Lonely Dissent

In addition to suffering social disapproval when they first make their contrary claims, the lonely dissenter should realize that even if they are eventually proven right, they will likely still lose socially compared to if they had not so dissented.

Yes, I would totally wear that clown suit to high school. My classmates would have loved it! (My, shall we say, eccentricities... won me a strange sort of popularity.)

Also, having had the experience of repeatedly being able to come up with correct answers that almost all the other students could not has made me perhaps a little more confident in myself than I should be.

My freshman chemistry class in college had multiple choice exams; when taking the final, I noticed that, on one problem, my solution didn't match any of the answers, but after going over it several times, I couldn't find any mistake in my work. I eventually decided that the error was not mine, and spoke up. As it turns out, the question did contain a mistake that affected the answer, and I was the only one confident enough to question the question!

"What takes real courage is braving the outright incomprehension of the people around you,"

I suspect that autistics are far more willing than neurotypicals to be true iconoclast because many neurotypicals find autistics incomprehensible regardless of what the autistics believe. So the price of being an intellectual iconoclast is lower for autistics than for most other people.

There's a distinction between contradicting everyone else (lonely dissent) and proposing something new. Dissent takes courage, not necessarily proposing something new, because one might suppose that people will find the new thing acceptable. For example, I'm not sure that Ettinger needed more courage than modern cryonicists-- he gives the impression that he expected his idea to be accepted as an obviously great idea, once it was proposed. It seems he was rather surprised by the world's reaction.

Eliezer, never mind black, the true iconoclasts don't go to school. I quit in 10th grade and became an emancipated minor. In the three years prior, I refused to do homework, citing the 13th Amendment. My motivation echoes yours: I could not abide fakers, and public school abounds with them. Fake lessons. Fake arguments. Fake sentiments. Public school is a thinly disguised day care center.

Fortunately, education is not the same as schooling, and there are plenty of ways to become better educated in private life. Then I discovered as an adult that being unconventionally educated could be a competitive advantage.

Eliezer, never mind black, the true iconoclasts don't go to school. I quit in 10th grade

You must have a higher tolerance for frustration.

You want really frustrating and generally fruitless iconoclasm?

Try explaining to a bunch of cryonicists that even though they may be right about the odds of preserving brain data, there's likely no data in their brains worth going through the trouble of saving.

They usually resort to the script of presuming a personal insult.

"They usually resort to the script of presuming a personal insult" instead of rightly apprehending the point you're making, which is...?

This is the difficulty I have with your comments, Caledonian. You always leave the interesting part out. (This is not a personal insult, by the way -- just a straightforward observation.)

Hard to see how that's a rebuttal Caledonian. Probably won't work AND probably no data worth saving still adds up to better odds than definitely worm-food. I guess it's possible that some cryonicists might find their values better served by offering their brains for scientific research, but that basically goes under the category "dying for a cause" even if the dying part was very likely anyway.

Gee, how could anybody ever assume hostility from an innocent statement like that. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but you're completely worthless and we'd all be better off if you just died. No offense intended."

I'm not sure what Caledonian is getting at but sometimes I see arguments from immortalists about the number of lives lost (needlessly) every day (I think I've seen such from Eliezer) and they have the exact opposite of the intended effect on me. Momentarily I find myself a committed "pro-mortalist." Perhaps the hardest thing to accept is that human life has no such inherent value.

Of course, if you dissent in more than one way, you'll probably hurt both causes by linking them together in people's perception, so you're probably better off toeing the line in all ways until you find something you're reasonably sure is the most important thing you could possibly dissent on.

Token message of attention-grabbing dissent for your collective pleasures:

There is no point saying 'the world needs that first dissenter'. Tell people to be rational, tell people to avoid biases, great, but 'dissenters can be useful' can never be a heuristic. Who does it? When should they do it? To what degree? Pluralism is great, but we can't say 'let's be pluralistic, who wants to disagree with our idea?' Shooting yourself in the head is almost universally considered to be A Bad Thing, but that doesn't mean we need someone to come out and advocate it so we can see the error of our ways. Stupidest person, light outside, sun shining etc. The only useful lesson I can draw from the above is 'if your idea is universally lauded, find a devil's advocate.' This doesn't happen in the real world.

