractors and constantly reformulate the perception of their ideology to be in the right.

In one sense, they believe themselves to be highly individualistic because they go against what they perceive to be the overall grain of society. This lends them conviction.

But in reality, their beliefs are not actually contrarian or minority beliefs, and these people would never had nurtured these beliefs or had the courage to actually publicly express them without the implicit support of some large chunk of society.

I believe this to be the reality today. So many people are deluded in thinking they are the small, under-represented, minority, oppressed group when they actually function as the oppressors to people who are sincerely independently-minded.

And when one who is independently-minded sees another who is deluded they are independently-minded, but in reality is aggressively-conventional, we cannot help but notice the hypocrisy.

eindiran• 6 years ago

I think the example of the students of the Princeton professor is very similar to this subtype:

I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it.

Most people, myself included, like to believe that they are independently-minded. Given that most people aren't independently-minded, most people are wrong.

robzhu• 6 years ago

Can you provide an example?

sinker8• 6 years ago

Yes. Both staunch Republicans and Democrats portray themselves as always being on the back foot, being attacked, and on the verge of losing control from the other party due to some contentious and highly important issue. Each side portrays themself as their views originating from reason (independence of thinking) and the other side as excreted out of ideology (convention).

uniqueid• 6 years ago

I don't share many of the views in Paul's essay, but there was one point he made with which I emphatically agree: like Paul, I too believe anyone who disagrees with me is just too small-minded to understand my argument.

sharker8• 6 years ago

They may just have a different system of axiomatic beliefs and are stuck in their own inconsistent state (per godels incompleteness theorem). I actually think most 'disagreements' fall into this fundamental 'human condition' so to speak.

BoiledCabbage4• 6 years ago

There is a subtype that is especially pertinent... the conventionally-minded who is convinced they are die-hard independently-minded.
I believe this to be the reality today. So many people are deluded in thinking they are the small, under-represented, minority, oppressed group when they actually function as the oppressors to people who are sincerely independently-minded.

This right here is the fundamental undercurrent of what's happening is society.

One of the topics that PG mentions is heresy. The topic of discussing things that a group feels shouldn't be discussed. I wish he went into more detail about it, because if you do it flushes out some interesting ideas.

Heresy exists in two important directions. Heresy against people in power, and heresy against people without power. Upwards heresy, and downwards heresy.

Upwards heresy usually is quashed, ignored or mocked. People without power performing heresy are "dealt with" by those with power. Either they are made to pay an immediate cost, or their view/opinion is not allowed to make it into the collective mainstream conversation. It gets labeled as wrong, inappropriate or simply dismissed. Most of the time you don't even hear about it because those without power have little recourse to elevate the visibility of the retaliatory actions. People with power define what heresy is - and it's defined to be the things they object to.

Downward heresy (people in power performing it) is usually entirely invisible. The people without power who are the "targets" of it have no relative power to respond to it. They don't have enough sway in the system to object to it, to call it out. If they did, they would face large repercussions by those in power that committed it. Because people with power usually can dictate what is acceptable discourse, downward heresy is usually deemed acceptable. As well, they use the term heresy to effect more power. To limit what groups can and can't do. Imagine the church using the term heresy to limit what followers can do to avoid competition religions, or to justify wars by accusing other groups of heresy.

Where things become interesting is where people without relative power gain a bit to the point they are able to call a subset of things committed by those in power as heresy. They can call out downard heresy. Here is where things blow up. The group accustomed to defining what is acceptable and not, no longer fully controls that, but they still have enough power, or influence to raise a storm when it happens. They will immediately turn to using any any all methods they have to shout how unfair it is that they can't think these thoughts, or utter these phrases. While they make thing this, of course this isn't truly the case. They enforce heresy rules all the time, but noone questions it when they do it - it just accepted as a normal part of society. The problem is that a group they deem without power, or with lesser power is holding influence over them. And that is what they can't stand. This is the group in power claiming to be oppressed. This is the majority claiming to not be. This is what causes friction in society, as it is a group with power revolting at the idea that a group with less power can affect them.

A Christian in the US is not under-represented (compared to non-Christians). And yet I hear so much of this claim recently. A man in this country, is not oppressed (in comparison to women). A heterosexual isn't oppressed. I'm a member of multiple groups above, and yet know this to be true.

Those groups (and others) can still face extreme difficulties. And live lives waaaay worse than members of other groups - but the idea that they are a under-represented oppressed group is flat out wrong.

The friction you hear is that these are groups with power, don't really don't like the fact that members of other groups in these same dimensions have some amount of power to now call out things that aren't ok. In general these dominant power groups have never had anyone other group have any influence over what they can and can't do, while they have help enormous amounts of power over what the other groups in these dimensions are able to do and the consequences they are subject to. As the saying goes, if you're always used to being over someone, being equal feels unfair.

