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Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he th

Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. > openly being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any significant opposition to anything he's said, anything he's done, or anything he is. I might be wrong, and I respect the opinions of "accidental moderates" who are acting in good faith, but I cannot imagine how you'd come to the conclusion that holding moderate viewpoints requires any real courage at all. > Nearly all the most impressive people I know are accidental moderates "I am only impressed with people exactly like me." Someone needs to write a similar pithy thinkpiece about how people who experience a lot of success should stick to what they know and not assume it gives them valid insight into other parts of life.

grawprog 7y ago
I always assume most people hold moderate viewpoints and the people with extreme viewpoints just tend to be the loudest. At least that seems to be the case with most people I meet anyway.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  And people with extreme viewpoints usually feel that way because they have some very strong belief system, like the idea that human life should take precedence over private property, or the idea that taxation is theft. If you start with one of those assumptions, then it pushes you pretty strongly to one pole or another. Often times people like that do think for themselves. They just think differently than you do.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  But the social pressure from the vocal minorities - especially when amplified by social media - pushes other people towards those extremes out of fear of being ostracized.
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  I've generally found most people don't generally care at all until they or someone they care about is impacted, then their care is largely dictated by the nature of the impact with existing political views only being partially factored in. One reason why getting to know members of a minority group can stop a person from being inherently biased against that group.
- dfxm12 7y ago
  More important than how loud people are or what viewpoints they publicly claim to have is how they vote. Take a look at who has been getting elected to congress in the US recently: https://xkcd.com/1127/ https://xkcd.com/1127/ Now, more than ever in our lifetimes, a lower percentage of congress is moderate. Center-right Republicans (the conservative party) have almost vanished. This isn't about a lack of choice either, because we've seen a bunch of long time incumbent congressmen lose to to people further from the center, like when Republican Bob Bennett finished 3rd in a Utah primary election to 2 far right tea party candidates. If most people held moderate viewpoints, like you assume, then congress would be getting more moderate, no?
karl11 7y ago
My takeaway from this comment is that you didn't really read what he wrote. An accidental moderate, by his definition, could hold zero moderate opinions. E.g. it is possible all of their opinions are 0 or 100 on a left/right spectrum. It requires courage because they cannot join any tribe, because enough of those opinions would be heretical to a given tribe to prevent acceptance.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Tons of people out there "can't join any tribe" because their belief systems are sufficiently different than those of people around them, and the way this is written suggests that it's almost a novel idea to Paul Graham. Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs? And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel. I'm probably a classic left leaning liberal. I'm in favor of universal healthcare. But I don't think gun control will solve all our problems, I'm okay with lower corporate taxes, but believe in greater wealth distribution. I think identity politics has gone too far. But I refuse to vote for Republicans because to an elect a Republican means to give more power to their voting bloc, and I don't like their policies. Do I need to invent a special term for myself? No. I'm a complicated individual. Everyone else is one, too. It's easy to assume you're the only one thinking for yourself, but it's more likely that you just fail to understand others are as complicated as you are. Also, I do believe he was implying that while his beliefs fall across the spectrum, they generally tend towards the center.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    > And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel. Clearly you're not on Twitter. Every day I see people deriding moderates for being moderates. So this post is an attempt to de-conflate people who don't subscribe to one of the parties and people who just want to be as inoffensive as possible.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    > Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs? Going again to the 'not actually reading the article' point, he has sneakily defined a moderate as someone potentially only holding extremest beliefs and probably as likely to be beaten up as anyone else. An extremist moderate, say. > I'm in favor of ... but I refuse to vote for Republicans There are good and bad people in every part of the spectrum. If you think only the Republicans are dangerous to elect you are either talking about the very-short-term of one election cycle or you are not thinking for yourself. A good check of if you are thinking for yourself is not feeling comfortable accepting or rejecting either side, or becoming almost a single issue voter (because nobody has time to be across more than one or two issues).
Frondo 7y ago
Agreed. People with extreme viewpoints (in either direction, whether you want to abolish private property or create a white ethno-state) face a lot of social sanction -- and very often financial penalties -- from the vast majority of people who just want to keep propping this status quo. Holding onto those extreme views risks losing a lot more than the extremely well-represented and appreciated middle. As for a pithy thinkpiece about successful people writing outside their expertise, someone already did, nearly 15 years ago... https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
- sagichmal 7y ago
