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.
> 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?
I'm wondering what kind of wack opinion he has that he doesn't want to talk about, and these essays are providing cover for.
I'm extremely loathe to blame specific individuals for the state of systems.
I do think that there is a broad limiting of discourse in the intelligensia in any particular circle. The metaidea is that certain approaches are the local way, don't question them; questioning bounces you to a different circle with its norms. Maybe this is just what happens, and people are noticing it more, but I'm skeptical.
> I'm wondering what kind of wack opinion he has that he doesn't want to talk about, and these essays are providing cover for.
This is the exact thing the essays are about, though! To use a question from a previous pg essay - I'm not even asking you to share it, just asking if it exists - do you hold any opinions that you believe to be true, yet you dare not share with anyone for fear that you would lose your job and all social connections if you were to reveal that you held that opinion?
> I'm not even asking you to share it, just asking if it exists - do you hold any opinions that you believe to be true, yet you dare not share with anyone for fear that you would lose your job and all social connections if you were to reveal that you held that opinion?
This just seems like a trick question to me. If you say yes, then you agree with him; if you say no, you admit you're just a sheep with no independent thoughts.
The idea of a lone free thinker who's come up with a forbidden truth also seems silly. The stuff people are getting "cancelled" for are not independent unique thoughts; they're stuff a huge group agrees with, including the current US president and ruling party. You also won't get shunned by all of your social connections for expressing it, you'll retreat back to the same group of people that reinforced those opinions to the status of "truth" in the first place, to reassure each other about how persecuted you all are.
It's not meant to be a trick question - more of a prompt that attempts to trigger someone to have one of the following thoughts "maybe I should be more charitable towards people who have unorthodox ideas, and should encourage other people to be charitable" OR "maybe I'm living in Plato's cave". I'm not trying to get anyone to agree to any particular heresy. Just to acknowledge the fact that every single thing that is taken for granted today (by goodthinkers) was a heresy at some point in the past. It doesn't mean we can't enforce social norms about what is acceptable; but rather that maybe we shouldn't necessarily be so enthusiastic about persecuting badthinkers. Note also that I'm talking about speech here and not criminal behavior.
> The stuff people are getting "cancelled" for are not independent unique thoughts; they're stuff a huge group agrees with, including the current US president and ruling party.
First of all I don't care about "cancel culture", and I don't think I'm persecuted, but also if you think the President and the GOP are the "ruling party" of America then I suspect there might be an unbridgeable gap in understanding. That's only true if you completely ignore the role of schools and universities, elite/prestige media, NGOs, the intelligence services, the judiciary...
I think there are certain research areas which are interesting, but research outcomes are so potentially misused or politically incendiary that there are no research done by people of good will.
If you're curious what those are, that would be any root of an arbitrary topic that is contentious in the US culture wars.
So going back to the Robert George quote from the essay - imagine you had been born a white male into a southern slave-holding family in 1750. What basis do you have for believing you would have been against chattel slavery? It seems like your only two options are "I just wouldn't have had an opinion on it" or "My opinions TODAY are uniquely correct for all time going forward". Unless you like to imagine future-you persecuting current-you.
I would describe mask wearing somewhat differently:
Top Left: People who want to throw anyone who isn't wearing a mask in jail.
Bottom Left: People who are wearing masks everywhere, including situations where it doesn't make sense to, because that's what the rules say.
Bottom Right: People who wear masks when it makes sense to wear them, and don't wear masks when it makes sense not to, even if that isn't what the rules say (for example, not wearing a mask when taking a walk outdoors where you can easily social distance, even if the letter of the rules in your area say to wear a mask whenever you leave your house).
Top Right: People who insist on pointing out that the rules on mask wearing are arbitrary and don't allow for common sense, even as they wear masks when common sense says you ought to.
> Top Right: People who insist on pointing out that the rules on mask wearing are arbitrary and don't allow for common sense, even as they wear masks when common sense says you ought to.
You mean "... as they don't wear masks ..." , correct? Otherwise I think you are leaving out the people who reject masks at every opportunity.
> You mean "... as they don't wear masks ..." , correct?
