Paul Graham on the religion that persecutes heretics

Paul Graham starts with this framework:

The kids in the upper left quadrant, the aggressively conventional-minded ones, are the tattletales. They believe not only that rules must be obeyed, but that those who disobey them must be punished.

The kids in the lower left quadrant, the passively conventional-minded, are the sheep. They’re careful to obey the rules, but when other kids break them, their impulse is to worry that those kids will be punished, not to ensure that they will.

The kids in the lower right quadrant, the passively independent-minded, are the dreamy ones. They don’t care much about rules and probably aren’t 100% sure what the rules even are.

And the kids in the upper right quadrant, the aggressively independent-minded, are the naughty ones. When they see a rule, their first impulse is to question it. Merely being told what to do makes them inclined to do the opposite.

He points out that universities used to be places where the aggressively independent-minded were protected from the aggressively conventional-minded. In my terms, universities were a haven for heretics, not the wellspring of the religion that is animated by the identification and persecution of heretics.

I believe that in order to have a cohesive society, you need some enforcement of conformity. But the extend and severity of that enforcement has to have limits. I think Graham’s essay makes that same point.

17 thoughts on “Paul Graham on the religion that persecutes heretics

  1. “ …. 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. Which in this case means you need to ban fewer ideas than you’d like to. But that’s hard for the aggressively conventional-minded to do, partly because they enjoy seeing people punished, as they have since they were children, and partly because they compete with one another. Enforcers of orthodoxy can’t allow a borderline idea to exist, because that gives other enforcers an opportunity to one-up them in the moral purity department, and perhaps even to turn enforcer upon them.”

    Describes the censorship ethic of both social media moderators and participants.
    “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

    • There was also plenty of good criticism at Hacker News (id=23938024), though often “praise in spirit” from a bunch of alarmed folks who lived through the bad old days in the Soviet Union or China, which is a very bad sign.

      In my view the strongest criticism on Hacker News was that the premise that Silicon Valley in some kind of non-conformist mecca for those who are independent-minded by predisposed personality type is utterly ludicrous and opposite of reality, as it is indeed one of the most incredibly conformist and politically-and-ideologically monocultural places in the world.

      There is no simply no connection between frontier-expanding creative innovation and out-of-the-box thinking in one’s field of technical and professional expertise on the one hand, and social nonconformity and independent-mindedness in ideological matters on the other. Clever people are creative when they are free to be creative and when creation is profitable. When conformism is profitable, they conform, and if they apply their creativity, it is to *bolster* the strength of the elite consensus, not to undermine it.

      I get why one might try this despearte tack in an effort to spread the perception that SJW inquisitors have the inferior minds of boring, conventional lunatic witch-hunting ogres, that causing trouble and internal discord is their compariative advantage because literally the only thing they are capable of doing well, and thus no smart person should want to have such a millstone of deadweight around the neck of their teams and companies. When you’re fighting an uphill battle, it really helps to have the whole truth on your side, but this is only half true.

      The idea that this all ‘began’ in the 1980s is simply incorrect and absurd and comes across as historically ignorant, but I’m willing to cut Graham a lot of slack because he too faces the same pressures and constraints he is trying to complain about. (Will Tyler Cowen still call this “whining” too, like he usually does, or does Graham get a special pass for being a VIP serious-person?)

      I think a more subtle criticism would be to point out that Graham walked right up to a critical insight but then still missed the chance to explore its implications. He mentioned that the Princeton students all thought they would be non-conformist abolitionists in the ante-bellum South, when likely most or all of them are conformists today (certainly on the matter of slavery, which is a good thing, but it’s not like they thought it through by themselves and weighed all the arguments pro and con didn’t just go with their society’s flow.)

      If you had asked those students, “Hey, if a time machine dropped you naked into the ante-bellum South with enough money to pay a tailor to make any kind of clothing you wanted, would you adopt the conventional sartorial fashions of that time and place, with the collars and crinoline, or would you insist on recreating the clothes you are wearing right now, even though you know everyone would judge you to be some kind of creepy weirdo with whom they wanted no association?”