The most notable part, is that the only type of heresy that PG writes about is the third of these. The least interesting of them all.

majormajor• 6 years ago

Yeah, the idea that the American past was some better home to more open public discourse is obviously false on the face of it. The voices of minority groups are barely present in the history books, because they were barely present in the public discussion of the time.

Look at the national anthem (adopted by the government in 1931) or pledge of allegiance (adopted by the government in 1942). The people who get offended by others not standing during them would hardly identify their own reaction as "political correctness," and yet... is it a good thing that the government adopted a "pledge" or proscribes expected behavior during a song?

That's the "free speech" past we think we want to go back to?

We forget about the right-in-your-face "political correctness" and "rightthink" demonstrations of the past, since we didn't live through them, and just accept them as-is.

bendbro12• 6 years ago

I think your argument makes sense. It fits well with my experiences with "MAGAers" and "SJWs". I also think this style of politics is here to stay, as it is the dominate strategy. America has a fracturing hegemony: there is no longer a single universally shared set of basic beliefs. Because we no longer share the same basic beliefs, disagreements are now less likely to be due to logical validity and more likely due to unshared premises. This means the way of politics I think we'd all prefer, of arguing logically from shared core beliefs, will be less useful, making the alternative, arguing emotionally about premises, more effective. I think people "come[ing] across by chance doctrine which appeal to a special part of themself, be it religious, political, or social doctrine" is this effect in action.

Though, some criticisms of what you said:

1. It can depend on surroundings. A leftoid will rightly feel like an independent mind in a conservative area and a rightoid will rightly feel like an independent mind in a liberal area.

2. Your logic can misidentify skeptics as traditionalists. It is easy to misconstrue a progressively minded skeptic as a conservative because they criticize most currently popular progressive issues.

On a personal note: as a progressively minded skeptic, in my experiences with society, coworkers, friends, significant others, and family, I feel I have increasingly been lumped in as a "deplorable conservative." I have felt this cultural shift coming for many years now, when "SJWs" (I know this hits a sour note with many liberals, but I don't know how else to succinctly categorize these people) first started cropping up in the spaces I frequented:

0. The removal of Christmas celebration from my elementary school

1. Atheism+

2. My school's official hackathon group (was taken over by left leaning people who said you cannot form teams based on peoples' programming ability)

3. My school's official programming FB group banning "spicy" posts (an example being one where people were arguing failing fizzbuzz is an acceptable way to decide someone is not a programmer)

4. My school via the coed programming fraternity- it was a place full of people involved in 2 and 3

5. The wider programming community (donglegate, stallman's cancellation, linus and sarah sharp controversy, github and meritocracy, redis CoC controversy, etc)

6. Gamergate (specifically attempts to politically pressure games to alter their stories and design to suit audiences that aren't the typical customer).

7. Politics that are safely expressable at work without having a meet 'n greet with HR. Very, very far left ideas are routinely plastered at work, and political "courageous conversations" meetings expect exclusively uncourageous mainstream ideas.

8. Politics that are safely expressable with acquaintances, friends, and family without risk of being excommunicated.

9. For brevity, I exclude many others.

Thankfully, the latest batch of ideas (abolish police, abolish suburbs, abolish capital gains) have such a large impact that it has finally given me a hill worth dying on, and I feel free to non-anonymously express, with all the snark of a twitter checkmark, that these ideas blow ass. If that skepticism makes me an oppressor, then I embrace being one. I suppose I do deserve some credit for not being silent, since that would be violence.

sinker8• 6 years ago

At some point ideology meets reality and that's when things begin to crumble.

If we construct society and organizations as if merit is not a highly important parameter in achievement, wealth, and success - and instead rely on cosmetics, as if this were inconsequential, then we'll see erosion in all factors which deem a nation or organization successful.

grandmczeb6• 6 years ago

Thankfully, the latest batch of ideas (abolish police, abolish suburbs, abolish capital gains) have such a large impact that it has finally given me a hill worth dying on

Who's seriously calling to "abolish suburbs"? It's easy to stand up against ideas no one is advocating for - that's called a straw man.

geodel• 6 years ago

That is, the conventionally-minded who is convinced they are die-hard independently-minded.

I do not see as sub-type. Aggressively-conventionally minded most assuredly think of them as independent minded.

