A funnier version of the same 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...
The Four Quadrants of Conformism
161–170 of 882 posts
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#162"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 t…
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 f…
> 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.
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#163As 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" quad…
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.
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
How confident are you that this is true? What kind of information would you have to see to feel alarm?
I would have to see the left gaining real political or financial power. Right now I am far more concerned about right wing fascism since that is gaining popularity in multiple countries.
As has been pointed out a couple of times, it's not a question of left vs right though, it's a question of liberal vs illiberal. The number of people who have lost their livelihoods for mere speech (on both ends of the political spectrum) goes to show that the illiberals do have significant political and financial power, and toleration is declining.
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I’m struggling to see how antibiotics harmed others.
There is an argument that the black plague was one of the driving forced behind the rise of British democracy causing a labour shortage that added fuel to the rise of the middle class.
Now I've got no idea if that is a convincing argument, but it is plausible enough to say that a counterfactual world without antibiotics might have turned out better.
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#166As 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" quad…
> 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 breaki…
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.
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#167Loved 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…
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 tha…
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)
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#168When I read this part I thought it really resonated:
> In adulthood we can recognize the four types by their distinctive calls, much as you could recognize four species of birds. The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is "Crush this essay!"
He chose such a prescient example.
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#169As 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 sa…
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.
Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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, ...
If that is your position I would refer you to the myth of thamus[0] and the writings of Neil Postman.
[0]https://bearskindigital.com/2015/01/20/the-myth-of-thamus-an...