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The Four Quadrants of Conformism

• r4vik 6y ago
  50% of the words in this article could have been replaced with an image +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | tattletales | naughty ones | | | | aggressive | | | | | | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | passive | | dreamy ones | | sheep | | | | | | | | +-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+ Conventional minded Independent minded
  • MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Agreed, that's the natural way of communicating this kind of taxonomy.
  • tome 6y ago
    Yikes, would you mind editing that so that it has half as many (ASCII) columns, and about one fifth as many rows? As it is it is taking up my entire screen.
    • r4vik 6y ago
      not the easiest thing to edit in this text area but I've reduced the height
      • anonmidniteshpr 6y ago
        I wish I could fork and vim it on some sort of HN interface, but the home internet is down and I'm on my tiny, ancient iPhone 6s just trying to hit the right letters and not make misspelling like I'm drunk texting a translated novel from somewhere in Belarus.
  • anonmidniteshpr 6y ago
    So if I called my very bi gf to be at my work's stairwell for a nooner just before the lunch rush the day after we were in a tiny dark park in (a certain sleepy South Bay SF town)* for 4 hours going at it... I guess take makes me a take-no-chances, passive sheeple welcoming of law-and-order-types. Bahhahah }xD * Local cops actually made numerous good suggestions where couples could go because she broached it before I could. Lmaoooo. Hilarity ensued and then rotfl. For cops, they seemed really cool which was shocking outside of Little Italy/Northbeach SF.
    • nickthemagicman 6y ago
      Wat
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• hrktb 6y ago
  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" quadrant and the "naughty ones" pretty freely. They'll want to obey rules until they hit one that they feel doesnt' make sense and/or needs to be broken, and ideally will get back to being "Sheep" once it doesn't make sense to be a "naughty one" anymore (i.e. rules have changed, or better, they changed the rule) That's also a reason why I see places like startup hubs where people consciously behave in unconventional ways (= be jerks, most of the time) to feel like they're "naughty ones" shouldn't be lauded, and being indepdendent minded should be balanced with benefits to the surrounding people or society (if you break big rules, it should have a big payoff for everyone) PS: I find wording it as "sheep" to be unneedingly pejorative towards people who just don't break the rules and let others live their own life. In other classifications it would be "lawful neutral" for instance.
  • bsenftner 6y ago
    If one did not know who the author is, the essay would be criticized as shallow and sweeping to the point of being a vague excuse to treat others badly by those that only half grasp ideas anyway. Strikes me as personal writing that ought to be kept personal.
    • Funes- 6y ago
      >Strikes me as personal writing that ought to be kept personal Spoken like a true aggressively conventional-minded person.
      • bsenftner 6y ago
        such bullshit
  • Archit3ch 6y ago
    > In particular, I think a lot of people switch from the "sheep" quadrant and the "naughty ones" pretty freely. They'll want to obey rules until they hit one that they feel doesnt' make sense and/or needs to be broken, and ideally will get back to being "Sheep" once it doesn't make sense to be a "naughty one" anymore (i.e. rules have changed, or better, they changed the rule) Unethical life pro tip: If you are breaking the rules, at least make a case for why they don't apply to you. "I'm only stealing to feed my family." "This isn't an invasion, we're just annexing our own population on the other side of this border."
• stopachka 6y ago
  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 militarizing). Yet, as PG points out, the independent minded are good at figuring out solutions. No matter what, the fundamental ideas that America is built on is focused so heavily on freedom that I trust the aggressively independent to protect, and the passively independent minded to innovate.
  • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    >No matter what, the fundamental ideas that America is built on is focused so heavily on freedom Freedom as long as you aren't threateningly critical of America. The journalist of the Syrian War who took an anti-American stance and was targetted by American drone strikes would prove otherwise: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-to-survive-americas-kill-list-699334/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...
    • stopachka 6y ago
      The fact that an article exists, and it’s possible for him to sue, is a right and luxury afforded to us by this American belief in freedom.
      • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
        His suit was dismissed by the government because having to defend themselves against the accusation would disclose state secrets. The right to sue only matters if you can meaningfully exercise it... And your standards are ridiculous. If anyone anywhere was able to show you a story of the US trying to kill someone for committing ideological heresy then the very fact they could tell you the story is proof that Amrrica believes in ideological freedom? You see the contradiction surely...
• andybak 6y ago
  As always in discussions of "types of people" it's more nuanced than this. Someone can be both aggressively conformist over some issues (and towards some groups) and aggressively independent over others. In fact if you picture a stereotypical conspiracy-minded alt-right individual then the exhibit both behaviours at the same time about the same group. (individualist) "I won't do x because the government tells me I should" and (conformist) "How dare those liberals in my town break the social conventions I feel strongly about!" It's not hard to come up with an equivalent caricature for the left. Every time you read a way of dividing the world into types - think of an example of someone who is multiple types. It's very easy in nearly all cases.
  • nabla9 6y ago
    This is true. The most important discovery in human psychology is that our behaviour is extremely context dependent. This is why it's so hard to draw any conclusions or make experiments that discover something universal. People have different roles and behaviours in different context, they can change their behaviour radically in the same context when they get different responses. Psychology researchers know this, but in the folk psychology there is this assumption that you can observe people in context and that's how they are.
  • leereeves 6y ago
    I don't see a contradiction in your example. I think such individuals are consistently being aggressively conformist with their group, but for the hyper-political, their group isn't the nation, but the party. That seems to fit with PG's claim that "The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is 'Crush <outgroup>!'". Naturally that would extend to disobeying the rules of the outgroup, perhaps solely because the outgroup proposed them.
    • andybak 6y ago
      OK - I didn't spend that much time constructing my caricature but I still feel my point is valid if you want to modify them somewhat. I myself remember feeling the strong pull of both "types" and I'd struggle to define myself clearly as either. (although I suspect I'm more frequently conformist than my overly flattering self-image depicts)
• jgrahamc 6y ago
  The first part of this essay reminded me of the D&D alignment system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragon...
• zimpenfish 6y ago
  With the trajectory of this and the previous one, it honestly feels like we're only a handful of steps from praising the Intellectual Dark Web(tm) and saying that Charles Murray was misunderstood.
  • jmeister 6y ago
    Outside the far-left, nobody thinks the IDW or Charles Murray are devils.
• montebicyclelo 6y ago
  > ...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?
  • f0ff 6y ago
    Take Peterson for example.
    • DavidVoid 6y ago
      People are intolerant of Peterson because of Peterson's intolerance though.
      • motorcycleman9 6y ago
        Many people intentionally mischaracterize Peterson as intolerant. His position is generally extremely open-minded and comes from the position of a psychologist that has seen the failure modes of many different clients' lifestyles. When he tells moral tales that tilt toward a conservative lifestyle, they are told in the sense that straying from a conservative path is morally fine, but subjects you to personal risk of worse outcomes.
        • DavidVoid 6y ago
          One of the main reasons for his rise to fame was the opposition to bill C-16. A bill he claimed to oppose because of its free-speech implications, when all the bill actually did was extend existing legal protections of identifiable groups to also include gender identity and gender expression. Those exact same protections already existed on the basis of race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, and mental or physical disability. If Peterson's gripe is with compelled speech then how come he didn't strongly criticize the existing legislation for other identifiable groups, but instead just singled out the new protections for transgender individuals? > straying from a conservative path is morally fine, but subjects you to personal risk of worse outcomes. Which is a baseless and very questionable claim to make. > Many people intentionally mischaracterize Peterson as intolerant. Peterson is a Christian conservative with some fairly patriarchal ideas [1,2], so I think characterizing him as intolerant is pretty fair. [1] "[Western feminists avoid criticizing Islam because of] their unconscious wish for brutal male domination." https://twitter.com/aliamjadrizvi/status/1001164042856271874 https://twitter.com/aliamjadrizvi/status/1001164042856271874 [2] It is "hypocritical" for a woman to wear makeup in the workplace if she doesn't want to be sexually harassed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blTglME9rvQ&t=7m12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blTglME9rvQ&t=7m12s
• peteretep 6y ago
  One of the things I dislike about celebrity is the idea that because I care what pg thinks about startups, that I should also care what he thinks about almost anything else. His Twitter account is starting to make me think he’s becoming Scott Adams.
  • SamReidHughes 6y ago
    HN has a 'hide' button. You're free to make use of it.
  • drekembe 6y ago
    You're free to not care what he thinks about some topics, but he's also free to still write about them and has no obligation to write only about the things you care about.
• thom 6y ago
  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.
  • PaulHoule 6y ago
    What's ironic about it is that Y Combinator has been accused of becoming yet another badge of being the right kind of person. There are so many people out there who want to say they were part of "Y Co" but aren't really interested in making or doing anything. Bossing people around and having status has some appeal to them, but taking some actual stand is just too dangerous. Some rich dude like like Paul Graham might reject them, they wouldn't want people to think they were S1W's or anything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHyCIDu6dSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHyCIDu6dSY I think Mr. Graham needs some diversity in his life. Maybe he should spend a night in a hotel in Marin County or Gilroy would open up his vistas. (Oh, but you know Y Co wouldn't be effective at all if it was moved across the street from where it is -- if Altman and Graham had any self conciousness or thought where their arguments lead they'd realize they are arguing for 100% local taxation on themselves because the only value behind Y Co is the holy land which is the only place where rich people will let you have an exit... Except for China)
    • wdwecewc 6y ago
      Looking at Paul's twitter it is clear he only really respects those who are as rich as him or present some viewpoint he agrees with. It almost makes me think that his writing on what type of person not to be is just projection.
  • chippy 6y ago
    The ideas of social justice and equality spring from the independent quadrant. These ideas have become the rules that conventional quadrant follow and expose. This doesn't seem to contradict itself.
• himinlomax 6y ago
  Very interesting take. This reminds me of Bob Altemeyer's work. He summed up his decades of research on authoritarianism in a free ebook at https://www.theauthoritarians.org/ https://www.theauthoritarians.org/ . I invite everyone to read this, this is the single most important work of political science / social psychology I've ever read. Two categories he identifies, "authoritarian" and "social dominant" map to Graham's "passively conventional" and "aggressively conventional." The latter also tends to correspond to what psychiatrists would describe as narcissist, anti-social and possibly psychopathic traits. For example, he conducted experiments as role playing games, like a model United Nations. When he removed the few "social dominants" from the player pool, the game ran smoothly, there was peace and everyone went to Alpha Centauri or something. But when he added a few social dominants, things went to hell quick, and nuclear war broke out. Note that social dominants / narcissists are typically at most a few percents of the population. I'm sure many people have noticed the phenomenon in any organisation: when a narcissist gets a modicum of power, they can destroy an organisation from within.
  • soundnote 6y ago
    Altemeyer should be viewed with some suspicion: He thinks left-wing authoritarianism is a "Loch Ness monster", and in talks with David Friedman couldn't comprehend why eg. labor unions could constitute an authority to a person - he viewed union membership purely in transactional terms with little ideological content. His scale may identify a certain kind of authoritarian, but his work is almost assuredly blind as a bat to others and not a comprehensive take.
    • himinlomax 6y ago
      This is textbook ad hominem. His work stands regardless of ideology. But you're also wrong on two counts: First, he wrote this and did most of his work at a time when power structures were clearly right wing. But the mechanisms he describes are universal and independent of the labels used by those in power: authoritarians will strongly conform to the dominant ideology, and social dominants will pretend to adhere to it to gain power. He just used the labels reflecting the situation at the time. Second, he specifically points out that authoritarians in the Soviet Unions were nominally left wing. Consider that this kind of shift in dominant ideology is a slow process, on a period longer that one academic's career.
• PaulHoule 6y ago
  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.
  • nickthemagicman 6y ago
    When you ad hominem, you immediately tap out of the discussion.
  • kwistzhaderach 6y ago
    What’s wrong with Girard’s ideas?
  • tome 6y ago
    > 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.
• notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  Ah, conventional minded people are those who insist that those who break the rules are bad, worthless in society, and should be punished. Then Mr. Graham goes on to say that the rules of civilized, successful, wealthy societies are that everyone should be free to debate even the worst of ideas, and the people who prevent this or disagree with this are bad, never become entrepreneurs (a laughable thought), are not worth considering, and are in fact responsible for all bad things in the world (well, they and the leaders who appeal to them, only those two groups of people!) It's laughably puerile... I mean how does he think this way? Has he any idea that one of the most valuable companies in the entire world is from a wealthy, civilized (in terms of lack of crime and lots of social etiquette only), successful country which has no concept of free expression (ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia)? How do intelligent people end up reducing the world into such obviously untrue caricatures? How does he think that convention is the enemy of new ideas? Following convention is also the same thing as learning from the past or standing on the shoulders of giants. Without regard for convention at some level, the "geniuses" Mr. Graham praises would have been reinventing the wheel over and over and over again!
  • peteretep 6y ago
    > How do intelligent people end up reducing the world into such obviously untrue caricatures? Hot take: as a function of increasing age
    • MH15 6y ago
      Ooh this is one I haven't heard before. Now I'm thinking.
