The Four Quadrants of Conformism(paulgraham.com)
paulgraham.com
The Four Quadrants of Conformism
http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html
803 comments
50% of the words in this article could have been replaced with an image
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.
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.
The first part of this essay reminded me of the D&D alignment system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragon...
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.
> ...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?
> the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities..
Are there some examples of what this might refer to?
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.
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.
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/ .
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.
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.
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!
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!
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Rules are for fools.
"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")
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")
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.
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.
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?
Which group does such a system punish to a greater extent?
A simple graphic of the four quadrants would have improved my experience in reading this article. I was surprised to not find one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-uphold...
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-uphold...
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.
Damage done in the world comes more from failing to understand how people get influenced in their choices than from picking the wrong quadrant.
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/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.
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/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.
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!
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!
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.
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.