Other than that I agree with you. These type of people make statement equivalent of 'Earth revolve around the sun' in 21st century. And then their circle-jerk jumps in, claiming what a 'brave' and 'stunning' position they have taken.

dataisfun• 6 years ago

The categorization is interesting albeit deeply ungrounded in any real rigor and seems of a piece with one of his other recent essays, in which he developed a psychoanalytic theory of the various kinds of "haters" and "losers."

Further, I wish Paul Graham would try to convey his ideas with less condescension and smugness. There's a sense in which he maligns large swaths of humanity as somehow defective or worthy of shame. Certainly the term "idiots" doesn't help.

Further there's an essentialism and determinism that's sort of disturbing (labeling preschoolers as sheep is kind of messed up) and lacking in empathy.

Finally I suppose this is obvious, but I'm guessing Graham situates himself as a paragon of fierce independent-minded thinking and courage. It's rather easier to do that when you're absurdly independently wealthy. Thinking through the courageous stand countless people are taking even right now around the world, risking life and limb, just makes this feel a bit like a grievance-laden tempest in a teapot.

webmaven3• 6 years ago

"[A]ny process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid."

This is pg conflating conformity (because conformists* would largely be the ones choosing to undertake the work of deciding which ideas to ban) with stupidity, which... is pretty telling... and wrong.

Intelligence (to the extent that we even understand what it is) seems largely orthogonal to both of the axes pg presents in his essay, and isn't strongly correlated with any particular personality traits at all.

dennis_jeeves3• 6 years ago

Good points.

hristov• 6 years ago

This is a good essay and an important one, but I think it completely ignores one very important aspect of the present social discourse.

It is unfortunate, but some people in the world are politically weak and some are powerful. The weak are often marginalized and/or treated unfairly in various ways. Often the only way the weak can gain strength or political power is through common action. Common action first makes the weak much stronger but also, if well applied it confronts the strong with a moral choice that they cannot escape. Thus, often the politically strong join these common actions simply because it is the right thing to do.

Common action however requires conformism.

It is all fine to be a cool independently minded non-conformist constantly questioning the rules when you are politically powerful. But when you are politically repressed that would probably land you in jail and very quickly. So what is the protection of the politically weak -- to immediately and collectively protest and threaten to damage society if one of them is unfairly hurt. This of course requires iron conformism.

It is not always pretty. It is in fact often ugly. For example, I have noticed that in many countries, the politicians that represent a certain politically repressed minority are often the most corrupt in the country. They are often filthy rich while the community they represent is wallowing in poverty. Why? Because the minority community knows that to split their vote means to be run over. They know that they have to conform and act as one to protect themselves. Thus, they overlook the corruption of their leaders in the interest of common protection. In many minority communities to vote against the chosen candidate is not a sign of individualism but of treason against one's family and friends and neighbors. Not showing up at a protest the community has decided to participate in is treated similarly.

Paul's article is a little vague, so I am not sure exactly what he is talking about when he is lamenting the rise of conformism in US universities. But it is quite possible that this rise of conformism is there to protect vulnerable or politically weak people as much as anything else. University faculty tend to be politically powerful, but because they have relatively secure jobs they often have the freedom of conscience and morality (something many people do not have), and thus they often side with the politically weak.

So, if we want to make our society more safe for non-conformists and presentation of different ideas, we have to make it more fair. This sounds counter-intuitive but it is true. A lot of the so called taboo ideas are taboo because they are connected to a long history of horrible repression and perhaps even a present state of repression, and there is a very real fear that expressing such an idea will continue said repression.

So for example, take the idea that a certain minority race is inherently less intelligent than average. Currently this idea is pretty much taboo. One may argue that in a society that better tolerates non-conformism such an idea even if disliked or even if wrong will get a fair hearing, perhaps be researched etc. But in society where this minority race is politically disadvantaged merely mentioning this idea will result in further repression. People of that race will have difficulty getting jobs as they will automatically be assumed to be stupid. Research will be conducted but at least some of the research will be culturally biased and carefully tailored to reach predetermined conclusions. This is not theoretical. It has pretty much happened already multiple times. See, for example, Jay Coulds excellent book "The Mismeasure of Man".

But if one suggest an idea that does not carry a history of repression with it, such as linking intelligence to an astrological sign or to birth-weight the idea will not be considered taboo and may be fairly researched.

If we can imagine a fair society where someone's race is as inconsequential as their astrological sign, perhaps there would not be that much race related taboos. But that is not yet the case.

analog31• 6 years ago

I wonder if a lot of people are somewhere in the middle, and also, if their position on the quadrants is situational.

dilandau2• 6 years ago

Was PG always so precious, or have I just aged out of appreciating these sublimated attempts at bolstering ones sense of self?

jariel3• 6 years ago

The oddest thing about this essay - is that the people he's kind of lamenting - the 'banners' particularly in academia and the press - are by far not classically conventional or authoritative types.