    • t_serpico 6y ago
      that, hubris, and intellectual dishonesty
  • jmeister 6y ago
    The only rebuttal to PG in your comment is ARAMCO, which was a state-run org till recently, and is nothing like the companies PG is talking about. Try again.
• sideshowb 6y ago
  > On the other hand, perhaps the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities is as much the symptom of the departure of the independent-minded as the cause. People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups. You have to be independent-minded to succeed at either of those. In defence of my chosen place in a university: being a quant or CEO implies a different kind of confirmity, namely, to the strong requirement of generating revenue (or at least investment) in the short term. Though we're all pushed to get academic funding as well, I don't think we have it as bad as either of those two roles, and that itself allows a certain diversity of thought.
  • kaymanb 6y ago
    I would also argue that the intersection of people who become quants / found successful startups and did so despite having a real shot at becoming a professor is pretty small. My only real data points are my own graduate school experience, but I haven't heard of anyone who was on a path to success in academia who didn't continue on down that path, or at least give it their absolute best shot before moving in. By success I mean maybe a post-doc or two followed by a reasonable shot at a tenure-track position at a decent school. This restriction is made in the same way that (I am assuming) pg is only referring to quants at decent firms, and startup founders who at least have an idea they can get off the ground. I seriously doubt that any kind of conformism at say, an ivy league institution, is because people who would have become profs there chose not to.
    • sideshowb 6y ago
      You're probably right, however, you could also argue that (my GP comment notwithstanding) diversity of modern academic thought is still somewhat reduced compared to what it was, because the modern academic system pushes out people who would have been successful there in the past (for example see Peter Higgs' comments on the matter https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-... )
    • zornthewise 6y ago
• coldcode 6y ago
  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.
  • stopachka 6y ago
    Any books you’d recommend?
    • wcarey 6y ago
      Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is a great read. I wonder which quadrant Graham would put Burke in?
    • zozbot234 6y ago
      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.
    • martythemaniak 6y ago
      Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, season 3. Probably about 30-40hrs of content (a lot of history happened!) and I find his content is a real good for first-timers.
    • coldcode 6y ago
      A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution by Popkin was very good.
  • gstomi 6y ago
    I am mildly interested in history but never really looked into the French Revolution. Can you suggest a starting point?
  • seneca 6y ago
• raverbashing 6y ago
  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 it. A lot of people succeed doing exactly that. Research? Take the latest papers in an area, try a similar research (nothing too out of the consensus) and write a grant request for it. The hard nonconformists, those will have a hard time. And the sad part is that most of them won't be nonconformists "for good reasons" but rather they will be most likely quacks. And I say the percentage is high exactly because academia does not favor anything out of the beaten path and independent thought is shunned.
  • croissants 6y ago
    > 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?
    • raverbashing 6y ago
      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.
• throwaway98797 6y ago
  People hate to think. It’s painful. Passivity rules the world and the weak willed will always follow. It’s is the deplorables that can save us from ourselves.
  • nickthemagicman 6y ago
    It's scary to think. Truth is actually scary. Stories are way better for most people
• mkloop 6y ago
  Excellent essay. I've been asking similar questions myself in the past couple of months, but in terms of European history. If I see a conformist activist, the first thing I ask myself: In a real crisis, would this person be the next Oskar Schindler? The answer is almost always "no". If I see an aggressive activist, the question is: Would this person still be aggressive during an actual crisis. In some cases, the answer is "yes". But in the majority of cases I doubt it and think they would just switch sides.
  • newacct583 6y ago
    Have you been watching what's happening in Portland? Where on the spectrum do you put those folks?
• anonmidniteshpr 6y ago
  I don't know what @pg means by aggressive or passive. In what respects? Maybe I don't understand what passive or rules-oriented are like because I live in a VW that has disco bar lights, a train horn, and I do basically whatever, wherever I want. Rules are for fools.
• oisdk 6y ago
  "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 to the pro-slavery types of yesterday. Really makes you think." I'm sorry but this comes across as total nonsense to me. Any "there are x types of people" stuff always reads as astrology for people with STEM degrees, especially when it's as ill-supported as the types given in this article. Also the article is pretty ahistorical: being "pro-slavery" was absolutely not the unanimous consensus that we like to pretend it was today. There was widespread opposition to slavery: many viewed it as an obvious moral evil. France banned slavery in 1315, for goodness' sake. People knew it was wrong. In actual fact, the type of people arguing against abolition were people in a much more similar position to Graham: the Economist famously urged delay with regards to abolition, fearing what freed slaves might get up to. Graham's notion that "actually, I'm much more like the abolitionists than slaveowners because we're both such iconoclasts" is extremely weak and, on its face, a little ridiculous. (also: does Graham really think he's going against the grain with this stuff? Last I checked, opposition to "cancel culture" and censorship is about as mainstream a position as there is. It would be hard to pick a more "conventionally-minded" opinion than "I think free speech is good")
  • garbagetime 6y ago
    > It would be hard to pick a more "conventionally-minded" opinion than "I think free speech is good" It's important to make the distinction between people who feel like they're in favour of freedom of speech, and people who are actually in favour of freedom of speech. It often seems to me that Americans belong to the former group but not the latter. I'll link a funny poll (from a long time ago, but I'd love to see a new one) where 96% of respondents said they were in favour of freedom of speech, but only 40% said they were in favour of radicals being allowed to hold meetings and express their views. https://news.gallup.com/vault/206465/gallup-vault-tolerance-free-speech-limits.aspx https://news.gallup.com/vault/206465/gallup-vault-tolerance-...
    • 6y ago
• ggreer 6y ago
  I enjoyed this essay, but I think PG missed one aspect of the recent cultural changes: Even though startups are founded by the aggressively independent-minded, they have insane amounts of ideological conformity. Many people with beliefs that are widespread in the US (pro-life, pro-gun, Republican, etc) are now "in the closet" in the Bay Area. Don't believe me? 10% of San Franciscans voted for Trump in 2016. Yet of all the people I've worked with in the past four years, not a single one of them has publicly admitted to doing so. 14 percent of Californians own guns, but again, nobody I've worked with is "out of the closet" as a gun owner. That is an amazing coincidence. Let's say I've worked closely with 50 people in the past 4 years (the actual number is higher). If each one has a 10% chance of voting for Trump, there is a 99.5% chance that I've worked directly with a Trump voter. It's a 99.95% chance that I've worked with a gun owner. Yet based on everything I hear at work, you'd never suspect that such people exist. They're like dark matter. If that's what life is like at companies founded by people who are aggressively independent-minded, I shudder to think how bad it is at companies run by the aggressively conventional-minded.
  • tfehring 6y ago
    SSC famously made and extended this argument a few years ago [0]. I like that essay's example of creationists even better, because it's a shockingly huge group of people - over 40% of Americans literally believe that the Earth was created in its present form in the last 10,000 years or so - and for all intents and purposes its overlap with the readership of PG, HN, SSC, or whatever is 0. [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
  • projektfu 6y ago
    Coming from where I live, it's surprising to think of any of those (pro-life, pro-gun, or Trump voter) being quiet about it, so my feeling is that they are nonexistent in your circles, not quiet. But perhaps they are indeed closeted there. FWIW, I also thought that SV (though not SF) was full of firearm enthusiasts and prepper types, but that's probably an uninformed view from the other side of the country.
    • 6y ago
• TigeriusKirk 6y ago
  Does a voting and flagging system on a discussion board reward the aggressively conventional or the aggressively independent to a greater extent? Which group does such a system punish to a greater extent?
  • chippy 6y ago
    In HN people often flag submissions to keep the identity and content more coherent and to reduce flame. (e.g. flagging advertisements, political and culture war submissions) Perhaps it's the passive ones that flag submissions, but downvoting comments occurs by more aggressive conventional ones? I'd love to see statistics.
    • jl2718 6y ago
      I think this board intends to favor passive independents. However, in almost all cases, it is aggressive conventional that dominate the conversation.
• jes 6y ago
  A simple graphic of the four quadrants would have improved my experience in reading this article. I was surprised to not find one.
• zucker42 6y ago
  It's certainly an interesting framework for thinking about things, and some of the thoughts seem aligned with my ideas on this issues. The problem is that I think everybody, including and especially people who view themselves as independently-minded, is susceptible to conformism and a lack of ideological independence. It seems to me like a basic fact of our biology, or at least very ingrained in our culture, that we develop ideas based on identification and solidarity with groups we belong to. It's true of politicians, VC firm leaders, tech workers, economists, and even the most earnest scientists. The idea that there is a class of people who are "independently-minded" and therefore somehow more intellectually useful is flawed because people tend to have interesting, unique ideas in some areas and ideas which amount to little more than parroting a group belief in others. Along these lines, the article argues that conformism is independent of rules (and it implies also independent of context), but I don't think it gives sufficient evidence for this point. It also doesn't agree with my experience; I was a bit of "goody-two-shoes" in K-12 (i.e. a passive conformist), but now my political outlook is niche, I try to think scientifically about the world, and I'd self-judge to be passive independently-minded person. > Though the people who run Silicon Valley are almost all independent-minded This reads as extremely overconfident, and in my judgement it is probably false. I think tech as an industry faces the same issues with group-think that any large-enough community is bound to face, and I don't think Silicon Valley is a pinnacle of enlightened, humanist society. The whole article to some extent reads like "if more people were more like Paul Graham, the world would be better". Obviously, that's the not the argument of the article (and to be fair, it's probably true the world would be better with more Paul Grahams), but its interesting I got an impression of that sentiment in an article about the dangers of conformism. And it's also interesting that it's not the first time I've read a very similar argument in recent weeks. In case I seem overly harsh, I want to clarify it was a thought-provoking article I enjoyed reading.
• bob33212 6y ago
  I agree that within some groups like humanities departments, twitter and liberal companies the social justice movement is out of control. Just promoting a white male employee, or calling the police in a black person you see commiting a crime would make you fear for your job in some of those circles. On the other side there was a member of Congress who called a female member of Congress a "fucking bitch" and also the president has said plenty of sexist and racist things recently without either person losing their job. The fact that both of these can exist in the same country is the troubling thing to me. They not even remotely trying to understand each other.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • devdas 6y ago
    Calling the cops has turned out to be a death sentence for Black people too often.
    • steveeq1 6y ago
      It's overplayed: https://i.stack.imgur.com/WogKi.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/WogKi.png
      • bob33212 6y ago
        I don't think your are well informed here. They are protesting the systemic racism that makes some cops feel like they can get away with leaving their knee on a black man's neck for 8 minutes killing him. Maybe you don't think that systemic racism is a major problem or maybe you think that people should focus on other issues instead? But your graph is incorrect.
        • steveeq1 6y ago
          I feel that the "systemic racist" is overplayed, yes. And the graph is sourced.
• gregwebs 6y ago
  Since this is claimed to come down to personality types, it would make sense to look at research on personality types. There is a model of personality types that seems relate-able where people are characterized as upholder, rebel, questioner, or obliger [1]. The aggressive ones line up at least: upholder = tattletales, rebel = naughty ones I don't think that equating the passive category to personality types in this model works, but it would be: questioner = dreamy ones, obliger = sheep The reason being that obliger is characterized more by relationships with others (aggressive/passive) than by being conventional or independent minded. [1] https://psychcentral.com/blog/4-personality-types-the-upholder-questioner-rebel-obliger/ https://psychcentral.com/blog/4-personality-types-the-uphold...
• m0llusk 6y ago
  This is all so static. Real life is more dynamic. An aggressive rule enforcer is an easygoing independent who got mugged and an easygoing independent is an aggressive rule enforcer who went to college. Damage done in the world comes more from failing to understand how people get influenced in their choices than from picking the wrong quadrant.
  • MiguelHudnandez 6y ago
    Any person's coordinates will change over time, that is true. I don't think that removes any value from the measurement system.
