Preliminary Theory of the In-Group Contrarian | Hacker News Reader

Preliminary Theory of the In-Group Contrarian

outsidertheory.com

53 pointsfullshark46 comments

"You will likely have a sense of where you fall in the orbit of the group(s) you affiliate with: closer to the core or closer to the fringes of some formation. Your feelings about IGCs will probably depend to some extent on this."

For some reason even without the context of which Group we are speaking about/or where I might fit in said group - the term "In Group Contrarian" makes me bristle immediately against said contrarian... I wonder if this reaction is specific to me or if its more general. To brisle against a person who identifies (or in this case is identified) as "contrarian" absent the necessary context (perhaps because absent context...the "contrarian" is describing themself as contrarian just for the sake of it). Fun semantic games.

I'm somewhat surprised by this as I see myself as somewhat rational but this leads me to think that absent other contextual clues for me at least the "default" setting is to "dislike" the contrarian and I can then be swayed by the veracity/rationale of their argument.

Contrarian almost seems too vague a term. In conversations I've run into people assuming a wide variety of roles. One is the polite interviewer who presses gently at the weak points of someone's statement, usually this person extends a lot of benefit of doubt, and is genuinely curious about the topic. The other is someone who is almost always engaged in some sort of argumentative point scoring. Attacking arguments with pedantry and too much emphasis on semantics, or always trying to one-up others with a string of "um actually..."s. The former person is usually great to talk to, they help you get your point across better. The latter is deeply frustrating since they are almost always engaged in linguistic gymnastics to deliberately miss the point. It feels rare that someone of the interviewer category would identify themselves as the "contrarian" though, and someone playing the um actually guy probably delights in the label. The most annoying part about the eager contrarian is they purposely muddy the water, nobody gains anything, and the conversation becomes unfulfilling.

Well said. I can't help the feeling that i encounter more "eager contrarians" both in real life and online (moreso online). Perhaps the way social media is though - pays to be adversarial?

> linguistic gymnastics to deliberately miss the point [...] The most annoying part about the eager contrarian is they purposely muddy the water, nobody gains anything, and the conversation becomes unfulfilling.

Yep.

FWIW, I had almost the opposite reaction. I favored this contrarian, also without context.

I was not terribly surprised that I felt this way, but I did try to suppress the feeling, because without context, it's not very rational.

The orthodox member will help reach consensus faster and improve decisiveness, but risks making wrong and/or extreme decisions.

A contrarian adds intellectual value and nuance to a decision, but can cause indecision/inaction.

And, I'll add, no small amount of social frustration. Persistently being contrary in social settings is a path to being unwelcome at social events.

There's a fine line between challenging ideas and sea lioning.

Whether it exists in online communities or IRL IGC are important in order to keep ideology honest, even if the IGC is dishonest.

It’s important that the ideas that convince people into following some behavior have the ideas checked for errors.

Yep - I can definitely agree with the need for checks/balances.

I was just fascinated to find this implicit bias in my "starting point" and wondered if others had a similar or different experience

>the term "In Group Contrarian" makes me bristle immediately against said contrarian... I wonder if this reaction is specific to me or if its more general. To brisle against a person who identifies (or in this case is identified) as "contrarian" absent the necessary context (perhaps because absent context...the "contrarian" is describing themself as contrarian just for the sake of it). Fun semantic games.

Usually the IGC doesn't label themselves as a contrarian, they merely are contrarian (but also, in group, e.g. contrarian but sharing the groups premises and ideas as a starting point).

But regardless of that, IGC sounds better than In-Group conformant...

Context should be obvious: different people have different preferences, and due to difference in preferences, disagreement emerges.

Sorry, but to be honest, I find that reaction rather disturbing and I hope other people do not share it.

My initial reaction to hearing someone as contrarian is not to assume they are right, wrong, pretentious, self-righteous, or whatever ... but, rather to be curious and intrigued that maybe this person carries some valid criticisms of my or others commonly held ideas and beliefs.

I find it makes life much more intellectually gratifying, and I am genuinely put off when I see people in intellectual communities (like software, etc.) not naturally having this instinct towards people who hold contrary views.

It is usually not a bad thing for someone to think differently from yourself or others. In fact, almost all (if not all) ideas have some valid criticisms and counter-arguments or examples. I personally find that it makes for a much more intellectually honest view of the world to consider them.

