But it's rare to mock someone for having a true intellectual journey: starting in one place, working hard, gathering more evidence, and arriving in another.
I've noticed that when people reduce some random thesis to a level of brevity beyond the minimum to actually express it coherently -- but do so succinctly and perhaps a bit archly -- the audience enjoys the illusion of effective communication, and fills in the intellectual voids on their own, affirmatively.
As if they've gotten a bargain, or been saved some time.
I mainly noticed this when so many people stopped writing awesome long-form blog posts, and supplanted it with tweeting. I seldom found value in the tweets, even from people whose blogs I prized. But many people did! And the tweeters were encouraged.
I see the same thing here. I mainly know the OP from his essays, which are overall quite good (IMHO). I subscribed to the RSS feed of them. I think I've read them all, even.
But it's hard to imagine a version of this tweet as a full essay (even a short one) that didn't end up repudiating the core idea entirely.
Because once you had to add even a bit more detail -- such as examples of it happening in the wild -- you'd end up realizing that people don't generally get mocked for changing their minds. That changing your mind is actually encouraged and praised by various books, corporate 'leadership principles', philosophers, etc... and in most cases, derision and animosity aimed at opinion-changers tends to be aimed at the ones who are obviously self-serving hypocrites, not those who've genuinely reconsidered things and come to a better conclusion.
So even though you still could, no dooubt, come up with some examples, through the process of writing the essay (or blog post), you'd... realize it was bullshit.
And then, you wouldn't publish the essay.
This has often struck me as one of the worst things about Twitter (i.e., that everyone tries to have conversations about serious stuff on a platform that's not conducive to long/detailed/nuanced posts), but it looks like PG's paying for Twitter's little paid subscription service, which, iirc, does let you write lontform tweets to your heart's content. So that's a little ironic, maybe.
Though either way, he would have access to the features of it, so your main point stands.
It's a disregard for context and nuance that I don't find specific to twitter.
I could not agree more. Tweeting and similar have been pretty bad for real intelligent and honest discourse.
You also hit on another terrible side-effect of extremely short-form discussion: the process of writing is also the process of analysis, at least when done right. To accomplish a good piece of essay-writing, you need to really think things through, do a bit of research in order to support for your thesis, etc.
The form itself requires a process that is more likely to force you to really think your thesis through, anticipate objections, etc. A short sentence requires none of that, and so doesn't encourage critical thought.
We have a word for this, it's "tweeting".
Ok, then you should know that your response was also tweeting, given that definition.
We have a name for it. It's "twitter post."
I don't think his essays aren't all that strong either. Just stronger than a twitter post and can survive a quick once-over. "Dabblers And Blowhards" is a good blogpost to disabuse you of the notion and show you the trick in his writing style.
So brevity is part of it, but I think a lot of people just prefer to engage in abstract philosophizing. It's more fun I guess, harder to argue with.
And weakness must always be punished.
I have no idea where PG puts himself on that spectrum. But SV culture is notorious for being convinced of its own awesomeness. So it's possible that if someone is being mocked it's not because of a change of mind, but for other reasons.
True, this is something that devs who are outside of SV are very often mocking SV devs for. That low-hanging fruit is too ripe to ignore.
The only part I would disagree with is this:
>So even though you still could, no doubt, come up with some examples, through the process of writing the essay (or blog post), you'd... realize it was bullshit.
>And then, you wouldn't publish the essay.
Alas, I feel you have some very optimistic assumptions about the level of self-awareness of someone who would otherwise indulge in "fallacious pithiness", the essence of which is condensing a narrative down to a quirky soundbite.
The pithiness doesn't come for free; the process of reduction is even more laborious than the one of expanding on a thought.
That road goes both ways: the same false narrative can be beefed up with numerous examples and arguments that support it, all while leaving the author immensely satisfied with the result.
----
Side note: as an autistic person, I used to make the same mistake, namely, thinking that fallacious argument of the sort we see here are the undesired result of carelessness that could be avoided if only the processes were improved.
Alas, such results, more often than not, are the outcome of a lack of the desire to find and express something that one feels confident is true. Such desire, however, is an autistic trait[1].
Most people find it not only acceptable, but desirable and enjoyable to construct narratives that look good, regardless of their veracity in the actual world we live in.