• areoform 6y ago
  There are many ways to parse this essay, but it is emotionally challenging to give feedback, lest the charge of being conventional minded is levied against you. However, I doubt that is pg's intention. This comment is my good faith attempt at a measured response. pg mentions universities multiple times, with the implicit and explicit statement that they were centers of revolution and non-conformist thought. While that is partly true, it's not the whole truth. History remembers a different, more complicated reality. Lise Meitner was the second woman in the world to gain a doctorate in physics. When she started, women weren't allowed to go to college, one of humanity's greatest minds spent her youth as a teacher. It was the only career available to her. When she tried to start doing research, she was refused, > The only difficulty was that Hahn told me in the course of our conversation that he had been given a place in the institute directed by Emil Fischer, and that Emil Fischer did not allow any women students into his lectures or into his institute. So Hahn had to ask Fischer whether he would agree to our starting work together. And after Hahn had spoken to Fischer, I went to him to hear his decision and he told me his reluctance to accept women students stemmed from an unfortunate experience he had had with a Russian student because he had always been worried lest her rather exotic hairstyle result in her hair catching alight on the Bunsen burner. - https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull6-1/06101400412.pdf https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazi... Fischer relented with pressure from Hahn, but in some cases, it took nearly half a decade for people to allow her to work with them. She lost years banging her head against the wall. What else could she have discovered had she gotten the right resources from the start? She prevailed against these barriers, but she was never recognized as an equal. Recognition eluded her. Lise and Otto discovered fission together, Hahn got the Nobel, she didn't. Decades afterwards, the first Pulsar was detected by Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She helped build the array that made the discovery. She spent her nights looking at the data. She noticed the anomaly. She championed it when her supervisor dismissed it as a glitch. Her persistence paid off, and her supervisor got the Nobel. Women have never been accepted as equal. Even at universities. How radical and non-conformist could they be when they repeated the same mistakes as the societies around them? They excluded people for being Jewish, for being born with the wrong sex organs, for having the wrong skin color, for being the wrong person. They were radical along some axes, but conformist along others. Things are better today, but women continue to be overlooked broadly and in academia. Women are discriminated against for "reasonable concerns" when it comes to pregnancies, leaves, healthcare needs... Systemic reviews have shown that doctors take reports of pain from women less seriously than they do from men. By a factor that gets multiplied if you're black or queer. Some people still have to work twice as hard to get half as much. They were just dealt with a shitty card. It is happening now, against someone as we speak. At prestigious teaching and research hospitals across the country, prejudice and the status quo are dealing out a crap hand to someone not counted as lucky few. Someone who will have to live with this moment for the rest of their life. My favorite anecdote is relayed by a woman who went in after a knitting accident; she was worried about losing dexterity and told her doctor that. The doctor assured her nothing would go wrong and started to patch her up. By happenstance, one of the woman's students happened to wander by and greeted her with the words, "Professor". And the doctor stopped. He asked her if she was a professor at the prestigious local university. She said yes. And before she could ask why she was wheeled into surgery to ensure she wouldn't lose dexterity. What cards would an ordinary black woman would have been dealt had she presented with the same problems? Young people on campuses see these shitty cards. Why is it a surprise that they seek to rebel? Universities have always been the hallmark of radicals, and these are the new radicals. It is simple to 'both sides' this, but their anger - magnified and disproportionate it may be - comes from a legitimate place. It comes from the rebukes of the past and present. The big and small injustices that make the world. And it is their clumsy attempt to create a better world. With all due respect to pg, the problem with the essay and this scale is that it is not well calibrated. Conformist along which directions? Aggressive in what ways? To what ends? To what degree? To what measure? At times it seems pg puts the (admittedly foolish) yale undergrads going on about cultural appropriation in the same bucket as the Kim Davis, anti-women's rights and 'religious rights' crowd. The former is an overreaction by the young and hot-headed. The latter is an enormous, organized effort to take rights away from others and to force everyone else to conform to their rules of society. The former a miasma in civil discourse. The latter an organized attempt to strip women of their right to determine what's right for their bodies. On what scale are we equating the two? By what means of calibration are these in the same quadrant and to the same degree? The idea in this essay is valuable. The insight is valid. And I believe that it is a good faith attempt to understand the world. However, it fails to resonate for me. It fails to track as it appears to be made for a world I am not a part of. No one invited me to the party.
• davnicwil 6y ago
  In one of his previous essays (can't find the specific one, but it talks about Cambridge) pg talks about how he thinks in the future startups might come more and more directly out of university towns because people with ideas already tend to congregate there, and mostly get drawn to hubs like Silicon Valley because of funding. As it gets cheaper to start a startup and need for funding decreases, this might not be so necessary any more. Towards the end of this essay he talks about the possibility that people with ideas might start to congregate around other institutions than universities in the future. He does explicitly say that he can't predict how this will play out, but it would be really interesting to read his thoughts on what he thinks those institutions could look like, or just what features they might have in broad terms. pg, if you're reading this, that would be a great future essay I'd love to read!
• frabbit 6y ago
  I mostly agree with this: am pretty much a Free Speech absolutist. However, I can't help but suspect that the reason we're hearing arguments about this now is because the liberal-Left are aggressively exercising their intolerance instead of the conservative-Right, who have had it all their way for a long time. Aside: I don't think lumping liberals and leftists in together is useful. There is a strong dislike of the trend towards censorship voiced by those that are economically on the left. The embrace of censorship is coming from the corporate/capitalist/liberal side of things. Most on the left are well aware that censorship will be used against them first.
  • tenuousemphasis 6y ago
    Can you define what you mean by free speech? That speech alone should not be punished by the state? Or that speech should have no social consequences? Because to me "the liberal-Left exercising their intolerance" could also be viewed as exercising their freedom of association.
    • frabbit 6y ago
      Punished by the state specifically. I don't see how you could enforce speech _not_ having social consequences, nor what the purpose of such speech would be if that were possible.
      • deanCommie 6y ago
        If that is the case, then free speech is not in danger. As you say, "the liberal-Left are aggressively exercising their intolerance". The liberal left is not in power in the government. So are they not just exercising their free speech?
        • frabbit 6y ago
          I take your point, and I am slightly on the fence about this and trying to figure it out. I found this¹ a very useful criticism of the Taibbi line-of-though(that I am also very persuaded by) I will admit: a) individuals and groups should be able to withdraw their co-operation, money and labor from other individuals or groups with whom they disagree. b) the examples which have happened in the recent flare-up fall squarely into a) However, where things get complicated is the definition of the state and how practical control is exercised over what can and cannot be said. The state is more than just the government, it is also traditionally the press, the army, the judiciary and the clergy. We are an 'interesting' situation now where the function of the press is to a large extent assumed by Facebook, Google and (indirectly) CloudFlare and the ISPs. Concretely they can prevent the spreading of information, the publication of ideas for reasons that they deem justified. The power to suppress and censor ideas has been exercized against what some would characterize as 'right wing' causes such as the publication of anti-semitic 'hate speech'. It has also be exercized against 'left wing' causes such as the publication of footage and reporting showing the massacres of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army. The only unique, useful thing about the internet is the possibility that it offers in allowing us to circumvent the censors. With that we get access to the Wikileaks material, the details of financial crimes carried out by our politicians and business people. We also get mis-information and pornography. The calls to boycott Facebook come from disparate places: government functionaries and political parties who wish to discipline the internet and control the narrative (no more upsetting the funding model, no more embarassing leaks showing our boys murdering civilians); activists who wish to protest specific social issues. In order for their wishes to become concrete there needs to be mechanism/s put in place by Facebook, Google, CloudFlare that enable them to suppress information: for good or bad reasons. The people who will be in control of these mechanisms are the people who got us here. The next round of popular protests won't happen because we will not have seen the video of a human being shot in their car or having their neck crushed. Tools of centralized power are used by those in power. That's not likely to be you and me. 1) https://newrepublic.com/article/158346/willful-blindness-reactionary-liberalism https://newrepublic.com/article/158346/willful-blindness-rea...
• agarv 6y ago
  Not meant to be snarky, but PG seems to have rediscovered the big five personality traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits specifically agreeableness and openness. For people that want to learn more, Jordan Peterson has a great video lecture series about it https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQApSdW8X71Ihe34eKN6XhCi https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQApSdW8X71I...
• bambax 6y ago
  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 people on top are the ones that make the world move in the right direction, and the ones at the bottom are dragging us all down. (Of course, he always ends up in the best category himself.) But innovation isn't good per se. If you invent novel ways of torturing people (or animals, cf. the whole meat industry), that's not progress. If you come up with clever ways of escaping the law for your own benefit while everyone else suffers (the whole "gig economy"), that's not a net gain for society, and society is legitimate in fighting you.
  • oldsklgdfth 6y ago
    > 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.
    • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      I’m struggling to see how antibiotics harmed others.
      • blueflow 6y ago
        Use of antibiotics bred resistant strains, which are becoming a increasing danger for hospital inpatients.
        • FeepingCreature 6y ago
          Yes, infections are a danger for patients....................
• Dumblydorr 6y ago
  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.
  • dhimes 6y ago
    The essay is very good starting with this paragraph: 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.
  • threatofrain 6y ago
    Yeah but unless there's someone who is a domain expert, deeply affiliated with experts from other domains, willing to drop into HN to give free advice... gurus are what you get. As popular as HN is, there are surprisingly few people willing to do this.
    • minikites 6y ago
      Why would they even try on HN, a site that famously looks down on any subject that isn't STEM or closely adjacent?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• josefrichter 6y ago
  The HN algorithm automatically puts everything from paulgraham.com to #1 :-)
• paedubucher 6y ago
  I think the example with the soccer field is great. People think and speak differently if they know that there are taboos.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society This contains a strong assumption of nature over nurture. I push back on that. (A point of evidence being salivary cortisol correlations with high-stress childhoods and even prenatal environments.) Independent-minded cultures produce more independent thinkers. A culture that censors raises children by rewarding convention-seeking behaviour and sharply punishing non-conformance. (Counterpoint: Did the children of circa 1920s academics become academics at a greater frequency than those of postwar academics? Anecdotally, I think so. A lot of them, as PG hypothesises, became founders. That suggests an innate quality that seeks its environment.) This might also be content-dependent. When I was young, I oscillated between tattletelling and rampant rulebreaking, with a memorable drive to stand out from my peer group. Notably, an inflection point, to my memory and, surprisingly, to my discovery a few years ago after reading childhood notes, was when my family immigrated to America. To-day, I’m passively conformist with the law, but moderately independent when it comes to personal social, political and broader commercial activities, enjoying standing out even if it means being quirky or disliked. I don’t imagine I’d have been the same in Switzerland or in India.
  • frjalex 6y ago
    This is a fair point. To say that personality can be purely characterized in full using a few adjectives is grossly over-generalizing. It seems like a better model of "the four quadrants" would be to add a dimension, the dimension of personality when it comes to dealing with different things in life. For instance, while one can be passively conformist in a particular area, say, following the rules of society, one can be aggressively independent in one's own discipline or expertise. For instance, you could expect a brilliant academic to be socially conformist, while academically aggressive and independent. Some sort of criminal or outlaw would be aggressively independent when it comes to following the laws of society, and maybe conformist when it comes to following the criminal discipline (this is when you have mobs and gangs --- outlaws find each other and form groups, too). And it is a combination of these different styles that make up the overall personality profile.
  • novok 6y ago
• oldsklgdfth 6y ago
  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.
  • naveen99 6y ago
    It’s a weakly specified / trick question. Do you get to keep your knowledge of the world as it is today ? if not how are you different than people 200 years ago ? So you can just ask what your ancestor’s position would have been. Which we already know the answer to.
    • chippy 6y ago
      People don't want to admit that evil is done by people like ourselves. Asking what your dead evil ancestors would do is different from asking what you would do. If you were born back then, with no knowledge of the future, you would be a Good Person no matter the conditions, right?
    • oldsklgdfth 6y ago
      The question forced to me ask myself if my values and convictions remain strong in the absence of knowledge. Do I know that slavery is terrible or do I believe in equality of humans? In the first case it's memorization, which is very specific to context. If I believe in the equality of humans, I can apply that belief across contexts and still reach unconventional conclusions. Personally, I know I would not have been much different because I'm not much different today.
    • tfehring 6y ago
      It's pretty clear that you don't get to keep your knowledge of the world as it is today - if you did, the question would collapse to "Do you support slavery?" which is much less interesting. Asking what your ancestors believed is also a bit of a miss. My ancestors in the US were all German-American, and German-Americans overwhelmingly opposed slavery, so my ancestors probably opposed it, and I probably would have opposed it too if I had been part of that population, but that's obviously a total cop-out. So take the framing of, say you were born into a white slave-owning family in the antebellum American South. Would you have freed your slaves and joined the abolitionist movement? The actual people in that situation weren't entirely a monolith - surely at least a few of them actually did that. But if the actual share who did so was, say, 1% of the population, then you have to think you're in the top 1% in terms of some combination of empathy, racial tolerance, forward-thinkingness, etc. to claim that you would. The question is useful because we're not different than people 200 years ago, no matter how much we like to think we are. I think the obvious and more explicit follow-up question is even better though - "What beliefs do you hold today that will be viewed as negatively 200 years from now as slavery is today?" If the answer is "none," we must be in such a utopia to have finally reached the end-state of human moral development.
• cjfd 6y ago
  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.
  • devdas 6y ago
    The Salafists are just the Islamic version of the evangelical churches in America.
  • mantap 6y ago
    Salafism itself is aggressive conventional-mindednessness. I'm sure they would say that it is the west that is sliding into lawlessness. The laws are very different but the thinking is the same.
