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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#441

Post by pwinnski »

oisdk wrote: post #260
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 What are you referring to, specifically?

Good question! The phrase "many people" covers up the relative paucity of actual instances, as well as the exact nature of those instances.

Every person who loses their job to a misunderstanding is a tragedy to that person, and every person who loses their job claims it's due to a misunderstanding. We live in a polarized nation such that other companies seem to rush to hire those very same people on purpose, so it doesn't seem to be a huge tragedy, but I'm sure it feels tragic.

It also seems to happen very, very rarely, and usually after events that seem indefensible on their face. That is, rarely are people willing to say "they should have faced no consequences," but often people are willing to say "they should not have faced consequences quite that severe."

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#442

Post by notsureaboutpg »

hashbig wrote: post #404
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.

Yes they were built by innovation. Creation of a new country no matter how it happens is an innovation. Creation of a new company, no matter how it happens, is an innovation.

Growing a company also is an innovation. You can only grow by venturing into new areas. If you think ARAMCO has never made any improvements in petroleum engineering, cyber security, logistics, etc, then you are daft. If all they had was oil fields they wouldn't make so much money. It's a combination of having them, knowing how to extract wealth from them, knowing how to identify more, and knowing how to reduce competition (OPEC is an example of constant innovation, there is no precedent to follow in setting the prices for a commodity like oil which humans have never relied on as extensively as they do now).

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#443

Post by rclayton »

AlexandrB wrote: post #436
enoch_r wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindness Yoga shut down after their pro-BLM posts online were criticized as "performative activism" by employees: https://coloradosun.com/2020/06/29/kindness-yoga-closure-dur... A woman in Kentucky was fired after 20 years from her job as a Hearing Instrument Specialist after she said she didn't support BLM in a facebook video: https://reclaimthenet.org/tabitha-morris-cancel-culture/ (Her GoFundMe was also shut down.…

Whenever I see lists like this, what's interesting to me is what's omitted. In this particular case I don't see mention of workers getting fired for trying to organize or advocate for unions[1]. I don't see the abuse that gets piled on cops who report the misdeeds of their colleagues[2]. And I don't see the NFL effectively blacklisting Colin Kaepernick for his views on police brutality. It seems like it's only "cance…

Great point.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#445

Post by zucker42 »

newacct583 wrote: post #43
lincolnq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you unpack this? The only social justice-related example in the piece was a positive one (antebellum abolitionism). It seems like you might be reading into the piece more than was intended.

I can only read the discussion of "aggressive conformism" at the end as a giant subtweet of cancel culture. There's a real, and sudden, movement in the political center against this idea (c.f. the Harpers letter), and pg is clearly picking a side. Which is fine, I guess. I personally didn't think the letter was so awful. It's hardly the worst problem in a world where we have federal paramilitary units being deployed…

The Harper's letter was hardly from the political center as most people conceive; Noam Chomsky signed that letter.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#446

Post by malandrew »

missosoup wrote: post #91
stopachka wrote: post #31

Loved this essay. The phrase “aggressively conventional minded” is genius, and may contribute a lot towards the solution. As someone coming from an ex-soviet state, I’ve felt personal alarm bells ring more and more, as I experience the kind of intolerance and double speak America is heading into. Both the left and the right my opinion are missing the key points on freedom (the left suppressing and labeling, the right…

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…

ne chital, no osuzhdayu

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-so...

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#447

Post by oisdk »

free_rms wrote: post #361
oisdk wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "just count political prisoners; see how few there are!" You see how it comes across as a little ridiculous when you equate "being cancelled on twitter" to "being a literal political prisoner"? Especially when there are actual political prisoners, in prison, in the US right now?

Losing your livelihood, in a nation famous for it's relative lack of safety net, is in fact a big deal. Here's the thing, you don't have to pick a side so hard. It's not, either we get this dude fired for citing a study about the 1968 riots or you're in favor of the border patrol arresting citizens without due process. These things are actually highly unrelated, and both can be bad.

I mean I agree with you: broadly I think things like the Yascha Mounk case are bad (I mean there are even better examples on the left: take Matt Bruenig, for instance), but like it's totally insane to say it's the main authoritarian crisis in the US today in the midst of brutal police violence.

Also, I do think that the Mounk or Bruenig case are actually a little different from "cancel culture": they seem much more like political machinations at the places those people worked. Like I think either of those things could have happened just as easily 20 or 30 years ago. When I think "cancel culture" I think more about random people getting twitter mobbed for saying something offensive.

Really I think it's an issue of emphasis. And I think identifying some social pressure to be more "woke" with threat of ridicule on social media as being the first step on the way to totalitarianism, while simultaneously insisting the police brutality is nothing of the sort, reveals quite a lot about people's lack of perspective and warped priorities.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#448

Post by rclayton »

Sacho wrote: post #354
rclayton wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, elaborate please.

It's difficult, when we are in thorough disagreement of the facts. > And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest Is the police crackdown on protest or rioting? I can buy an argument that Trump hates the protests and is secretly hoping that sending the police will also disperse protesters, but on its face, do we disagree that there's rioting in Portland, and that it's the police's job to stop it? >…

I think that’s the point. “Cancel cultural” has always been around in some form or another when you challenge the cultural norms of some society or institution. The outrage over it now seems silly, particularly when it’s predominantly liberal people suffering from it. However, unlike other oppressed minorities of the past, the consequences are much less severe.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#449

Post by mc32 »

notsureaboutpg wrote: post #405
mc32 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t be so optimistic. Level headed people in the French Revolution, the liberals in the Russian revolution, they had some rather horrible things happen. Done by very lucid people. You can’t say that was then. It’s hard to escape that fate.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#450

Post by kerkeslager »

Funes- wrote: post #324
kerkeslager wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

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

Everyone can read the conversation and see what was said.

> 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.

Okay, if that's what you're saying, I didn't understand that previously, and I'll take some blame for thinking I understood instead of asking clarifying questions.

But, I'll say, the qualitative discussion of "how facts are dealt with" is pretty irrelevant if there aren't any facts to deal with. It's very much not clear that much of PG says in this essay is based in facts at all. Even if you want to argue that quality of evidence is a spectrum, the can still be a 0 value on that spectrum.

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