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 thi

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.