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Comment by atleastoptimal | Hacker News Reader

The question is, do truly "orthodox" (in the sense that the essay means: bearing no controversial beliefs) people exist in large numbers? Fully center of every possible overton window?

I'd wager these people are extremely rare. I'd guess the majority of people we consider to be fully "orthodox" and uncontroversial actually do have opinions it would be hard to express openly, but they're good at hiding that they have those opinions and "play the role" of an orthodox completely in any social context.

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they're good at hiding that they have those opinions

I think the answer to this question is that most people simply don't have opinions on the vast majority of subjects, and that "having an opinion" is largely an identity marker of the intellectually-minded – and not a basic quality that everyone has. So it's not so much that such people are good at hiding their unorthodox opinions, but that they haven't really thought about it in the first place.

PG's other essay, "Keep Your Identity Small" is a good solution to this tendency of intellectually-minded people to want to have an opinion on everything.

There are a whole lot of people whose "strategy" for navigating life is to always pick the side of the strongest group. For them being part of the mainstream as a form of protection is of higher priority than being correct/truthful/just/moral.

I don't think pg was referring to this demographic, but there are certainly a whole lot of people who even take pride in being mainstream on every topic.

> ...a whole lot of people whose "strategy" for navigating life is to always pick the side of the strongest group.

True. And all too understandable - human history is full of "...and things ended badly for the losing side".

Your question subtly implies that to be "unorthodox" is to merely be not-quite-centered in the Overton Window.

But in fact being in the Overton Window at all makes you pretty orthodox.

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