      This is the reverse case, in which they would admit they would conform in the past, but deny they are just conforming in the present and fool themselves in incere self-delusion that they are being authentic to some unique inner voice and following their own unique style that it “truly me”. A billion people wore togas and tunics for thousands of years yet somehow not one person without some severe mental illness finds that style to be the authentic reflection of their inner desires and walks around like that today. Because they know that everyone would shun them as a creepy weirdo. The “inner voice” turns out to be the Inner Big Brother who won’t allow normal, well-adjusted people to even want to do things that will get them into that kind of social trouble.

      Likewise, the conformists to ideological fashions of today also erroneously imagine themselves to be some beleaguered minority of independent thinkers and heroes fighting against all odds and the oppression and injustice of the system, the powers that be, and The Man keeping them down. Hence “Social Justice Warrior”. When in reality, they are the very mechanism of the system’s power. They *are* The Man. That is, people in Graham’s left quadrants *imagine* themselves as living in a fantasy world in which they are the ones in quadrant I, fighting against evil conservative conformists in quadrants II and III, and they actively spread and maintain that false consciousness among themselves.

      Without recognizing this fundamental problem and taking it on directly, Graham’s essay backfires because the people he is begging to stop imagine themselves as the good guys in his proposed framework. He only reinforces this false notion by declaring Silicon Valley’s overwhelmingly conformist ideological monoculture as the very model of independent nonconformity.

      Finally there is the matter of being hopeful in the long term because imaginative and independent people are purportedly good at inventing new institutions that don’t get compromised.

      This is so wrong that the most charitable read is that it’s some kind of Straussian signal, perhaps so people will get the hint it’s already being done, or that they should contribute to attempts to solve the problem.

      There is a reason Conquest’s Second Law of Politics is a Law. “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”

      When you are recognizing that all the important institutions have been compromised, and always seem to get compromised, then on what possible basis can only be hopeful that there is some unexplored, self-contained solution to this problem? Not just false hope, but *unfounded* false hope.

      To have one’s expression of hope taken seriously, one would have to be able to explain how C2L works, and prove the existence of exceptions and weaknesses. Spoiler Alert: There are no exceptions or weaknesses. Sometimes one has to have one’s spirit broken in order to see the light, “when you’re going through Hell, keep on going”.

      Graham has not yet travelled down the path of true despair in which he is finally led to embrace the harsh reality and ugly implications of this bleak truth. But only when he does so will his essays make better sense.

      • Your critisisms are correct but both recent essays came off as pretty strausian to me. He is basically trying to frame restriction of ideas as a position only dumb people hold. That’s a tactic, not a factual description of reality.

        You have to come at these problems very carefully or you will lose credibiliy with the people you are trying to convince. Just look at Tyler tippy-toe around the possibility of opening schools.

        It looks cowardly at first, but it is actually a very hard line to walk so I respect it as well.

      • Great stuff as usual. Kinda off-topic. I was explaining Conquest’s Laws to someone the other night. And it got me thinking, does the Libertarian party count as explicitly RW? I don’t think so. If they aren’t RW then the law should still apply. I think anyone who follows the major libertarian outlets (the Libertarian party, reason, libertarianism.org/Cato) can’t deny the quick lurch to the left (some more than others). I think this is a really interesting phenomena and one that hasn’t been totally explained.

      • Why do we think C2L is true? It seems like primarily a WEIRD society phenomenon. Not clear the CCP is becoming more left wing. And it’s for sure not explicitly Right Wing!

        Maybe the argument is: WEIRD societies enable lefty ‘openness’ values, and these values dominate in settings which lack market discipline/are resource unconstrained (academia, non-profits, deficit spending gov’t). So the only way C2L fails is when (if?) lefty openness values cause failure which de-WEIRDs the institution (or the society).

        (another Q: it seems to me the application of C2L to big business is more hit and miss. At least, it took a lot longer for Exxon to go left than it did the Carnegie Foundation).

      • Robert Conquest’s Second Law says, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” But that assumes there is some obvious and unchanging meaning to the terms “right-wing” and left-wing”. There isn’t. Reading the above comments, I tried applying it to “the major libertarian outlets (the Libertarian party, reason, libertarianism.org/Cato)” and then to the Chinese Communist Party. I couldn’t do it and now my head hurts.

