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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#521

Post by logicslave »

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…

By successful scientist he means someone who changes a scientific paradigm, creates a new field, or really pushes the field forwards. Incremental discoveries are not under this umbrella

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#522

Post by skellington »

oisdk wrote: post #220
tome wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US I genuinely don't have reliable information to determine whether they are peaceful protestors or violent rioters, nor whether the police are secret or not. Where would I go to find out?

Peaceful protestors being brutalised by police has been documented in almost countless cases by now. I find it hard to believe that you're asking this is good faith, but if you you are then you can: * Watch any one of the hundreds of videos documenting what I'm referring to. * Read pretty much any major news source in the US documenting these cases. I'm sorry that I don't have a specific source to point you to, but i…

No, it hasn't. Because that's a made up narrative.

Please show me video of police purposefully brutalizing non-violent protesters who behave sensibly (maybe you can learn how to spell protester while you're at it).

I've watched pretty much all of them and the cases of protesters being hurt always involves in some way being a part of the violent protest group, being intermixed with the violent protesters, or refusing to follow police orders during the clearing of unlawful gatherings (which only happens after violent rioting).

Even that older man who got his head cracked open from falling, decided to ignore orders to vacate and instead got into the face of a riot cop and reached for the cops belt.

I have seen zero videos of cops just randomly going off on groups of protesters walking down the street peacefully. Although CNN/MSNBC/etc will ALWAYS edit the video to begin with the police jumping on some person, when you look at the full video, it ALWAYS starts with the person doing something violent, illegal, or stupid.

BTW I'm also sure that SOMETIMES police do do unacceptable things (Floyd) and the criminal court system is absolute garbage, but your BS narrative that PEACEFUL protesters are just getting smashed as a matter of course is pure fiction.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#523

Post by lm28469 »

philwelch wrote: post #499
lm28469 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I believe that is a video of an informant extraction.

It could very well be but it isn't an isolated thing (as far as I can tell) and it's in line with everything that happened in the last weeks/months in the US.

In absence of any proofs I wouldn't side with the law enforcement by default, but you're right to question it.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#524

Post by clairity »

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…

> "This dynamic requires a fifth state in Graham's admirably simple 2x2 grid. We need to recognize people that can be defiant non-conformists when the moment presents itself..."

to be aggressively non-conformist, that's the critical mistake pg makes: we're dynamic, complicated creatures embedded in an infinitely complex system. who we are in a given moment is not who we are at another moment. to define ourselves as "being" one type or the other is a gross error of static categorization. we're each of them at different moments in our lives, frittering among them, and beyond them, constantly.

put succinctly: fuck labels.

that's not to say the conceptual framework isn't useful, but his static application of it is in error.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#526

Post by ggreer »

rclayton wrote: post #453
free_rms wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we're very precisely estimating the reach and are appropriately terrified? If you can't get the people you want, but you really want to get somebody ...

And what are the consequences of you getting cancelled? Really? You lose your job? People are fired everyday for silly things or no reason at all. But would you really want to continue working for a company/culture so incapable of enduring free thought? Perhaps companies need to suffer the consequences of losing talent to realize how intellectually bankrupt this process is.

> But would you really want to continue working for a company/culture so incapable of enduring free thought?

In this economy? Hell yes.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#528

Post by philwelch »

sgentle wrote: post #464

Never thought I'd see the day that a pg essay crosses over with /r/politicalcompassmemes The problem with "discussing ideas" as a framing is that it exists in opposition to something. What is that something? Those whose position favours the status quo would read it in opposition to "not discussing ideas", which is obviously bad. However, to those who find the status quo untenable, the opposite position is "acting on…

> Following pg's example, let us consider the following classic debate topic: "is slavery good?" A plantation owner might find themselves tickled by a lively discussion on the subject, replete with a cornucopia of Enlightenment principles and classical liberalism and such.

Historically, the Southern states (which were politically dominated by slaveholders) outlawed all abolitionist literature because they feared that free discussion of ideas would undermine the system.

> It is perhaps telling that slavery was not abolished through free inquiry or the discussion of ideas.

90% of the work was done through free inquiry and discourse, ranging from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the publishing of books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The attempts to solve the problem violently (e.g. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry) failed.

It was only when the slave states refused to accept the outcome of a free election and started the civil war that violence became necessary.

> The debate is over, and the actual free-thinkers have moved on.

You’ve cherry-picked a specific example that fits that narrative.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#529

Post by ordinaryradical »

jfarmer wrote: post #516

If you write several essays about "the way society works" and they consistently resolve to a protagonist who happens to be very much like yourself, you're probably writing about your own mind, not society.

It's ironic that he describes social media as an own goal but there isn't the introspection accompanying it that would lead to the obvious point you've made so well.

Everyone in SV wants to be "up and to the right" in every quadrant map of anything. How comforting to simplify life to those terms, to exceptional winners and conventional deadweight. But if society takes your myopic vision and resulting creation and then eats itself and all its democratic institutions, to paraphrase Prinicpal Skinner:

"Am I so out of touch? No, it's the users who are wrong."

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#530

Post by Kednicma »

anoncoward121 wrote: post #257
Kednicma wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Perhaps he speaks on behalf of others, precisely because he is in the enviable position of still being able to speak out. If you work at Google and depend on your salary, you cannot say these things. Which is a pity, because "left" and "right" agree on a lot of things like state brutality. But if the "left" monopolizes that topic and vilifies others because of a lack of total obedience, working together is impossible…

Sounds like bullshit. I've worked at Google, and I spoke up loudly while I was there. I've spoken up while at other employers, too. We can't simply let ourselves be muzzled by corporate accusations of thoughtcrime.

When we say the slogan, "it is hard to get somebody to realize something when their salary depends on it," we are talking about cognitive impediments to understanding. We aren't talking about the lying that corporate spokespeople carry out.

Which far-right state agrees with the idea of less state brutality? Could you name one? I'm only able to think of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bhutan, and Thailand, and they all have quite a bit of state-sponsored brutality, in their own different ways.

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