You have a set amount of “weirdness points”. Spend them wisely

  • Weirdness is important
    • Necessary for social progress
    • Many aspects of our society that we take for granted would be very weird to our ancestors
  • Six stages of policy
    • Unthinkable - radical - acceptable - sensible - popular - actual policy
    • Many policies have followed this pattern
      • Suffrage
      • Same-sex marriage
  • Some good ideas are still in the “radical” stage
    • Effective altruism
    • Mitigating x-risks
    • Friendly AI
    • Cryonics
  • People take weird opinions less seriously
    • People are less likely to believe things that sound weird to them, even in the face of overwhelming evidence
    • Social proof matters - if few people believe something, then that in itself is taken as evidence against the belief
  • We can use this knowledge to our advantage by exploiting the halo effect in reverse
    • If we’re normal in most ways, then any weird beliefs that we have seem more normal
    • Think of weirdness as a currency that you can spend
  • Actionable principles
    • Recognize that you only have a few weirdness points to spend - pick one or two weird causes to push
    • Spend your weirdness points effectively - find the weird causes that will do the most good and push those
    • Clean up and look good - don’t dress unconventionally or sloppily for no purpose
    • Advocate for more “normal” policies that are almost as good or closely aligned - example: expansion of the EITC is a “normal” policy that aligns well with the “weird” policy of calling for a universal basic income
    • Use the foot-in-door and door-in-face techniques
      • Foot-in-door - start with a small ask and slowly escalate
      • Door-in-face - start with a large ask to make smaller asks seem more reasonable
    • Reconsider effective altruism’s clustering of beliefs
      • Compartmentalize AI research, x-risk, etc into other organizations
      • Focus on donating money and donating it effectively
      • Ask people to be more effective with the donations they’re already making, rather than asking them to donate more
    • Research and evaluation
      • Research the impact of weirdness on the spread of ideas
      • Literature review and market research

On Weirdness Points

  • Weirdness as a currency is not a good way to talk about weirdness
  • Many social movements with a lot of weird people gain influence and power
    • Objectivists
      • Believe in weird things like privately owned roads, Aristotle being a great thinker and altruism being evil
      • Yet Alan Greenspan, an Objectivist, became chairman of the Federal Reserve
    • Feminists
      • Much feminist theory has been developed by communists and socialists
      • The notion of intersectionality means that endorsing gender equality also implies that you endorse anti-racism, anti-ableism, anti-poverty, etc.
    • Evangelical Christianity
      • Movements like Quiverfull have some really weird beliefs
      • However, this has not stopped Evangelical Christians from amassing a fair amount of political power
  • Weirdness for private figures
    • If your group dresses or acts unconventionally, then you’re the weird one for dressing or acting conventionally
    • Thus when you minimize weirdness, you’re going to minimize it relative to the group median rather than the median of the wider society
  • Public figures should consider their role
    • People being interviewed or organizing meetups might want to project normality, in order to attract the greatest variety of participants
    • However, writers may have an advantage in being weird
      • Writers perceived as original have more influence than writers who write repeatedly about the same topic
      • If you endorse many conventional positions, then when you endorse a weird position, your audience will dismiss your endorsement as an aberration
  • Being weird in private is fine
  • Not everyone is weird by choice
    • Trans people can’t help but wear dresses in public
    • Communicating well is harder for non-neurotypical people

