[Link] How Signaling Ossifies Behavior

I think what Bryan meant was that if it weren't for our tendency to conform, and to punish nonconformists, then progress would be faster. I agree.

Most intolerance doesn't announce itself. It usually dresses itself up as something positive.

The cynic in me would say the so-called tolerant people within our society aren't actually tolerant, rather they've adopted a potpourri of non-traditional behaviours in order to signal their faux tolerance, and then act with intolerance to so-called traditionalists (who are racist, homophobic, misogynist, authoritarian, etc). It all depends on how you value the liberal project. Personally I think it rests on shaky foundations, so I have some sympathy for this cynical view, although I think there are genuine moral concerns caught up in a very confused (and often destructive) ideology.

Probably the strongest example of intolerance dressed up as tolerance, though, is Western political ideology and how we relate to other societies. The democratic countries are extremely intolerant of other political systems; probably more so than many of their most hated rivals. This is expressed in terms of freedom, individual rights, etc, but elections and other Western political institutions are only tenuously connected to freedom. It's certainly not the case, as is usually assumed by Westerners, that elections are by definition a form of freedom and no further argument is needed. A case needs to be made.

Most discussion of Western political ideology tends to assume what it's trying to prove. For example, it's assumed that being incarcerated for a political crime is much worse than being incarcerated for something recognised as a crime in the West, but this is only obviously the case if you already agree with Western political ideology. It's not hard to come up with arguments (the standard line being that it's too easy to abuse) but if a country started giving political prisoners fair trials and following accepted legal practice for incarcerating people based on well-defined political crimes, would we accept that? I doubt it. The fact is that we won't accept anything short of them adopting our practices because their perceived superiority stems not from the particular benefits of adopting them but from that they are ours.

The same is true for freedom of speech, assembly, etc. I've been stuck in traffic because of a protest and it occurred to me then that marching down the street is something we make an exception for in political circumstances but would almost definitely outlaw if we didn't have that ideal. Are countries that don't share our ideals outlawing protests because they hate freedom or because that's just a really, extremely obvious thing to outlaw if you don't share our ideals? Calls for elections in countries without them are calls for the destruction of the prevailing political system. In the West, communists, fascists, anarchists and other rivals to the prevailing political system (as opposed to a party within the system) are not tolerated either. They're often demonised and sometimes they're arrested.

These are some of the ways we disguise intolerance for political and cultural differences as sympathy for the plight of individuals under other regimes (while simultaneously ignoring their differences from us, as if everybody has a Westerner trapped inside them, just waiting to be freed). There's also the tendency to file under propaganda any expression of political views that doesn't fall under the party system (for example., that the party system is not optimal). There are Chinese and Singaporean political thinkers (and some leaders) who write very eloquently about the limitations of Western political thought and are summarily dismissed as having ulterior motives. Almost everything the Chinese government does is dismissed as a way to prop up the regime, as if nobody there cares about the fate of their own country at all.

Of course, this all stems from the Western idea that the state is an antagonist and opportunist rather than an organic part of society (and, relatedly, that society doesn't transcend the individual). These ideas are not shared by others but, again, rather than provide an argument we just assume differences in opinion are examples of oppression. Often these differences in opinion are shared by the very people we consider "oppressed" (this is where we bring in nice words like "enlightened" which deny the autonomy of the individual we're expressing our sympathy for; once they've become like us, they'll understand why being like us is better, but until then... well, screw their opinions).

Meh; what is the state-of-the-art evidence that (modern, western, educated) people actually are huge conformists and will automatically judge weird behaviors negatively?

The existence of sexism, racism, able-ism, transphobia, the lack of gay marriage in the United States (unless we're excluding it from that group?), trans people still can't serve in the US military, anyone who has ever committed a felony isn't even allowed to VOTE, anyone whose sexual orientation includes an interest in anyone under 18 (even if they would NEVER act on it) is potentially subject to violent vigilante mobs hunting them down...

I personally get confronted about 50% of the time I go shopping without wearing shoes, and that seems like it should be a relatively minor trespass. I've been thrown off a bus for it despite having written confirmation that it doesn't violate any of the company's policies.

Some basic experiments should confirm this one. Go to the video store and walk around on all fours, do a three-way makeout session in a high-traffic public area. If you're female, take the bus or go to a restaurant topless (assuming that's even legal where you are - that it's NOT legal in some areas should tell you tons)

There IS definitely a level of weirdness that's tolerated. My general experience is that it goes "no reaction", "being ignored", "people are nervous", and then "people actively want to get away from me". If I put even a bit of thought and creativity in to it, getting to "people are nervous" is pretty easy, but I'm often baffled by what ends up truly getting people to shun me (seriously, bare feet gets me more hate than anything else I've done in my life o.o)

In recent decades there has been a heavy emphasis in our popular culture that being close-minded, conformist, or supporting the status quo are bad things, and that open mindedness and difference and originality and thinking for yourself and finding your own way and understanding are admirable (or at least, you often have moralizing stories about that in children's media).

The Moldbuggian interpretation of the outward valorisation of nonconformity would be that the supposed nonconformity is but conformity to a different ideology, the actual status quo that he calls the Cathedral, actual nonconformity with which is severely punished by the self-styled nonconformists. "Open mindedness and difference and originality and thinking for yourself and finding your own way and understanding" are (on this view) code for loyalty and obedience to the Cathedral. Thinking for yourself is allowed precisely so long as you arrive at approved answers.

Well, it's fun running a Moldbug simulation in my head.

I don't get the impression that being seen as weird or different has particularly bad consequences, at least not among educated western adults.

In your model, the typical educated western adult would not negatively judge someone who is:

promiscuous
polygamous
voluntarily celibate (why is the expert worried about "curing" this non-problem)
mentally ill
gender non-conforming (eg cross-dressing)
a poor speaker of the native language of the community
voluntarily unemployed
male and primary child care provider

I would have great difficulty if I wanted to avoid hearing negative judgments of those or similar traits from college educated adults. I'm not sure we are communicating with the same concepts. I understand intolerance as any act that occurs primarily to make that state of being less frequent / less visible. When I take my son to the park without my wife, and others comment on how unusual I'm being, that's a kind of intolerance of my behavior.

Not that intolerance is necessarily bad. I'm quite intolerant of murderers, child-rapists, and thieves. But saying a particular intolerance isn't problematic is different from saying that type of intolerance never occurs.

"Intercultural conformity comparison" doesn't seem like a trivial problem to me. What it means to conform is different in different cultures. In Japan it might mean using polite language. At Burning Man it might mean not being greedy (based on skimming the Wikipedia article; I have no first-hand experience). People at Burning Man might care less about polite language, but that just suggests that they use something other than polite language as a social signal of respect. It doesn't mean they've stopped caring entirely about the concept of respect.

Chanting "nonconformity" doesn't make you a nonconformist any more than chanting "rationality" makes you a rationalist.