It’s worth digging a bit more for the cruxes, and you’re absolutely right that the conservative side is just plain not great at the intellectual debate behind their intuitions. One that you don’t mention is the acceptance of inequality and the expected ratio of weirdos to normals. Weirdos are valuable, but should be somewhat rare. Further, weirdos have a much wider distribution of success, with many living miserable lives, and a few living great ones. Trying to adjust this is a harmful encouragement for normals to be weird.
That distinction between (support and respect) and (encourage and cause) for non-standard behaviors (which are some mix of choice and nature) is an important difference in framing among those conservatives and progressives with whom I’ve discussed some of these topics.
Further, weirdos have a much wider distribution of success, with many living miserable lives, and a few living great ones.
If the miserable lives are more likely that the great lives, it could mean that being a weirdo is bad on average; and yet we need the weirdoes to discover the potential new better ways of human existence. So it’s a trade-off between (guaranteed) short-term unhappiness, and (hypothetical) long-term happiness.
And, maybe, diminishing returns—if you have too many weirdoes, the paths they explore will often be the same (also because they copy each other), so the short-term unhappiness scales linearly, but the long-term research does not?
...which sounds analogical to the role of mutation in evolution. An improvement is only possible by mutation, but most mutations are harmful, so the organisms try to prevent mutation as much as possible, which could be seen as “hypocritical” if we anthropomorphise the species, given that the only reason they exist is that their ancestors have mutated. And yet.
I can’t fully pass an ITT, especially as conservatives tend to reject Utilitarian-style analysis in the first place. I think the underlying intuition is that it’s OK if the average wierdo suffers, as long as the really valuable ones get the benefit for most of the normals (or the representative normal maybe—it’s hard to pin down whether this is median, mean, some middle percentile, or what).
So, yes—weirdos are harmful on average, but beneficial often enough that we should discourage too many or too weird but not fully eliminate them. Kind of weirdly, this kind of diversity (willingness to accept a range of pleasantness and value of lives) is truly anathema to progressives.
Weirdos are valuable, but should be somewhat rare. Further, weirdos have a much wider distribution of success, with many living miserable lives, and a few living great ones. Trying to adjust this is a harmful encouragement for normals to be weird.
Your point about the normal2weirdo-ratio is excellent! I haven’t considered that yet. I agree that you’re more likely to struggle when you’re an outlier than be a success story.
Additionally, even if an unconventional set of behaviours benefits an individual, it might not be scalable. An example that comes to mind is people foraging for food in dumpsters (are they called freegans?). While that might sustain a few people per city, it’s hardly a population-wide solution. Generally speaking, adhering to the norm should be more scalable.
It’s worth digging a bit more for the cruxes, and you’re absolutely right that the conservative side is just plain not great at the intellectual debate behind their intuitions. One that you don’t mention is the acceptance of inequality and the expected ratio of weirdos to normals. Weirdos are valuable, but should be somewhat rare. Further, weirdos have a much wider distribution of success, with many living miserable lives, and a few living great ones. Trying to adjust this is a harmful encouragement for normals to be weird.
That distinction between (support and respect) and (encourage and cause) for non-standard behaviors (which are some mix of choice and nature) is an important difference in framing among those conservatives and progressives with whom I’ve discussed some of these topics.
If the miserable lives are more likely that the great lives, it could mean that being a weirdo is bad on average; and yet we need the weirdoes to discover the potential new better ways of human existence. So it’s a trade-off between (guaranteed) short-term unhappiness, and (hypothetical) long-term happiness.
And, maybe, diminishing returns—if you have too many weirdoes, the paths they explore will often be the same (also because they copy each other), so the short-term unhappiness scales linearly, but the long-term research does not?
...which sounds analogical to the role of mutation in evolution. An improvement is only possible by mutation, but most mutations are harmful, so the organisms try to prevent mutation as much as possible, which could be seen as “hypocritical” if we anthropomorphise the species, given that the only reason they exist is that their ancestors have mutated. And yet.
I can’t fully pass an ITT, especially as conservatives tend to reject Utilitarian-style analysis in the first place. I think the underlying intuition is that it’s OK if the average wierdo suffers, as long as the really valuable ones get the benefit for most of the normals (or the representative normal maybe—it’s hard to pin down whether this is median, mean, some middle percentile, or what).
So, yes—weirdos are harmful on average, but beneficial often enough that we should discourage too many or too weird but not fully eliminate them. Kind of weirdly, this kind of diversity (willingness to accept a range of pleasantness and value of lives) is truly anathema to progressives.
Your point about the normal2weirdo-ratio is excellent! I haven’t considered that yet. I agree that you’re more likely to struggle when you’re an outlier than be a success story.
Additionally, even if an unconventional set of behaviours benefits an individual, it might not be scalable. An example that comes to mind is people foraging for food in dumpsters (are they called freegans?). While that might sustain a few people per city, it’s hardly a population-wide solution. Generally speaking, adhering to the norm should be more scalable.