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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#401

Post by bigpumpkin »

aerosmile wrote: post #393

The amount of negativity in the comments is astonishing (and has been with regards to all of his recent essays). Which is perverse on a couple of levels: 1. PG's essay outlines a theory that the majority of the world is conventionally-minded and doesn't like to discuss new ideas. The comments here perfectly resemble that theory. PG wins. (Edit: at the time of writing, the comments were exclusively negative. This has…

"let's instead use the economic success as a proxy for truth."

This is why I think Mark Zuckerberg is always right.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#402

Post by oisdk »

biophysboy wrote: post #340
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…

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 o…

Listen, if people want to say that “cancel culture” is a real phenomenon and it has a chilling effect on speech that’s one thing: I’d even be sympathetic to that point of view (although, as I said, I think it’s vastly overblown by people like Graham who are simply experiencing criticism from a broader range of people due to social media).

What I think is ridiculous is to jump to the authoritarian/soviet comparisons, especially when the US is in the midst of a horrific authoritarian violent crackdown by a militarised police force. I think that emphasis reveals a real lack of perspective.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#403

Post by designium »

aerosmile wrote: post #393

The amount of negativity in the comments is astonishing (and has been with regards to all of his recent essays). Which is perverse on a couple of levels: 1. PG's essay outlines a theory that the majority of the world is conventionally-minded and doesn't like to discuss new ideas. The comments here perfectly resemble that theory. PG wins. (Edit: at the time of writing, the comments were exclusively negative. This has…

"It's futile to fight a war of words over who is right or wrong - let's instead use the economic success as a proxy for truth."

Even though, that's the one of the core tenets of capitalism, I could show you that is not always the way it seems. Think about big corporations located in developing world like Brazil (where I came from), where corruption and bribes run amok. Saying that people and companies that are successful financially and economically is equal to truth and the right path to go, it's dismissing a lot of other context based on "other truth".

The world is much bigger than North America and the PG's text may not apply for different countries and culture. Imagine the same ideal applying to North Korean and Russia, what conclusions do you get from it?

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#404

Post by hashbig »

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #18

Ah, conventional minded people are those who insist that those who break the rules are bad, worthless in society, and should be punished. Then Mr. Graham goes on to say that the rules of civilized, successful, wealthy societies are that everyone should be free to debate even the worst of ideas, and the people who prevent this or disagree with this are bad, never become entrepreneurs (a laughable thought), are not wor…

ARAMCO and Saudi Arabia by extension were not built because of innovation. PG is talking about the importance of discussing idea regardless of how unorthodox they are, because the majority of successful companies are built, believe it or not, using ideas and not oil.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#405

Post by notsureaboutpg »

mc32 wrote: post #95
notsureaboutpg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No matter what, the fundamental ideas that America is built on is focused so heavily on freedom Freedom as long as you aren't threateningly critical of America. The journalist of the Syrian War who took an anti-American stance and was targetted by American drone strikes would prove otherwise: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

And while you are aghast at that, I’d have ask if you’d be aghast at the people who bully and gaslight and threaten individuals who are critical of some aspects of progressivism. I ask because if we ever had an “antifa” government I can be almost certain the abuses would escalate to heights we dare not imagine.

I also am not a fan of cancel culture or the sort of progressive Victorianism we see these days. Sure an antifa government would suck.

But that's just bad manners, these are people being assassinated because the government disagrees with them.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#406

Post by designium »

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…

Well put. There is a huge simplification and again, very North American centric. I beg you, HN readers, apply what he wrote to other societies.

I read on the top comments of people getting worried about the US becoming like former Soviet States in regards about thought control and lack of freedom. That's a whole different issue. PG mixes multiple different problems and oversimplify them.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#407

Post by sanxiyn »

phkahler wrote: post #386

I feel like PG has neglected the literature with this one. The two axis are probably aligned with exisiting traits from the field of psychology (agreeableness seems relevant for starters). It's nice that he considered all this, but I think he did so in his own bubble. There can be benefits from reinventing things in your own way, but to completely overlook the existing work can be a mistake too. There is so much more…

Conventional/independent mind axis is literally Openness of Big Five model. People really should study Big Five. I agree PG is reinventing the wheel.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#408

Post by domador »

rclayton wrote: post #312
ptero wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe there's only a handful of "regular people" getting cancelled... but that's enough to create a chilling effect, scaring others into compliance with convention.

A good example might be Walter Palmer, the hunter who killed Cecil the lion. He's rich, but wasn't a celebrity. What he did was legal, as far as he could tell. He didn't ask for his guides to break the law for him. Yet he was doxxed, received death threats, and had his house graffitied. People showed up to protest at his business (which is unrelated to hunting) and lowered its rating on Yelp through bad reviews.

(Incidentally, I disagree with the practice of hunting for sport, but think sport hunters should be stopped with new laws, rather than through mob action.)

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#409

Post by designium »

doctor_eval wrote: post #325
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…

Let's play this out for mask wearing:

Top Left: Top doctors asking people to wear masks Bottom Left: People who are wearing masks Bottom Right: People who occasionally use masks, or alternatives, bandanas, etc. Top Right: People who don't want to use masks because of freedom.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#410

Post by notsureaboutpg »

stopachka wrote: post #68
notsureaboutpg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His suit was dismissed by the government because having to defend themselves against the accusation would disclose state secrets. The right to sue only matters if you can meaningfully exercise it... And your standards are ridiculous. If anyone anywhere was able to show you a story of the US trying to kill someone for committing ideological heresy then the very fact they could tell you the story is proof that Amrrica…

I don’t quite see it, because at least in the part of the world I was raised, I can tell you that someone talking about this on the news would have sounded ridiculous. I do agree that America has never been a perfect bastion of freedom, and there are large struggles today. It definitely saddens me to see that. Yet, this is the whole point of the idea that our ties to freedom are fundamental — that some group in the U…

I was raised in such a world too.

I get what you're saying. But like everything there is a middle ground. US has good press freedom, but they also, like every country, will kill you if you "blaspheme" against them too much. There's a balance between freedom and security. And what the US deems "safe" and "unsafe" is always important to keep in mind

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