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.
I think PG's a product of his world. He isn't an expert in personality or psychology, so he looks to other tech leaders as thought leaders and independent saviors, and he is regurgitating commonly held views about Left and Right to fit his construct. He does so with extremely scant evidence, because his task is to make a snappy essay, not a coherent theory with strong evidence.
The ideas of social justice and equality spring from the independent quadrant. These ideas have become the rules that conventional quadrant follow and expose.
Social justice and true equality aren't conformist ideas though. We live at a time when wealth inequality is around the highest since our country has kept track and you think equality is a mainstream conformist idea?
Many people have been so misled by education and media consumption that they have no idea what is going on. It is a commonplace that conformists will profess to beliefs that they regularly undermine. E.g., the people who "support the protests" but still whinge about how they're too "confrontational" and "violent".
They're protesting the policing of minorities, and you stand at the ready to police their protesting... by asserting their minority status! In lots of protests this isn't a "small minority". Please think more carefully. The author of TFA would not appreciate your aggressive conformity.
Hey man, I agree completely that the police suck. But what I think is happening is there are two groups here:
* Protestors of police brutality who are in the main completely peaceful and capable of self-policing. These people tend to do normal protest things like blocking the streets, yelling at cars, holding signs, and similar. That's totally fine and should be protected by law. Their leaders are often seen keeping the rest of the group from pushing up against barricades and otherwise inciting violence.
* Small groups of what I can only describe as fringe counterculture people who are hiding in these protest groups waiting for an opportunity to incite violence. These people use the mask laws in many localities to hide their identity, and are doing things like dropping piles of bricks off in protest zones, throwing molotov cocktails into fast food restaurants and running, breaking windows and looting stores, and pushing the peaceful protestors into the riot control police. These are most certainly non-conformists, but we should not tolerate these behaviors if we want to live in a civil society. And the peaceful protestors are getting caught up in the dragnets.
The police make no effort to distinguish between the two groups in most cases. During protests in the 60's there's ample evidence that the police were part of the second group. So it's probable the violence is being incited by certain groups who are interested in silencing the peaceful protestors.
If that makes me an aggressive conformist to hold those views, then I will gladly be one. Non-conformity should not be the goal. And frankly if this is how it's defined, it's a stupid label.
Eventually there will be "ample evidence" that police are also members of this "second group". A Minneapolis cop vandalizing a business was identified on Facebook already. (Don't link to the police denials; rational observers take those as proof.) City governments have a lot easier access to pallets of bricks and the equipment to transport same than poor kids have. Authoritarians do the same thing over and over again because it works over and over again.
None of that matters. The point of the protests, to combat USA racism in general and also the specific racism of violent USA police, is more important than the form of the protests. If we truly do support these goals, we won't be sidetracked by potential insurance claims of large corporations. Instead we will interrogate myths we've accepted by dint of constant media gaslighting. MLK did not oppose destructive protest in general. Destructive protests are not counterproductive; in many instances they have had far more significant positive effect than any number of candlelit vigils. The police don't work for us (even if "us" means "us white folks"); they work for wealthy property owners. Many black Americans do support effective protests, even if the only black Americans allowed on cable news are very worried about "white anarchists". Much of the destruction you fear is the rational action of black citizens who've had to deal with this shit for a really long time.
The problem I have with violence is that there will always be people who are caught in the crossfire. Violence begets violence and you have to be prepared to lay down arms at some point or you will always be at war. My fear is mainly that when people resort to violence, the same people who hide out in the peaceful groups come out of the woodwork, and they take advantage of the situation to their own ends.
Violence is ugly, and it's hard to control, especially when it's group-on-group violence. It's surprisingly easy for the oppressed to become the oppressor when the smoke settles. If you have a way to avoid that, then go right ahead.
This fear is overblown. We've had racist violence from USA police for their entire existence. Nothing that has been tried so far has eliminated it. Now, let's try something else. I would refer you to NFAC, who have performed several armed public actions without causing an escalation in violence.
> If we truly do support these goals, we won't be sidetracked by potential insurance claims of large corporations.
The victims of violence aren't large corporations; they're individual people whose homes and neighborhoods and businesses are not safe. The very people that the protesters claim to be protesting on behalf of.
The valid claim of the protesters that the rule of law is not applied equally to everyone, as it should be, is undermined when people use the protests as a cover to violate the rule of law themselves.
Many effective protests do destroy property, and that's mostly the property of large corporations. Violence against individual humans is a separate issue. There are some indications that such violence has increased by a finite amount since the start of the COVID-19 shutdown. You're free to assume that this has nothing to do with the public health and economic situation (and self-interested voluntary decisions of police) and may be blamed entirely on protests, but you're announcing a deep personal bias by doing so. Wondering aloud about how the message may be undermined is mere concern trolling. We recognize it when racist troglodytes do it, and we also recognize it when "good liberals" do it.