• ohgreatwtf 6y ago
  As a passive independently minded, I can say that we also see natural fluctuation from epochs of independently minded reason to social conformity and back. These are good and necessarily healthy cycles because the independently minded, left unchecked, inevitably will achieve the freedom for certain individuals within that sector to explore avenues of thought and action that doom civilization and degrade reason and safety. The conservatively minded, left unchecked, will inevitably lead to total stagnation and the destruction of personal freedoms. It's a cycle, and the truly reasonable people, the truly intelligent, will see through it. I see your fear, and I understand it is about the rise of radical social conformity, as I personally think was adequetly heralded by ted krazinski and george lincoln rockwell, two very independently minded, aggressive, and destructive individuals. It is scary to witness, and to experience leading into this wave, but understand all things come to an end. Conservatism, Feminism, Neoliberalism and the Patriarchy are out. Political correctness and xenomania are on the way out and will be out of vogue within 10 years. The youngest generation to arrive on the world stage is repulsed ad nauseum with what they rightfully view as political posturing for virtual life achievement points by all sides of the now universally static social instrument, whose only purpose, inside and outside of the statehouse, is to carry out token activities that defend the ambitions of entrenched opponents; opponents whose true motives are inerrently selfserving, oblivious to the ground level truth, and dismissive of the long term consequences of their missions. It is nearly the hour for the true star children to take their place. The first to arrive are even now approaching the zenith of power and influence, and the waves that have come since are growing in intensity. We are actively uninvested in the television and the mock battles being carried out behind it. Our life prospects and probability of reproduction have been seized from us, to serve the needs of those who profit from stasis. We are drones in a steady state, wealth maintaining, species killing industrial grade dystopia. It won't last much longer. The majority of the shifts that will come and precipitate our total revolution across all points of the spectrum that dismisses every single piece of the political machine enslaving us will take place within a decade. They wont be heralded by shifts in thought or reason, because it is the decline of systemic thinking itself which must necessarily decline for to coexist unincorporated as equals and as stakeholders in a commonwealth destiny. This is not anarchy, in practice it could look like a lot of things. It could, ideally, wind up vaguely resembling some kind of mutualistic, agrarian society with vast quantities of independent small communities consisting of large, interconnected families subsiding on self-sustaining garden estates. These communities could be organized into democratic representational regions that are governed by a futuristic constitution which, to prevent the entrenchment of conventional systemic thinking, requires the government model to be decentralized and assembling on an as needed basis, with temporary, as opposed to permenant, and internally selected, as opposed to independently appointed, individuals nominated to national councils and bodies of state, for the purpose of making nationwide decisions. There will be war, even in such an era, over resource conflicts. People will, out of necessity, die. Pray you are not among them. But do not pray for the bloodshed to come to an end. Conflict is a necessary part of growth, and growth is requisite for freedom, and freedom is requisite for independent inquiry. The boil must be allowed for the world to return to a peaceful and generously cool condition, otherwise, it will always be in a state of continual repression.
• marsrovershadow 6y ago
  A funnier version of the same <more or less> set of ideas is "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" by Carlo M. Cipolla. ...And unlike Paul's essay, it comes with illustrations! http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidity/ http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...
• ghiculescu 6y ago
  When I read this part I thought it really resonated: > In adulthood we can recognize the four types by their distinctive calls, much as you could recognize four species of birds. The call of the aggressively conventional-minded is "Crush this essay!" He chose such a prescient example.
  • kaymanb 6y ago
    I can't put my finger on it, but there must be a name for this kind of logic. I think pgs arguments have more sustenance than just this, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I'll give an (extreme) example below. 1. Make a statement, calling out some part of the population as "inferior". 2. Note that a trait of belonging to the inferior class would be to disagree with the above statement. 3. Dismiss any criticism of the statement as coming from someone in this inferior class, and therefore being unable to give meaningful arguments.
    • yesenadam 6y ago
      Thanks for your comment. I don't know the name for it either, but the statement in that example sounds unfalsifiable, and the reasoning is very reminiscent of fascists/Nazis.
    • yesenadam 6y ago
      Gee, my sibling comment here was flagged, I don't know why, except maybe people saw "fascists/Nazis" and flagged it without reading it and/or the parent. Would the person/people flagging it care to explain why? Or do they have another better description for the style of reasoning in the parent's extreme example? Who have you seen talking/writing in precisely that way, besides fascists/Nazis? I thought my comment would be totally uncontroversial, both what it said and how I said it.
• pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
  Quick, someone make a political compass meme out of this!
• zests 6y ago
  Let's pretend that such a projection exists and we can assign people to points on the cartesian plane. This begs the question, how do the points change over time? Mathematically speaking, we can add to our model by assuming there is some notion of a flow or a vector field on the quadrant that pulls individual people/points in directions. There are also people moving in their own directions either due to inherit personal characteristics or perhaps life events impacting them. How do we model this field? We could start by creating a bunch of "attractors" or points on the plane that people are attracted to. Think of an attractor like a very massive body and the gravitational pull it has on other bodies. If these attractors do exist, where are they on the compass? Some attractors might be "abstract ideals" that naturally draw people to each part of the quadrant but I'd say the biggest attractor is in fact other people. Human beings have tribal tendencies and so if/when a lot of people cluster on the compass it pulls even more people in. With our gravity analogy this is like a massive star absorbing all of the mass surrounding it. Some people have anti-conformist tendencies and don't like to belong to large groups of like minded people. Eventually large pockets of people become increasingly unstable and people radically disassociate with the big attractor. This is like a supernova radically expelling mass in all directions. I prefer the gravity analogy because it avoids moralizing specific "locations" on the compass. A gravitational well can occur anywhere and we can discuss them abstractly. I think what PG is saying is that it is not a good idea to let yourself be pulled in to the well. Just look at the wells that have occurred in the past. All of these statements can be made with respect to an abstract political context. Now apply them to the current context. Does this post make any sense or is it just the ravings of a mad lunatic? Do we believe these things because they are true or do we believe them because we agree with their conclusion? Do we disagree because we disagree with the conclusion? Is it really possible to introspect and judge the validity of our own conclusions? If anyone can answer this questions (preferably by reference to a third party source) I'd be appreciative.
  • Kednicma 6y ago
    Honestly, it's all too easy to read PG's "social" and "individual" as code words for "socially-planned markets" and "unregulated free markets", making his left-right axis actually the left-right axis of the political compass. And from there, it's easy enough to start unmasking the entire essay as a thinly-veiled apology for why neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and other upper-right ideologies on the standard political compass are, in fact, the Good Ideologies that are Better than everybody else's. Edit: Let's complete the analogy. In my framing, PG is calling lower-lefties "sheep", upper-lefties "tattletales", and lower-righties "dreamers". This clearly places PG in the upper right with bootlickers. From this framing, PG looks at the left as weak and enslaved to a state, with the "sheep" being unable to consider anything beyond what the state tells them and the "tattletales" enforcing the rules of the state. If only the "dreamers" could stop being so namby-pamby and be more "aggressive", then we could have a more "individual" state. PG gives zero examples when he says: > In the last few years, many of us have noticed that the customs protecting free inquiry have been weakened. Oh? Which free inquiries, PG? Please, show us; what has poor PG been unable to talk about because of the mean old Twitter mob? To hear millionaires whine of not being able to simply get their way, you'd think that they're in danger of being shipped to the gulag. In fact, though, PG is hilariously wealthy and can publish his words through a variety of platforms; in addition, he's never had those platforms taken away from him because of a line of inquiry that he's pursued. Can he show otherwise, or is he just being a whiner?
• jkraker 6y ago
  While I agree with some of this, there's a hubris in it that I find a bit distasteful. It seems to claim that there's only one type of person needed for society to thrive. Not surprisingly, it's the type that most aligns with who he identifies himself to be. I think that the article is using caricatured descriptions of two categories that are more broad (people who are oriented toward change and those who are oriented toward stability) and highlighting only the good of the preferred group (his own) and the bad within the "other". The truth is, there are beneficial and destructive individuals in both groups, and there are perspectives from each that we need. I would argue that what society really needs is not the ascendancy of one group above the other but mutual respect and discussion of ideas between groups. Which is kind of where he was going with the discussion of ideas. He just didn't have a big enough tent.
  • clomond 6y ago
    I did not interpret it as hubris. Rather, I viewed it as the differences in deliverers of progress versus orthodoxy. “Classic progressivism” / “Enlightenment” principles have across the globe been under attack from all over the place, including from within the depths of the worlds leading institutions. Given that so much of the peace, prosperity and progress (both socially and technologically) have been driven by safe environments for the “aggressive independents” - I view this essay as a call out for us to do better. Those who value stability are an important part to ground the bad new ideas from taking hold in the vein of progress, but traditionalists are by very definition not how progress is actually made.
    • hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      > I did not interpret it as hubris. I mean, he refers to the "passively conventional minded" as "sheep". Whether or not that's true, it's still dripping with condescension. I agree with the parent commenter. I largely agree with PG's essay, but it's also telling that he doesn't see (or at least, doesn't comment) on any potential negatives from "aggressive independently minded" folks. If anything, a lot of the current backlash I see in the technology realm is where entrepreneurs and "visionaries" promised us enlightenment and the world, but it didn't quite work out that way. The pitch for social media was that it was supposed to bring the world closer and let people develop more and stronger relationships. Yeah, how'd that turn out...
• elil17 6y ago
  In this article, PG creates a personality test of sorts that, I think, seems intuitively true. Then, absent any real evidence, he assigns political roles and moral value to each of the categories he invented. It’s so farcical to suggest that independent mindedness always manifests as “intellectual freedom” and conformism manifests as “political correctness.” (He doesn’t use that phrase but that’s clearly what he’s trying to get at.) We live in a world where people with power over others (even people with pretty small amounts of power like professors) have historically been allowed shielded from the consequences of espousing hate. It is not “conformist” to advocate that people should be held accountable for what they say. What PG has done is come up with a “good” category and a “bad” category. He then says that the people who agree with him are the good people and the people who don’t are the bad ones. He does so without considering that his support of Silicon Valley tycoons and professors who are upset that their students criticized them could actually put him in the conformist category.
  • bitcurious 6y ago
    > We live in a world where people with power over others (even people with pretty small amounts of power like professors) have historically been allowed shielded from the consequences of espousing hate. It is not “conformist” to advocate that people should be held accountable for what they say. The conformity is in the process which defines what “hate” is.
    • elil17 6y ago
      I don’t understand - what is the process that decides what hate is? How is it conformist?
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• thaumaturgy 6y ago
  Isn't it funny how things like this are never written by the boring types? It's always those wild, maverick, enlightened types seeking to describe themselves and, along the way, describe others, but mostly to describe themselves in flattering terms, with just a light veneer of modesty. (The self-assessed MBTI INTJs are just fantastically entertaining at this.) "All great ideas come from us," beams the self-described aggressively-independent-minded, "and if we aren't allowed to champion horrible ideas, why, the world just won't be able to get on without us." There are so many coarse assertions in this argument, without any solid foundations or evidence or even thoughtful observation. Right from the first sentence: > One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism. "Arbitrary" ways. It's spelled "arbitrary". There are a plethora of categorical little boxes that people can try to fit other people into, and some of those have value sometimes, but they often also cause people to see other people as only their boxes. [1] > Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system... Imagine never having seen /r/PoliticalCompassMemes [2]. As gross as it is, this kind of quadrant-categorization isn't new. > There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones. So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest. This is a setup for seeking minority status for free-thinkers. The problem with this is that "free" thought -- or "aggressively independent-minded" in PG parlance -- has no defined, characteristic ideas, by definition. A simple thought experiment here is the current political divide in the US. Are Trump voters the "aggressively independent-minded"? Are Democrats? Progressives? None of the above? If the definition of "aggressively independent-minded" contracts to, "me and a few people I like", then it's meaningless. Everyone with a strongly-held political belief in the US right now sees themselves as belonging to the rebel outgroup. > Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society. This had to be the most astoundingly bad line in the whole essay. It rests upon a supernatural notion of some sense of "self" that is somehow independent of time and place; that the powerful formative forces of culture and society, especially throughout early childhood, would somehow not transform each and every one of us into utterly different people. There is no more polite way to say this than that that notion is, as far as I know, entirely unfounded in the field of human development. > Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote... Okay, do yourself a favor, and read Joseph Yannielli's really excellent article, hosted on Princeton's site, on Princeton's role in opposing abolition: https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-and-abolition https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-and-abolitio... It's long, and it's historical, and it's forthright, and it's introspective. It also includes many quotes from educated opponents to abolition that, if you squint just a little bit, sound suspiciously similar to a lot of the "unacceptable" ideas that so many people right now are crying that they're no longer supposed to talk about outside the komfortable konfines of their klans. Try and keep that Princeton article in mind, full and fresh, and then read this next part from Graham: > For the last couple centuries at least, when the aggressively conventional-minded were on the rampage for whatever reason, universities were the safest places to be. Princeton themselves disagrees. At length. This essay does not add to or resolve today's cultural conflicts in any amount. When the last thing you have left for an idea is that it's special because you're special and it's your idea, then it's time to consider the possibility that other people might have some pretty strong arguments against it. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA&feature=youtu.be&t=185 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA&feature=youtu.be..., the whole video is good though. [2]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Political_Compass_yLR_wo_text.svg/2000px-Political_Compass_yLR_wo_text.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Po..., for the fortunately unaware.
• deleted 6y ago
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• hkt 6y ago
  This does somewhat come off as cod philosophy. There have been ample studies in group psychology and minority influence dating back to the mid 20th century, and the fact is that independent thinkers have massive influence wherever they go. See here for a reasonable primer, key thinkers are Asch and Moscovici: https://www.simplypsychology.org/minority-influence.html https://www.simplypsychology.org/minority-influence.html So, the whole "rules to restrain the conformist sheeple" thing doesn't really apply. The author has created a category, put himself in it, then heaped praise on it. Neither edifying nor tasteful. Sorry.
