The Four Quadrants of Conformism

There's a term for that: "mob rule". It's not a good thing.

I'm not for one second saying that Police brutality isn't a problem. I don't live in the USA so I don't know. I am saying that if your system doesn't provide a method for fixing this problem without rioting, then your system is probably broken, and it might be better to fix the system and then use the fixed system to fix the problem.

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.

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.

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