About your (1) and (2): I’m not saying such negative judgements are justified! Sure, people make stupid judgements about risk and probability and correlation all the time, I’m discussing whether a negative judgement is due to “dislike for the weird and different” as a general tendancy, or to a specific (possibly wrong!) judgement against something.
The pager is a good example of an innovation hampered by intolerance; I remember a time where cell phones were negatively judged too; though even that could maybe be explained by it’s association to a disliked group (Yuppies), not dislike of weirdness. I’m not very convinced by that explanation though, it may make the standard of what really counts as dislilke of weirdness a bit too high.
Points (1) and (2) are not closely related. A person could believe (2) without believing (1)
I think these comments from fubarobfusco and Qiaochu_Yuan explain the point that what counts as conformity is very culturally dependent. Non-conformity in those situations might just be a disguised way of saying that someone desires the culture to change.
About your (1) and (2): I’m not saying such negative judgements are justified! Sure, people make stupid judgements about risk and probability and correlation all the time, I’m discussing whether a negative judgement is due to “dislike for the weird and different” as a general tendancy, or to a specific (possibly wrong!) judgement against something.
The pager is a good example of an innovation hampered by intolerance; I remember a time where cell phones were negatively judged too; though even that could maybe be explained by it’s association to a disliked group (Yuppies), not dislike of weirdness. I’m not very convinced by that explanation though, it may make the standard of what really counts as dislilke of weirdness a bit too high.
Points (1) and (2) are not closely related. A person could believe (2) without believing (1)
I think these comments from fubarobfusco and Qiaochu_Yuan explain the point that what counts as conformity is very culturally dependent. Non-conformity in those situations might just be a disguised way of saying that someone desires the culture to change.