• marcus_holmes 6y ago
  As a (mildly) aggressive non-conformist, I prefer the motto "non serviam" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_serviam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_serviam
• MikeOfAu 6y ago
  I don't like his analysis. I don't think it models what's going on currently. And because of that, it doesn't allow us to think about the problem correctly. IMO, the key thing that's happened since 2010 is that there has been a coup on "the progressive side" of politics, with "Classical Social Justice" (MLK-like) being replaced with "Critical Social Justice". It has been a mostly silent coup, until recently. There's been a dramatic change, and most people on the left don't even realise it has happened, much less what it means. The shift is from empiricism, universalism, justice, equality of opportunity, and liberalism to ... frankly, pretty much the opposite of those values: lived experience, identity groups competing with winners and losers, maoist group-think, purity spirals, etc. The profoundness of the change can't be overstated. IMO, the good people of the Left (classic liberals) have to take it back from those that have stolen it (the Critical Social Justic people). But, I'm not even sure that's even possible now. It has gone too far—what a disaster. And because "classic liberals" want the left to go back to how it was ... they have almost become "the conservatives of the left" and they have been forced weirdly towards the centre - except those to the left of them are now more facist than those to their right. So weird. Bottom line: the illiberal, Clitical Methods Left now holds sway (Newspapers, Hollywood, Universities) and it isn't going anywhere in a hurry. The worst part about this is: the current sensemaking apparatus (newspapers, etc) has been hollowed out by the Internet. And they aren't even capable of analysis any more ... just activism (as a business model ... a way of generating clicks). How can a democracy function when the population is not informed? I really like Eric Wienstien's analogy for this: the Media has now become like Iago in Othello, whispering madness into the ear of those that will listen (on both sides). All very broken. Suddenly.
• julesqs 6y ago
  did paul graham really just imply that himself and his fellow silicon valley millionaires would have been abolitionists if they were alive during slavery
• jonahbenton 6y ago
  The missing dimension in PG's analysis is power, particularly power imbalance. PG writes that his "aggressively conventional" category are "responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world" and "have been handed a tool" via social media with the result that "customs protecting free inquiry have been weakened." This is bollocks. Prior to social media, there have been hierarchies- in terms of people organization at workplaces and in the political arena, and in terms of information distribution- that prevented those with power from being subjected to the inquiries from those without. The notion of "free inquiry" was limited to those topics that were considered to be of interest to those in power, which often explicitly excluded topics around justice and power imbalance. Populists were those organizers who were able to formulate a message and leverage those powerless voices into a voice that succeeded in demanding answers from power. Now, social media have created platforms where voices from groups/individuals who otherwise are powerless can amplify their individual voices. But it also is a platform that enables augmentation of the voices that are speaking from places of power, perhaps even to a greater degree, because power has access to automation and the levers of the amplification algorithm. In the US we are facing an unprecedented (for the US) physically aggressive and dangerous assertion of federal power, under the leadership of a cognitively diminished, corrupt, and according to some dimensions of national interest, traitorous, sociopath. This leadership is also by any measure failing, to a criminal degree, in its most important role- to act in the interest of those for whom it was elected to serve- in the pandemic. To complain that "free inquiry"-say, of the sort that Tom Cotton wished to engage in- is being limited- because his OpEd in the NYT led to a backlash and to the OpEd leader resigning- is to completely miss the fundamental power dynamic. Cotton spoke in service of the same forces that are engaging in state-sanctioned violence, while also failing at leadership. When that happened in other countries, we would call Cotton a propagandist and would see it as the responsibility of journalists to not engage with his arguments, because of the violence that accompanies them. As AOC heroically pointed out- violent acts are not separate and apart from violent speech. When a party in power engages in violent acts, their violent speech should be considered one and the same. To say it out loud is banal but necessary- those without power are dying and having their lives destroyed by the forces holding the reins of legal, policing, and military power in the US. For there to be "free inquiry" this assertion of actual violence on the part of the state must stop. The "aggressively conventional" group that has completely slipped PG's mind in his analysis is the state, which is in literal terms aggressively and violently engaging, both in speech and act. This is fundamentally unacceptable in a nation under rule of law. Social media is the only vehicle the weak have to organize and amplify, and, yes, while there are a few casualties from an intellectual perspective- the OpEd head at the NYT lost his job- these pale in any moral sense in comparison to the actual casualties at the hands of those in power. So- PG, some advice: why don't you give away your wealth, get a job as an uber driver or an "essential" food delivery worker, and see what you think about social media and cancel culture then. I'll wait. More directly- PG has blocked me on twitter, because I dared to criticize some earlier comments he made there. Forgive me for offending, dear leader. I was only intending to engage in free inquiry.
• asdfman123 6y ago
  Paul Graham has done it again -- vastly oversimplified things and cast himself and his peers as intellectually superior/nobler/braver.
  • eat_veggies 6y ago
    that's VC as a whole
• mchusma 6y ago
  I love PGs essays, but his take on Robert George is the opposite of what Robert George was saying. PG: "He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't." Robert George from the quoted tweet: "Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it." https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/1278529694355292161 https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/1278529694355292161 It doesn't change PG's point, but its just odd he used the quote in this way.
  • projektfu 6y ago
    Quoting: 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." He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't. And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders.
    • projektfu 6y ago
      They're saying the same thing, but PG added the "He's too polite..." bit as though he didn't read past /1 in the thread.
• darepublic 6y ago
  So one quadrant upvotes the posts they like, and downvotes the ones they don't like, another quadrant simply upvotes the posts they like, another tries to find a middle ground and mend rifts, another has no account, lurks and laughs inside.
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• __alexs 6y ago
  I honestly don't understand this perspective which seems central to a lot of pgs writing lately: "the customs protecting free inquiry have been weakened" Can anyone explain it? We are, right now, posting on the most expansive and weakly moderated communications platform humanity has ever had. You can find almost anyone opinion imaginable out there with a brief Google search and forums on which to argue every side of it with. In what way is free inquiry meaningfully weakened? By any absolute measure it seems like it can only be the strongest it has ever been.
  • etrautmann 6y ago
    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.
    • __alexs 6y ago
      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 really that edgy. We have more tools and venues to test out and refine new ideas today than we have ever before. Use them.
      • deleted 6y ago
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  • M2Ys4U 6y ago
    It means people like him are being scrutinised like never before (absent an actual revolution) and he doesn't like it.
  • jimbokun 6y ago
    > You can find almost anyone opinion imaginable out there with a brief Google search and forums on which to argue every side of it with. And you can quickly get someone fired or their business boycotted or doxxed or swatted if they express an opinion you don't like.
• bokbok8379 6y ago
  This guy seems to be using logic, which is an illegal thoughtform.
• samuelbeniamin 6y ago
  This article is distasteful with tiny number of facts and a lot of opinions. After all, there is a fact, that he ranked human beings into levels, some higher than the others, some are trouble makers and others are the angles with no fault to be found in them, some are "sheep" and others just "naughty". I do strongly believe that societies are in need for all types of people, some are conventional and some are unorthodox.
• peisistratos 6y ago
  Almost all access to the media, access to the Internet and so forth in the US has been consolidated into the control of six corporations: AT&T/Warner, Comcast, Disney, Newscorp, Sony, and ViacomCBS. As control of almost all communication is centralized under the control of entities ultimately controlled by billionaire heirs, the natural reaction of people will be to struggle over what communications comes out of these channels. The average inflation adjusted hourly wage is below what it was in the early 1970s in the US. All the wealth has gone to the heirs and a handful of people mostly born into the white upper middle class. Channels of communication are shut down. The monopolies I mentioned shut down Usenet and communication became centralized by them and companies like Facebook. Everyone I have heard whining about the end of the Enlightenment recently is part of this to the manor born type, as well as their bought off stalking horses in relevant communities. What is happening is a very natural result of what has been happening for decades. As anti-trust laws are not enforced, as the Fairness Doctrine goes away and our media channels consistently advocate oppression of nationalities alongside a newly militarized police, we don't hear of the monopolization of communication or proletarianization and impoverishment of the population or militarization of the police, the end of the Fairness doctrine - we hear the newly centralized lines of communication can't spew out their propaganda without complaint.
• getpost 6y ago
  I suggest not putting people into quadrants and making an us-vs-them argument. Everyone is exactly the same and also completely unique. At times, some people appear to catalyze change, but it's everyone else that actually makes the change. There has always been an "immune" reaction to new ideas. That is not going to change for the foreseeable future. Don't worry about it, just keep innovating.
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• dj_gitmo 6y ago
  "This seems, unfortunately, to have been an own goal by Silicon Valley. Though the people who run Silicon Valley are almost all independent-minded, they've handed the aggressively conventional-minded a tool such as they could only have dreamed of." This comes across as self-aggrandizing and a tad elitist. "On the other hand, perhaps the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities is as much the symptom of the departure of the independent-minded as the cause. People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups. You have to be independent-minded to succeed at either of those." This is happening for economic reasons. Jobs outside academia pay more than they used to, the US no longer have a high income tax rate like we did in the 1950s, and there is more competition for academic jobs. Maybe at one point deciding to become a quant was independent-minded, but at this point it's a well worn path. Also, I'm sure there are some ideas that would be off-limits in quant circles
• phkahler 6y ago
  I feel like PG has neglected the literature with this one. The two axis are probably aligned with exisiting traits from the field of psychology (agreeableness seems relevant for starters). It's nice that he considered all this, but I think he did so in his own bubble. There can be benefits from reinventing things in your own way, but to completely overlook the existing work can be a mistake too. There is so much more out there on this stuff than analogies from junior high.
  • sanxiyn 6y ago
    Conventional/independent mind axis is literally Openness of Big Five model. People really should study Big Five. I agree PG is reinventing the wheel.
• notacoward 6y ago
  Worth noting that the "aggressively non-conformist" quadrant includes not just inventors and leaders but also criminals and trolls. For some reason the essay downplays that. Also, is it just me, or 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? He doesn't directly attack them, but he seems to be coming at a general "social pressure is bad" theme from multiple directions lately.
  • designium 6y ago
    I think you can apply his quadrant to usage of mask during Covid and the result speaks for themselves: Let's play this out for mask wearing: Top Left: Top doctors asking people to wear masks Bottom Left: People who are wearing masks Bottom Right: People who occasionally use masks, or alternatives, bandanas, etc. Top Right: People who don't want to use masks because of freedom.
    • mywittyname 6y ago
      Go into a conservative areas the the top quadrants flip. Where the Top Left are the People who don't wear masks accost others for doing so and the top right are those wearing the mask in spite of the harassment. Being an enforcer or a rule breaker is very much dependent upon what the rules are.
      • war1025 6y ago
        > Being an enforcer or a rule breaker is very much dependent upon what the rules are. This gets left out of so many conversations, and is a very important point. The essay touches on it a little with the slavery bit, but I feel like the rest of the essay downplays it.
        • defen 6y ago
          That seemed like the whole point of the essay to me and not a side note. His claim is that rule-orientation and assertiveness are present already in childhood (which I think is true), and that those are what determine people's behavior toward rules, not the specifics of the rules themselves.
• aerosmile 6y ago
  The amount of negativity in the comments is astonishing (and has been with regards to all of his recent essays). Which is perverse on a couple of levels: 1. PG's essay outlines a theory that the majority of the world is conventionally-minded and doesn't like to discuss new ideas. The comments here perfectly resemble that theory. PG wins. (Edit: at the time of writing, the comments were exclusively negative. This has changed since.) 2. If you don't like his writing and his world view (the brave startup founder is the hero), then why come to HN? Why support someone's website and accelerator/fund if you think they are so wrong? 3. While recognizing the limitations of this framework (see below), let's recognize that PG became very wealthy by employing the brave founder thesis. There's got to be a lot of truth there. If there's anything wrong with PG's writing, it's that he doesn't spell out the truth for you - which is that in 99% of the cases, you're not the target audience. This essay is the perfect example. The quadrant he's romanticizing about is the smallest one, and of course most people are not going to see themselves resembling those characteristics. Many other essays have this quality - it's easy to walk away realizing that you're either not young enough, or not hard-working enough, or not smart enough, or not in a position to take the required risks to be the target audience. And that hurts, because it's true. Just don't shoot the messenger. For clarification, all you get from being a part of PG's target audience is having a certain set of traits which are good for one thing, but would also disqualify you from being an astronaut and pursuing many other desirable careers.
  • bigpumpkin 6y ago
    "let's instead use the economic success as a proxy for truth." This is why I think Mark Zuckerberg is always right.
  • designium 6y ago
    "It's futile to fight a war of words over who is right or wrong - let's instead use the economic success as a proxy for truth." Even though, that's the one of the core tenets of capitalism, I could show you that is not always the way it seems. Think about big corporations located in developing world like Brazil (where I came from), where corruption and bribes run amok. Saying that people and companies that are successful financially and economically is equal to truth and the right path to go, it's dismissing a lot of other context based on "other truth". The world is much bigger than North America and the PG's text may not apply for different countries and culture. Imagine the same ideal applying to North Korean and Russia, what conclusions do you get from it?
