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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#601

Post by throwaway8582 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #211
mattbee wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. pg might be interesting again if he said what "unsayable" and "aggressively independent-minded" things he actually wants to say, and I wish he bloody would - we've got no choice but to read it. "independent-minded" is such a cliche now - it's often a euphemism for something else. Surely more truly "aggressively independent-minded" people are homeless addicts, not rockstar founders. What's the right balance…

It would be interesting if he developed a theory of "unsayable" things based on examples. One really good one is Freud's theory of infantile sexuality: https://www.bartleby.com/278/2.html It's completely true that four year old boys get erections and play with themselves (I did), don't think about it all when they are ten, and then tend to think about it a lot when they hit puberty. It is the basis for understanding…

The fact that you are posting this using your real name is strong evidence that it's not actually "unsayable".

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#603

Post by bittercynic »

GavinB wrote: post #577
frasermince wrote: post #503

While I think there might be a grain of truth here I really disagree with how he states it. He seems to be really placing higher value on the isolated genius who does great things despite society being against him. This seems to be based on a lot of pretension and dismisses people who do not think like him. With how he defines conformity and nonconformity one could argue that the flatearther surrounded by non flatear…

Yes, flat-earthers would probably count as non-conformist. I think the point is that in order to have Galileo, you have to tolerate flat-earthers as well. I do agree that calling most people "sheep" is uncharitable, and would add that calling aggressive conformists "stupid" is also not accurate or productive. They might be making stupid decisions, but they're not stupid people.

I disagree, and would count flat-earthers as highly conformist - it's just that they're conforming to an unconventional view.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#604

Post by jl2718 »

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #180
frabbit wrote: post #100

I mostly agree with this: am pretty much a Free Speech absolutist. However, I can't help but suspect that the reason we're hearing arguments about this now is because the liberal-Left are aggressively exercising their intolerance instead of the conservative-Right, who have had it all their way for a long time. Aside: I don't think lumping liberals and leftists in together is useful. There is a strong dislike of the t…

Can you define what you mean by free speech? That speech alone should not be punished by the state? Or that speech should have no social consequences? Because to me "the liberal-Left exercising their intolerance" could also be viewed as exercising their freedom of association.

Freedom of association is not exactly a pillar of modern liberalism.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#605

Post by vgfalk »

smhost wrote: post #587

This is so meandering and incoherent that it's hard to comment on, but the idea that silicon valley and finance types are "independent-minded" is downright laughable. It's pretty clear that those types are in lock-step with each other ideologically, maybe broadly split between east-coast and west-coast aesthetically. This categorization is such nonsense. People in the hard sciences don't neatly fall into a type, and…

I do not agree that the essay is incoherent, the general line of thought is very clear: Independently of left or right, conformists of the passive, aggressive, or passive aggressive variety can ruin societies and free thinking.

Conformists can also easily switch sides.

Indeed the insertion of Silicon Valley was a bit unnecessary. They are ruthless capitalists that currently pretend to be socialist for profit and hiring motives as well as suppressing weak software developers by confusing them with new ideologies every week.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#606

Post by novok »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #139

> Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society This contains a strong assumption of nature over nurture. I push back on that. (A point of evidence being salivary cortisol correlations with high-stress childhoods and even prenatal environments.) Independent-minded cultures produce mor…

After seeing how different an adopted child acted compared to the non adopted ones in a close family member's family, I believe a lot more in nature causing big differences in behavior vs. nurture. Even when you have your own kids, children born 1 or 2 years apart in the same family can have very different personalities.

People don't like it, because it's used to justify fatalistic write offs of people. I agree it's wrong to do that because people are often wrong in writing off people, especially the aggressively independent :)

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#607

Post by kristianc »

smhost wrote: post #587

This is so meandering and incoherent that it's hard to comment on, but the idea that silicon valley and finance types are "independent-minded" is downright laughable. It's pretty clear that those types are in lock-step with each other ideologically, maybe broadly split between east-coast and west-coast aesthetically. This categorization is such nonsense. People in the hard sciences don't neatly fall into a type, and…

Right - and there’s the tacit assumption flowing throughout is that the ‘independent thinkers’ have only good things to say, and that societal norms have not evolved for any good reason.

The state, particularly the welfare state, is partly a recognition that together we can achieve a level of protection for each other that we cannot achieve independently.

And if the independent thinkers don’t much feel like writing open source software, writing political treatises or contributing to Wikipedia articles and instead feel like spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories online, then what?

Like most business quadrants of this type, it gets you to agree to its typology of the world and the rest flows naturally from there. But the typology usually can be called pretty easily into question.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#608

Post by chrisco255 »

himinlomax wrote: post #13

Very interesting take. This reminds me of Bob Altemeyer's work. He summed up his decades of research on authoritarianism in a free ebook at https://www.theauthoritarians.org/ . I invite everyone to read this, this is the single most important work of political science / social psychology I've ever read. Two categories he identifies, "authoritarian" and "social dominant" map to Graham's "passively conventional" and "a…

I believe Steve Jobs was a narcissist or had some of those traits, but he did just the opposite. It's not necessarily true that narcissists are destructive. I think they are a mixed bag. Sometimes they are constructive and work within the system to improve things, even if it's ultimately to improve their own standing in the world.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#610

Post by kristianc »

> For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so.

Luckily there’s an easy way to verify this - how many of the current YC cohort are B2B SaaS startups?

Today’s collection of startup CEOs are the very opposite of aggressively independent minded - they’re people who 15 years ago would have done an MBA or gone into finance.

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