The laws of physics allow for a society in which PG's narrative would be true; and our society allows for enough outlier examples to cherry-pick for it. (I have experienced criticism for changing my opinion in a long discussion, the change stemming from being convinced that the other side has a good point - but that was an isolated incident). Without an urge to fact-check oneself (is what I say really true?), entertaining these thought experiments and turning them into words for others to read is a pleasant pastime.
It's the prose equivalent of vapid poetry, with pithiness being the constraint instead of rhyme. And it hits just the same.
[1] https://www.employmentautism.org.uk/blog/autism-and-honesty
People seriously overvalue "being right". Discovering you're wrong is far more valuable and is worthy of celebration. It means you learned something, and are just a little less ignorant as a result.
Sure, but if in the course of being convinced of the wrong thing they have caused harm it should cause guilt and embarrassment.
I think that regardless of whether or not someone's belief is correct, causing harm to unconsenting others should always cause some amount of guilt or embarrassment.
But if I hold a belief that is leading me to cause harm to people, and then I discover that I'm wrong, is that not a reason for even greater celebration? It means that I have become a less harmful person.
That said, sometimes one needs to declare a position without be absolutely sure and it is wise in that scenario to declare the fact that you are unsure.
Reminds me of this classic Limmy sketch:
Yeah this sort of grand, vague postering is the kind of thing that tech personalities do and it's because they get the kind of blind positive reinforcement from followers who have their own agenda.
Someone in his position can write something like "Not everything is knowing" and get a bunch of adulatory responses and just think they're providing some deep philosophical fodder.
“I think people are generally honest.” (Strawman) “Politicians and con men make a career out of dishonesty, how can you suggest they are honest.”
Changing your mind doesn’t make you a hypocrite. Hypocrites are people that claim to have certain morals, but act differently. That’s not people that change opinions.
Example of a hypocrite:
“The Bible says homosexuality is wrong and everything in the Bible is right, sorry I have to be against gay rights” * proceeds to have affairs, use the lord’s name in vain, and does many other things the Bible considers wrong*
This person isn’t a hypocrite if they change their minds about gay rights, or even went back and forth.
They are a hypocrite because they claim their actions are guided by the Bible, yet clearly they aren’t because they conveniently choose what to follow.
Few Americans follow the bible just because (fundamentalism).
Most do it for cultural reasons, and those cultural norms also dictate picking-and-choosing what to follow, while claiming the religious authority of the bible. It's not the individual that is hypocritical, it's the culture.
The reason I mention this is that hypocriticism requires some kind of logic to track consistency (or lack of) and yet faith is blindly illogical (believe this just because). No one is analysing why someone has (or chooses to have) a faith in something in the first place.
I also think there is a definition of hypocrite that goes something like: being a proponent of some universal moral rule, while excepting oneself from it.
I know it's only tangential to the topic being discussed, but it's quite important, so I'll elaborate.
I used to be anti-gay. So, in PG's words, ~P (why did he choose "~" instead of "!"? ~ is bitwise not in c++, while ! is boolean not. It's going to remain one of the mysteries of life). Now I'm not only pro-gay, pro-trans, etc, but thankful that I live in a country that is free, and gay and trans people, and all people, can decide for themselves what life they want to live, and to consider that they don't need approval from the rest of the society, or actually, that the rest of the society owes them an approval for their life choices.
But why was I anti-gay? Because that is what I learned as a kid. Kids learn from adults. Especially during teenage years, they are rebellious, but in reality, they still take their value clues from adults. And once you are an adult, and hold some values, it's difficult to think that they values you've held all your life were wrong. So you come up with excuses. Like the Bible thing. I grew in an atheist society, so that was not my excuse. My excuse was simply that I was raised thinking that it's wrong to be gay. That was it. In time I changed my argument into "Gay people want to get marriage benefits from the government", but someone pointed to me that gay people pay taxes too. So, after a while I realized that whatever arguments I had were hallow. But most people don't go through what PG call the journey from ~P to P. Their brain doesn't allow them too.
Find a way to help them.
In fact, those people generally get more attention and praise than the people who have had the beliefs all along. Movements seem to generally be lead by born-agains. Every other media liberal has their conversion from a sheltered conservatism story, and conservatives constantly talk about how they were dumb liberals until they saw the world.
