Annotations (3)
“Princeton professor Robert George recently wrote: I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it. He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't.”
Psychology & Behavior · History & Geopolitics · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Conformists today would have been conformists in any era
“To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong. Conventional-minded people can't do that. For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. So it's no coincidence that societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay.”— Paul Graham
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Success requires correctness when consensus is wrong
“There are two reasons why we need to be able to discuss even 'bad' ideas. The first is that any process for deciding which ideas to ban is bound to make mistakes. All the more so because no one intelligent wants to undertake that kind of work, so it ends up being done by the stupid. And when a process makes a lot of mistakes, you need to leave a margin for error. The second reason it's dangerous to ban the discussion of ideas is that ideas are more closely related than they look.”— Paul Graham
Philosophy & Reasoning · Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Restricting one idea constrains adjacent ideas through propagation
Frameworks (1)
The Four Quadrants of Conformism
Classifying Personalities by Independent-Mindedness and Aggression
A framework for understanding personality types across two axes: conventional-minded vs. independent-minded (horizontal) and passive vs. aggressive (vertical). Creates four quadrants: aggressively conventional-minded (tattletales/enforcers), passively conventional-minded (sheep/followers), passively independent-minded (dreamers/non-conformists), and aggressively independent-minded (rebels/innovators). The framework predicts that personality type persists across contexts, meaning the same person would likely occupy the same quadrant regardless of their society's specific beliefs or rules.
Components
- Map the Two Axes
- Identify Behavioral Markers
- Recognize Cross-Context Stability
- Protect Independent-Minded Space
Prerequisites
- Honest self-assessment capability
- Willingness to challenge conventional wisdom
- Understanding that personality type is relatively fixed
Success Indicators
- Accurate prediction of behavior in new contexts
- Better talent selection for roles requiring independent-mindedness
- Institutional design that protects dissent
Failure Modes
- Using framework to justify intolerance of conformists
- Romanticizing aggressively independent-minded without recognizing costs
- Failing to protect space for unpopular ideas
Mental Models (2)
Personality Persistence Across Context
PsychologyFundamental personality traits remain stable across different historical and social contexts.
In Practice: Illustrated through thought experiment about slavery-era positioning
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Constraint Propagation
Systems ThinkingThe principle that restrictions in one part of a system propagate backward into
In Practice: Used to explain why banning discussion of 'bad' ideas constrains thinking across
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Connective Tissue (1)
Soccer pitch with minefield in one corner
The restriction of inquiry in certain domains is compared to playing soccer on a field with a minefield in one corner. The effect is not merely that you avoid the dangerous zone; rather, the presence of the minefield makes you play a 'much more subdued game even on the ground that's safe.' This captures how intellectual constraints propagate beyond their immediate boundaries, creating a chilling effect across the entire space of ideas. The fear of accidentally triggering a restriction causes thinkers to self-censor and avoid even safe territory that might lead toward forbidden zones.
Used to illustrate how banning discussion of certain ideas propagates restrictions backward into adjacent topics
Key Figures (1)
Robert George
1 mentionsPrinceton Professor
Princeton professor who poses a thought experiment to students about what their position on slavery would have been had they lived in the antebellum South, revealing the persistence of conformist personality types across historical contexts.
- When asked what their position on slavery would have been in the antebellum South, students uniformly claim they would have been abolitionists. George recognizes this is false: they would have behaved like people of that era, with today's aggressively conventional-minded being slavery's staunchest defenders.
Key People (1)
Robert George
(1955–)Princeton professor who studies political philosophy and jurisprudence
Concepts (1)
Margin for error
CL_STRATEGYBuffer space built into a system to accommodate inevitable mistakes
Synthesis
Synthesis
Migrated from Scholia