• easymovet 6y ago
  Sounds like you need an invite to Galt's Gulch
• LukaszWiktor 6y ago
  The first paragraph would me much easier to comprehend if it was a picture.
• classified 6y ago
  Is this propaganda for a new cult? Like, if you're not non-conformist enough then you're just dumb dead weight? This sure reads like PG wants to drum up conformism to what he calls "non-conformism".
• defnotashton2 6y ago
  What he really after US vs them tendency of tribalism, he is upset at the overreach of the left and their lacking self criticism. Then ironically lacking self criticism presents an us vs them argument. "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." F. Scott
• mywittyname 6y ago
  > In the past, the way the independent-minded protected themselves was to congregate in a handful of places > That may not work this time though, Ah yes, the classic, "things used to be so much better" argument. Which yeah, if you ignore things like McCarthyism then it probably seems that way. I'm curious how many black, female professor feel that they would have faced less intolerance in American universities before the intolerance wave of the 1980s. I personally see tolerance as a trade-off in a lot of scenarios. Tolerating discrimination necessarily infringes on the freedoms and well-being of the victims. And tolerating anti-discrimination infringes on the freedoms of the aggressors. Both groups cannot be equally free in such a matter, because the freedom of one is at the expense of another.
• henning 6y ago
  The idea that you can be independently minded as a quant or at a startup is absurd. If you don't parrot the same bullshit as everyone else as a startup employee, you get fired without feedback because you aren't a "good culture fit." You have two choices: conform, or work somewhere else.
  • ericsoderstrom 6y ago
    His point is that the founders and underlying ideas for startups and quantitative trading companies need to be unconventional in order to succeed. Otherwise the returns will already have been captured by the market (in the case of trading) or the product will already have been built (in the case of a startup)
  • kutorio 6y ago
    "worked at a startup" and "founded a (non-trivial) startup" can be quite different.
• sgentle 6y ago
  Never thought I'd see the day that a pg essay crosses over with /r/politicalcompassmemes The problem with "discussing ideas" as a framing is that it exists in opposition to something. What is that something? Those whose position favours the status quo would read it in opposition to "not discussing ideas", which is obviously bad. However, to those who find the status quo untenable, the opposite position is "acting on ideas". Following pg's example, let us consider the following classic debate topic: "is slavery good?" A plantation owner might find themselves tickled by a lively discussion on the subject, replete with a cornucopia of Enlightenment principles and classical liberalism and such. A slave might find this discussion less interesting, because no outcome would lead to their freedom. It is perhaps telling that slavery was not abolished through free inquiry or the discussion of ideas. It was abolished through acts of state power and, ultimately, violence. Are we to believe in an alternate history where the South was debated out of its peculiar institution? The discussion of ideas gave way to acting on those ideas. The alternative would be a society of endless, meaningless rambling. Today, if you were still debating "is slavery good?", you would not be a brave free-thinking iconoclast, you would be either an idiot or a very devoted racist. You would get uninvited from lectures and yelled at on Twitter, not because your ideas are too advanced, but because they're too far behind. The debate is over, and the actual free-thinkers have moved on. It's sad to say, but I think the real lesson of this essay is that political ideas are just like music taste. Whatever your parents were listening to is outdated and embarrassing, whatever the kids are listening to is just angry noise, and miraculously your generation was the only one to stumble upon that which is profoundly, timelessly good.
  • philwelch 6y ago
    > Following pg's example, let us consider the following classic debate topic: "is slavery good?" A plantation owner might find themselves tickled by a lively discussion on the subject, replete with a cornucopia of Enlightenment principles and classical liberalism and such. Historically, the Southern states (which were politically dominated by slaveholders) outlawed all abolitionist literature because they feared that free discussion of ideas would undermine the system. > It is perhaps telling that slavery was not abolished through free inquiry or the discussion of ideas. 90% of the work was done through free inquiry and discourse, ranging from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the publishing of books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The attempts to solve the problem violently (e.g. John Brown at Harper’s Ferry) failed. It was only when the slave states refused to accept the outcome of a free election and started the civil war that violence became necessary. > The debate is over, and the actual free-thinkers have moved on. You’ve cherry-picked a specific example that fits that narrative.
• GCA10 6y ago
  Lots of great ideas here -- but in keeping with all top-vintage Paul Graham essays, he takes his best points to about 130% of their validity. So I'd like to weigh in on this assertion: "To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong." Not so. To be a successful scientist, you need to be orderly, fast and well-connected in finding all the rest of the Next Rights, once a few of your peers (or you) have opened up a whole new river of truth by finding the first right. (See James Watson, Ernest Lawrence, etc.) You can see this in the evolution of practically every exciting field, whether it's subatomic physics, molecular biology, paleontology, etc. This dynamic requires a fifth state in Graham's admirably simple 2x2 grid. We need to recognize people that can be defiant non-conformists when the moment presents itself -- and then work within the system to make the most of their second and third-order insights as the world embraces their big idea. The concept of the brilliant, isolated, irritable genius is a mainstay of a certain kind of movie or novel. But in real life, the most effective disrupters are just as good at forming large teams that lead the charge toward the next right (once they've found their breakthrough idea) as in coming up with that breathtakingly strange new idea in the first place.
  • reginaldo 6y ago
    I also stopped on the assertion about the successful scientist, but instead of outright disagreeing, I took it to mean that the definition of successful scientists for pg includes mostly the starters of new paradigms, regardless of the ideas being accepted during their lifetimes or not.
  • vikramkr 6y ago
    I'm unsure about your example of James Watson as a successful scientist. He was successful, yes, and was a scientist. But I don't think he was successful as a scientist. Rosalind Franklin made the key scientific insights crucial to figuring out DNA's structure. She wasn't even actually the person that took Photo 51, that was her student. She was, however, the one who presented her insights that the phosphate backbone is on the outside of the molecule, one of the most crucial insights to figuring out how DNA works since prior to that watson crick et al thought the backbone was on the inside. That goes beyond just "contributing" the photo, that's actually generating the scientific insights that unlocked the structure of the molecule before being derided as an assistant incapable of understanding her own data by watson and then dying without a nobel. In light of that, I don't see how watson can get credit as a successful scientist. Crick went on to make other contributions such as codifying the central dogma, watson not so much.
• Tiktaalik 6y ago
  Abundantly clear from his Twitter that like so many others that are used to having an unassailable platform of privilege to express themselves, PG has recognized that normal people now have a voice to push back and criticize opinions he has, and so he's joined those expressing "concern" about this. Instead of expressing in concrete terms his views to make them available for criticism, he talks about the dangers of "cancel culture" instead, presumably because he knows his views are now beyond community norms and they'd get him cancelled. This essay is a scaffolding effort to rebrand people that would seek to express intolerant opinions as "independent minded" and "free inqueryiers" so that they can escape criticism. Nah sorry not gonna work.
  • pdonis 6y ago
    > an unassailable platform of privilege to express themselves Anyone can start a website and post essays on it. If many more people read PG's essays than other people's, that's because he has done things that attract a wider audience.
• divbzero 6y ago
  aggressively conventional-minded │ aggressively independent-minded ─────────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────── passively conventional-minded │ passively independent-minded
• dencodev 6y ago
  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 systemic issues that overwhelmingly impact POC and the LGBTQ+ community is not what I consider "conventionally minded" and definitely counts as a "new idea" when viewing it through the lens of racism and homophobia in America since its inception. As others posted, it's not clear to me what PG is referring to as conventionally minded at universities, but the issues I mentioned are typically at the forefront of political issues at schools these days. Here's what I find conventionally minded thinking: supporting capitalism and accumulating ridiculous amounts of wealth without guilt. If you're the type of person who sees an abnormally high level of sociopaths in non-profits[1] and honestly believes the "defining quality of nonprofits is to make no profit, not to do good" has any significant basis in reality, perhaps that says more about your bias against non-profits than it does about the people in it. And that bias, to me, reeks of conformity. 1: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1124254508232663040 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1124254508232663040
  • philwelch 6y ago
    > 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 have to say with respect to what, and this changes as kids get older. For younger kids it's the rules set by adults. But as kids get older, the source of rules becomes their peers. So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite.”
    • dencodev 6y ago
      >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.
• frasermince 6y ago
  While I think there might be a grain of truth here I really disagree with how he states it. He seems to be really placing higher value on the isolated genius who does great things despite society being against him. This seems to be based on a lot of pretension and dismisses people who do not think like him. With how he defines conformity and nonconformity one could argue that the flatearther surrounded by non flatearthers could be a nonconformist. I would argue it's not conformity or lack there of that leads to effectiveness, but instead an indifference to conforming leading to a pursuit of the truth regardless of if it is mainstream or not. So I would say his quadrant system does not define the independent minded person he talks about later in the article. I think he is in the right ballpark when it comes to pointing to the clear eyed visionary who is willing to look past the orthodox of those around them. But I think his formulation of such an idea is reductionistic. People I would view as conformist have their own worldviews and often pride themselves as nonconformists. Worldviews are a complicated thing and if we write off the majority of people as "sheep" or just part of the problem we become part of a contempt culture that can be really toxic.
  • GavinB 6y ago
    Yes, flat-earthers would probably count as non-conformist. I think the point is that in order to have Galileo, you have to tolerate flat-earthers as well. I do agree that calling most people "sheep" is uncharitable, and would add that calling aggressive conformists "stupid" is also not accurate or productive. They might be making stupid decisions, but they're not stupid people.
    • bittercynic 6y ago
      I disagree, and would count flat-earthers as highly conformist - it's just that they're conforming to an unconventional view.
    • solmans 6y ago
      To view the majority of human beings as livestock, metaphorically or not, really shows the kind of person he is. Everyone is for the most part unique and will have bouts of aggressive independent mindedness. No one is constantly questioning the system or breaking rules, Paul would like to think that's what he does but in reality he is more of a conformist than he thinks and if he saw himself this way he would probably not use the term 'sheep' to describe it.
• analbumcover 6y ago
  > All successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. So it's no coincidence that societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay. This seems very conventional-minded, to use Graham's terminology. Thinking that technological innovation is the hallmark of a prosperous society is conventional thinking, at least in Western Society. As is espousal of capitalism, democracy, etc. I don't see aggressive independent-mindedness except in criminals, dissidents, and radicals. He repeatedly asserts that tech CEOs are independent-minded mavericks, but I just don't see any evidence of that.
• jfarmer 6y ago
  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.
  • acpetrov 6y ago
    Society's only protagonist is the individual
    • jfarmer 6y ago
      Society isn't a story and therefore doesn't have a protagonist.
      • erichocean 6y ago
        Did you just invalidate your own prior comment? Very meta…or maybe your comment was just about your own insecurities, relative to pg?
  • ordinaryradical 6y ago
    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 then eats itself and all its democratic institutions, to paraphrase Prinicpal Skinner: "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the users who are wrong."
    • jfarmer 6y ago
      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.
• deleted 6y ago
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• tmaly 6y ago
  > 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?
• breuleux 6y ago
  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.
• Balgair 6y ago
  In my experience, Universities in the US aren't the place to place your bets on. It's hard to explain in a short HN comment, so my apologies here if it's a bit gripe-y and disjointed. I've just gotten the feeling that the Universities, very much including the STEM departments, are all about funding. Since the funding is largely controlled by other professors in the field (via Study Sessions), you have to get on the good side of many people. The after-talk drinking sessions at major conferences are a key way to do this. If you're 'likable' and a 'big' name, then committees send funding your way. After all, at that level, every proposal is pretty much gold anyways. I remember a Nature editor telling a class once that they could shut down the submissions portal at about noon January 1st and see no drop in the quality of what they published for the year. Still, Nature and funding committees have to dole out things. So, when given the choices of people you know and people you don't, you tend to go with people you know (academic pedigree is also super important here). So 'rocking the boat' is very much discouraged, your mortgage depends on you not doing that. Then the same issues that we see on Twitter occur as well. The louder voices tend to get more 'views', as long as the voice is stating the orthodox opinions. In STEM fields, it's less bad in terms of the research (facts very much matter), but the underlying culture is just the same as with all humans. If you get into the replication crisis issues, then it's the funding crunch on steroids. Those fields tend to be all about 'name', as the facts have become so difficult to obtain that no one could 'fact check' even if they wanted to (nutrition, bio, psych, fMRI, etc). I'm still surprised that particle physics hasn't fallen down this hole and I think that their 'culture' is one to look into. Again, apologies on the rant here. Still, heterodox opinions (not facts, to be clear) are not the place for Universities in the US anymore. I'd look at where all the Burners went after about 2012 to find the better places to deal with the aggressively independent minded. Ephemerisle is a thought, but those guys are a bit wacko in terms of covid-19 safety, though that may just be a side effect. Maybe the Rainbow gatherings?
