The Four Quadrants of Conformism • Hacker News Board

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#341

Post by krapp » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

ptero wrote: post #290

krapp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how things tend to work when people are so alienated or disenfranchised from the system that change within the system becomes impossible, yes. And while people like to dismiss any group whose concerns they disagree with as being merely an "angry mob," more often than not that "mob's" concerns are legitimate, and their anger is justifiable. Laws don't get passed to "pacify" them, they get passed because public…

The legitimate concerns and justified anger tend to be characterized by long-term (multiple years), consistent pressure. People exerting it can listen to opposing views (without angry screams) and justify their own. What we see today are angry flashes that can change direction on a whim. Flash mobs of statue tear-downs, coronavirus mask/no-mask outrages, etc. are in my view more of a symptom of pent-up aggression fan…

With the exception of the coronavirus protests, everything else has had years of consistent pressure behind it.

There have been riots and protests over police brutality and systemic racism for years. People have been protesting America's whitewashing of its history and romanticizing of the Confederacy for years. None of these issues are new. The CHAZ wasn't the result of "pre-election opportunism," read their list of demands. It's fueled by anger, yes, but also seeks redress for grievances the black community has been complaining about for years. "Biden 2020" isn't in there anywhere.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#342

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

wrren wrote: post #320

saberience wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 p…

[deleted]

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#343

Post by ben509 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #75

andybak wrote: post #3

As always in discussions of "types of people" it's more nuanced than this. Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others. In fact if you picture a stereotypical conspiracy-minded alt-right individual then the exhibit both behaviours at the same time about the same group. (individualist) "I won't do x because the government tells me I sh…

> Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others. Yes and no. In a purely objective context conformity is a personality mode shaped by a person's social reference group and the devotion or conformance to a single idea rests on the reinformance of the local group. For a highly conformant person you can change their opinion on a subject by…

> From extremely conforming people originality is met with immediate hostility.

I'd submit a common case of that is someone with a new idea and being confronted with all the reasons it will never work.

And that really does seem like a function of personality. The people saying why it won't work aren't being close-minded; they're gaving the idea a listen and thinking about it critically. They're may not even being outwardly rude. It's simply an unconcious preference to critique and find flaws.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#344

Post by steveeq1 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #339

steveeq1 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel that the "systemic racist" is overplayed, yes. And the graph is sourced.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#345

Post by etrautmann » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

__alexs wrote: post #317

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…

I think the larger point is that it doesn't matter how easy it is to make works public if the consequences prevent you from doing so: if you can easily get fired, pushed out of a tenured position at a university, or otherwise lose your voice for making unpopular opinions public.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#346

Post by cmorgan31 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

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…

You are not addressing the point that the society at large has to continue to trust institutions to alleviate concerns of corruption by the institution. The mob is not formed in a vacuum. Democracy, rule of law, and government only have value when trust in those pillars of our society have not been eroded to the point where large swaths of people form a mob to carry out their own justice. It’s been made abundantly clear in the West that our systems are very vulnerable to bad faith actors from inside the system.

> Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them.

This is true for both ends of this spectrum and also never ending. The mob doesn’t see themselves as eroding those institutions just as our current government doesn’t see itself as obstructionists. What makes this difficult is two competing extremes. I don’t focus on cancel culture because I’m concerned more with the erosion of our voting rights and the dismantling of our institutions by our own citizens. It doesn’t invalidate your points what so ever but it makes them a blind spot for individuals with competing priorities.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#347

Post by AlanYx » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #332

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…

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.

>one big difference is that the Red Guards were created by Mao as a way to purge the party of his enemies...

No -- that's not the case, and that's precisely why I think the parallel to what is happening now is so strong.

The Red Guards started in 1966 as a student movement. They later developed a manifesto, which Mao thought he could leverage to his own advantage, so he endorsed its broadcast. This fanned the flames of the movement (being a kind of political endorsement), and from that point Red Guard cells sprung up organically across the country. From that point, things became chaotic and the leadership in Beijing made a series of sometimes opposing moves, some of which tried to restrain the movement to preserve the government and others which fanned the flames.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#348

Post by Funes- » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

ziddoap wrote: post #300

Funes- wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Funny enough, all throughout my many years in academia I had to provide sources for anything I stated as a fact in an essay (including opinion pieces). That requirement obeyed that academic institution's criteria, not the genre's traditional nature. You either were being tested by them or published something with their name attached to it, so it's only normal that they established the empirical validity of your writ…

Oh boy you sure got me by calling out my grammar. I'm writhing in embarrassment. Good to know that outside of academia that things stated as fact have no requirement or expectation of being factual. I will temper my expectations in the future.

>Good to know that outside of academia that things stated as fact have no requirement or expectation of being factual.

Stop putting words in my mouth. I have no desire to keep pointing out straw man fallacies.

Academia tends to have formal requirements of that kind. Personal blogs don't, for instance. That's the explanation behind me--and other people, surely--not expecting an elaborate empirical demonstration of everything the man writes on his site. I don't think it's that hard to stick to what's being said in my comments instead of twisting my words for the sake of sarcasm and preserving your own ego.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#349

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #332

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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#350

Post by tfehring » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

ggreer wrote: post #55

I enjoyed this essay, but I think PG missed one aspect of the recent cultural changes: Even though startups are founded by the aggressively independent-minded, they have insane amounts of ideological conformity. Many people with beliefs that are widespread in the US (pro-life, pro-gun, Republican, etc) are now "in the closet" in the Bay Area. Don't believe me? 10% of San Franciscans voted for Trump in 2016. Yet of al…

SSC famously made and extended this argument a few years ago [0]. I like that essay's example of creationists even better, because it's a shockingly huge group of people - over 40% of Americans literally believe that the Earth was created in its present form in the last 10,000 years or so - and for all intents and purposes its overlap with the readership of PG, HN, SSC, or whatever is 0.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...