        • Conquest’s Law is more general than you are giving it credit for, and does not at all depend on some fixed definition of ‘right’ and ‘left’ as illustrated by the need to distinguish between “Old Left” and “New Left” or “Marxism” vs “Cultural Marxism”, yet despite that transition, we can clearly see the same mechanism at work.

          When any kind of fashion changes, the individual members of any institution that is characterized by adherence to a position that has gone out of fashion feel tremendous pressure to conform to the new fashion. Unless they devote themselves specifically to being unfashionable and resisting this pressure, the temptation to compromise and yield will prove irresistible, especially because it becomes a useful way to win social games and make power-play moves in the incessant Internal Power Struggle.

          What has happened to American Libertarianism is as good an example of this happening as any, practically the textbook case of it. When it becomes socially inconvenient to fight the progressives about something, a bunch of “libertarians” will flip, adopt the fashion for social justice or redistribution or affirmative action and split to the Bleeding Heart club or the liberaltarians or “200-proof liberals” or the Niskanen Center or whatever the hell Jerry “I’d rush them and beat their brains in” or Will “destroying property is obviously not violence” Wilkinson pretend to call themselves these days. And then they will slander the people who didn’t flip and split and call them nasty names.

          What you have left is stuff that progressives don’t find offensive enough to target. Run that for a few iterations and with the “biological solution” of generational turnover, and soon enough you won’t be able to tell the difference. Which is how staunch Calvinist Mainline Protestants ended up with dwindling churches for “radical progressivism at prayer” in just a few generations. Either you are against fashions, or sooner or later, bit by bit, you are nothing but the latest fashion.

          The only way to stop this it to *end* the internal power struggle, that is, to make it impossible to make these particular moves and play this particular social dominance game.

          Which is what the CCP has done, which is only “Communist” or even ‘leftist’ in name only, mostly just “Chinese Ruling Monopoly Organization”, emphasis on the Monopoly. When you are a ruling monopoly, you don’t conform to fashions, you define fashions, and everyone conforms to you. It is utterly pointless and likely suicidal to try and make a power-play in the upper echelons of The Party by making some appeal to ideological principles which portrays the proponent as being a more consistent adherent than the leaders currently in charge.

          Just as Stalin had no friends to his right and also no friends to his left, because he is the one person who gets to define the one correct position, the Chinese have established an explicitly conservative regime in terms of allowing no challenge whatever to the legitimacy and organization of the existing power structure.

          It just so happens that like Stalin they established this conservative system at an extremely Old-Left starting point that was the inevitable result of the subversive revolution they used to win power in the first place. Subversion for me, definitely not for thee. But don’t confuse the starting point or the public name for the actual state of affairs, incentives, and power dynamics of that particular system.

        • I realize this is uncharitable but you can prove anything if you are allowed to constantly “modify” your definitions to make them relevant. So, for example:

          1) A racist is someone who wants to keep black people down.

          2) Black people will be kept down unless there is discrimination against white people.

          3) Therefore, if you oppose discrimination against white people, you are a racist.

          One can completely agree with your argument about fashion but it says nothing about “right-wing” or “left-wing”. Unless you want to define any winning fashion as “left-wing”. But that’s circular.

          For what it’s worth, I think you underestimate how much Xi is a true believer, not just a power-hungry “conservative” (how many medieval Cardinals were true believers, even though the belief was used to give them a monopoly of certain kinds of power, and a life that was a lot more affluent than that of ordinary people?). Tanner Greer at The Scholar’s Stage has written a number of good articles on Xi Jinping-thought, the extent to which it appeals to historical continuity, and the extent to which it drives decisions. The most recent (a little dry but with links to some previous) is The World That China Wants (III): Taking Chinese Communism Seriously.

          Greer surprised me some time ago by pointing out that the Chinese communist experiment has lasted longer than the Russian. Xi believes that the Soviet Union died because it’s rulers stopped believing. He wants to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen to China.

          • You can take it seriously, but don’t be fooled, you can’t take it literally.

