Imagine a world where people weren't divided into the "us-es" and the "them-s". Particularly by someone who is wealthy and powerful. And most particularly when the "them-s" are clearly intended to be untermensch.
For one thing, I don't know how many people Graham has interacted with over the years; probably a great deal more than I have given that I'm quite shy as well as a confirmed misanthrope. However, I do know a fair number of people and exactly none of them fit neatly into "aggressively/passively conventional/independent". (For one, I had an uncle that was a staunch Baptist and had been the sheriff of De Baca county, NM, who conspiratorially confided that he liked a glass of red wine of an evening.) Everyone is conventional about somethings and independent about others, and everyone is sometimes aggressive and sometimes passive about those things.
"[T]he aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales." Yes, of course they are. I note that "whistle-blower" is a synonym of "tattletale".
"[T]he passively conventional-minded, are the sheep." Yes, naturally, sheep. (https://xkcd.com/1013/) And is it just me or is really hard to tell the "passively conventional-minded" from the "passively independent-minded"?
"[T]he passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones." Those kooky cloud-cuckoo-land dwellers. Just try not to be on the side of the road while they're driving, 'cause they're probably not paying attention.
"[T]he aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones." Yes, of course. "Eppur si muove." Or possibly "Give me all of the cash in the drawer or I'll shoot you in the face." (Remember, there are all kinds of rules.)
"And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders."
Indeed. Remember, "conventional" is bad, "independent" is good, and bad is conventional while good is independent. There were never, ever, any independent minded defenders of slavery. (Louis Agassiz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz) - well, technically he opposed slavery, because it led to mixing the races; Nikola Tesla (https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/remembering-nikol...) - well, ok, a little late for slavery. Let's just say that you probably shouldn't investigate your heroes too thoroughly.) Anyway, I'm vaguely surprised Graham never worked "muggle" into this essay. Maybe he used another word. Normie? Mundane?
"For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so." Yes. Travis Kalanick. Elizabeth Holmes. Adam Neumann. Doug Evans. Jeffrey Skilling. Martin Shkreli. Bernard L. Madoff. Arthur Sackler. All aggressively independent-minded, I assure you. But didn't Peter Thiel found Palantir?
So what are these "bad ideas" whose discussion he's worried about banning? The great heros of the Confederacy? President Trump's genius? The moral and physical weakness of women?
Now, I realize that disagreeing with The Paul Graham goes strongly against the conventional wisdom here on Hacker News. Naturally, one can only be a rebel if one wears the right uniform. Perhaps I'm not being independent-minded in the right way. But here's a prediction for you: "aggressively conventional-minded" is going to replace "virtue signaling" as the favorite dismissal of ideas that the independent-minded don't want to consider. And "independent-minded" will be the new "politically incorrect"; a way to blunt criticism of repugnant words and actions.
(Did he really say that professors of engineering were independent-minded? Does he know any? I mean, real engineers, not 27-year-old senior software engineers. I mean, that's way outside my experience.)