With all due respect - I think you've oversimplified a bit. It goes without saying that "intellectual curiosity to opposing ideas is good". I think anyone would agree contrary views should be treated with intellectual fairness/intrigue - but that's separate from instinctive reactions and I think it's unrealistic to believe people won't have a range of emotions on any given day for n number of reasons.

I was quite surprised to note it myself but just trying to be honest about an unexpected self-observation rather than offer what i think i should feel. Importantly the reaction was in reference to the Contrarian Sans Context (i.e. contrarian for sake of contrarianism; context is everything).

What's more if there are only three default settings to the contrarian (simplifying here - for/against/neutral)... it follows that some sample of any population will begin at each of those defaults and it is unlikely that everyone assumes a neutral position even if that's taken to be favorable. Admittedly it is difficult to discern right now whether this is a localised (in time) reaction for me or if there's something more fixed there.

It could be contended that a mix of default positions (For/against as well as neutral) to the IGC is in fact "normal" - rather than to prescribe that everyone should be neutral and that is always preferable. For example across a population if people assume different starting positions then we could see a variety of responses and perhaps more dynamic conversation at the extremes/edges.

I think there’s a difference: I too enjoy conversation with people who think differently than myself and with whom I disagree. But a self described contrarian may well hold those opinions simply because they are contrary, not because it’s something they actually truly believe. That is rarely a satisfying conversation.

Lifetime contrarian here. Contrarianness for its own sake is a child's game.

I tend to see multiple sides to things when others seem to agree that there's only one side to see. I'm the person who talks about the elephant in the room. In a professional context, that means putting my neck on the line; be bloody sure that I'm speaking up about something I believe, not just taking the piss.

Amen.

I like the role of "advocatus diaboli" (the devil's advocate).

Not for the mere sake of argument, but because I find elements of truth in all sides, and want to balance the sheepish behavior of most groups to fully side with one side.

To the group-mind this makes it appear like you are contrarian for the sake of it and contradictory, e.g. "but you where anti-colonialist in yesterday's argument, why are you pro-west today" or "you like Apple and MS, why do you say OSS is good now?" and so on...

But that's just judging each case both on its own merits and in general context and thinking for yourself - not just taking some given side...

I think there’s a tinge of misanthropy in those who are comfortable being contrarian. If most people believe something, it’s probably not that right, or at the very least, needs more vetting before blanket shallow acceptance. Contrarians must first diagnose that before all else.

It’s totally a valid criticism that contrarians are distasteful for that simple reason, but the herd can be equally annoying. It’s a symbiosis.

The Joker to Batman: You complete me

We’re also very pretentious as you can see :p

I agree, Batman is an excellent example of a misanthropic, pretentious contrarian ;)

Not the hero you want, but the hero you deserve.

Best cheesy outro ever: https://youtu.be/6c_H45kt1_8

Greatest in group contrarian ever?

Thanks for clarifying. Exactly what i was getting at - my "default state" was based on the Contrarian sans context (i.e. for the sake of it). Think it's an interesting thought exercise.

Well, but the IGC is not contrarian without context.

It's an In Group Contrarian -- so contrarian in the context of the group.

This means that

(a) they are not just contrarian for the sake of it (then they would be contrarian to the ideas of every group, not just one)

(b) they are not opposed to everything the group believes (in that case they wouldn't be in-group contrarians, but mere ideological enemies of the group)

Agree - original comment was on the meta not the specific.

So where there is no specific group or context in which to place said "contrarian" - just a description of what was felt/instinctive. Would change immediately once we get into a specific example.

All groups you know don't have contrarian opinions? Most ideas can be questioned.

> but, rather to be curious and intrigued that maybe this person carries some valid criticisms of my or others commonly held ideas and beliefs.

My association were colleges who try to "win" over others without regard to what is actual truth. It is less about what really is and more about winning.

Uncharitable listening, changing topic subtly, emotional based "arguments" like implying you are stupid if you tell this or that, blowing out of proportion innocent mistake someone else did. Forcing others to redefine redefine redefine and then ignoring standard definition.

Downright making stuff up and pretending expertise they dont have.

It is about rhetoric tricks, it is not about having actual criticism.

