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Comment by altcognito | Hacker News Reader

What objective measure of conformism are you using?

Not any measure that makes sense to me, and I've lived through a few decades now. I don't even think America represented such a menagerie of viewpoints in the late '60s.

That’s what I’m wondering. The internet has sharpened so many viewpoints (not in a good way) . My question is sincere and curious. There might be lots of pressure to push opinions in one direction or another but that’s not conformism, quite the opposite.

I think a lot of people are rightly sensing a shrinking of the Overton window[0]. For example, I think the following is a perfectly reasonable position to hold: "It would be a remarkable happenstance if, in a perfectly free society, men and women were found in equal proportion in every industry. Indeed, the default expectation should be that there will be variability in this regard."

Saying that in today's environment with my name attached would get me fired, so I keep my mouth shut. A perfectly reasonable position, and I cannot speak it for fear of losing the ability to care for my family.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

It's probably a reference to http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html.

Sum of squares of the differences on all important issues between you and the average?

So basically the same formula as variance in probability theory.

Well I mean at that level what counts as a difference and what’s the measure of that distance. I like that this is an attempt to define it even if is isn’t op and we do t actually have any actual numbers, past or present for comparison.

Doesn't seem to be that hard.

On abortion it would be 1 if you're in favor of total ban and 0 if you're in favor of no regulation whatsoever.

On free healthcare it would be 0 if you want no state involvement whatsoever and 1 if you want free tax-payed healthcare for every citizen.

Etc.

It doesn't even matter which way the 0 and 1 are.

With enough issues, no one will be at the average, by the curse of dimensionality. On the other hand, making it obvious that we're all nonconformists (à la https://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php And Then There Were None?) might be an improvement.

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