  Excellent reply, thank you for writing it, and for bringing more light to Maciej.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any significant opposition to anything he's said, anything he's done, or anything he is. When you break this down into social groups, being moderate generally results in a person being able to pass in multiple groups if they are willing to be quiet and tolerate it, but not being able to join in any groups. And as for that passing, that holds true of most people in most groups. It is the lack of having a group to belong too that is harder than having such a group. I guess the question then remains as to why such people don't form their own group, but I think that ends up being that they are as incompatible with someone else who is incompatible with established groups as they are incompatible with established groups. Think of it this way. Imagine people's opinions super simplified into an array of 3 dozen boolean values, each representing one of the 3 dozen most charged political issues (even if it isn't charged for most people if it is really charged for some people it can average out as being charged enough to count). Arbitrarily pick 0 or 1 to represent one of the two party views within the US (places with multiple parties are harder to represent, but they may also have far less of this problem to begin with). Now calculate the distance people are based on how many are the same or different. Someone who is mostly a 0 with only 3 or so 1s is going to only be a distance of ~3 away from one of the main groups. But someone who is randomly assigned half and half is going to be a distance of ~18 from either group. But two people who are randomly assigned half and half are also going to be a distance of ~18 from each other, despite both of them being moderates. Now in reality you will find some clustering beyond just the existing division (such a group that may tend towards socially conservative and socially liberal), but the overall all point of difficulty, and thus courage, can be understood as the calculation of a difference from other people in this simple model, and in such a case, being moderate has higher distance. Edit: I would like to add that courage does feel like a bad choice of words to me. As someone who is often moderate (more undecided on issues because I see either stance resulting in extreme conclusions that I don't like), I don't do it because of any sense of bravery. I hold the views I do because they are the views I have. The extent I may espouse them might count a bravery, but in general I'm careful enough at reading the context and, when online, remaining anonymous I still wouldn't see it an act of courage (though what I am envision as courageous acting may be crossing that thin line into foolishness). I would much prefer calling it more difficult, but not an act of courage.
eloff 7y ago
As an accidental moderate myself, it does take courage. You don't belong on the right or the left. I'm too liberal for conservatives, and too conservative for liberals. I'm not even part of my parent's political or religious tribe. An accidental moderate means being tribeless. It doesn't surprise me that those kinds of people would be more impressive, since anyone who describes themselves as right or left, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, inherits their opinions instead of choosing them one-by-one on the basis of merits. I mean accidental moderates are pretty much the only adults in the room, and everyone else are child-like in their beliefs. Why should it surprise anyone that the adults accomplish more impressive things? EDIT I should add that I think everyone is really some level of accidental moderate, because there are not too many pure ideologues and not too many pure free-thinkers out there. But I think it is fair to say that the average person on the street is mostly not free-thinking about tribal things like politics or religion. And I'm sure I'm not fully-free thinking either.
- deleted 7y ago
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- m_ke 7y ago
  I'd love to hear what your liberal and conservative leanings are and why they make you so brave.
  - eloff 7y ago
    I don't hold any extreme beliefs (I think) but that's probably what an extremist would say. I do hold beliefs that would make me unpopular on either the left or the right. It takes more courage to not fit in, as any teenager can attest.
- opportune 7y ago
  I really hope this post is satire
  - eloff 7y ago
    Enlighten me if you think I'm wrong.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jturpin 7y ago
> I cannot imagine how you'd come to the conclusion that holding moderate viewpoints requires any real courage at all. Expressing moderate opinions on the internet will cause a lot of people of accusing you of being a "fence-sitter" or siding with "the enemy", as well as accusations that you are a coward by people who are agitated that the opinions they hold in such high regard are not shared and are even challenged. It is inviting vitriol from people highly polarized on either side.
- m_ke 7y ago
  Expressing liberal or conservative opinions will also get you a ton of accusations of being a communist or a fascist, that's how the internet works.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Yes, and if you think posting something people are going to disagree with on Twitter takes a great deal of courage, you are probably not used to holding any very controversial beliefs at all.
  - jturpin 7y ago
    I think the things you think are controversial are not the things that others consider controversial, and you should be aware of any bubbles you might be in. Anything that puts your job, employability, and social standing on the line takes a non-negligible amount of courage - let's not move the goal post by trying to classify what is "great courage" or not.
paulvorobyev 7y ago
>Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. This is almost everything that PG writes.
Reedx 7y ago
You mean intentional moderates? The ones trying to find the middle point and attempting to appease both sides, essentially. But accidental moderates aren't doing that and end up with positions across the whole spectrum. As such they're fully exposed to the slings and arrows from both tribes. It's easier and safer to be nestled inside a tribe than to be navigating outside of them. Which requires more courage than either selecting a tribe or trying to appease them. I can't see how PG is incorrect about that, though I think using the term "moderate" makes it unclear and easy to misinterpret.
zjaffee 7y ago
100% agree with everything you've written here. I'd also add that there is absolutely no such thing as an accidental moderate in a way that warrants any sort of prideful thinking. Additionally, there are political world views that are often described as moderate, but are legitimately their own political world view. Namely, in the US political system, the democrats are a big tent party of liberals and social democrats with clear ideological differences between the new democratic caucus and the progressive caucus. Those liberals are not moderate, they're liberals which are much closer in line to conservatives ideologically as they both support free market capitalism. Anyone who is an "accidental moderate" in a truer sense of the word has never spent any time thinking about politics in any sort of unified sort of way. Politicians should have a both a unified theory of change and a broader political framework for which they rationalize their decisions. While many people describe the Clinton's or Obama as being moderates, they are not moderates, they are liberals, which just happens to be it's own fully unified political theory to the right of socialism and social democrats and to the left of conservatism, nationalism, and fascism.

