It depends how you define weirdness, I think. What I’m claiming, by use of examples, is that we have a very specific out-group/in-group separation. What we usually label “weird” is harmless in-group stuff. We might even use it to signal our tolerance/freedom/etc. What is actually weird to us, we tend not to define explicitly at all, but to separate by exclusion and by favouring in-group stuff without argument. Sometimes we consider it offensive. The examples in the original article are not great, I think, since our society is tolerant of people wearing wacky clothing, etc (i.e., the other day I saw an adult woman in the supermarket wearing an animal onesie and nobody even looked twice). But if you take “weirdness” to be actual out-group behaviour then I think there’s ample evidence that we’re inherently intolerant of it (some of which I tried to provide).
I agree that it depends of what is meant by “weirdness”, and that if by that you mean out-group behavior then yes we are intolerant of it.
However, Caplan’s argument was that signaling conformity discouraged innovation, so the important question becomes how many potential innovations get discouraged—how many fall under ’harmless in-group stuff”, and how many fall under “actually weird out-group stuff”.
You could conceivably have an out-group/in-group separation such that the “out-group” is a restricted set of characteristics, and the in-group is anything else (it’s defined by what it’s not, which isn’t that rare), in which case most innovations wouldn’t be hindered. Or more generally, in-group borders can vary in how restrictive they are; some groups (catholic housewives) can be such that any innovation is likely to fall outside the group, and others (hippies, geeks), while still having borders, may be broad enough to allow a lot more potential innovations to fall in.
I think there are potential examples of “suppressed” innovation due to our ideology. Our political ideology is based on a particular view of individual psychology and sociology. I mentioned the view of the state as an antagonistic actor and the idea that society doesn’t transcend the individual. Both of these assumptions are absent from other traditions (pre-Englightenment West, Confucian, etc) and both appear to set the bounds of how we reason about people and society. I would add to this the idea that morality is problematic in that it doesn’t fit into the natural world without revision, which is perhaps the central philosophical problem that led to modern Western political ideology, and is the reason we look for legal and institutional solutions to social problems rather than the character-centric solutions common to traditional approaches.
It would be very hard, I think, for a Western sociologist or a political scientist to argue for a view of the individual and of society that wasn’t compatible with our political ideology. This also restricts the available possibilities in psychology because we tend to strongly favour “internal” solutions (representations, models, etc) rather than solutions that would imply the interdependence between individuals and culture/society. But again, only occasionally does this rise to the point where people say, “this is too weird!” Usually the suppression is more subtle. There are just certain places we don’t go, intellectually, because the coherence of our ideology depends on it not being true. I think it’s very hard to get a grip on how restrictive your own ideology is because of this.
For example, it’s possible to imagine that I might come up with a psychological theory that seemingly justifies authoritarianism and that might provoke a reaction in others, but what of a psychological theory that shows our very concept of authority to be mistaken? What if I think we’re confused about what freedom is altogether? It’s likely that such a theory would still be evaluated as authoritarian (or not) within the ideology it seemingly undermines. But the situation can be more subtle still. For example, many people have argued that the problem of free will is a non-problem. But what does a world where this question has been dissolved really look like? It certainly doesn’t look like our intellectual climate. Dissolution is merely accepted among the pantheon of answers. You could say that our ideology is especially defined by what we consider a problem rather than the answers we consider legitimate. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our society is organised around ideas that come from the same era as many of our most intractable philosophical problems.
As someone who believes mainstream cognitive science is mistaken, I run into this issue all the time. Even people in heterodox research seem to have a hard time taking their theories “all the way.” I think it’s at least plausible that the sticking point here is an intolerance of the genuinely ideologically strange. In fact, I became interested in heterodox, pre-Enlightenment and non-Western political ideology while doing research in heterodox cognitive science, because it helps me clear away biases. So I’ve spent some time reading about other cultures and other eras and trying to get a handle on their perspective, so that I can “think outside the box.” Of course, I could be wrong about mainstream cognitive science, but I think it’s clear there are avenues of investigation that are closed off because they are intermingled with actually weird out-group stuff. I wonder if it’s possible to genuinely dissolve problems without becoming an outsider of sorts.