A lot of people are aggressively impervious to all reasoning or evidence until the opinions of people who they rely on for friendship or money change, then they suddenly change opinion without any new argument or evidence being introduced. That type of flocking behavior is what is seen as hypocrisy.
I'm not sure. Consider those who are de-transitioning. The effect seems akin to departing some flavor of cult.
So to the credit of those who profess strong positions, I think society is... unsophisticated enough that such strong positions are implicitly encouraged.
This is a bit uncharitable. People only have so much capacity and interests.
Constantly analyzing the parts of life you don’t care about is exhausting.
For example: Most people would be absolutely crushed if they had to manage my disability the way I do. For me, it’s second nature. That doesn’t make neurotypical people less.
We’re the weird ones who enjoy being curious about a broad set of topics rather than just one or two. The curiosity that is so much a part of us is not necessary for much of life. We just can’t imagine living any other way.
I’ve only seen this be a common thing when people use (implicitly or explicitly) a weakly held premise as the basis for a strongly held conclusion, or one with a very high cost born by other people.
W. B. Yeats
* Immediately go with your gut instinct. * Appear 100% confident in your decision. * Avoid flip-flopping unless there would be catastrophic consequences.
I'm sure it works very well for keeping a group of people alive in deadly situations.
Because it's so persuasive, it can often be an effective way to get others to follow instructions in less grave circumstances, but when there's no time pressure, in the bigger picture it's a bad idea IMO.
Single issue voters can be weird like that.
The local pot enthusiast crowd that I know we’re furious year after year when it wasn’t legalized. They would note that some politicians said they supported it, but it wasn’t passed. They we’re upset ignoring the fact that legalization would never pass due to the balance of power in another branch of government.
They often feel like they’ve been betrayed or lied to if the outcome they want doesn’t happen.
Granted, such an acknowledgement involves some degree of humility, but I think this is preferable to not having opinions at all, especially about issues that matter.
In fact, if you don’t view it as provisional, you’ll never figure out its wrong. Cf. Columbus and reaching the East Indies.
I think we can widen the definition to include any surprising new ideas a person holds that seems to contradict their previously professed ideas / identity.
Look at when a public culture figure changes their ideas about something in a way that breaks our image of their identity- Jim Carey starting to make paintings or Lewis Hamilton designing clothes. If someone is well known for something then it seems like there’s a general aversion to that person expressing their thoughts and opinions in a different domain.
I think this might have to do with the fact that our ideas of someone’s identity is just never that accurate- it’s difficult to understand the nuances of why someone would believe something, so it’s surprising when they express an idea that might seem contradictory to something they expressed before.
This still can hold true for a personal acquaintance too- “my uncle is learning to speak German??”.
If we’re talking about politicians then our system is also not setup for them to express a lot of nuanced opinions. If they change their mind I feel like a lot of the time the nuanced justifications for that change of kind get washed away in the mainstream media.
Usually the issue is not about them doing something that breaks their identity but about using their position of influence to get an advantage with having far less skill and talent than the competitors that didn't start out famous.
Specific pg case in point. In the early stages of the Twitter acquisition, pg mocked others for saying that Musk didn't know what he was doing wrt Twitter. Then, a couple weeks or months later, pg sent out a tweet complaining about something in Twitter that had broken, pg expressing the sentiment that he was baffled by the level of incompetence.
Now, I don't necessarily think this represents a complete change of mind, but pg was roasted pretty significantly online for his new sentiment. But it wasn't because pg "changed his mind", it's because he was so condescending to others who viewed Musk's management skills negatively to begin with. Furthermore, he only tweeted out his negative opinion when something specifically affected him directly.
It's like when conservatives suddenly have a change of opinion with respect to gay rights when their child comes out. I'm not going to throw you some party celebrating your ability to change your mind when all you've done is show that you only care about shit when it affects you directly.
Shaming people who have "strong moral/ideological positions" is basically just denying human nature... if anything, it is comendable to at the very least be able to change your position if enough (real) evidence is provided.
Obviously, someone who is "Open to all viewpoints" is ideal, but in many cases those people (Myself included in many cases) also do not feel too strongly about any topic to act on it (it is mostly just our nature), if everyone was like that we wouldn't have activists for example.
