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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

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.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    So you have an external locus of control, that sounds like a personal problem but let’s roll with it. Maybe you’re right and the rules aren’t set by your peers, but that wasn’t the point of the example. The point was conventional-minded people can often feel rebellious by following a certain garden path of “conventional rebellion” that has been specifically laid out for them. That doesn’t actually make them independent-minded. In fact, you’re even worse off than you think because both the society that you live in and the specific way in which you choose to rebel against it are both completely outside your control and presented to you as closed systems that you have no input or contribution to.
    - soundnote 6y ago
      As one example, flouting your skepticism in r/atheism is easy. Coming out as an atheist in the Bible Belt without living on r/atheism first? Orders of magnitude more difficult. Being a pro-social justice liberal in the universities is trivial - the whole social environment supports it. Be an open, conservative Catholic in one? We are anti-slavery today because we really believe it, but let's not forget that one huge factor in us being so is that it's laughably easy to be so in the modern West. Environment matters.

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.
- philwelch 6y ago
  So you have an external locus of control, that sounds like a personal problem but let’s roll with it. Maybe you’re right and the rules aren’t set by your peers, but that wasn’t the point of the example. The point was conventional-minded people can often feel rebellious by following a certain garden path of “conventional rebellion” that has been specifically laid out for them. That doesn’t actually make them independent-minded. In fact, you’re even worse off than you think because both the society that you live in and the specific way in which you choose to rebel against it are both completely outside your control and presented to you as closed systems that you have no input or contribution to.
  - soundnote 6y ago
    As one example, flouting your skepticism in r/atheism is easy. Coming out as an atheist in the Bible Belt without living on r/atheism first? Orders of magnitude more difficult. Being a pro-social justice liberal in the universities is trivial - the whole social environment supports it. Be an open, conservative Catholic in one? We are anti-slavery today because we really believe it, but let's not forget that one huge factor in us being so is that it's laughably easy to be so in the modern West. Environment matters.