In my experience, the rhetorical behavior you describe is far more common of the deep swollen center mass of the in group, than those on the peripheral edge. Those are the idea-carriers who have every incentive to preserve the ideological hedgemon, and so they do what they are incentivized to do: protect the orthodoxy by any means required.

Your comment is a prescriptive approach to emotional analysis. The comment to which you are responding is taking a descriptive approach.

Very different things.

There is this idea (I got it from Paul Ormerod's Butterfly Economics, but I suspect it's older) that there are 3 types of (economic) decisions that humans can make in any given situation:

1. Do whatever you were doing in the past and worked well for you.

2. Copy what other people are doing and it seems to work well for them.

3. Try to figure out what is the best decision yourself.

I think different people (heck, even same people at different situations) have different propensity to choose one of these options. And it makes sense, to save option 3 only for special occasions.

But what if the group orthodoxy is just an illusion created by all the people who choose option 1 and 2? And the contrarian happens ad hoc, by being the person who for whatever reason chooses option 3?

This seems to presuppose that the human will successfully execute their decision, or that they will even make one. Perhaps there should be a fourth category: flail about without any decision, and then justify their behavior post-hoc to maximize their self-worth.

IMHO that's the option 1. Continue what you were doing.

Although, maybe you mean things like anxiety, something like fight/flight/freeze response. I guess you could put these sort of human defaults into a separate category.

All that in-group out-group social identity theory stuff is pseudoscience anyway. But it's not an illusion, it's just a different and just as wrong framework of ideas than what you propose. Although I like yours better, it at least doesn't label people nor puts them in buckets, embracing more complexity of behavior.

This seems wildly overthought and an unnecessary invocation of Girard. Everything about in-group contrarians appears more parsimoniously explained by simply observing that groups must be ambivalent about 'loyal oppositions' because 1. such people need to be kinda jerks or autistic personalities to overcome the extremely powerful social pressures towards conformity and express criticisms where they are not wanted; and 2. while they are 'traitors to the cause' in the short run by giving the enemies ammunition & splintering the group costing it momentum, in the long run they are critical to a healthy movement in keeping it honest & prepared for its enemies' arguments & innovations.

"Ce qu'il y a d'enivrant dans le mauvais goût, c'est le plaisir aristocratique de déplaire" --Charles Baudelaire

(Sorry for the French quote)

I think that IGC tactics is also very common for the adepts of Dandyism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy

Bourdieu also wrote a book on something tangentially related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_(book)

"In a specific social field, agents are constantly caught between two contradictory intentions. To be recognized in a field, one must distinguish oneself from it, but distinguishing oneself also leads to being excluded from it. Officers therefore need to adjust the balance between distinction and compliance. To have style is to follow fashion while standing out from it with a few personal touches." (Translated from the better French version of the wikipedia page)

It probably would have been easier to just translate the quote in your head instead of apologizing for it: "What is intoxicating about bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing"

> Of course, the majority of IGCs are low-follower anonymous accounts, and can be simply ignored

That critics are not popular is an old rule. I think you can also safely ignore people with a large following, but that is another topic.

> IGC must not just be dismissed, but destroyed

They basically put the finger where it hurts.

>We can now return to the concept of the In-Group Contrarian (hereafter IGC). Anyone who has observed social media platforms, especially Twitter, will know the type. This is the person who, precisely when mimetic snowballing is in progress, attempts to apply the brakes. What’s important is that this figure is not simply an outsider to the group, in which case they could probably be ignored, but instead claims to share the group’s goals, beliefs, etc and merely objects to some aspect of this manifestation of them. The appearance of this figure is as predictable as the mimetic snowballing itself.

This account casts assent and dissent as quasi-deterministic duals of each other. It is overdetermined as a result.

"a figure ... who nominally belongs to a given ideological formation but consistently dissents from its orthodoxies"

I'm only comfortable being part of a group if I'm on its fringes. I don't know why I'm this way, but I am

IMHO in-group contrarians:

- Someone how didn't get that all truth-seeking is a facade (no matter if it is a Catholic, feminist, communist, libertarian, etc group). So they don't get that they should pretend to search for truth while accepting the dogma (think about many religious scholars: often it is fine, or even encouraged to ask questions and have doubts, as long as you arrive at the "correct" answer).

