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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#311

Post by ptero »

spectaclepiece wrote: post #136
wdwecewc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I can’t speak for the states but I feel strongly that the aggressive conformists are gaining ground on several levels of society. One can avoid the worst of it if as you say one stays away from certain threads online and I’ve personally taken steps to do so but the way it has started to permeate broader academia and work places is creating a real problem which needs to be addressed and the fact that sensible people a…

> I feel strongly that the aggressive conformists are gaining ground on several levels of society. ... the fact that sensible people are speaking out about it now is encouraging.

It is, but I am afraid sensible people speaking out may be on the decline. Many employers now schedule obligatory "sessions" where employees are given a spiel on a topic heavily pushing "the right view" with a short 2-3 minuted at the end dedicated to "discussion". With "just try to criticize this" as an unspoken seasoning.

This would have been dismissed as "ludicrous, never going to happen here" when I came to the US 20 years ago but is the accepted norm now. Ironically, folks leaving for Vietnam claim more freedom as their main reason for leaving...

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#312

Post by rclayton »

ptero wrote: post #267
rclayton wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I would like for someone to enumerate all the people who have been “cancelled” and then compare it to those that have been violently attacked.

Your "just count the cancelled" does not work. I have lived in the East Europe pre-Perestroyka and back then, it was "just count political prisoners; see how few there are!". And it was true -- there were not that many by 1980s. But there were few not because thought police was not real, but because any appearance of acting against it would be quickly dealt with. So very few people would dare. That's the path we are…

As oisdk points out, I would consider the very real threat of violence different than a celebrity getting their contract cancelled. But that’s an important point to also make. There’s a vast difference between a celebrity being cancelled and an average person. Cultivating popularity is a part of being a celebrity — so isn’t avoiding being cancelled a natural extension of that profession?

As for regular people getting cancelled, there only seems to be a handful - particularly those that might actually have committed a crime (thinking of the Central Park Karen).

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#313

Post by vinceguidry »

BurningFrog wrote: post #286
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #117

Earlier 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.

> 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.

You can push that all the way back to the Middle Ages. Serfdom was quite an improvement over Roman-era slavery, being tied to the land was far more stable and secure than being tied directly to a master. It wasn't quite a middle class, but better nonetheless.

Transportation and naval technology steadily improved, and more and more goods and services became broadly available during this time period.

The downside is that war got really bad from 1800-1950.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#314

Post by rclayton »

hnal943 wrote: post #243
oisdk wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I think there's an argument to be made that discourse has become more rigid (although I do think it's overblown), but like I don't understand how you can write this: > 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. And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest and the army being brought in to police civilians…

You don't understand, and that's the problem.

Well, elaborate please.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#315

Post by wdwecewc »

missosoup wrote: post #159
wdwecewc wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who claims to be educated on history, it is important then to remind yourself of why this actually occurs. You can't make essays dismissing some angry mob as if they are a homogenous hivemind. They won't listen to you because they literally can't listen to you, they act independently and uncoordinated. You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with. Police brutali…

You probably don't know this word, but you're literally advocating for ochlocracy, which is the very thing I was talking about in the upstream comments. The mob has an infinite well of issues, the mob will never be satisfied. That's exactly how it transitions into totalitarianism. Pandering to the mob just adds more fuel to the fire. Police brutality etc. are issues that should certainly be addressed, and there's cou…

I would argue a mob is just a sort of tumor clinging onto the back of a very legitimate protest movement. My point, which I maintain, is that people like Paul are using this as an excuse to dismiss the movement in its entirety by selecting the (real) problems created by the mob. You would not be allowing the mob to rule by satisfying the entire group's demands. This is a function of very ordinary protests that have gone on over the last forever.

And I don't think it's fair to compare racists, which are real, to witches, which are not.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#316

Post by frabbit »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #180
frabbit wrote: post #100

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 t…

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.

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.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#317

Post by __alexs »

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.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#318

Post by oldsklgdfth »

dantheman wrote: post #306
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many improvements have no disadvantage Every improvement has, at the very least, its Luddite cost. It forces some people to change, and some of those people won’t like that.

What was the disadvantage introduced by having doctors wash their hands or the invention of antibiotics?

I can only speculate. I would say an overall weakened immune system.

Is your point that there are technologies with only benefits?

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#320

Post by wrren »

saberience wrote: post #309
wrren wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People expressing their opinions about one's ideas is not cancel culture: it's when critics go one step further and try to destroy the person they disagree with. Many people have lost their livelihoods and even more are afraid to express their opinion at all because of the disproportionate cost they might incur. People having been structurally shielded from mob justice in the past is a state worth returning to.

"Many people have lost their livelihoods" Hmm, sounds intriguing. Do you have any sources for this or concrete examples which can be fact-checked?

Matt Taibbi's had a few good articles on this recently. Some excerpts:

"Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that will be familiar to students of Russian history, accusers are beginning to appear alongside the accused. Three years ago a popular Canadian writer named Hal Niedzviecki was denounced for expressing the opinion that “anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." He reportedly was forced out of the Writer’s Union of Canada for the crime of “cultural appropriation,” and denounced as a racist by many, including a poet named Gwen Benaway. The latter said Niedzviecki “doesn’t see the humanity of indigenous peoples.” Last week, Benaway herself was denounced on Twitter for failing to provide proof that she was Indigenous.

Michael Korenberg, the chair of the board at the University of British Columbia, was forced to resign for liking tweets by Dinesh D’Souza and Donald Trump, which you might think is fine – but what about Latino electrical worker Emmanuel Cafferty, fired after a white activist took a photo of him making an OK symbol (it was described online as a “white power” sign)? How about Sue Schafer, the heretofore unknown graphic designer the Washington Post decided to out in a 3000-word article for attending a Halloween party two years ago in blackface (a failed parody of a different blackface incident involving Megyn Kelly)? She was fired, of course. How was this news? Why was ruining this person’s life necessary?"

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