grawprog 7y ago

I always assume most people hold moderate viewpoints and the people with extreme viewpoints just tend to be the loudest. At least that seems to be the case with most people I meet anyway.

asdfman123 7y ago
And people with extreme viewpoints usually feel that way because they have some very strong belief system, like the idea that human life should take precedence over private property, or the idea that taxation is theft. If you start with one of those assumptions, then it pushes you pretty strongly to one pole or another. Often times people like that do think for themselves. They just think differently than you do.
_bxg1 7y ago
But the social pressure from the vocal minorities - especially when amplified by social media - pushes other people towards those extremes out of fear of being ostracized.
SkyBelow 7y ago
I've generally found most people don't generally care at all until they or someone they care about is impacted, then their care is largely dictated by the nature of the impact with existing political views only being partially factored in. One reason why getting to know members of a minority group can stop a person from being inherently biased against that group.
dfxm12 7y ago
More important than how loud people are or what viewpoints they publicly claim to have is how they vote. Take a look at who has been getting elected to congress in the US recently: https://xkcd.com/1127/ https://xkcd.com/1127/ Now, more than ever in our lifetimes, a lower percentage of congress is moderate. Center-right Republicans (the conservative party) have almost vanished. This isn't about a lack of choice either, because we've seen a bunch of long time incumbent congressmen lose to to people further from the center, like when Republican Bob Bennett finished 3rd in a Utah primary election to 2 far right tea party candidates. If most people held moderate viewpoints, like you assume, then congress would be getting more moderate, no?

karl11 7y ago

My takeaway from this comment is that you didn't really read what he wrote. An accidental moderate, by his definition, could hold zero moderate opinions. E.g. it is possible all of their opinions are 0 or 100 on a left/right spectrum. It requires courage because they cannot join any tribe, because enough of those opinions would be heretical to a given tribe to prevent acceptance.

