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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#2
50% of the words in this article could have been replaced with an image

  +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  |           tattletales             |       naughty ones                 |
  |                                   |                                    | aggressive
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |  passive
  |                                   |       dreamy ones                  |
  |        sheep                      |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  |                                   |                                    |
  +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+
       Conventional minded                    Independent minded

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#3
As always in discussions of "types of people" it's more nuanced than this.

Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others.

In fact if you picture a stereotypical conspiracy-minded alt-right individual then the exhibit both behaviours at the same time about the same group. (individualist) "I won't do x because the government tells me I should" and (conformist) "How dare those liberals in my town break the social conventions I feel strongly about!"

It's not hard to come up with an equivalent caricature for the left.

Every time you read a way of dividing the world into types - think of an example of someone who is multiple types. It's very easy in nearly all cases.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#6
post #2

50% of the words in this article could have been replaced with an image +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | tattletales | naughty ones | | | | aggressive | | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | passive | | dreamy ones | | sheep | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------+---------------------…

Agreed, that's the natural way of communicating this kind of taxonomy.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#7
> ...the latest wave of intolerance began in universities. It began in the mid 1980s, and by 2000 seemed to have died down, but it has recently flared up again with the arrival of social media.

> the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities..

Are there some examples of what this might refer to?

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#8
post #3

As always in discussions of "types of people" it's more nuanced than this. Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others. In fact if you picture a stereotypical conspiracy-minded alt-right individual then the exhibit both behaviours at the same time about the same group. (individualist) "I won't do x because the government tells me I sh…

I don't see a contradiction in your example. I think such individuals are consistently being aggressively conformist with their group, but for the hyper-political, their group isn't the nation, but the party.

That seems to fit with PG's claim that "The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is 'Crush !'". Naturally that would extend to disobeying the rules of the outgroup, perhaps solely because the outgroup proposed them.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#9
One of the things I dislike about celebrity is the idea that because I care what pg thinks about startups, that I should also care what he thinks about almost anything else. His Twitter account is starting to make me think he’s becoming Scott Adams.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#10
Good grief man, if you can only detect new ideas when they erupt from the mouths of startup CEOs, and you can't credit things like social justice and equality as anything but conformist (despite having been denied millions if not billions of people), then you're not 'independent', you're just incredibly narrow minded.
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