That's where this analysis goes way wrong.

'Ban culture' is driven by 'aggressive antagonists' who generally have power through the mob, or some kind of 'new' authority, they are 'anti classical power' in their very identity.

I would characterise them as the 'least conventional' people.

The logic I think goes off the rails there.

Banners are 'people angry at the system'. Not 'people adamantly supporting the system'.

Mr. Graham may not realize that those pushing ban culture are in his camp - 'SJW' has more in common with Entrepreneur/CEO and Artist than it does 'Police' or 'Justice System'.

Also the author's choice of words to describe the groups says far more about the author than his musings on personality types.

Most tellingly 'tattletales' and 'quasi-fascists' as those who support the rules and 'Galileo' as those who break them.

It also speaks to class a little bit, because for common people, in reality, the rule breakers are more likely to be actual criminals. Like the 'bad' kind.

The closest 'common science' we can get at would be the 'Big 5' personality types of which 'conscientiousness' is somewhat correlated with following rules. Prisons are full of 'unconscientious people'. And most succesfull people are highly conscientious.

That said, it's not an exact correlation and his 'sheep' type 'vs' aggressive type are probably very differently: conventional people in the burbs, aspirational conventional in business. (I literally read that yesterday, I'm sorry I cannot find the reference, but 'Big 5 conscientiousness' does break down into sub-types).

The underlying problem with the analysis, is that there is often an inherent morality in 'convention', which the author's choice of words seems to kind of deny.

'Look both ways before crossing a street' or 'wear a mask' - these are very important rules to follow, and we need these conventions. None of us are smart enough to really understand the nature of all the rules, so we end up having to follow a lot of them.

Dr. Fauci says 'wear a mask' - and since he's the expert, I trust him on the whole, even though I could point at a myriad issues, I know it's a complicated thing.

Also:

"The first is that any process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid. "

So here's the thing - when CNN is deciding 'who to ban' - this is very bad.

But when Facebook is deciding how to moderate - this is not bad, and Graham is wrong to suggest only dummies would want to do this. This is an astonishingly difficult problem to solve, it's not bounded by the norms we normally understand, so it should be very attractive to real thinkers.

People say horrible, horrible things all the time. Tons of harassment, abuse, doxing, bullying, point-blank racism - and I'm not talking 'intellectuals being called out' - I'm talking 'neighbours don't want the n-word on their street' and 'my boss is a faot', people making death threats. Graham is speaking a little bit from the bubble - 'most' of censorship is simply just getting people to stop saying they're going to kill each other - not 'banning ideas'.

So I think this thought-piece has a big hole: most people shutting down freedom of expression (in the free world) in the more intellectual sense - are not 'conventional' by his own description. Not at all.

bePoliteAlways2• 6 years ago

Convention and independently-minded is based on "majority" belief. With time "majority" belief changes so the one who was "independently-minded" becomes "conventional". Not sure how to categorize the old-convention minded one as.

timoth3y2• 6 years ago

For many years, writers of all political persuasions have divided people into the "independent-thinkers" and the "sheep". Of course, people who think like they do are the independent-thinkers and the others are the sheep.

This article follows the same very old and tired pattern, and it's a shame, because I really enjoy most of Paul Graham's essays.

Has anyone ever seen an attempt to define these terms in an objective, data-driven way? Real data on this might be quite interesting.

marc_abonce• 6 years ago

And of course, there's that relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/610/

timoth3y2• 6 years ago

There is always a relevant XKCD.

jacques_chester• 6 years ago

Has anyone ever seen an attempt to define these terms in an objective, data-driven way?

Broadly, yes.

The Five Factor Model includes axes for openness (what Graham divides has as "conventional-minded" to "independent-minded") and agreeableness (Graham's "aggressive" to "passive"). The FFM is well supported by various lines of evidence.

Graham's model however overlooks three other axes: conscientiousness, extraversion-introversion and neuroticism. Plus it doesn't allow for any nuance, based on a binary classification when in fact the spectra of human behaviour are incredibly wide and nuanced.

The characterisation of folks as "tattletales", "sheep", "dreamy" and "naughty" doesn't suggest an attempt at good-faith discussion.

mikedilger• 6 years ago

PGs presents a closing hope in the imagination of the aggressively independent-minded. There is hope but no assurance that doesn't turn towards sustained decline. The dark ages happened. Leonardo DaVinci lamtented that in 1400 he knew less than Galen did in 185 AD. The Islamic golden age also abandoned science to religious dogma.

