Live data from Hacker News

The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

701–710 of 882 posts

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#701
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last I checked, opposition to "cancel culture" and censorship is about as mainstream a position as there is Not at all. I am 40. My father and one of my brothers share that position with me, but every single one of my friends and acquaintances from universities and workplaces, in the USA and in the European country in which I grew up, if they make their position clear on social media, it is in line with the progres…

> it is in line with the progressive left and thus implicitly at least supportive of "cancel culture" and censorship. It's very easy to say everyone is in favour of cancel culture if you say that any support of the "progressive left" amounts to support for cancel culture.

That's fair, I didn't make my case very well there.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#702
post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These protests are possibly the single largest protests for civil rights in the country's history. It is estimated that between 15 and 26 million Americans protested. Roughly 6% to 10% of the US adult population. If after almost 1 in 10 Americans protesting for the same thing you're pushing, you think you're less capable of succeeding at your job, I think you may want to question your approach. And I don't mean that…

I think it's important to step back see the bigger picture. Your comment IMO is exactly what PG is talking about when he defines "aggressively conventional" (down to using the actions of the masses to support your POV). A perfect system cannot exist, and getting there is limited by economics -> diminishing returns. It seems like you are pushing for a social structure that will consume American freedom to lower rate o…

I have a number of disagreements with your comment.

The first is the following:

1. OP posted that they've been trying something for many years and it hasn't produced the end result people want

2. An unprecedentedly large protest event has happened

3. I'm suggesting that OP should use the awareness of this new event to consider a new approach.

4. You characterize the above as "aggressively conventional".

If saying someone should take new knowledge and do something different in your opinion is "aggressively conventional", then I reach one of two conclusions.

Either

a. You have a very different understanding of "conventional" than PG meant.

b. It illustrates the uselessness of PGs framework for delineating conventionality, conformity and action.

My opinion is it's actually option "b". PG has essentially framed any opinion that someone advocates for, that he (and via implication the reader) strong disagrees with as being conventional, and any opinion that he or the reader advocates for as independent.

PG got a BA in from Cornell, an MS and Phd from Harvard. He went to study fine arts at Rhode Island school of design, and then at an art school in Florence. Following by going into business, and starting a company. I have nothing against any of those, and in fact thing it's a great path and laud him for the hard work and decidation of doing it. But it's true, that it's almost impossible to be in and leverage any more traditional, conventional methods of success in society than that. That is as conventional as it get. And yet he labels himself as independent. Amongst people who went to Ivy Leagues and started a company he advocated for something somewhat different (you can make more money doing X than by doing Y), but honestly it's pretty darn conventional. It's like being the rebel on Wall St., or the punk rocker that dyes their hair orange instead of the typical pink. He calls out teenagers, but doesn't see how exactly he's in that same mold.

Now directly on "conventional". Everything has been done before. Protests have happened before, people in power have used it to suppress ideas, there have been pandemics, there have been new technologies. If your definition of conventional is "has this ever happened", then from knowing even a tiny slice of history - exactly everything ever is conventional.

If you choose your definition of conventional to be more practical than "everything that ever happens", you come to a definition of conventional being supportive of those ideas, structures and systems of the existing groups in power. And independent meaning pushing ideas against them. Leveraging a non-infinite definition of "conventional" your argument above no longer makes sense. It becomes clear that you're arguing for using the conventional methods of trying to reform the system, which is what haven't been working. You are arguing for conventional thinking, while denouncing it.

> It seems like you are pushing for a social structure that will consume American freedom to lower rate of failure ... from our social system.

This is uninterpretable to me. I'm not even certain what social structure you're accusing me of pushing.

> The system is not fundamentally broken, it's just human; comprised and run by humans.

And this again to me seems to be the fallacy/oversimplification you've used. Because a system is comprised of and run by humans it not fundamentally broken? Every system is comprised of humans. That means you're arguing that no system can ever exist that can be broken. Again you're using a label and try to have it encompass the infinite. The fact a system is comprised of humans doesn't mean it can't be broken.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#703

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…

> We have a legal and social framework for affecting longterm change and it works much better than arson. This is a non-sequitur. Police violence has (probably) been increasing for years[1]. Over the last 20 years the police have become more militarized and killings by police have increased even as crime rates have decreased sharply. Clearly the legal and social frameworks are not working. [1] https://fee.org/article…

Police violence has (probably) been increasing for years

From what I've gathered, police violence has likely decreased at least compared to 50 years ago. I would argue fewer incidents, but much more publicity around them.

