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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#491

Post by projektfu »

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…

Coming from where I live, it's surprising to think of any of those (pro-life, pro-gun, or Trump voter) being quiet about it, so my feeling is that they are nonexistent in your circles, not quiet. But perhaps they are indeed closeted there.

FWIW, I also thought that SV (though not SF) was full of firearm enthusiasts and prepper types, but that's probably an uninformed view from the other side of the country.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#492

Post by dencodev »

I'm not sure I find much meaning in this essay because everyone's definition of "conventional" and "independent" depends on their own bias. PG's own definition of independently minded seems to be "they have all the new ideas". If that's the case, then universities are absolutely a place of independently minded people when compared to the baby boomers and older generations.

Speaking out against racism, bigotry, and systemic issues that overwhelmingly impact POC and the LGBTQ+ community is not what I consider "conventionally minded" and definitely counts as a "new idea" when viewing it through the lens of racism and homophobia in America since its inception. As others posted, it's not clear to me what PG is referring to as conventionally minded at universities, but the issues I mentioned are typically at the forefront of political issues at schools these days.

Here's what I find conventionally minded thinking: supporting capitalism and accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth without guilt. If you're the type of person who sees an abnormally high level of sociopaths in non-profits[1] and honestly believes the "defining quality of nonprofits is to make no profit, not to do good" has any significant basis in reality, perhaps that says more about your bias against non-profits than it does about the people in it. And that bias, to me, reeks of conformity.

1: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1124254508232663040

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#493

Post by reginaldo »

GCA10 wrote: post #470

Lots of great ideas here -- but in keeping with all top-vintage Paul Graham essays, he takes his best points to about 130% of their validity. So I'd like to weigh in on this assertion: "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." Not so. To be a successful scientist, you need to be orderly, fast and well-connected in finding all the r…

I also stopped on the assertion about the successful scientist, but instead of outright disagreeing, I took it to mean that the definition of successful scientists for pg includes mostly the starters of new paradigms, regardless of the ideas being accepted during their lifetimes or not.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#494

Post by soundnote »

[deleted] wrote: post #424
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.…

[deleted]

You're suggesting the person would have to remain jobless for a long time for it to be a cancellation? We're talking people deliberately going for other people's jobs in a country where access to health care is often tied to employment.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#495

Post by flyflyFenix »

pdonis wrote: post #486
designium wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can apply his quadrant to usage of mask during Covid and the result speaks for themselves: 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.

I would describe mask wearing somewhat differently: Top Left: People who want to throw anyone who isn't wearing a mask in jail. Bottom Left: People who are wearing masks everywhere, including situations where it doesn't make sense to, because that's what the rules say. Bottom Right: People who wear masks when it makes sense to wear them, and don't wear masks when it makes sense not to, even if that isn't what the rul…

> Top Right: People who insist on pointing out that the rules on mask wearing are arbitrary and don't allow for common sense, even as they wear masks when common sense says you ought to.

You mean "... as they don't wear masks ..." , correct? Otherwise I think you are leaving out the people who reject masks at every opportunity.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#496

Post by pdonis »

jessaustin wrote: post #377
jschwartzi wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey man, I agree completely that the police suck. But what I think is happening is there are two groups here: * Protestors of police brutality who are in the main completely peaceful and capable of self-policing. These people tend to do normal protest things like blocking the streets, yelling at cars, holding signs, and similar. That's totally fine and should be protected by law. Their leaders are often seen keeping…

Eventually there will be "ample evidence" that police are also members of this "second group". A Minneapolis cop vandalizing a business was identified on Facebook already. (Don't link to the police denials; rational observers take those as proof.) City governments have a lot easier access to pallets of bricks and the equipment to transport same than poor kids have. Authoritarians do the same thing over and over again…

> If we truly do support these goals, we won't be sidetracked by potential insurance claims of large corporations.

The victims of violence aren't large corporations; they're individual people whose homes and neighborhoods and businesses are not safe. The very people that the protesters claim to be protesting on behalf of.

The valid claim of the protesters that the rule of law is not applied equally to everyone, as it should be, is undermined when people use the protests as a cover to violate the rule of law themselves.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#497

Post by globular-toast »

jahaja wrote: post #490
globular-toast wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually all intelligent people take "equality" to mean equality of opportunity. The type of equality you seem to mean is where individual personalities, talents and desires don't exist. In other words, where everyone is the same person. What a boring world. I just don't think inequality matters as long as the poorest in society are never cold or hungry. That's pretty much where we are today.

> That's pretty much where we are today. What on earth makes you think that?

Oh, well obviously there are hungry and cold people in the world, but I was talking about within a developed country like the UK. People who go on about equality are concerned with making themselves richer because of billionaires. They are not concerned with making themselves poorer because of hungry and cold people in other countries.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#498

Post by skellington »

oisdk wrote: post #385
vorpalhex wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 someone despicable. So the only actual example I was able to google here was the last one: and I have to say, is that it? A guy wasn’t asked back as a dorm a…

Rioters aren't protesters and there is nothing even close to "brutal" happening to the rioters. If anything, the state is showing remarkable restraint. Imagine if this shit was happening in China or Russia.

If you/they get what you want out of all of this, a neo-marxist-anarcho-commune-socialist-green-whatever, no-rules, but lots of rules enforced randomly by the mob, THEN you'll see real brutal-ism like you saw in CHAZ when the 'security' force gunned down two teenagers who were joy riding in a stolen car. The fact that current rioters have no real fear is because they know that the police are extremely restrained in what they do. Getting tear gassed or (rarely) hit with a baton/bean-bag is nothing close to what real brutality is.

Also, the fact that you are not aware of the deep reaches of cancel culture today is because you are aggressively conformist with your peer group so you only get your information from sources that are deeply filtered.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#499

Post by philwelch »

lm28469 wrote: post #76
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-...

You don't even have to look that far, there are secret police officers using unmarked rental cars to arrest protesters without telling them who they are and why they are being arrested. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/17/portland-pro... https://twitter.com/sparrowmedia/status/1283436911307218948

The guy they’re “arresting” also doesn’t say anything, and is extremely compliant for someone who’s allegedly an anti-police protester. I believe that is a video of an informant extraction.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#500

Post by pdonis »

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.

> What's happening in the US emerging from below

Partly, yes. But it is also being co-opted by people whose actual motives are very different from the perfectly justifiable demands for equality before the law.

> without anyone orchestrating it

It may have started without anyone orchestrating it, but I don't think it's that way now. See above.

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