I can't remember any mocking for changes on LGBT issues from "anti" to "support". In fact, that movement was particularly careful throughout the naughts and 10s to be welcoming to changed minds. I don't remember any mocking for changes in the other direction either, but tbh that direction of change was probably pretty rare until fairly recently. So maybe it did happen and I never saw it because the precondition was rare.
Nit: Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004, which was 20 years ago. Several other states quickly followed. Major changes to civil institutions don't happen when "almost everyone" is quixotic. I think you could say "a majority" were anti or neutral, but certainly not "literally almost everyone". Perhaps "literally almost everyone running for President", but now we're talking about dozens or perhaps hundreds of people most of whom genuinely deserve to be mocked for having no real convictions outside of personal ambition. Or at the very least mocked a bit for the obvious dearth of courage to defend or even admit to any convictions they do hold which happen to be inconvenient to electoral college math...
The vast majority of the coverage was positive, for exactly the reason you said. But I heard a number of voices who saw it as part of a pattern: they were uninterested in any issue that did not affect them personally. It's not a lack of conviction, but rather a lack of empathy. Every issue is pursued with equal self-interest, holding back rights from everybody else until it serves them.
Two things can be true at once. People who identify as LGBT can be very pleasant people. Additionally, I can still believe that identifying as LGBT is wrong according to my religious views. In fact, according to my religious views, everybody is a sinner and doing stuff that's wrong, but that doesn't mean they're horrible people. But it also doesn't justify the wrong behavior.
And of course, my religious views don't mean I can go and harass people who disagree with me or anything. But it also doesn't mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don't agree with.
Nobody’s asking for “praise”, the LGBT movement is about attaining the same civil rights that you enjoy.
> you can almost certainly find an entire organization dedicated to whatever X you please.
This is fairly meaningless when you strip it of all magnitude and comparison. Sure you can find some weirdos in numbers that are statistically insignificant. You can’t even make your point without also acknowledging that an organization of ten people is 0.000000125% of the population, which is, statistically speaking, for all intents and purposes, nobody.
?
You may want to reread what I wrote because the last thing I was trying to do was argue a "strawman that summarized LGBT as being harassment vs praise". In fact, I was arguing exactly the same thing you seem to be arguing here: that this is a false dichotomy being preached by the loud minority, and that taking a balanced middle ground is a fine idea.
However, I do find it funny that you're offended about someone being pedantic with your argument when it seems like that's the exact same thing you did with my original comment.
> And of course, my religious views don't mean I can go and harass people who disagree with me or anything. But it also doesn't mean I have to go praising them for doing something I don't agree with.
This still sounds like a straw man to me. Again, apologies if I’m misreading you, but you didn’t respond directly to my comment to you that LGBT people aren’t asking for praise by and large, they’re asking for civil rights. Your comment that you don’t need to praise them seems like a straw man because they’re not generally asking for or expecting praise, as a group.
Perhaps to be fair to you, in a way, I don’t personally see how people telling people stories that LGBT people are wrong can avoid leading to harassment. I don’t think it’s possible to take part in that narrative and not produce behavior that comes off to LGBT people as systemic oppression. So yes, if you intended a message of peace and inclusion, I have indeed missed it upon re-read.
Most religious bodies, despite their uneducated followers not understanding the nuance either and generally being homophobic turds, are against extramarital sexual intercourse not because god hates the gays but actually because they believe [religious] marriage is covenant of procreation. Marriage is not needed to have sex, and having sex outside of a situation where you’re willing and able to accept children, is not the society these people want to build. There’s nothing inherently homophobic about that at all. Nobody (the bible included) says you can’t love someone of the same sex or even have two people of the same sex cohabitate and raise children. It’s actually quite the opposite if you look at history and the broader context. They’re just not “married” in the eyes of their church because they’re not popping out babies. Believe it or not, in the Catholic Church, a heterosexual couple married but on birth control is looked down upon and considered to be in a state of sin.
Now you can still have a problem with a group of people considering extramarital sex sinful, I have no apropos argument there, but it’s not born of some grand scheme to discriminate against the gays or whatever. And it’s really uncharitable and harmful to thoughtful religious people to reduce their moral doctrine to charged falsehoods.
Also, different christian denominations have different beliefs about the purpose of marriage. Sex outside of marriage is definitely sinful in all of the mainstream christian churches, though they differ on how sinful sex is in the context of a marriage.