> Many effective protests do destroy property, and that's mostly the property of large corporations.
The property being destroyed by rioters and looters in the current wave largely belongs to individuals and small businesses, although there have been some large corporations affected (e.g., Macy's in NYC was looted).
> Violence against individual humans is a separate issue.
I agree that it is worse to harm or kill a human directly than to harm or destroy their property. However, since many people's property is essential to their livelihood, harming or destroying property is still a very serious matter and should not be condoned.
> You're free to assume that this has nothing to do with the public health and economic situation (and self-interested voluntary decisions of police) and may be blamed entirely on protests
Rioting and looting is not a valid response to the COVID-19 situation any more than it is a valid response to inequality before the law and corruption on the part of the police (and the local governments that are responsible for police corruption).
Apparently your impression is that most property damage from rioting has affected small business and home owners. My impression, from both mainstream and fringe media and personal observation, is definitely not that. I doubt we'll settle the disagreement on this point through discussion. ISTM one has to conjure up a quite particular "white anarchist" bad guy to support the "small business" theory. What branch of anarchism is more opposed to small business than to giant corporations? Anyway, basically the only reason white people speak up at these demonstrations is to encourage less property destruction.
I'm glad we agree that property owned by large corporations and covered by insurance is not something to worry about.
"Rioting and looting" (since we must constantly distract ourselves from the goals of protests that are manifestly mostly not those things) may not be a "valid" response to disease per se. In USA, we have seen multiple giant "bailout" laws passed in response to this disease, in nearly legislatively unanimous fashion, which have mostly given trillions of dollars to rich people while not changing the public health situation at all. At the same time, smaller expenditures in other nations have solved the problem to much greater extents than we've managed here. As a result, people in our families will die who would not have died if they lived in e.g. New Zealand or China or South Korea or Germany or Cuba. In that context, burning down some wealthy store that already received a giant handout from the government seems about right to me. In addition, we always expect crime to increase somewhat during economic downturns.
Destructive protests are the only thing that has ever moved the needle at all on police brutality. Just look at Ferguson: decades of no action and inexorably worse policy, followed by immediate changes once the burning started. It's almost as if the white power structure doesn't care about the lived experiences of black, brown, and indigenous people, and only responds when it is forced to do so.
> I'm glad we agree that property owned by large corporations and covered by insurance is not something to worry about.
I did not say I agreed with that.
> since we must constantly distract ourselves from the goals of protests that are manifestly mostly not those things
I am doing no such thing. I am simply drawing an important distinction that you appear to be unwilling or unable to draw, between justified protest and unjustified violence.
You're excluding from consideration the category of justified property destruction. "Violence" is a different thing. No one outside the police and a few undercover police want to see kids and old people get injured, maimed, or killed. If police continue to escalate, there will also be violence in the other direction. That's on them.
Following on from the essay, the ideas are adopted by aggressively conventional minded even if they are "non conformist".
Other aggressively conventional minded people believe in the the rules of ever explosive growth, exploitation and free market capitalism.
The ideas do conflict with each other obviously.
The essay gives the example of abolitionism that some aggressively conventional minds back in history would be in support of slavery and other aggressively conventional mind would be opposing slavery.
Within the concept of the essay what does non conformist really mean? Are social justice and true equality ideas that belong only on the independent side of the quadrant?
This is a good point. It shows the problem with the whole article. I think many people don't view themselves as "conformist" no matter who they are. PG certainly doesn't view himself as conformist. Everyone likes to think they that are independent thinkers, but most people, by definition, aren't. If a person thinks they're an independent thinker, then they'll simply think that anyone who thinks like them are also independent thinkers. In reality, they're just conforming, but maybe in a way that's different than other conformists.
PG seems to be calling out "cancel culture" with this essay, but I think the people on both sides of that argument are conforming. The independent thinkers are busy with things that actually matter and aren't paying attention.
I can't think of many people that I would label truly independent thinkers. The first that comes to my mind is maybe Richard Stallman, but that's about it.
Agreed. I think the "opposing" aggressively conventional people would be believing in the rule of law, authority of the police and social and cultural conservatism. These, 10 years ago, would be seen as mainstream ideas.
Virtually all intelligent people take "equality" to mean equality of opportunity. The type of equality you seem to mean is where individual personalities, talents and desires don't exist. In other words, where everyone is the same person. What a boring world. I just don't think inequality matters as long as the poorest in society are never cold or hungry. That's pretty much where we are today.
Oh, well obviously there are hungry and cold people in the world, but I was talking about within a developed country like the UK. People who go on about equality are concerned with making themselves richer because of billionaires. They are not concerned with making themselves poorer because of hungry and cold people in other countries.