asdfman123 7y ago
Tons of people out there "can't join any tribe" because their belief systems are sufficiently different than those of people around them, and the way this is written suggests that it's almost a novel idea to Paul Graham. Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs? And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel. I'm probably a classic left leaning liberal. I'm in favor of universal healthcare. But I don't think gun control will solve all our problems, I'm okay with lower corporate taxes, but believe in greater wealth distribution. I think identity politics has gone too far. But I refuse to vote for Republicans because to an elect a Republican means to give more power to their voting bloc, and I don't like their policies. Do I need to invent a special term for myself? No. I'm a complicated individual. Everyone else is one, too. It's easy to assume you're the only one thinking for yourself, but it's more likely that you just fail to understand others are as complicated as you are. Also, I do believe he was implying that while his beliefs fall across the spectrum, they generally tend towards the center.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  > And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel. Clearly you're not on Twitter. Every day I see people deriding moderates for being moderates. So this post is an attempt to de-conflate people who don't subscribe to one of the parties and people who just want to be as inoffensive as possible.
- roenxi 7y ago
  > Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs? Going again to the 'not actually reading the article' point, he has sneakily defined a moderate as someone potentially only holding extremest beliefs and probably as likely to be beaten up as anyone else. An extremist moderate, say. > I'm in favor of ... but I refuse to vote for Republicans There are good and bad people in every part of the spectrum. If you think only the Republicans are dangerous to elect you are either talking about the very-short-term of one election cycle or you are not thinking for yourself. A good check of if you are thinking for yourself is not feeling comfortable accepting or rejecting either side, or becoming almost a single issue voter (because nobody has time to be across more than one or two issues).

Frondo 7y ago

Agreed. People with extreme viewpoints (in either direction, whether you want to abolish private property or create a white ethno-state) face a lot of social sanction -- and very often financial penalties -- from the vast majority of people who just want to keep propping this status quo. Holding onto those extreme views risks losing a lot more than the extremely well-represented and appreciated middle. As for a pithy thinkpiece about successful people writing outside their expertise, someone already did, nearly 15 years ago... https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

sagichmal 7y ago
Excellent reply, thank you for writing it, and for bringing more light to Maciej.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>If he thinks that having middle-of-the-road opinions requires the most courage of them all, he has had an extraordinarily easily life in which he is used to be hailed as brilliant. It seems as though due to his comfortable position in life he has never faced any significant opposition to anything he's said, anything he's done, or anything he is. When you break this down into social groups, being moderate generally results in a person being able to pass in multiple groups if they are willing to be quiet and tolerate it, but not being able to join in any groups. And as for that passing, that holds true of most people in most groups. It is the lack of having a group to belong too that is harder than having such a group. I guess the question then remains as to why such people don't form their own group, but I think that ends up being that they are as incompatible with someone else who is incompatible with established groups as they are incompatible with established groups. Think of it this way. Imagine people's opinions super simplified into an array of 3 dozen boolean values, each representing one of the 3 dozen most charged political issues (even if it isn't charged for most people if it is really charged for some people it can average out as being charged enough to count). Arbitrarily pick 0 or 1 to represent one of the two party views within the US (places with multiple parties are harder to represent, but they may also have far less of this problem to begin with). Now calculate the distance people are based on how many are the same or different. Someone who is mostly a 0 with only 3 or so 1s is going to only be a distance of ~3 away from one of the main groups. But someone who is randomly assigned half and half is going to be a distance of ~18 from either group. But two people who are randomly assigned half and half are also going to be a distance of ~18 from each other, despite both of them being moderates. Now in reality you will find some clustering beyond just the existing division (such a group that may tend towards socially conservative and socially liberal), but the overall all point of difficulty, and thus courage, can be understood as the calculation of a difference from other people in this simple model, and in such a case, being moderate has higher distance. Edit: I would like to add that courage does feel like a bad choice of words to me. As someone who is often moderate (more undecided on issues because I see either stance resulting in extreme conclusions that I don't like), I don't do it because of any sense of bravery. I hold the views I do because they are the views I have. The extent I may espouse them might count a bravery, but in general I'm careful enough at reading the context and, when online, remaining anonymous I still wouldn't see it an act of courage (though what I am envision as courageous acting may be crossing that thin line into foolishness). I would much prefer calling it more difficult, but not an act of courage.