• mikhailfranco 6y ago
  I read almost all of the essay assuming that the conventional-minded people meant the woke cultural Marxists. They are the conventional wisdom today. He should have used the word conservative: [1] On (The Future Of) Conservatism .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5T3sWAg0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5T3sWAg0w Most young Western people seem to be conventional in the progressive tradition, because they were indoctrinated at school and university by ex-hippies from the 1960s, who couldn't actually do anything, so they all became teachers. Sixty years is more than enough to become the conventional wisdom. Marx proposed a keen and mesmerizing analysis of Capitalism, a plausible (but wrong) diagnosis, then a completely ridiculous and laughably naive solution. Real class-based Marxism was proved wrong many times over, so the Frankfurt School and 1960s French philosophers decided to switch the dialectic, from class-based polarization, to group identity politics and the anti-scientific relativism of non-truths. Struggle by any other name would smell as sweet. America is now in the middle of its Maoist Cultural Revolution. Let's see what happens. The world is watching. Does the Enlightenment survive? It's certainly up for grabs at this point. The precedent is not good. China was utterly laid waste for decades by Mao. Tens of millions died, leaving a legacy of intellectual, historical and economic impoverishment. It is hard to imagine anyone more evil than Mao, because his fear-mongering catastrophes and casual genocides were so routinely inflicted against his own people, his supportive party colleagues, his family, his (ex)wives, and even his children: [2] Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang & Jon Halliday. [3] Nine Commentaries on the (Chinese) Communist Party .... https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLED64004A96BE76FA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLED64004A96BE76FA [4] Evolution Of Evil: Mao Zedong .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaWmqgmJxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaWmqgmJxs Let us see what happens in America ...
• dilandau 6y ago
  In which pg spills a few hundred words humblebragging about his maverick status. I think the thing to measure is defiance rather than conformity, by the way. Much more interesting.
• maCDzP 6y ago
  >I'm biased, I admit, but it seems to me that aggressively conventional-minded people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world I agree with this statement. But I would also agree with the opposite: Aggressively independent-minded are also responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world. Maybe, they are even more disproportionaterly responsible since they are a really small group? My 5 cents.
• erichocean 6y ago
  > And the call of the aggressively independent-minded is "Eppur si muove." I wonder if PG picked that specific phrase ("And yet it moves") because of the recent brouhaha over IQ and genetics….
• smhost 6y ago
  This is so meandering and incoherent that it's hard to comment on, but the idea that silicon valley and finance types are "independent-minded" is downright laughable. It's pretty clear that those types are in lock-step with each other ideologically, maybe broadly split between east-coast and west-coast aesthetically. This categorization is such nonsense. People in the hard sciences don't neatly fall into a type, and in fact is almost the opposite. In physics and math (maybe especially in math and physics), people are split right down the middle between conventional and independent. pg just doesn't seem to understand the internal politics of the sciences.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • vgfalk 6y ago
    I do not agree that the essay is incoherent, the general line of thought is very clear: Independently of left or right, conformists of the passive, aggressive, or passive aggressive variety can ruin societies and free thinking. Conformists can also easily switch sides. Indeed the insertion of Silicon Valley was a bit unnecessary. They are ruthless capitalists that currently pretend to be socialist for profit and hiring motives as well as suppressing weak software developers by confusing them with new ideologies every week.
    • avs733 6y ago
      i.e., aggressive-conformists masquerading as aggressive independent thinkers
  • kristianc 6y ago
    Right - and there’s the tacit assumption flowing throughout is that the ‘independent thinkers’ have only good things to say, and that societal norms have not evolved for any good reason. The state, particularly the welfare state, is partly a recognition that together we can achieve a level of protection for each other that we cannot achieve independently. And if the independent thinkers don’t much feel like writing open source software, writing political treatises or contributing to Wikipedia articles and instead feel like spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories online, then what? Like most business quadrants of this type, it gets you to agree to its typology of the world and the rest flows naturally from there. But the typology usually can be called pretty easily into question.
• alexashka 6y ago
  Paul Graham continues to re-invent what others have pointed out in more succinct and clever ways. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/ You can almost guess what Paul is going to write about - just see what cliche is being discussed on Twitter and come up with the laziest thought that an average programmer will find 'insightful' - that's Paul Graham's next 'essay' :)
• boreas 6y ago
  People spend so much time on the "meta-conversation" about the ecosystem of ideas, and so little time talking about the actual ideas themselves. What are these repressed debates people are so anxious about? Is it just race stuff?
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • dennis_jeeves 6y ago
    >People spend so much time on the "meta-conversation" I have wondered about that. What is your guess ? ( other than race)
• rafiki6 6y ago
  As with all human attempts to categorize things, the 4 categories should actually be a spectrum, and the ends of the spectrum should be called into question based on PG's definition here. I mostly agree. I think I probably fall on the more "independent-minded" end of the spectrum (as we all like to think). But there is value in conformism and value in independence of thought. PG should realize the fact that he wrote this essay and is still alive is a good example of where things are today vs. in the era of feudalism or even the era of WW2 :) I agree with his take on academia though. That whole institution is limping along.
• deleted 6y ago
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• michaelmrose 6y ago
  > For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. > So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite Which is it?
• kristianc 6y ago
  > For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. Luckily there’s an easy way to verify this - how many of the current YC cohort are B2B SaaS startups? Today’s collection of startup CEOs are the very opposite of aggressively independent minded - they’re people who 15 years ago would have done an MBA or gone into finance.
• kutorio 6y ago
  Initially I wondered if pg was insinuating that startup hubs could replace universities as the new haven of independent thinking: > "People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups." > "If existing institutions are compromised, they'll create new ones." However, after reading through the essay a second time, I'm more pessimistic about the positive conclusion of the essay. If startups succeed by "make stuff people want", and given there are "far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones", then perhaps independent-minded CEOs making tools for conventional-minded people is not a rare accident, but rather an inevitability.
• mcguire 6y ago
  Imagine a world where people weren't divided into the "us-es" and the "them-s". Particularly by someone who is wealthy and powerful. And most particularly when the "them-s" are clearly intended to be untermensch. For one thing, I don't know how many people Graham has interacted with over the years; probably a great deal more than I have given that I'm quite shy as well as a confirmed misanthrope. However, I do know a fair number of people and exactly none of them fit neatly into "aggressively/passively conventional/independent". (For one, I had an uncle that was a staunch Baptist and had been the sheriff of De Baca county, NM, who conspiratorially confided that he liked a glass of red wine of an evening.) Everyone is conventional about somethings and independent about others, and everyone is sometimes aggressive and sometimes passive about those things. "[T]he aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales." Yes, of course they are. I note that "whistle-blower" is a synonym of "tattletale". "[T]he passively conventional-minded, are the sheep." Yes, naturally, sheep. (https://xkcd.com/1013/ https://xkcd.com/1013/) And is it just me or is really hard to tell the "passively conventional-minded" from the "passively independent-minded"? "[T]he passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones." Those kooky cloud-cuckoo-land dwellers. Just try not to be on the side of the road while they're driving, 'cause they're probably not paying attention. "[T]he aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones." Yes, of course. "Eppur si muove." Or possibly "Give me all of the cash in the drawer or I'll shoot you in the face." (Remember, there are all kinds of rules.) "And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders." Indeed. Remember, "conventional" is bad, "independent" is good, and bad is conventional while good is independent. There were never, ever, any independent minded defenders of slavery. (Louis Agassiz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz) - well, technically he opposed slavery, because it led to mixing the races; Nikola Tesla (https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/remembering-nikola-tesla-eugenicist https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/article/remembering-nikol...) - well, ok, a little late for slavery. Let's just say that you probably shouldn't investigate your heroes too thoroughly.) Anyway, I'm vaguely surprised Graham never worked "muggle" into this essay. Maybe he used another word. Normie? Mundane? "For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so." Yes. Travis Kalanick. Elizabeth Holmes. Adam Neumann. Doug Evans. Jeffrey Skilling. Martin Shkreli. Bernard L. Madoff. Arthur Sackler. All aggressively independent-minded, I assure you. But didn't Peter Thiel found Palantir? So what are these "bad ideas" whose discussion he's worried about banning? The great heros of the Confederacy? President Trump's genius? The moral and physical weakness of women? Now, I realize that disagreeing with The Paul Graham goes strongly against the conventional wisdom here on Hacker News. Naturally, one can only be a rebel if one wears the right uniform. Perhaps I'm not being independent-minded in the right way. But here's a prediction for you: "aggressively conventional-minded" is going to replace "virtue signaling" as the favorite dismissal of ideas that the independent-minded don't want to consider. And "independent-minded" will be the new "politically incorrect"; a way to blunt criticism of repugnant words and actions. (Did he really say that professors of engineering were independent-minded? Does he know any? I mean, real engineers, not 27-year-old senior software engineers. I mean, that's way outside my experience.)
• happy-go-lucky 6y ago
  You refuse to conform to conventions because you're independent-minded. As a business owner, to what extent would you allow your workers to be nonconformist? By the way, I belong to the right upper quadrant, and I cannot answer my own question without being hypocritical.
  • solmans 6y ago
    We'd all like to think we belong to Paul's upper right quadrant (which, mind you, isn't even very well defined) but in truth you, me, and even Paul himself are more conformist than we think and recognising that is an important step in being intelligent and not shielding yourself from criticism. For example, I don't think wanting to go and pursue a business idea is independent minded. The overwhelming majority of people would like to do this, even your employees. Actually putting in the effort isn't very independent minded either since it's mostly a matter of how much capital, free time, and social safety nets you have, not how much of a free radical you are.
• miguelmota 6y ago
  > The first is that any process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid. Especially the people who enforce the laws. Law enforcement police officers have to follow orders without question. People who don't question things are inherently stupid.
• tgflynn 6y ago
  This is a good essay, but I don't think he gets it quite right. I agree with the horizontal axis: conventional vs. independent but I don't think the view he presents of aggressiveness is quite accurate. I do think that a major axis for classifying humans is the extent to which they desire to impose their views on others through coercion. This seems to be partly what Graham is trying to capture but his description doesn't seem to quite fit. In particular I have a hard time thinking of anyone who wants to impose their own independent-mindedness on others through coercion. Typically they just want the conventional minded to leave them alone so they can work on their independent ideas and hopefully prove them right. Of course they may want to convince a few people, such as investors, of the value of their ideas before they have been proven, but that isn't the same kind of coercion that the aggressively conventional-minded employ to silence dissent.
• TomMckenny 6y ago
  [edit] I had a lengthy more thoughtful post here but it seems I had mistaken a pronouncement for a discussion. The near instant voting response made me realize that absurdity, especially in light of the fact that I am responding to the second of two posts by the site's governance where college professors are singled out as a threat to freedom even as unmarked vans and secretive police round up the "dreaded" diversity proponents in Portland and other cities. So I shall leave it to persons devoted to maximizing short term profits from new products and the "freethinking" commentary from persons seeking funding from same, to bloviate on how to "protect" society from intellectuals and liberalism.
• tgflynn 6y ago
  You could probably measure the extent to which HN users are aggressively-conventional minded by how often they downvote comments without replying to them.
• WesternStar 6y ago
  I think the idea that people are the same no matter what the rules are just isn't true. It stated as though it is obvious and I need evidence that that is the case. The rest of the argument falls apart based on that point.
• sinker 6y ago
  There's a subtype he doesn't mention but I think deserves notice and is especially pertinent to today's environment. That is, the conventionally-minded who is convinced they are die-hard independently-minded. People like this come across by chance doctrine which appeal to a special part of themself, be it religious, political, or social doctrine. They hardily embrace the newfound doctrine and denounce others as having fundamentally the wrong framework of thinking. They come across like-minded people and make blanket statements against their detractors and constantly reformulate the perception of their ideology to be in the right. In one sense, they believe themselves to be highly individualistic because they go against what they perceive to be the overall grain of society. This lends them conviction. But in reality, their beliefs are not actually contrarian or minority beliefs, and these people would never had nurtured these beliefs or had the courage to actually publicly express them without the implicit support of some large chunk of society. I believe this to be the reality today. So many people are deluded in thinking they are the small, under-represented, minority, oppressed group when they actually function as the oppressors to people who are sincerely independently-minded. And when one who is independently-minded sees another who is deluded they are independently-minded, but in reality is aggressively-conventional, we cannot help but notice the hypocrisy.
  • eindiran 6y ago
    I think the example of the students of the Princeton professor is very similar to this subtype: > 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. Most people, myself included, like to believe that they are independently-minded. Given that most people aren't independently-minded, most people are wrong.
    • deleted 6y ago
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  • robzhu 6y ago
    Can you provide an example?
• deleted 6y ago
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• dataisfun 6y ago
  The categorization is interesting albeit deeply ungrounded in any real rigor and seems of a piece with one of his other recent essays, in which he developed a psychoanalytic theory of the various kinds of "haters" and "losers." Further, I wish Paul Graham would try to convey his ideas with less condescension and smugness. There's a sense in which he maligns large swaths of humanity as somehow defective or worthy of shame. Certainly the term "idiots" doesn't help. Further there's an essentialism and determinism that's sort of disturbing (labeling preschoolers as sheep is kind of messed up) and lacking in empathy. Finally I suppose this is obvious, but I'm guessing Graham situates himself as a paragon of fierce independent-minded thinking and courage. It's rather easier to do that when you're absurdly independently wealthy. Thinking through the courageous stand countless people are taking even right now around the world, risking life and limb, just makes this feel a bit like a grievance-laden tempest in a teapot.
