If you truly believe that your ideas are underrepresented then you will much better promote them by being appearing generally “normal” and passing off the underrepresented idea as a fairly typical part of your ostensibly coherent worldview.
Couldn’t do it if I tried for a hundred years.
Something interesting may be going on here.
Consider the question, “Could you appear generally ‘normal’ and pass off the underrepresented idea as a fairly typical part of your ostensibly coherent worldview, if the fate of the world depended on it?”
I could imagine the same person giving two different answers, depending on how they understood the question to be meant.
One answer would be, “Yes: if I knew the fate of the world depended on it, then I would appear normal”.
The other would be, “No, because the fate of the world could not depend on my appearing normal; in fact the fate of the world would depend on my not appearing normal”.
(A third possible answer would be about one form of akrasia: “In that case I would believe that the fate of the world depended on my appearing normal, but I wouldn’t alieve it enough to be able to appear normal.”)
This seems psychologically parallel to the situation of the question about “Would you kill babies if it was intrinsically the right thing to do?”. One answer is, “Yes: if I knew the intrinsically right thing to do was to kill babies, then I would kill babies”. But the other is, “No, because killing babies would not be the intrinsically right thing to do; in fact the intrinsically right thing to do would be to not kill babies”. (The third answer would be, “In that case I would believe that killing babies was intrinsically the right thing to do, but I wouldn’t alieve it enough to be able to kill babies”.)
Maybe the important question is: what would the meaning be of the imagined statement, “the fate of the world would depend on my not appearing normal”?
For the statement “the intrinsically right thing to do would be to not kill babies”, one possible meaning would be conceptual and epistemic: “I have thought about possible ethical and meta-ethical positions, and it was impossible for killing babies to be the right thing to do.” Another possible meaning would be non-epistemic and intuitive: “If someone has an argument that killing babies is the intrinsically right thing to do, then from priors, I and others would both estimate that the chances are too high that they had made a mistake in ethics or meta-ethics. If I were to agree that they could be right, that would be a concession that would be both too harmful directly and too costly to me socially.”
Similarly, for the statement “the fate of the world would depend on my not appearing normal”, one possible meaning would be conceptual and epistemic: “I have thought about my abilities, and I could do at most two of ‘value appearing normal’, ‘be psychologically able to privately reason to truthful beliefs’, and ‘have enough mental energy left over for other work’, but it was impossible for me to do all three.” Another meaning would non-epistemic and intuitive: “If someone has an argument that it would be good on net to appear normal and not contrarian, then from priors, I and others would both estimate that the chances are high that they had made a motivated mistake about how hard it is to have good epistemology. If I were to agree that they could be right, that would be a concession that would be both too harmful for me directly, and too costly socially as an understood implicit endorsement of that kind of motivated mistake.”
Something interesting may be going on here.
Consider the question, “Could you appear generally ‘normal’ and pass off the underrepresented idea as a fairly typical part of your ostensibly coherent worldview, if the fate of the world depended on it?”
I could imagine the same person giving two different answers, depending on how they understood the question to be meant.
One answer would be, “Yes: if I knew the fate of the world depended on it, then I would appear normal”.
The other would be, “No, because the fate of the world could not depend on my appearing normal; in fact the fate of the world would depend on my not appearing normal”.
(A third possible answer would be about one form of akrasia: “In that case I would believe that the fate of the world depended on my appearing normal, but I wouldn’t alieve it enough to be able to appear normal.”)
This seems psychologically parallel to the situation of the question about “Would you kill babies if it was intrinsically the right thing to do?”. One answer is, “Yes: if I knew the intrinsically right thing to do was to kill babies, then I would kill babies”. But the other is, “No, because killing babies would not be the intrinsically right thing to do; in fact the intrinsically right thing to do would be to not kill babies”. (The third answer would be, “In that case I would believe that killing babies was intrinsically the right thing to do, but I wouldn’t alieve it enough to be able to kill babies”.)
Maybe the important question is: what would the meaning be of the imagined statement, “the fate of the world would depend on my not appearing normal”?
For the statement “the intrinsically right thing to do would be to not kill babies”, one possible meaning would be conceptual and epistemic: “I have thought about possible ethical and meta-ethical positions, and it was impossible for killing babies to be the right thing to do.” Another possible meaning would be non-epistemic and intuitive: “If someone has an argument that killing babies is the intrinsically right thing to do, then from priors, I and others would both estimate that the chances are too high that they had made a mistake in ethics or meta-ethics. If I were to agree that they could be right, that would be a concession that would be both too harmful directly and too costly to me socially.”
Similarly, for the statement “the fate of the world would depend on my not appearing normal”, one possible meaning would be conceptual and epistemic: “I have thought about my abilities, and I could do at most two of ‘value appearing normal’, ‘be psychologically able to privately reason to truthful beliefs’, and ‘have enough mental energy left over for other work’, but it was impossible for me to do all three.” Another meaning would non-epistemic and intuitive: “If someone has an argument that it would be good on net to appear normal and not contrarian, then from priors, I and others would both estimate that the chances are high that they had made a motivated mistake about how hard it is to have good epistemology. If I were to agree that they could be right, that would be a concession that would be both too harmful for me directly, and too costly socially as an understood implicit endorsement of that kind of motivated mistake.”