Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 882 posts

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#141

Post by oldsklgdfth »

The part of the essay that made me the most introspective was:

" Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote:

    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. "
I had to stop and ask myself that question.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#142

Post by blueflow »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #132
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But innovation isn't good per se. Innovation isn't anything in moral terms. All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population. This means that every new technology benefits some and harms others.

I’m struggling to see how antibiotics harmed others.

Use of antibiotics bred resistant strains, which are becoming a increasing danger for hospital inpatients.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#143

Post by wdwecewc »

missosoup wrote: post #110
wdwecewc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You sound like someone who has never experienced the second phase of where this culture inevitably leads to. I pray that it remains that way. This is not a left/right issue. This is a mental homogeneity to the point of militant aggression towards dissenting views issue. And it always leads to totalitarianism.

As someone who claims to be educated on history, it is important then to remind yourself of why this actually occurs. You can't make essays dismissing some angry mob as if they are a homogenous hivemind. They won't listen to you because they literally can't listen to you, they act independently and uncoordinated. You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with. Police brutality, for example, is still a threat not yet addressed. yet in all of Paul's preaching about the mob I don't see him making an iota of effort to do something that would actually stop the mob: fixing their issues. Instead, the current plan seems to be to dismiss their outcries and trod steadily along down the path of least resistance in a world that was already collapsing with or without the anger.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#144

Post by blunderkid »

bambax wrote: post #109

I have come to intensely dislike most of PG's essays, for many reasons, but the two main ones are that 1/ he plays fast and loose with the facts, reduces the whole history of (the various peoples of) humanity to a single arrow, and confuses demonstration with affirmation and, more importantly 2/ he has an unhealthy obsession with "classifying" people, by which he actually means ranking them, from top to bottom. The p…

Haha, take your point about the tendency to "classify". There is good reason for that however: he is a VC. One of the big things that keeps VCs busy is classifying/stereotyping teams and looking for patterns of success. Yes, he should probably keep some of these "frameworks" to himself. There isn't enough since in there to be taken seriously in a peer reviewed paper. But hey, he is PG! And there are weaklings, probably not members of his favored quadrant, who swear by his views :).

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#145

Post by raverbashing »

croissants wrote: post #134
raverbashing wrote: post #41

At the notes, there is something that caught my attention: > Many professors are independent-minded — especially in math, the hard sciences, and engineering, where you have to be to succeed. And I disagree with it. You don't have to be independent-minded (from the group) to be "average" successful. Quite the opposite. Follow the lead, follow the procedures, always take the skeptical side and you'll just coast through…

> You don't have to be independent-minded (from the group) to be "average" successful. Quite the opposite. If this is true, then what exactly separates successful faculty from unsuccessful faculty? There are lots of graduate students who want to be faculty, but only a small percentage do. What do you think the distinguishing factor is if not some kind of new ideas?

Conformist or not, resiliency and building relationships still play a part.

Given faculty positions are (very) limited, it seems resiliency might be the most important factor.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#146

Post by cjfd »

Regarding the use of the 'aggressively conventional minded'. When I was younger I would think that these kind of people were mostly just detrimental to society but I have come to see that they sometimes have a use. It is this kind of people who were the first to see that immigration and multiculturalism have their limits. For instance, salafism cannot just be seen as just another opinion that people can have. Of course, the 'agressively conventional minded' would put it in a bit more stark words than 'have their limits' and would also extend their warning messages to far greater groups than actually warranted but the other three types of people might just close their eyes to the whole problem. Generally, the 'aggressively conventional minded' can be helpful when a society is in danger of degrading into lawlessnes. They will be the first to sound the alarm and sometimes they are right.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#147

Post by zozbot234 »

stopachka wrote: post #87
coldcode wrote: post #21

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.

Any books you’d recommend?

The French Revolution, A History by Thomas Carlyle. It is a truly massive undertaking, an 'in depth' account if there ever was one; and Carlyle's focus on the 'various types' of people involved is quite clear.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#148

Post by arethuza »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #132
oldsklgdfth wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But innovation isn't good per se. Innovation isn't anything in moral terms. All technological change is a trade-off. For every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage. The advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population. This means that every new technology benefits some and harms others.

I’m struggling to see how antibiotics harmed others.

You could perhaps argue that antibiotics have allowed farming practises that might not be otherwise be economical that produce more suffering for the animals.

NB I don't know if this is true or not, but it certainly seems possible.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#149

Post by jccalhoun »

oisdk wrote: post #53

"Here's a taxonomy of people that I just made up. There are four types of people, classified by superficial characteristics. Actually, this classification is an extremely strong indicator for behaviour, certainly stronger than other indicators. How do I know this? I am very smart and I say so. Based on this fact, I notice that the social-justicy types of today bear some superficial and extremely tenuous resemblance t…

Also, "here is a taxonomy I made up and coincidentally I just happen to be in the category that is the best. "

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#150

Post by DavidVoid »

oisdk wrote: post #53

"Here's a taxonomy of people that I just made up. There are four types of people, classified by superficial characteristics. Actually, this classification is an extremely strong indicator for behaviour, certainly stronger than other indicators. How do I know this? I am very smart and I say so. Based on this fact, I notice that the social-justicy types of today bear some superficial and extremely tenuous resemblance t…

It certainly comes across a bit like Peterson's "everything is either order or chaos and chaos is bad," but for tech people who claim to be independent thinkers while all reciting the same old anti-regulation ideas.

I especially find PG's claim that "the people who run Silicon Valley are almost all independent-minded" to be questionable.

Post reply on HN