>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

>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.