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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#331

Post by newacct583 »

hnal943 wrote: post #264
ptd wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not you believe America was built on freedom has a strong correlation to your political affiliation.

That has only been true for a few years. In any previous century, that claim was not political.

That's really not true. For the last 60 years or so (basically since the civil rights movement) the conventional understanding of "freedom" on the educated American left has been significantly more nuanced. It is, after all, a nation with the institution of slavery enshrined in its constitution, so people tend to talk carefully about which freedoms they mean.

On the right, that never took hold (we probably don't want to get into why). So when someone says something like "freedom is a foundational ideal of America" they're effectively making a declaration of identity as an American conservative.

And coming back to the upthread point: if I hear that statement as "I'm a conservative!" in the context of "I'm an independent thinker!", then I'm going to be a little dubious about how independent that thought is when it's defined in terms of a political identity. Political orthodoxy is perhaps the SAFEST form of (to use the terminology from the article) conventional-minded thought.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#332

Post by BurningFrog »

AlanYx wrote: post #204
missosoup wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I see the similarities, but one big difference is that the Red Guards were created by Mao as a way to purge the party of his enemies and reshape society to serve him more fully.

What's happening in the US emerging from below, without anyone orchestrating it.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#333

Post by doctor_eval »

rorykoehler wrote: post #289
olalonde wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that automation is one of those improvements with no disadvantage. But it can also result in people losing their jobs and those people might be opposed to it. I would argue that the same is true with the gig economy. It benefits the people participating in it greatly but it also cost some people their jobs (e.g. taxi drivers).

Losing a job isn’t inherently bad. I’d only bad now because we’ve decided to arrange society around zero sum thinking.

It’s pretty inherently bad if losing your job means you can’t feed your kids or yourself.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#334

Post by samuelbeniamin »

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.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#335

Post by andjd »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #274
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…

> 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 ei…

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 ;-)

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#336

Post by oldsklgdfth »

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.

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

Not sure that's the conclusion to draw. The car made traveling large distances possible. Now things are built on car scale distances, making walking difficult and requiring a car.

> unimaginable improvement of human life in every dimension

I would argue mainly materialistically. And yet we have to spend most of our lives working to pay for these comforts.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#337

Post by jacobush »

vorpalhex wrote: post #308
oisdk wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 appro…

You're engaging in a straw man of both sides and it makes me want to disregard your argument entirely. > you choose only to talk endlessly about tweets like... Do you really think that's what people are complaining about here? Not the professors being fired, the well known economists being forced to resign? There was a professor who lost his status running a residence hall because he was on the legal defense team for…

But the reform way hasn't worked very well, if at all, either. Not saying that means one should revolt or anything, just that America seems like it's stuck between a rock and hard place, currently.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#338

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#339

Post by bob33212 »

steveeq1 wrote: post #303
devdas wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

I don't think your are well informed here. They are protesting the systemic racism that makes some cops feel like they can get away with leaving their knee on a black man's neck for 8 minutes killing him.

Maybe you don't think that systemic racism is a major problem or maybe you think that people should focus on other issues instead? But your graph is incorrect.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#340

Post by biophysboy »

oisdk wrote: post #177
missosoup wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 appro…

Twitter warriors are absolutely a small piece of the pie, but I think you could say they are the online face of the amorphous force that the authoritarian secret police are attacking.

Each unit of the force is trivial (rioters are a trivial part of the protests, campus activists are a trivial part of the student body, AOC is a trivial part of congress, moral clarity journalists a la Wesley Lowery are a trivial part of news mastheads, online "SJW" people are a trivial part of Twitter, etc). However, in aggregate it freaks out and motivates the authoritarians you are talking about. When they criticize any of the forces, they are simultaneously fearing the larger whole.

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