Still it is hard to fathom a worldwide sustained decline. Some cultural and/or language group won't go along.

int_19h2• 6 years ago

I'm on the left myself - far enough that most people I consider like-minded would scoff at being called "liberal".

And I think that, while our broad cause is both rational and just, there are way too many people who believe that it can justify things that are unjustifiable; and who are, in effect, willing to replace their morality with "revolutionary necessity".

On the subject of conformance, freedom of speech, and censorship, in particular, this essay by Orwell is getting more relevant day by day:

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

This troubles me a lot, especially as I don't see alternatives here and now - large-scale, systemic changes are desperately needed, but that requires a mass movement; and while it's possible to have a mass movement that is not authoritarian, the one that we do have seems to be infested by authoritarian thinking to a significant degree.

True, it's fighting against authoritarianism that is even broader in scope - and worse yet, operating from a veneer of legitimacy, and with resources of state oppression at its disposal. But if "my" side wins, it'll get that same veneer - and with the attitudes that I'm observing, I find it hard to believe that the majority will be willing to discard those powerful tools as a matter of principle, or even believe that they're truly capable of misusing them.

I don't really have good answers. Insofar as decisions have to be made today, I try to go with what I see as "less wrong" - but that still leaves a lot to be desired from an ethical perspective. And yet staying out of the fight is also an unsatisfactory cop-out; for which I could, perhaps, find convincing enough excuses for people whose judgment matters to me, but never to my own conscience.

nappy2• 6 years ago

Graham framing his essay as such is disingenuous, at best:

  And the call of the aggressively independent-minded is "Eppur si muove."

In case you had to search for this (I did)[0] It's a reference to Galileo being correct about the Earth orbiting the Sun, and famously so. The presumption of this reference is that "independent" thinkers are right - they are more often wrong. PG seems to presume, or lead the reader to presume, that these thinkers are more right... oddly the rest of the essay avoids the question of conventional wisdom being right.

This is also bad writing. The use of set phrases / quotes in a foreign language without citation is confusing for the reader, and also pedantic.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves

zzo38computer• 6 years ago

There may also be some in between conformism/aggressive and having in different cases and different times.

"I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition?" My own response to such question might be, "How should I know? Such a thing is counterfactual and I do not know the answer."

I believe the discussion of ideas should not be banned; we need full freedom of speech and discussion of ideas. (Especially to complain about the government is necessary.)

seankimdesign• 6 years ago

Thank God for people like PG who are brave and wise enough to be able to craft such beautiful and timely essays. McCarthyism may be fashionable again, but we'll endure unscathed as long as writings such as these continue to be written.

davegri• 6 years ago

Did Paul Graham just repackage DnD Alignment?

courtf• 6 years ago

I'm not quite so sure we live in a society that protects free inquiry now, and are suddenly in danger of losing that status.

mac01021• 6 years ago

PG's essays are always thought provoking even when factually questionable.

This one is probably both.

I don't disagree with him about the need for advanced societies to protect free inquiry and independent thinking.

But the psychological taxonomy expounded here is simplistic and all the little things he attaches to it, like the psychoanalysis of tattletales, are probably not well supported by much evidence.

epeus• 6 years ago

I think this previous rebuttal to pg's pretence of broad mindedness still applies https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/paul-graham-is-still-askin...

sytelus• 6 years ago

Not sure why being conformist or not is important. Isn’t the more desirable thing is how you reason that your belief will lead to your desired result? What evidence have you taken in account and what risks you are aware of? How do you deal with uncertainty and how do you strive to get additional evidence.

For example, if you believe in vaccinations, are you conformist? These 4 quadrants even applicable universally for wide variety of topics for any person?

dennis_jeeves3• 6 years ago

Examples of what what the the aggressively conventional minded insist upon:

- Let's have a (pandemic) lock down. Given reason: let's protect everybody. Real reason: they are idiots who who cannot reason out the nuance of pros vs cons of lock down.

- Make masks mandatory. Given reason: let's protect everybody. Real reason: they are idiots who who cannot reason out the nuance of personal protection vs public harm

- Make rich pay their taxes. Given reason: they are not paying their fair share, Teal reason: they are jealous of the rich)

- Send all kids to school. Given reason: we need to 'educate' everybody, real reason: In their narrow world view they cannot fathom that at least some parents can do a better job of 'educating' their kids than conventional schools.

The concept of freedom that does not harm others is entirely lost among these sociopath individuals.

libra1• 6 years ago

Most of the "free inquiry" that has been banned from universities is related to sensitive issues like race and gender. I don't see any universities out there restricting free inquiry on say, the sciences. Is there really that much social good that will come out of exploring racism and misogyny?

The Four Quadrants of Conformism

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