- People who take the gamble (consciously or not) - to be the new leader or a cast-out. Again, it seems that in religion almost every single person considered a key figure falls into this category (some didn't succeed so ended up as heretics, or we don't even remember their name). Think: Moses, Jesus, Martin Luther.

From a tribalistic standpoint, it makes sense to have at the same time:

- A cohesive belief, so it is a clear distinction for who is in and who is out.

- Some route to explore other ideas. If the tribe accepts it, good. If considered it wrong, then it is much easier to banish or execute a few people, than counteract to a large fraction of the population which are slightly heretical.

"...the way that dissent from the herding dynamics can be an effective way to game the attention economy..."

, yes, go on...

When you put it that way, that validates that there is a literal shortage of counter arguments such that people can even enter the market and extract attention.

Lots of words and vagueness without much of a point (other than someone really didn't like being called a grifter on twitter dot com, I guess?). After reading the entire piece I have no idea what the author is really alluding to, and they have to be alluding to something because it wouldn't sound eerily specific otherwise. Why not just state your point with the example at hand instead of uselessly theorizing? Seriously, this is what happens when you take online too seriously - using grandiloquent words like orthodoxy, skandalon, attention economy or citing Girard and Durkheim as though this weren't about petty spats no one outside Weird Twitter has ever heard about. If your reputation and livelihood doesn't depend on your being extremely online, why would you care about this stuff? If it does, and you actually profit from talking about this stuff and playing contrarian, how can you object to being called a grifter?

Ok, clearly this was posted as a veiled reference to something occurring in current events. I’ll take a guess at the intended subject: Candace Owens?

Don't think she counts as someone in the ingroup.

I would think it is more like Contrapoints, who got cancelled for being sympathetic towards certain outgroup members despite being one of the most prominent trans public faces.

or Scott Alexander of slate-star-codex whose rationalistic approach is despised by others in the left, because it often lets the data lead a person to conclusions instead of going about it the other way round. He is quite squarely part of the left, but also disliked by the left.

Stand up comedians often fall in this category. IMO, Louis CK's scorched earth cancellation was a result of him being an IGC, where folks were just waiting for a thing to come out, so he could be discredited.

Being an IGC can yield huge benefits though. But, it requires carefully planning your public persona to a T and you need to be good enough, that you can't ever be called a talentless hack who is profiteering from contrarianism.

I've seen two approaches that have worked. Either build a ton of good will (like Dave Chapelle) and then be a contrarian. At that point. Or, never pretend to be aligned with a group, build an audience that is sufficiently intellectually diverse, mix contrarian opinions with self deprecation and clearly differentiate your person from your persona. (like Bill Burr). It is incredibly important to be intellectually honest though. Because even the faintest hint of hypocrisy will get you cancelled.

I don't understand the association of being contrarian and having no talent. Or do you mean the knee-jerk reaction to it? Because I would classify the most eccentric artists to be very contrarian with unlimited baskets of critique.

There is a large portion of philosophy that ponders the question if criticism can be a creative endeavor. I am firmly in the camp that believes it is indeed with no restriction.

> being contrarian and having no talent

I meant that if you are a contrarian then the majority will dismiss you as an opportunist who is using their contrarian position to gain popularity, that they would have otherwise been unable to attain.

Their implication being, that the contrarian lacks the talent to make it without the additional attention brought by being the contrarian. I wasn't stating a truth, but rather the perception and resulting reaction from the 'hivemind'.

> There is a large portion of philosophy that ponders the question if criticism can be a creative endeavor. I am firmly in the camp that believes it is indeed with no restriction.

I am totally with you on that. I am sorry if the original comment came across as being demeaning towards contrarians.

As a counter-point to this being a "veiled reference" - Your comment that the article is a reference to something that's happening in the world could conceivably apply at any given point in time.

There will always be contentious ideas - the meta of an "in-group contrarian" transcends the current social narrative.

For us non-US HN-ers who don't know who Candace Owens is, she seems to be a person of colour with conservative believes, this is her wiki page [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens

Candace Owens has pretty standard viewpoints for Trump-minded people. Her main differentiator that has made her popular is that she is a black woman, so it is much harder to call her racist or sexist for stating the exact same thing that, say, a white male Trump supporter would get called racist or sexist for.

So I don't think she is an IGC in any sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com