The Four Quadrants of Conformism • Hacker News Board

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#321

Post by Sacho » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

oisdk wrote: post #258

tome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peaceful protestors being brutalised by police has been documented in almost countless cases by now Yes, I've seen plenty of evidence for that[1]. On the other hand you said "protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US". That's quite a different claim and I haven't seen any evidence for that. I've heard a few reports and associated videos whose reliability I haven't been able to verify. [1] For the avo…

I assume you're aware of police obscuring their badge numbers, and refusing to identify themselves? That phenomenon is at least as common as the actual police violence. While I have many problems with the following snopes article, I think the facts it presents are pretty incontrovertible: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/feds-unmarked-vans-portlan...

> I assume you're aware of police obscuring their badge numbers, and refusing to identify themselves?

Er, is this what you would call secret police? The article's facts may be incontrovertible, but they don't agree with your description:

"What's Undetermined

While one person said he was detained without officers identifying themselves — and another viral video was interpreted by viewers as a case of the same thing — we have no verifiable evidence to prove or disprove whether agents in those cases explained for what federal agency they worked during the arrests."

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#322

Post by rclayton » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #304

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.

The point, to spell it out, is about chilling effects. If some organization starts killing everyone wearing a blue hat,pretty soone nobody would wear a blue hat. And then people like you would think that since no blue hat wearers get murdered, this is fine. Even call it "non violent" perhaps.

Have we started killing cancelled people? Who has been “cancelled” anyways? What punishments have they endured? A lost job at a very public position?

As someone wisely pointed out, the only person possibly going to be jailed in the #MeToo movement will be Harvey Weinstein. Many comedians and politicians have recovered. Look at Al Franken - polls show he’s electable in his state (by the group that ostracized him no less).

More importantly, if cancel culture had any teeth, this President would have been cancelled.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#323

Post by M2Ys4U » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

oisdk wrote: post #107

garbagetime wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Yes: the former.

All of his recent screeds basically boil down to: I want free speech for the rich like me, and people who don't like that attitude should shut up because that's Cancel Culture and therefore bad.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#324

Post by Funes- » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #244

Funes- wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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.

> If your argument is that essays aren't concerned with facts, then that's a great argument for ignoring the entire genre of essays. [...] 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.

>If your argument is , then . Luckily, , so .

That's a straw man fallacy if I've ever seen one. It's a textbook example. Congratulations.

My reply to another user regarding that:

>Paul Graham, on the other hand, is just publishing a simple essay on his very own website; of course I don't expect an exhaustive empirical demonstration on his part, though any kind of factual data can be welcome.

Look, it's not a binary decision (facts/no facts), but a qualitative distinction: it's how I expect facts--whatever those are, but that's another discussion--to be dealt with in a short essay on a personal blog, instead of expecting or wanting essays to be deliberately unconcerned with them.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#325

Post by doctor_eval » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #109

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 p…

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

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#326

Post by FeteCommuniste » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #252

rclayton wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 ha…

> 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.

Jaron Lanier comes to mind.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#327

Post by ckemere » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

nwienert wrote: post #155

bambax wrote: post #109

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 p…

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…

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...

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#328

Post by mrtksn » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #295

mrtksn wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there more context on this? Why is he in the UK for example?

It's interesting that he doesn't share anything about his life, isn't it? Even if his body is not in the Bay Area he doesn't show any evidence of having been around. Even Piers Anthony would talk about the random things that happened in his life, but Graham doesn't.

I think he might have downvoted me even for asking :)

Seriously though, I can't really blame him. I got a few days fame back in the day and it was a scary thing to watch a mob of strangers picking on my past and judging. Even people who I thought are my friends acted extremely strange - as if they don't know me personally and joining the mob of haters or lovers.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#329

Post by throwaway0a5e » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #278

gallegojaime wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course a version of it existed, but the going concern with cancel culture is that it doesn't require much thought or effort to cancel someone now. Social media allows you to easily join a mob without judging a person deeply by yourself.

Because previous mobs were well known for their thoughtfulness and judgement?

Well previously you needed an actual physical mob so you had to get enough people local to the victim outraged enough to be convinced it's worth their time. That's a much higher bar than doxing someone and sending hate mail to everyone around them.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#330

Post by AlanYx » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #292

AlanYx wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The first best instance of this was during the French Revolution. People were guillotined in droves for being not merely enthusiastic enough.

I think there are some important qualitative differences with the French Revolution, at least in its relationship with the academy (although I'm not an expert). During the French Revolution, most of the aristocratic cadre of scientists did lose their positions, but less than a year into the Terror, the Institut de France was established with more-or-less conventional takes on merit and the scientific method.

In the cultural revolution, it was different. More than three fourths of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were persecuted, most of whose work did have scientific merit and had no direct nexus with politics. But that was the problem -- just doing science wasn't sufficiently political/ideological for the mob.