eloff 7y ago

As an accidental moderate myself, it does take courage. You don't belong on the right or the left. I'm too liberal for conservatives, and too conservative for liberals. I'm not even part of my parent's political or religious tribe. An accidental moderate means being tribeless. It doesn't surprise me that those kinds of people would be more impressive, since anyone who describes themselves as right or left, democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, inherits their opinions instead of choosing them one-by-one on the basis of merits. I mean accidental moderates are pretty much the only adults in the room, and everyone else are child-like in their beliefs. Why should it surprise anyone that the adults accomplish more impressive things? EDIT I should add that I think everyone is really some level of accidental moderate, because there are not too many pure ideologues and not too many pure free-thinkers out there. But I think it is fair to say that the average person on the street is mostly not free-thinking about tribal things like politics or religion. And I'm sure I'm not fully-free thinking either.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
m_ke 7y ago
I'd love to hear what your liberal and conservative leanings are and why they make you so brave.
- eloff 7y ago
  I don't hold any extreme beliefs (I think) but that's probably what an extremist would say. I do hold beliefs that would make me unpopular on either the left or the right. It takes more courage to not fit in, as any teenager can attest.
opportune 7y ago
I really hope this post is satire
- eloff 7y ago
  Enlighten me if you think I'm wrong.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jturpin 7y ago

> I cannot imagine how you'd come to the conclusion that holding moderate viewpoints requires any real courage at all. Expressing moderate opinions on the internet will cause a lot of people of accusing you of being a "fence-sitter" or siding with "the enemy", as well as accusations that you are a coward by people who are agitated that the opinions they hold in such high regard are not shared and are even challenged. It is inviting vitriol from people highly polarized on either side.

m_ke 7y ago
Expressing liberal or conservative opinions will also get you a ton of accusations of being a communist or a fascist, that's how the internet works.
asdfman123 7y ago
Yes, and if you think posting something people are going to disagree with on Twitter takes a great deal of courage, you are probably not used to holding any very controversial beliefs at all.
- jturpin 7y ago
  I think the things you think are controversial are not the things that others consider controversial, and you should be aware of any bubbles you might be in. Anything that puts your job, employability, and social standing on the line takes a non-negligible amount of courage - let's not move the goal post by trying to classify what is "great courage" or not.

paulvorobyev 7y ago

>Ah yes, the old "No one thinks for themselves except people like me" argument. This is almost everything that PG writes.

Reedx 7y ago

You mean intentional moderates? The ones trying to find the middle point and attempting to appease both sides, essentially. But accidental moderates aren't doing that and end up with positions across the whole spectrum. As such they're fully exposed to the slings and arrows from both tribes. It's easier and safer to be nestled inside a tribe than to be navigating outside of them. Which requires more courage than either selecting a tribe or trying to appease them. I can't see how PG is incorrect about that, though I think using the term "moderate" makes it unclear and easy to misinterpret.

zjaffee 7y ago

100% agree with everything you've written here. I'd also add that there is absolutely no such thing as an accidental moderate in a way that warrants any sort of prideful thinking. Additionally, there are political world views that are often described as moderate, but are legitimately their own political world view. Namely, in the US political system, the democrats are a big tent party of liberals and social democrats with clear ideological differences between the new democratic caucus and the progressive caucus. Those liberals are not moderate, they're liberals which are much closer in line to conservatives ideologically as they both support free market capitalism. Anyone who is an "accidental moderate" in a truer sense of the word has never spent any time thinking about politics in any sort of unified sort of way. Politicians should have a both a unified theory of change and a broader political framework for which they rationalize their decisions. While many people describe the Clinton's or Obama as being moderates, they are not moderates, they are liberals, which just happens to be it's own fully unified political theory to the right of socialism and social democrats and to the left of conservatism, nationalism, and fascism.