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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#531

Post by dencodev »

philwelch wrote: post #514
dencodev wrote: post #492

I'm not sure I find much meaning in this essay because everyone's definition of "conventional" and "independent" depends on their own bias. PG's own definition of independently minded seems to be "they have all the new ideas". If that's the case, then universities are absolutely a place of independently minded people when compared to the baby boomers and older generations. Speaking out against racism, bigotry, and sy…

> Speaking out against racism, bigotry, and systemic issues that overwhelmingly impact POC and the LGBTQ+ community is not what I consider "conventionally minded" It’s so unconventional that almost every Fortune 500 corporation has done so in unison. I think there’s a part of pg’s essay that’s doing a lot more work than people realize, because everyone keeps missing it: “ When measuring conformism, of course, you hav…

>It’s so unconventional that almost every Fortune 500 corporation has done so in unison.

For literally the first time in history, and most of the Fortune 500 "speaking out" is just empty words without any real action. Look how progressive Amazon is, putting the BLM banner on their homepage for a couple weeks. Meanwhile Bezos is still perpetuating awful working conditions that disproportionately impact his POC employees.

I'm in my 30s and rules in my life are not set by my peers. They're set by the older generations who overwhelmingly feel and act like "Fuck you, got mine". My life is overwhelmingly dictated by the rich and powerful and privileged, everywhere from where I live and how I live to where I work and how I work. I have very little say in how my life works, and it's rare that I ever see someone my age having any impact on that.

Also, people (and university students) don't live in a bubble. It is absolutely independently minded to grow up around parents and teachers that all have the same beliefs and then to be able to form your own beliefs that diverge largely from theirs. Just because you have people around you that made the same step doesn't make you conformist.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#532

Post by nitrogen »

missosoup wrote: post #356
AlanYx wrote: 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…

In addition to Lord of the Flies, we had to watch a movie in my high school (long ago) about student movements getting out of hand, I think it was called The Wave.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0083316/ might be it

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#533

Post by pnathan »

defen wrote: post #510
pnathan wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> does it seem like most of pg's recent essays are attempts to "poison the well" against anyone who might try to hold him and his peers accountable for their contributions to the sorry state of our society? I'm wondering what kind of wack opinion he has that he doesn't want to talk about, and these essays are providing cover for. I'm extremely loathe to blame specific individuals for the state of systems. I do think…

> I'm wondering what kind of wack opinion he has that he doesn't want to talk about, and these essays are providing cover for. This is the exact thing the essays are about, though! To use a question from a previous pg essay - I'm not even asking you to share it, just asking if it exists - do you hold any opinions that you believe to be true, yet you dare not share with anyone for fear that you would lose your job and…

I don't _think_ so.

I think there are certain research areas which are interesting, but research outcomes are so potentially misused or politically incendiary that there are no research done by people of good will.

If you're curious what those are, that would be any root of an arbitrary topic that is contentious in the US culture wars.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#534

Post by tmaly »

> When the conventional-minded get the upper hand, they always say it's in the service of a greater good. It just happens to be a different, incompatible greater good each time

I think its hard to imagine people on the other side of your positions and world view. If your team is winning, you do not stop to think of those on the opposite side of the coin. But circumstances change, you could be on that opposite side of the coin someday.

> Enforcers of orthodoxy can't allow a borderline idea to exist, because that gives other enforcers an opportunity to one-up them in the moral purity department, and perhaps even to turn enforcer upon them. So instead of getting the margin for error we need, we get the opposite: a race to the bottom in which any idea that seems at all bannable ends up being banned.

Free expression of ideas or something else filtered by those that own the platforms. Is that the choice we have?

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#535

Post by [deleted] »

__alexs wrote: post #379
etrautmann wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the larger point is that it doesn't matter how easy it is to make works public if the consequences prevent you from doing so: if you can easily get fired, pushed out of a tenured position at a university, or otherwise lose your voice for making unpopular opinions public.

I don't buy this. There are millions of anonymous Twitter accounts and forum posters. Literal children have figured out opsec well enough to save themselves them embarrassment of having to share their love of anime with the wrong friends. I'm sure a tenured professor is smart enough to use a different email address and profile picture when signing up to radical life extension forums if what they want to discuss is re…

[deleted]

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#536

Post by LordFast »

jfarmer wrote: post #516

If you write several essays about "the way society works" and they consistently resolve to a protagonist who happens to be very much like yourself, you're probably writing about your own mind, not society.

If many people find agreements with a person's notions of conformity, by the evidence of the popularity of their writings, does that make these people conformists, and therefore engenders conformist attitudes towards the author's point of view on non-conformity?

Genuinely pondering.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#537

Post by jfarmer »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #529
jfarmer wrote: post #516

If you write several essays about "the way society works" and they consistently resolve to a protagonist who happens to be very much like yourself, you're probably writing about your own mind, not society.

It's ironic that he describes social media as an own goal but there isn't the introspection accompanying it that would lead to the obvious point you've made so well. Everyone in SV wants to be "up and to the right" in every quadrant map of anything. How comforting to simplify life to those terms, to exceptional winners and conventional deadweight. But if society takes your myopic vision and resulting creation and the…

Absolutely! You can see it in this thread, even. There are folks excited by the prospect of using the phrase "aggressively non-conformist".

pg is providing memetic ammunition for the very "culture wars" he claims he's trying to sit out. No introspection (or at least no _evidence_ of introspection), exactly as you say.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#538

Post by raxxorrax »

thom wrote: post #30
lincolnq wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you unpack this? The only social justice-related example in the piece was a positive one (antebellum abolitionism). It seems like you might be reading into the piece more than was intended.

The recent history of PG's twitter outpourings has been about the danger posed by political correctness and progressives more generally, in the face of criticism of things like AI bias.

I think he argues that progressives are a misnomer, political correctness a compromise with orthodoxy.

Progressives don't necessarily agree with other progressives. At least a subgroup wouldn't self describe as such.

This was tried to communicate very often, for example with reference to diversity of opinion. It was, perhaps with some reason, seen as an argument against diversity of skin colors.

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#539

Post by jfarmer »

LordFast wrote: post #536
jfarmer wrote: post #516

If you write several essays about "the way society works" and they consistently resolve to a protagonist who happens to be very much like yourself, you're probably writing about your own mind, not society.

If many people find agreements with a person's notions of conformity, by the evidence of the popularity of their writings, does that make these people conformists, and therefore engenders conformist attitudes towards the author's point of view on non-conformity? Genuinely pondering.

I think the one-dimension "conformist" / "non-comformist" axis isn't useful.

We all participate in orthodoxies that we're blind to (or at least not fully aware of). The only questions are "Which ones?" and "What are the consequences of our participation?"

In that sense, we're all "conformists".

Re: The Four Quadrants of Conformism

#540

Post by breuleux »

I'm a bit uncomfortable with how he romanticizes the "aggressively independent" quadrant as being the quadrant of startup founders, great innovators and Galileo (those with good ideas), even though that quadrant also clearly contains anti-vax leaders, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler (those with bad ideas). I'm sorry I had to go there, but it's true. People in both aggressive quadrants are extremely dangerous.

I'm also uncomfortable with his defence of free will because of how... conventional it is. It's nothing I haven't read a million times before. Like it or not, "free speech is good" is one of the most conventional statements one could make in current society, and it is consequently pushed by a lot of aggressively conventional people. Whether they are right or not is besides the point here. The point is that it is not, as portrayed, a fight between the independent-minded and the conventional-minded. It is perfectly reasonable for independent-minded people to question it, as they would question any other widespread norm, and a lot of its staunchest proponents are conventional-minded.

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