The economy of weirdness

  • Model 1: Weirdness is badness
    • People don’t like weird things
    • The only reason to be weird is that it’s hard to keep your weirdness under control
  • Model 2: Weirdness is rare, and rarity is bad
    • Weirdness is unusual
    • Being unusual is bad
    • The reason to be weird is because you like the trait and you want to make it less unusual
  • Model 3: Weirdness among the cool kids is bad
    • Explains why you want to budget your weirdness
    • The more weird traits you have, the less cool you are, and thus the less your vote counts
  • Model 4: Weirdness is divisive
    • If a trait is weird, it will be off-putting to a lot of people and pleasing to a minority
    • This isn’t necessarily bad - having a few enthusiastic followers, while being mildly disliked by many is often better than being treated indifferently by everyone
    • Causes and policy views tend to follow this model of weirdness
    • Spending weirdness points advocating for “related” weird topics can mark you out as a “true believer”, making you more liked by the minority you’re appealing to
  • Model 4.1: Weirdness is divisive, and the goal is spreading weird traits
    • So far, we’ve assumed that the objective is to be liked or taken seriously
    • What if we change the goal to ensuring that a weird trait becomes common, regardless of whether you choose to express it?
    • In order to spread a weird trait, you have to be associated with it - promotes having or expressing a lot of weird traits
    • However, if you’re perceived as a weird person, then any trait associated with you is tainted by that association
    • This changes the mild dislike vs. enthusiastic support question - mild dislike is now more costly
  • Model 5: Weirdness is local
    • Weirdness is defined by what people around you find weird
    • You can change the people around you by either seeking out new groups to join, or randomly bouncing between groups until you find a group that is compatible with your beliefs
    • Weirdness, in this model, has a fixed price - the price of finding the accomodating group
    • Might be good to spend all your weirdness points at once, to make the group selection and filtration process happen as fast as possible
  • Model 6: Weirdness as a signal
    • Weirdness often signals other things
    • Lack of awareness
    • Lack of self-control
    • These can be somewhat mitigated by pointing out the weirdness and presenting extenuating circumstances
  • Model 7: Weirdness is honest
    • Deliberately avoiding weirdness is implicit misrepresentation of oneself
    • Being openly weird marks you as an honest and “authentic” person
    • Having no idiosyncracies at all is often as weird as being extremely eccentric
    • Being open about your entire set of beliefs can make you seem less flakey or hypocritical when you change what you’re advocating for
    • Being open about weirdness makes it easier to get useful feedback, since people know where your true priorities lie
  • These models apply in varying degrees to various parts of the world
  • Hard to tell whether people should be more weird or more normal on balance
  • Treat weirdness differently based upon your goals

Socially Optimal Weirdness

  • What is the optimal allocation of weirdness from a social perspective?
  • Social costs of people being judged badly
    • People avoid being weird in order to be judged well
    • If the effect of one person’s status decreasing because of their weirdness is an increase in the status of one or more other people, then then weirdness is neutral from a global perspective
    • However, if weirdness causes one person to lose status without others gaining status, then weirdness has a global cost
    • Social costs of deception
      • If you actually don’t want to interact with people who have certain weird beliefs, then people hiding their beliefs in order to fit in is actively detrimental to your process of discovering people whose honest beliefs are compatible with yours
      • On the other hand, if you’re more interested in smooth social interactions, then people hiding their true beliefs may be beneficial
  • Signaling race
    • In some contexts, “not weird” is subject to constant redefinition
    • Being able to be not-weird is a sign of social awareness and the ability to adapt to changing social circumstances
    • This race takes some effort from people, which would be saved if people didn’t avoid weirdness
  • Neutral views
    • If everyone chooses one topic on which to spend their weirdness points, and accepts the common position on every other view, then virtually all views will be dictated by conformit
    • Status quo will barely change on most topics
    • Seems socially optimal for people to be weird enough for public opinion to be shaped by thought rather than conformity
  • Economies of scale and congestion
    • Having large groups of people with similar tastes (conformity) is helpful when consuming non-excludable goods or goods subject to economies of scale
      • Entertainment
      • Fast food
    • Have lots of people with dissimilar tastes (weirdness) is helpful when consuming excludable goods that are not subject to economies of scale
      • Outdoor recreation
  • Standards
    • Having nonstandard preferences imposes a cost on you when facilities are optimized for those with standard preferences
    • Language barriers impose a huge cost on communication
  • Variety
    • Weirdness offers variety
    • Variety is a common terminal goal for people
    • Instrumentally, variety of thought improves the robustness of society
  • Information
    • Honesty about weirdness is helpful for improving policy
  • Unclear what level of weirdness is best

Signaling Inertia

  • Traditional ways of signalling
    • Intelligence - complicated arguments and large vocabularies
    • Health - sports achievements, drinking, long hours
    • Wealth - expensive clothes, trips, etc
  • We have better ways of signalling now
    • IQ tests for intelligence
    • Medical tests for health
    • Bank statements for wealth
  • Given these more efficient signals, why do we persist with the older forms of signalling?
    • Inertia - signalling equilibria require complex coordination and those who try to unilaterally change them seem nonconformist and clueless
    • Hypocrisy -
      • Ancient and continuing norms against bragging
      • Need to find plausible deniability for our signalling
      • Pretend that large vocabularies convey more information, sports are for fun, and expensive clothes are prettier and more comfortable
      • Much harder to find an excuse to flash your bank statement or your IQ store
  • Cowen and Caplan argue that competency-based signalling is a much more efficient signal of educational achievement than traditional schooling, and therefore competency-based signalling will displace traditional education
  • But schooling isn’t about education
  • Employers, in practice, don’t want their employees to have much independence or initiative
  • Success in traditional schooling signals both competence and conformity
  • Therefore, success in traditional schooling will still be preferred as a signal of employability to success in competency-based learning