I'd also note that, while wedding ceremonies commonly talk of kids, there is no obligation to have kids as part of a marriage. For example, the church is perfectly happy to marry an old woman with a man, even though it is absolutely certain she can't have kids anymore.
Overall, the orthodox/fundamentalist christian position seems to be: sex should only be done for the purpose of making children, only married couples should have sex, and anyone capable of having children should strive to have more children. LGBTQ+ people are not exempted - at least if they are physically capable of having children, they shouldn't let their personal preferences get in the way of their duty to God - so they should also seek to enter a heterosexual marriage to have children. The only exception to all of this is choosing to become a monk or priest (depending on denomination) - in which case you owe a duty of faith to God and thus shouldn't love other men or women anyway.
It doesn’t really map to either “fundamentalist” or “orthodox” in the usual theological senses (though its more associated with the former), particularly the “anyone capable of having children should strive to have more children” part, which is a modern social movement overlapping with some streams of Christianity, but not really a part of traditional doctrine.
> The only exception to all of this is choosing to become a monk or priest (depending on denomination) - in which case you owe a duty of faith to God and thus shouldn’t love other men or women anyway.
The branches of Christianity that have celibate religious brothers and/or clerical celibacy are also the most accepting of the concept of a vocation of committed single Christian life outside of clerical life and religious orders; there is basically no Christian community I am aware of where monastic/priestly celibacy is a norm but it is the only acceptable non-married life.
OP makes it seem like if you disagree with LGBT lifestyle, then it's because you must hate the people. All I'm pointing out is that you can disagree with the lifestyle and the movement while still loving the people. That's a core tenet of Christianity: God hates the sin while loving the sinner.
Once again, the OP's ultimate point was:
> if anything, it is comendable to at the very least be able to change your position if enough (real) evidence is provided.
And the claim was that LGBT people are actually quite pleasant, hence you should change your mind. And my counterclaim is that according to Christianity, people can be pleasant while sinning (after all everyone is a sinner[0]), and sin can still be wrong. They are not mutually exclusive. So realizing that someone is pleasant while also not following the tenets of my religion is not counter-evidence that would make me change my mind.
[0]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%203%3A23...
I would even argue that for non-religious people, the concept is entirely irrelevant, with some exceptions, and religious people shouldn't try to legislate anti-sin policies into law.
[Exceptions:] If you live in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood and sell sandwiches, it is a good idea to have kosher ones as well, even though you personally don't care about mixing of cheese and ham.
While GP has a point but, in general, there is a lot bigger penalty for changing mind than for being stubborn. We would be better off as a society if we balance penalties for changing your position vs being stubborn.
And I rather have leaders who are hypocritical/opportunistic/etc but at least using new data to change their views than those who reject the new data and stick to their original viewpoint.
If by “literally almost everyone” you mean “a majority, but not a particularly overwhelmingly large majority”, sure. Both opposed 20 years ago and supportive now:
2001-2019 support for gay marriage in Pew polling went from 57-35 against to 61-31 in favor. Did everyone change their mind? No, about 1 in 4 did.
Possibly far fewer, since it's not the same population, and those aging into polling were much more accepting (on average) than those, um, "aging out."
For everyone else in the world, dogma rules. It is not that people get mocked when they profess a strong moral position - it is that the vast majority live by strong moral positions and apply this level of certainty to everything. Just look at the increase in discussions around "how to change people's minds" since Trump entered the political scene: we suddenly needed to deal with folks who will not change their mind under any circumstances.
Mocking people for changing their mind is how the "in group" of the tribe maintains its dominance. We, the shamans, live by different rules, and occasionally get nailed to trees by the mob.
Sometimes we'll strongly believe something totally bogus (I used to believe in communism when I was a teenager). And the fact we change our mind when holding very strong beliefs is actually a sign of intellectual honesty.
Unfortunately, I see people being mocked even when transparent and respectful. But I mostly agree with you that being respectful helps receiving respect when you're wrong.
Someone who’s open about all beliefs being provisional, respectful of opposing viewpoints, and transparent about being willing to change with no evidence is not going to be mocked.
Outside of politics and other performatively dishonest arenas, of course. In those areas mockery is a weapon and it doesn’t matter how fair the criticism is.