Contrarians (Robin Hanson & Agnes Callard, with Aella)

View the transcript for this episode here: ⁠⁠⁠mindsalmostmeeting.com/episod...
Imagine two smart curious friendly and basically truth-seeking people, but from very different intellectual traditions. Traditions with different tools, priorities, and ground rules. What would they discuss? Would they talk past each other? Make any progress? Would anyone want to hear them? Economist Robin Hanson and philosopher Agnes Callard decided to find out.
Visit the Minds Almost Meeting website here: ⁠⁠⁠mindsalmostmeeting.com⁠⁠

[@matteyas]

It's easy to see that consistency is a local phenomenon, if you come from a mathematics background. In Euclidean geometry (you might imagine a flat 2d grid), parallel lines stay at a constant distance from each other. In other geometries (curved, consider e.g. the 2d surface of a sphere), they do not. Both geometries are consistent, but they contradict each other. Essentially, this establishes two clearly separate pockets of local consistency.
Contrarians who have not yet disentangled themselves from belief systems will likely look at the current mish mash of opinions that make out "the norm" and go "wow, this is the headquarters of contradictions" and then they'll make their merry way _into one pocket or the other._ This is probably why they appear spread out; there are many pockets of local consistency out there-maybe not perfect ones, but certainly several that are better than what they came from.

[@marianialvaro7603]

I'm a fashion meta-contrarian

[@davidhoracek6758]

I hope Robin thinks more about how to connect his stodginess about contrarianism to his nightmare scenario about stable global coordination that nobody can escape even once rot sets in. It seems to me that we should be thinking hard about how to be effective in preventing the forces of coordinated elites from locking down the world. Having better arguments than theirs will not be enough. But making a virtue out of contrarianism really might slow down the coordination machine, because we already feel in our hearts that contrarians are doing something valuable for society, despite usually being wrong. Let's encourage kids to have the sentiment that "they do it differently over there, and we find them weird or even repugnant, but exploring these differences is really good for the world, so be thankful that we have those weirdos!" If something prevents the jaws of elite conformity from clamping down on us all, it won't be the arguments of reluctant contrarians like Robin, but the much less reasonable religious zealots, annoying crypto bros, freaky polyamorists, LARPers, gun nuts, and every other freak group who is fighting for some slack in the world to do its own thing. We especially need a diversity of freaky elites - more academic cats and fewer academic sheep - because you can't coordinate cats, and that makes everyone freer. If that means that we must even champion the freaks we despise, Feyerabend style, then so be it.

[@richardgoldstein-dm3bv]

The proshtitewt really added a lot! I threw up a few times.