            By any normal definition of “socialism” China is obviously and profoundly less socialist than it was 40 years ago, and nothing at all like North Korea or even Cuba.

            Rome continued calling itself a republic long after it ceased to be a republic. Technically Queen Elizabeth II is still the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which once actually meant something, but hasn’t in centuries.

            China has likewise ceased to be communist in all but name. Not some “No True Scotsman” definition of 100% communism, but anything that can reasonably be called communism at all. This is the oldest trick in the book, and everyone plays it, but we don’t need to play long and let ourselves be tricked.

          • China may not be socialist, but it certainly is communist. The Party still rules. There can be no truth outside the Party. The Party is on the right side of history and ultimately will prevail. All opposition will wind up on “the dustbin of history”. (Of course, history is dialectical; it doesn’t proceed in a straight line, so retreats from socialism will have to be made but the triumph of socialism is inevitable.) Bourgeois freedoms are just cloaks for oppression. Etc Etc.

            Lenin’s New Economic Policy was certainly not socialism but it did not lead to a liberalization. The collectivization of agriculture was just a decade in the future. China still does Five Year Plans.

            Your July 29 at 10:42 comment seemed to re-envisage Conquest’s Second Law as “organizations tend to move toward the dominant culture”. That may well be true but it has nothing to do with “left-wing” and “right-wing”.

          • The last paragraph should read:

            Your July 29 at 10:42 comment seemed to re-envisage Conquest’s Second Law as “organizations tend to move toward the dominant culture” or “organizations tend to move toward what is fashionable.” That may well be true but it has nothing to do with “left-wing” and “right-wing”.

  2. Here is the insight, for me at least.

    “Since one’s quadrant depends more on one’s personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they’d grown up in a quite different society.”

    So when (if) these people get what they want, what then?

  3. The Portland rioters are eager to break rules regarding burning down the federal courthouse and assualting police officers. But they are eager to enforce rules on left-wing political ideology and punish or expel heretics.

    Are they rule breakers? Or rule enforcers? Clearly, they are both; it depends on which rules you are referring to. They are breaking basic rules of civil society and enforcing rules regarding left-wing political ideology. This quadrant system falls apart.

  4. “In my terms, universities were a haven for heretics, not the wellspring of the religion that is animated by the identification and persecution of heretics.”

    In the last 300 or so years, in general, maybe, but establishment universities were not places for heretics up the 18th century. The technophobic universities of England forced innovators such as Newcomen and others into dissenting academies or apprenticeships. And those freed from the control of the universities transformed the world with steam power, etc.

    I’ve thought for a while that the early 20th century was an inflection point in human history where we slipped the free of demographic control by mortality to one based on fertility control. Moved away from disease and famine. But it seems to have been only a respite. But this time, the knowledge is out there, free from monopolistic control, and though under threat, freedom communication, and thought, is still relatively easy.

    • Thanks for making the point about England and the dissenting academies. It’s a story that is part of the historical record, but many people are mostly unaware of it.

      Wikipedia has some information on them.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissenting_academies

      = – = – = – =

      I’m tempted to segue into a discussion of the German Research University model, but all I know is that that model is “a thing” and that model is not all that old, and out of it emerged great innovations in fields such as chemistry and electricity.

      It also makes me wonder what was going on in the Calvinist lands, for example in the Netherlands.

  5. When you think of the racist, colonialist, nationalistic CCP, and what is carried out every day without protest, and about how little it matters to people, then there’s no need to “ask students what their position on slavery would have been” way back when in an earlier age. It’s not hypothetical.

    Listen to people when they tell you what they care about. Listen to the engaged and committed and passionate students who never say a word about it. University presidents, think tankers, journalists, management consultants, lobbyists. Retired politicians turned PR flacks. Our enlightened teachers at the National Basketball Association. They never talk about what’s happening now in the biggest country in the world. That people don’t think about it is coming through loud and clear.

    And in fact people defend the nationalists and the racists carrying out these atrocities with this simple trick: The nationalists are internationalists. War is peace. China means liberalism. When we defend the CCP, we’re on the side of the angels and of progress and harmony. There are no atrocities being carried out right now because the CCP is our ally in peace and prosperity.

Comments are closed.