121–130 of 882 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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How confident are you that this is true? What kind of information would you have to see to feel alarm?
This dude has to get out more and hang out with people who aren't like Peter Thiel. (Thiel burns me up. I feel stupid because he fooled me into buying a Girard book.) He's got an open invitation to stay in my treehouse but he seems to refuse to go anywhere that has weather. Maybe he melts like a witch when it rains or something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Social justice and true equality aren't conformist ideas though. We live at a time when wealth inequality is around the highest since our country has kept track and you think equality is a mainstream conformist idea?
Many people have been so misled by education and media consumption that they have no idea what is going on. It is a commonplace that conformists will profess to beliefs that they regularly undermine. E.g., the people who "support the protests" but still whinge about how they're too "confrontational" and "violent".
This is one of PG's weaker essays. He attempts to glide between psychology, history, politics, and philosophy without proper evidence or background in those areas. His construct is somewhat interesting on the surface but is only supported by his own feelings and his own anecdata, he doesn't point to anything relevant or similar written by actual experts.
You'd think it would be obvious just from that sentence what a dangerous game they're playing. But I'll spell it out. There are two reasons why we need to be able to discuss even "bad" ideas.
Everything above that is just setting up the rest.
> ...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?
Loved this essay. The phrase “aggressively conventional minded” is genius, and may contribute a lot towards the solution. As someone coming from an ex-soviet state, I’ve felt personal alarm bells ring more and more, as I experience the kind of intolerance and double speak America is heading into. Both the left and the right my opinion are missing the key points on freedom (the left suppressing and labeling, the right…
It's his personal problem. He built the ultimate machine to attract conformists who want to get another badge. First the conformists will push out individualists by their sheer bulk and better ability to navigate the approval process. (It's their core competency in life!) Y Combinator is a plant that has grown too large for its pot. Someday something is going to go wrong, there are so many people going through it tha…
Conventional thinkers are the builders of institutions. The people who bring us together. As an aggressively independent minded person, I see a dire need for that.
If socially minded people don't have a nice group to join, they fall back on the old toxic classics. We need someone to give us new unions, churches, universities, bowling teams, a group you aren't born into. The aggressively conventionally minded people are the ones who can do that!
As for most attempts to classify people, it should be strongly stated that any single human would fits several quadrants depending on the subject, the phase in their life they are in, or even the mood of the day. I read this two dimensional presentation only as device to discuss a theoretical point, and not something that could have any practicality. In particular, I think a lot of people switch from the "sheep" quad…
> As for most attempts to classify people, it should be strongly stated that any single human would fits several quadrants depending on the subject Its not related to such subjectivity as the subjectivity is itself a likely form of conformity.
That would be the same person, but behaving differently depending on the field or the context.
This dude has to get out more and hang out with people who aren't like Peter Thiel. (Thiel burns me up. I feel stupid because he fooled me into buying a Girard book.) He's got an open invitation to stay in my treehouse but he seems to refuse to go anywhere that has weather. Maybe he melts like a witch when it rains or something.
It seems to be de rigeur in this thread to point out that he now resides in the UK.
If you want to learn about the various types of people and how they relate to the world around them, study the French Revolution (in depth, not just a snippet). You will find every kind of person (in much more complex combinations than presented here), and how they participate/change/destroy/terrorize/etc. People today are no different we just have more technology.