Have you ever noticed the overlap between outlier groups? For instance, I self-define (in rough order of increasing craziness/offensiveness) as an anti-authoritarian, a left-libertarian-anarchocapitalist, an (agnostic) atheist, a transhumanist, a TCS-friendly unschooler, a general medical skeptic, a HBD-er, and a polyamorist. For any arbitrary position, I am not only a <5% outlier, but an outlier inside the outlier group.
I claim that once you've exited the polite discussion space on one topic, you are more susceptible to, even attracted to positions that also lie outside the norm. Why is this true?
Claim: Most "beliefs" are mostly about fitting in, monkeybrains, taboo, status/envy, hatred of the "other" group (Atheists, Communists, Environmentalists, Republicans), and related factors that have NOTHING to do with the truth of the position. Until you believe a position that (if you shared it) would destroy your social status among most observers, you are locked into the inability to think critically about crazy stupid stuff that is dogma (blank-slate). However, once you accept one batshit crazy position (agorism, polyamory, unschooling, formalism, transhumanism, communism, ...), a whole pile of options for analysis open up, and you are now able to think about stuff that was locked away in the status drawer.
Of course most heavy-outlier positions are wrong...and probably most of the ones I hold are too (I think I only hold outlier positions, which is clearly nuts). But the odds of finding someone who has exactly 1 outlier position is effectively zero. Either you conform to the general position, or you have outlier positions all over the place.
Has anyone else noticed the same thing?
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7 comments:
I agree. And I was going to write about this more - I alluded to it at my blog when I came out on the topic of plasma cosmology and again with formalism. I should just repost half of what you write to perfidy, you're doing a better job of expressing my opinions than I have. I need to get cracking...
I think it was the plasma cosmology that cracked the door open for me. After that, becoming a reactionary was easy. Maybe in killing beliefs, like they say with killing people, the first one is the hardest.
The danger is in what Chesterton said, "When a Man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything."
There is a real slippery slope, and the the sharp spikes at the bottom are paranoia and conspiracy theory. You have to be able to stop believing things, but still be skeptical about what you use to fill the holes. I think a lot of people forget the second part.
It's a pandora's box scenario you outline - once you open the box, all sorts of batshit crazy shit comes out.
I don't see it any more, but when I was a kid, I remember there was a sort of tradition among older men in my family - and my friends families - where they'd have one eccentric belief, but otherwise be fairly conventional. Maybe I didn't know them well enough, but it seemed that these guys really did have just one outlier belief. Like my uncle Slim, who believed in UFOs. Or my friend's dad, who was a freemasonry conspiracy nut before it was fashionable.
It's bowling pins. Once the first one goes, it's a chain reaction.
That's why the Lefties are so keen to keep deviation as the ultimate sin.
At first I thought of a counterexample: Many people seem to be crazy outliers ONLY about exercise (CrossFit) or diet (paleo).
But maybe those are more like interests -- like chess or specific cooking -- for those folks.
Those who take a specifically intellectually curious path to first reach oddity...are the ones whose curiosity goes in other domains too.
This post got me thinking. I originally was ready to argue that I am "effectively zero" being a nature mama and adhering to most ideology that respects nature and all its gifts within the human body. However, no matter how I hate the label, I'm mostly a democrat. I'm a Catholic, my daughter goes to public school. I'm pretty Normally McNormalson.
But then I remembered that I, too, am a polyamorist. And that opened the gateway for me to examine the rest of my idiosyncrasies. Turns out - you're right. I am not "effectively zero" - I would probably lean more toward Bat-shit crazy.
PD,
Welcome. I appreciate the company on my blog. We too are Texas refugees.
Andrew,
If you're going to be a crazy outlier, and get benefit from it, you have to know you're a crazy outlier. Those folks who've been serious about fitness, and then decided the mainstream fitness community is nuts...or who were nutritionists and then went paleo...those folks are all crazy like us.
Heck, superslow in particular, and HIT in general is built by Objectivists, and you can tell from reading them, even if they never use Rand's name...though both Hutchins and Mentzer did.
Just to flex my non-conformism, I'm going to be different.
I've noticed quite a few apparently staid people actually have batshit notions, just that they generally have the sense not to bruit them about. What they say in public has little relation to their actual beliefs.
Or, they're not even aware of how batshitty they sound. (Not sure how I get them to tell me, in that possibility.)
Or, sometimes, open up a random unmarked human and find it's a can of stupid.
By 'quite a few' I mean 'every single one I've had a chance to chat with.' Which is, admittedly, not too many.
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