It depends how you define weirdness, I think. What I’m claiming, by use of examples, is that we have a very specific out-group/in-group separation. What we usually label “weird” is harmless in-group stuff. We might even use it to signal our tolerance/freedom/etc. What is actually weird to us, we tend not to define explicitly at all, but to separate by exclusion and by favouring in-group stuff without argument. Sometimes we consider it offensive. The examples in the original article are not great, I think, since our society is tolerant of people wearing wacky clothing, etc (i.e., the other day I saw an adult woman in the supermarket wearing an animal onesie and nobody even looked twice). But if you take “weirdness” to be actual out-group behaviour then I think there’s ample evidence that we’re inherently intolerant of it (some of which I tried to provide).
I agree that it depends of what is meant by “weirdness”, and that if by that you mean out-group behavior then yes we are intolerant of it.
However, Caplan’s argument was that signaling conformity discouraged innovation, so the important question becomes how many potential innovations get discouraged—how many fall under ’harmless in-group stuff”, and how many fall under “actually weird out-group stuff”.
You could conceivably have an out-group/in-group separation such that the “out-group” is a restricted set of characteristics, and the in-group is anything else (it’s defined by what it’s not, which isn’t that rare), in which case most innovations wouldn’t be hindered. Or more generally, in-group borders can vary in how restrictive they are; some groups (catholic housewives) can be such that any innovation is likely to fall outside the group, and others (hippies, geeks), while still having borders, may be broad enough to allow a lot more potential innovations to fall in.
I think there are potential examples of “suppressed” innovation due to our ideology. Our political ideology is based on a particular view of individual psychology and sociology. I mentioned the view of the state as an antagonistic actor and the idea that society doesn’t transcend the individual. Both of these assumptions are absent from other traditions (pre-Englightenment West, Confucian, etc) and both appear to set the bounds of how we reason about people and society. I would add to this the idea that morality is problematic in that it doesn’t fit into the natural world without revision, which is perhaps the central philosophical problem that led to modern Western political ideology, and is the reason we look for legal and institutional solutions to social problems rather than the character-centric solutions common to traditional approaches.
It would be very hard, I think, for a Western sociologist or a political scientist to argue for a view of the individual and of society that wasn’t compatible with our political ideology. This also restricts the available possibilities in psychology because we tend to strongly favour “internal” solutions (representations, models, etc) rather than solutions that would imply the interdependence between individuals and culture/society. But again, only occasionally does this rise to the point where people say, “this is too weird!” Usually the suppression is more subtle. There are just certain places we don’t go, intellectually, because the coherence of our ideology depends on it not being true. I think it’s very hard to get a grip on how restrictive your own ideology is because of this.
For example, it’s possible to imagine that I might come up with a psychological theory that seemingly justifies authoritarianism and that might provoke a reaction in others, but what of a psychological theory that shows our very concept of authority to be mistaken? What if I think we’re confused about what freedom is altogether? It’s likely that such a theory would still be evaluated as authoritarian (or not) within the ideology it seemingly undermines. But the situation can be more subtle still. For example, many people have argued that the problem of free will is a non-problem. But what does a world where this question has been dissolved really look like? It certainly doesn’t look like our intellectual climate. Dissolution is merely accepted among the pantheon of answers. You could say that our ideology is especially defined by what we consider a problem rather than the answers we consider legitimate. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our society is organised around ideas that come from the same era as many of our most intractable philosophical problems.
As someone who believes mainstream cognitive science is mistaken, I run into this issue all the time. Even people in heterodox research seem to have a hard time taking their theories “all the way.” I think it’s at least plausible that the sticking point here is an intolerance of the genuinely ideologically strange. In fact, I became interested in heterodox, pre-Enlightenment and non-Western political ideology while doing research in heterodox cognitive science, because it helps me clear away biases. So I’ve spent some time reading about other cultures and other eras and trying to get a handle on their perspective, so that I can “think outside the box.” Of course, I could be wrong about mainstream cognitive science, but I think it’s clear there are avenues of investigation that are closed off because they are intermingled with actually weird out-group stuff. I wonder if it’s possible to genuinely dissolve problems without becoming an outsider of sorts.