No. Wearing masks when common sense says you ought to, in the current situation, is independent-minded, not conformist. (For example, consider: the same person would have been wearing a mask before any guidance or rules were issued about it at all, since it took quite a while for such guidance and rules to catch up with the actual situation. A Bottom Left person would have been waiting for some guidance or rules to be issued. A Top Left person would have been calling out the mask wearer for overreacting, after all, things can't possibly be that bad if no guidance or rules have been issued requiring people to wear masks, right?)
> I think you are leaving out the people who reject masks at every opportunity.
Strictly speaking, yes, those could also count as Top Right, but I wanted to emphasize the fact that Top Right does not require stupidity.
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.
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.
> and that those are what determine people's behavior toward rules, not the specifics of the rules themselves.
Maybe abstract, theoretical sense. But adults already hold pretty concrete opinions on most rules and an aggressive person's obedience or defiance is dictated by the person's agreement. Also, humans can be opportunists and see enforcement or defiance as a means of grabbing or welding power & influence.
There's ample evidence of this in action. The police selectively enforce laws all the time. Or the neighbor that calls the city to complain that you're violating zoning by having too many cars while they, themselves have an illegal fence and refuse to deal with it. Authoritarians by nature do not like it when the rules apply to them, but love enforcing them on others.
I know it's taboo to discuss votes here, so please interpret this generally and not as a cute attempt at recursive self-reference. I think it's actually germane and intellectually interesting in this specific limited context.
Aggressively non-comformist comments are the most reliable way to get downvotes on HN, but sometimes they result in massive upvotes.
Passively conformist comments are the most reliable way to get little to no votes whatsoever on HN.
Aggressively conformist comments are the most reliable way to get moderate upvotes on HN.
Passively non-conformist comments virtually don't exist on HN.
Supposing these observations are accurate, it's interesting to consider why they might be so.
> Aggressively non-comformist comments are the most reliable way to get downvotes on HN, but sometimes they result in massive upvotes.
Thinking on this further, I presume down votes are capped at 5 and up votes are uncapped because of this dynamic. The cost of saying aggressively non-conformist or even outright unpopular things here that don't run afoul of the guidelines is extremely low. I imagine that this good design is part of why the discourse here can be so delightful.
Aggressively non-comformist comments also potentially result in a ban, especially when it comes to sensitive topics. The negatives outweigh the positives in many cases. Discussions here on scientific topics like human group differences border on outright delusional because there is no polite way of questioning the dogma.
Have you considered the case that you find the discussion delightful because it is just reinforcing your biases?
> Have you considered the case that you find the discussion delightful because it is just reinforcing your biases?
Funny you should say that, because I recently wrote a comment on the subject of cognitive biases: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23917259. As you can see the far left reply to it was not viewed favorably. And while I try not to be obnoxious about it, it's pretty obvious that my ideological leanings are probably not shared with the majority of the HN commenting population.
It's my observation that the moderation here tends to discourage discussion of issues like average race and sex differences not out of a desire to censor, but because they are inevitably a waste of time and no intellectually interesting discussion occurs. I suppose one could consider this a heckler's veto, but them's the breaks. Besides, there's no consensus on which side is heckling. In my experience discussion of such fraught topics that challenge deeply held beliefs is best started with persons that you know well and who are willing to approach the subject in a spirit of intellectual honesty and curiosity. That's hard to do on a pseudonymous Internet board with thousands of users.
Edit: From your username I surmise that you are at the 'zon. I've heard from people on the inside that the climate has become rather oppressive for anyone who doesn't publicly embrace the Seattle/Portland school of politics. You're certainly not alone.
Banning discussion of fraught topics doesn't just affect the discussion about the fraught topics themselves, it also leads to biased and often meaningless discussion of every single other topic where the fraught stuff is an important factor. To have a meaningful discussion you need to be able to challenge base assumptions, you cannot do that here.
Do you realize that you just used an appeal to popularity in your argument against popularity?
When (or whether) social pressure is good is a very highly debatable point, and in that debate it's important not to conflate kinds/levels of social pressure. Calling someone out for using the N-word is one thing. Throwing someone in jail for having the wrong political views is quite another. If you, or pg, or anyone else wants to discuss good and bad forms of social pressure, the intellectually honest thing to do would be to make a direct case, not engage in these pigeonholing and semantic exercises to cast others' views in a bad light.
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.