It wasn't unusual in the least for cops to rough up a suspect. Disrespect the police, well, you'll get a good beating because you're a criminal and no one will believe you.

This video about "Whistling Smith", a Vancouver cop in the 70's was really eye opening for me.[1]. Look at his interactions, you think that would fly today?

Same thing with this quote from a cop investigating biker gangs in Quebec in the 90's.

"Don't forget this before the Charter of Rights. You saw a guy walking up the street in his colors, you kicked the shit out of him, and that was it".[110] Bouchard argued that the "old school" methods of beating up outlaw bikers were far preferable to modern policing methods as outlaw bikers only respect violence.[2]

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ5oYz6uufU [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Boucher

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#704
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…

Sounds scary so long as everything is discussed in such vague terms, which is why those decrying "cancel culture" always keep it in the theoretical space. When the "conformity of the mob" is a concrete example, such as leftists fighting for basic human rights, eg. access to medicine so that you don't die, not getting murdered by the police, etc, well it's hard to make this sound troubling.

Cancel culture is equally strong in the UK, where they have free public healthcare and the UK police kills about 2 people per year (usually well justified). These issues seem to be orthogonal.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#705
post #260
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?

[deleted]

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But the reform way hasn't worked very well, if at all, either. You don't see a difference between USA, 1960 and USA, 2020?

My understanding is that inequality is much worse now than in the 60s. It also seems like back then it was much easier to have a good quality of life with a non-skilled job than it is today. However, I haven't looked into it too much so I could be mistaken.

Census data on percentage of blacks living in poverty.[1]

2018 - 23.3%

1966 - 31.1%

[1]https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#707
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>one big difference is that the Red Guards were created by Mao as a way to purge the party of his enemies... No -- that's not the case, and that's precisely why I think the parallel to what is happening now is so strong. The Red Guards started in 1966 as a student movement. They later developed a manifesto, which Mao thought he could leverage to his own advantage, so he endorsed its broadcast. This fanned the flames…

This comment is 100% correct and the fact that most people here misunderstand the Red Guards movement is the terrifying proof that they have no idea what we're dealing with in the US right now. This ideology is not something that strives for or can be steered into a productive outcome, it inherently wants to expand its reach and list of enemies until it takes over the entire world or someone shuts it down. It's the c…

As someone who grew up in China, I think this analogy is overblown. PG and others are up in arms about "cancel culture," but I'm not seeing substantial evidence of people's voices being suppressed by the masses. The few anecdotes cited (James Bennet fired by NYT, JK Rowling finally being called out for being anti-trans, random people being unfairly fired) don't seem to point toward a mass movement toward intolerance in the US.

On the other hand, it's clear, especially to young people, that traditional liberalism has failed at actually addressing inequality, racism, and other systemic problems that the US faces. A big part of what people refer to as "cancel culture" is frustration over the ineffectiveness of traditional liberalism, especially when the far right seems to play by a different set of rules.

I'm definitely concerned about far left zealotry, but I don't think that's what I'd happening in the US.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#708
post #260
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?

If you can't be bothered to recognize even a single instance of this happening, then you've shut your eyes and ears.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#709

When I read this part I thought it really resonated: > In adulthood we can recognize the four types by their distinctive calls, much as you could recognize four species of birds. The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is "Crush this essay!" He chose such a prescient example.

I can't put my finger on it, but there must be a name for this kind of logic. I think pgs arguments have more sustenance than just this, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I'll give an (extreme) example below. 1. Make a statement, calling out some part of the population as "inferior". 2. Note that a trait of belonging to the inferior class would be to disagree with the above statement. 3. Dismiss any criticism of th…

[flagged]

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#710
post #694

There's a subtype he doesn't mention but I think deserves notice and is especially pertinent to today's environment. That is, the conventionally-minded who is convinced they are die-hard independently-minded. People like this come across by chance doctrine which appeal to a special part of themself, be it religious, political, or social doctrine. They hardily embrace the newfound doctrine and denounce others as havin…

I think the example of the students of the Princeton professor is very similar to this subtype:

> I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it.

Most people, myself included, like to believe that they are independently-minded. Given that most people aren't independently-minded, most people are wrong.

Post reply on HN