• webmaven 6y ago
  > "[A]ny process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid." This is pg conflating conformity (because conformists* would largely be the ones choosing to undertake the work of deciding which ideas to ban) with stupidity, which... is pretty telling... and wrong. Intelligence (to the extent that we even understand what it is) seems largely orthogonal to both of the axes pg presents in his essay, and isn't strongly correlated with any particular personality traits at all.
  • dennis_jeeves 6y ago
    Good points.
• hristov 6y ago
  This is a good essay and an important one, but I think it completely ignores one very important aspect of the present social discourse. It is unfortunate, but some people in the world are politically weak and some are powerful. The weak are often marginalized and/or treated unfairly in various ways. Often the only way the weak can gain strength or political power is through common action. Common action first makes the weak much stronger but also, if well applied it confronts the strong with a moral choice that they cannot escape. Thus, often the politically strong join these common actions simply because it is the right thing to do. Common action however requires conformism. It is all fine to be a cool independently minded non-conformist constantly questioning the rules when you are politically powerful. But when you are politically repressed that would probably land you in jail and very quickly. So what is the protection of the politically weak -- to immediately and collectively protest and threaten to damage society if one of them is unfairly hurt. This of course requires iron conformism. It is not always pretty. It is in fact often ugly. For example, I have noticed that in many countries, the politicians that represent a certain politically repressed minority are often the most corrupt in the country. They are often filthy rich while the community they represent is wallowing in poverty. Why? Because the minority community knows that to split their vote means to be run over. They know that they have to conform and act as one to protect themselves. Thus, they overlook the corruption of their leaders in the interest of common protection. In many minority communities to vote against the chosen candidate is not a sign of individualism but of treason against one's family and friends and neighbors. Not showing up at a protest the community has decided to participate in is treated similarly. Paul's article is a little vague, so I am not sure exactly what he is talking about when he is lamenting the rise of conformism in US universities. But it is quite possible that this rise of conformism is there to protect vulnerable or politically weak people as much as anything else. University faculty tend to be politically powerful, but because they have relatively secure jobs they often have the freedom of conscience and morality (something many people do not have), and thus they often side with the politically weak. So, if we want to make our society more safe for non-conformists and presentation of different ideas, we have to make it more fair. This sounds counter-intuitive but it is true. A lot of the so called taboo ideas are taboo because they are connected to a long history of horrible repression and perhaps even a present state of repression, and there is a very real fear that expressing such an idea will continue said repression. So for example, take the idea that a certain minority race is inherently less intelligent than average. Currently this idea is pretty much taboo. One may argue that in a society that better tolerates non-conformism such an idea even if disliked or even if wrong will get a fair hearing, perhaps be researched etc. But in society where this minority race is politically disadvantaged merely mentioning this idea will result in further repression. People of that race will have difficulty getting jobs as they will automatically be assumed to be stupid. Research will be conducted but at least some of the research will be culturally biased and carefully tailored to reach predetermined conclusions. This is not theoretical. It has pretty much happened already multiple times. See, for example, Jay Coulds excellent book "The Mismeasure of Man". But if one suggest an idea that does not carry a history of repression with it, such as linking intelligence to an astrological sign or to birth-weight the idea will not be considered taboo and may be fairly researched. If we can imagine a fair society where someone's race is as inconsequential as their astrological sign, perhaps there would not be that much race related taboos. But that is not yet the case.
• analog31 6y ago
  I wonder if a lot of people are somewhere in the middle, and also, if their position on the quadrants is situational.
• dilandau 6y ago
  Was PG always so precious, or have I just aged out of appreciating these sublimated attempts at bolstering ones sense of self?
• jariel 6y ago
  The oddest thing about this essay - is that the people he's kind of lamenting - the 'banners' particularly in academia and the press - are by far not classically conventional or authoritative types. That's where this analysis goes way wrong. 'Ban culture' is driven by 'aggressive antagonists' who generally have power through the mob, or some kind of 'new' authority, they are 'anti classical power' in their very identity. I would characterise them as the 'least conventional' people. The logic I think goes off the rails there. Banners are 'people angry at the system'. Not 'people adamantly supporting the system'. Mr. Graham may not realize that those pushing ban culture are in his camp - 'SJW' has more in common with Entrepreneur/CEO and Artist than it does 'Police' or 'Justice System'. Also the author's choice of words to describe the groups says far more about the author than his musings on personality types. Most tellingly 'tattletales' and 'quasi-fascists' as those who support the rules and 'Galileo' as those who break them. It also speaks to class a little bit, because for common people, in reality, the rule breakers are more likely to be actual criminals. Like the 'bad' kind. The closest 'common science' we can get at would be the 'Big 5' personality types of which 'conscientiousness' is somewhat correlated with following rules. Prisons are full of 'unconscientious people'. And most succesfull people are highly conscientious. That said, it's not an exact correlation and his 'sheep' type 'vs' aggressive type are probably very differently: conventional people in the burbs, aspirational conventional in business. (I literally read that yesterday, I'm sorry I cannot find the reference, but 'Big 5 conscientiousness' does break down into sub-types). The underlying problem with the analysis, is that there is often an inherent morality in 'convention', which the author's choice of words seems to kind of deny. 'Look both ways before crossing a street' or 'wear a mask' - these are very important rules to follow, and we need these conventions. None of us are smart enough to really understand the nature of all the rules, so we end up having to follow a lot of them. Dr. Fauci says 'wear a mask' - and since he's the expert, I trust him on the whole, even though I could point at a myriad issues, I know it's a complicated thing. Also: "The first is that any process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid. " So here's the thing - when CNN is deciding 'who to ban' - this is very bad. But when Facebook is deciding how to moderate - this is not bad, and Graham is wrong to suggest only dummies would want to do this. This is an astonishingly difficult problem to solve, it's not bounded by the norms we normally understand, so it should be very attractive to real thinkers. People say horrible, horrible things all the time. Tons of harassment, abuse, doxing, bullying, point-blank racism - and I'm not talking 'intellectuals being called out' - I'm talking 'neighbours don't want the n-word on their street' and 'my boss is a faot', people making death threats. Graham is speaking a little bit from the bubble - 'most' of censorship is simply just getting people to stop saying they're going to kill each other - not 'banning ideas'. So I think this thought-piece has a big hole: most people shutting down freedom of expression (in the free world) in the more intellectual sense - are not 'conventional' by his own description. Not at all.
• bePoliteAlways 6y ago
  Convention and independently-minded is based on "majority" belief. With time "majority" belief changes so the one who was "independently-minded" becomes "conventional". Not sure how to categorize the old-convention minded one as.
• timoth3y 6y ago
  For many years, writers of all political persuasions have divided people into the "independent-thinkers" and the "sheep". Of course, people who think like they do are the independent-thinkers and the others are the sheep. This article follows the same very old and tired pattern, and it's a shame, because I really enjoy most of Paul Graham's essays. Has anyone ever seen an attempt to define these terms in an objective, data-driven way? Real data on this might be quite interesting.
  • marc_abonce 6y ago
    And of course, there's that relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/610/ https://xkcd.com/610/
    • timoth3y 6y ago
      There is always a relevant XKCD.
  • jacques_chester 6y ago
    > Has anyone ever seen an attempt to define these terms in an objective, data-driven way? Broadly, yes. The Five Factor Model includes axes for openness (what Graham divides has as "conventional-minded" to "independent-minded") and agreeableness (Graham's "aggressive" to "passive"). The FFM is well supported by various lines of evidence. Graham's model however overlooks three other axes: conscientiousness, extraversion-introversion and neuroticism. Plus it doesn't allow for any nuance, based on a binary classification when in fact the spectra of human behaviour are incredibly wide and nuanced. The characterisation of folks as "tattletales", "sheep", "dreamy" and "naughty" doesn't suggest an attempt at good-faith discussion.
• mikedilger 6y ago
  PGs presents a closing hope in the imagination of the aggressively independent-minded. There is hope but no assurance that doesn't turn towards sustained decline. The dark ages happened. Leonardo DaVinci lamtented that in 1400 he knew less than Galen did in 185 AD. The Islamic golden age also abandoned science to religious dogma. Still it is hard to fathom a worldwide sustained decline. Some cultural and/or language group won't go along.
• int_19h 6y ago
  I'm on the left myself - far enough that most people I consider like-minded would scoff at being called "liberal". And I think that, while our broad cause is both rational and just, there are way too many people who believe that it can justify things that are unjustifiable; and who are, in effect, willing to replace their morality with "revolutionary necessity". On the subject of conformance, freedom of speech, and censorship, in particular, this essay by Orwell is getting more relevant day by day: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... This troubles me a lot, especially as I don't see alternatives here and now - large-scale, systemic changes are desperately needed, but that requires a mass movement; and while it's possible to have a mass movement that is not authoritarian, the one that we do have seems to be infested by authoritarian thinking to a significant degree. True, it's fighting against authoritarianism that is even broader in scope - and worse yet, operating from a veneer of legitimacy, and with resources of state oppression at its disposal. But if "my" side wins, it'll get that same veneer - and with the attitudes that I'm observing, I find it hard to believe that the majority will be willing to discard those powerful tools as a matter of principle, or even believe that they're truly capable of misusing them. I don't really have good answers. Insofar as decisions have to be made today, I try to go with what I see as "less wrong" - but that still leaves a lot to be desired from an ethical perspective. And yet staying out of the fight is also an unsatisfactory cop-out; for which I could, perhaps, find convincing enough excuses for people whose judgment matters to me, but never to my own conscience.
• nappy 6y ago
  Graham framing his essay as such is disingenuous, at best: And the call of the aggressively independent-minded is "Eppur si muove." In case you had to search for this (I did)[0] It's a reference to Galileo being correct about the Earth orbiting the Sun, and famously so. The presumption of this reference is that "independent" thinkers are right - they are more often wrong. PG seems to presume, or lead the reader to presume, that these thinkers are more right... oddly the rest of the essay avoids the question of conventional wisdom being right. This is also bad writing. The use of set phrases / quotes in a foreign language without citation is confusing for the reader, and also pedantic. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves
• zzo38computer 6y ago
  There may also be some in between conformism/aggressive and having in different cases and different times. "I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition?" My own response to such question might be, "How should I know? Such a thing is counterfactual and I do not know the answer." I believe the discussion of ideas should not be banned; we need full freedom of speech and discussion of ideas. (Especially to complain about the government is necessary.)
• seankimdesign 6y ago
  Thank God for people like PG who are brave and wise enough to be able to craft such beautiful and timely essays. McCarthyism may be fashionable again, but we'll endure unscathed as long as writings such as these continue to be written.
• davegri 6y ago
  Did Paul Graham just repackage DnD Alignment?
• courtf 6y ago
  I'm not quite so sure we live in a society that protects free inquiry now, and are suddenly in danger of losing that status.
• mac01021 6y ago
  PG's essays are always thought provoking even when factually questionable. This one is probably both. I don't disagree with him about the need for advanced societies to protect free inquiry and independent thinking. But the psychological taxonomy expounded here is simplistic and all the little things he attaches to it, like the psychoanalysis of tattletales, are probably not well supported by much evidence.
• epeus 6y ago
  I think this previous rebuttal to pg's pretence of broad mindedness still applies https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/paul-graham-is-still-asking-to-be-eaten-5f021c0c0650 https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/paul-graham-is-still-askin...
• sytelus 6y ago
  Not sure why being conformist or not is important. Isn’t the more desirable thing is how you reason that your belief will lead to your desired result? What evidence have you taken in account and what risks you are aware of? How do you deal with uncertainty and how do you strive to get additional evidence. For example, if you believe in vaccinations, are you conformist? These 4 quadrants even applicable universally for wide variety of topics for any person?
• dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  Examples of what what the the aggressively conventional minded insist upon: - Let's have a (pandemic) lock down. Given reason: let's protect everybody. Real reason: they are idiots who who cannot reason out the nuance of pros vs cons of lock down. - Make masks mandatory. Given reason: let's protect everybody. Real reason: they are idiots who who cannot reason out the nuance of personal protection vs public harm - Make rich pay their taxes. Given reason: they are not paying their fair share, Teal reason: they are jealous of the rich) - Send all kids to school. Given reason: we need to 'educate' everybody, real reason: In their narrow world view they cannot fathom that at least some parents can do a better job of 'educating' their kids than conventional schools. The concept of freedom that does not harm others is entirely lost among these sociopath individuals.
• libra1 6y ago
  Most of the "free inquiry" that has been banned from universities is related to sensitive issues like race and gender. I don't see any universities out there restricting free inquiry on say, the sciences. Is there really that much social good that will come out of exploring racism and misogyny?