Well, I'll wait for the government report in 2021. A lot people who "miss meals" are still overweight, they just make poor decisions with their money. In any case, inequality like that could be solved by everyone in this forum taking a pay cut to something that covers just basic essentials. People who talk about inequality are always, always talking about making themselves richer. Everyone has the power already to make themselves poorer.
Not always. A prominent counterexample would be Bill Gates Sr. In any case, you don't have to wait for the 2021 report to see the evidence that hunger is a real problem even in 1st world countries like the UK. Mothers going hungry so their children do not can't simply be dismissed as the result of poor life choices.
Many great progressive ideas and movements have been taken over by aggressive conformists. The ideas get perverted into something far less useful and overly specific.
Lets move the discussion into something less political!
In tech this happens too. Cargo cult engineering anyone? Agile methodology and OOP are two huge examples: they started as radical, useful ideas too. But often today people argue overly specific rules of implementation rather than asking why these things exist, where they came from and where they fit.
Well what about if the rules of the conventional quadrant become "Anyone who says or implies 'Crush <outgroup>!' is bad and should never be listened to"?
Could you unpack this? The only social justice-related example in the piece was a positive one (antebellum abolitionism). It seems like you might be reading into the piece more than was intended.
The recent history of PG's twitter outpourings has been about the danger posed by political correctness and progressives more generally, in the face of criticism of things like AI bias.
I think he argues that progressives are a misnomer, political correctness a compromise with orthodoxy.
Progressives don't necessarily agree with other progressives. At least a subgroup wouldn't self describe as such.
This was tried to communicate very often, for example with reference to diversity of opinion. It was, perhaps with some reason, seen as an argument against diversity of skin colors.
I can only read the discussion of "aggressive conformism" at the end as a giant subtweet of cancel culture. There's a real, and sudden, movement in the political center against this idea (c.f. the Harpers letter), and pg is clearly picking a side.
Which is fine, I guess. I personally didn't think the letter was so awful. It's hardly the worst problem in a world where we have federal paramilitary units being deployed to pick fights with hippies, but there are excesses (David Shor for sure shouldn't have been fired).
The problem is there's a baby vs. bathwater issue with the reasoning. The same people who spit bile about Shor are the ones who just pushed BLM from a fringe idea that couldn't get purchase into something approaching social consensus. Did anyone see the ballgame last night? What's your position on Kaepernick now?
It's complicated. There's for sure a generational skew here, most of the signers were older established voices[1]. While there was some diversity, there were very few truly progressive voices, and what ones there were tended to come out later expressing that they were mislead about the way the letter would be presented.
The text of the letter is hard to argue against. The context in which it was presented, and especially the way it was leveraged on the right as an "a-ha!" moment to disparage many of the demographics that were supposed to have "signed" it was quite different.
Republicans view that letter as an admission of guilt on the part of the left, when the intent was to call back absolutist rhetoric everywhere. It didn't work.
[1] From the perspective of the activist left: the powerful looking to suppress checks on their power from new voices.
Paul Graham moved back to the UK years ago. He hasn't run Y Combinator since 2014. Of course he still has many social and professional connections to the bay area, but he doesn't have to worry about what some activists in SF will do.
Is there a single instance of a hundred millionaire/billionaire having a "real job"? With "real job" defined as doing something you'd otherwise not do if it wasn't for the pressure of having a place to live and food to eat.
Those Girard books that Peter Thiel wants you to buy because (1) Thiel got a commission and (2) Thiel doesn't know anything academic that didn't happen at Stanford.
Girard seemed to think that the great cultural problem of the world was "The Court of Versailles" where nobles who have no real problems just compete to be the same as each other. It's a compelling problem if you're a vendor who makes fancy stuff for the palace (e.g. one of those mirror makers who got assassinated to protect the secret of making mirrors) but for the 99% of people who grow rice, wheat, corn whatever it is that supports the life of most people and the vendors who serve the palace, it is just designed to erase your perception of your own life and make it a pale shadow of someone else's narcissism.
Sorry, I meant the decoder of what you feel he's really trying to say through some obfuscated means. I suppose you've attributed some ideas to him, otherwise why the talk about the "smackdown from LGBT activists", but you just alluded to it instead of writing "he says this, this, and that, but he's using the following code: ..."
That's hardly useful, because it's more mysticism, and there's no testing your opinion, and so it also can't be rejected .
> and you can't credit things like social justice and equality as anything but conformist
As I'm sure you know, people like PG, and me, and the many, many other people who share many common beliefs with the progressive left, do not criticize social justice and equality. What we are finding extraordinarily problematic currently is the people on the progressive left who are the most vocal champions of social justice and equality, in particular their intolerance, deplatforming, certainty that their's is the only true view, etc.
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
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)
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.