Dissent can be a good thing; it keeps us honest, even when it's wrong. But it can only ever be an emergent phenomenon, never part of the design. Everyone above - are you proud of your anecdotes of brave individuality? If so, you haven't understood. I'd much rather reach my last breath and be able to say 'I was true to myself,' not 'that clown suit really f*cked with their heads.'

Eliezer - surely getting weird looks when trying to explain your immortality scheme to the pagan types gives you get a warm fuzzy rational glow rather than a feeling of being outcast?

Oh, and either 'camaraderie' or 'comradeship' please! ;)

"""But if you think you would totally wear that clown suit, then don't be too proud of that either! It just means that you need to make an effort in the opposite direction to avoid dissenting too easily. That's what I have to do, to correct for my own nature."""

I know exactly what you mean. I often see myself dissenting with the majority. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell if I do so because I am Right, or because I want to be Different.

Sure, I can use logic. But, how do I know I am being a Rationalist, rather than just Rationalizing? It's easy to make up arguments (even coherently logical ones) to support incorrect conclusions. Look at economists.

Ben Jones, thanks, fixed.

Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit.

Debating cryonics with my friends, I have been feeling this an awful lot.

A social suggestion for dissent. This happened to me by chance, but if you are the kind, like me, that would enjoy wearing pijamas in a steak house, or medidate in front of a public monument, you may read it as advice.
To lead others into dissent is usually much easier than to do it alone. So convincing a tiny group can sometimes be the best way to allow yourself to feel confortable with something. I've done some social outcast stuff, and usually I just talk people into it, once they have the information that you will do it, they will do it as well.
I was the first transhumanist in Brazil (circa 2003), I first dissented online, finding "gurus" Bostrom, Yudkowsky, Cordero etc... Soon I decided for cryonics. But only now, after seven years I have actually subscribed, and decided to work towards a better posthuman world. This is because it took some seven years to convince a sufficient amount of my friends (let's say, 9) that I'm not fuc*#ng crazy. I'm too social, so 9 was my natural threshold, but probably most people would dissent happily with one or two.

In the Asch experiment, there are three lines. What happens if A is really the longest, all but one confederate says B is longest, and one confederate dissenter says C is longest?

Forget the clown suit. Try defending theism in a place where atheism reigns. Try being chaste before marriage and happily married after. Try to stand up for what you know to be right even if no one else around you is.

It is fashionable and respectable to be a dissenter in pre-approved areas of dissent, try instead to stand up for the norms which one knows to be right, and see what happens.

This is the true lonely dissent and the true rebellion for which the "tolerant" are not able to tolerate regardless of whether it is right or true.

"I would totally have worn a clown suit to school. My serious conversations were with books, not with other children."

The same goes for me. But then, our teachers told us not to be afraid to ask "silly" questions and express weird ideas. If you aren't the best and you aren't nearly the worst student, a lot of others would be thinking along same lines at the moment. Our teachers pointed that our... and it helped, actually. Well, it wasn't your average school.

"But if you think you would totally wear that clown suit, then don't be too proud of that either! It just means that you need to make an effort in the opposite direction to avoid dissenting too easily."

The age takes care of that. It fills you with "cached ideas" and an overhealming need for security. Maturity (it isn't nearly as positive a thing, as it may sound) makes you a conservator.

What about those who merely play "devils advocate," by presenting the dissenting opinion in situations where there's a general consensus, whether or not the presenter agrees with the dissenting opinion? I just hate it when people all agree on one topic without even considering other veiwpoints. Would that just be playing the iconoclast role, or would it just be giving people more options in their choices?

It's a universal phenomena. Every social animal despite its social behaviour will have certain outliers. This is true not just among animals but also other elements of the universe including galaxies of stars and planets.

There would exist among the homogeneous mass, a few outliers. That's the Universe's way to provide for evolution. Without dissent and difference, life would not be sustainable.

In my experience, most people react to learning that I'm vegetarian by trying to argue me out of my crazy non-meat-eating ways. Usually just praising the taste of various meat products, but dire warnings of malnutrition are also popular. Some people can get quite angry at you, presumably based on the fact that choosing vegetarianism on ethical grounds tactitly labels meat-eaters as unethical.

I wouldn't have worn a clown suit in high school, per se... but in college I made campus newspapers (plural; I transferred from one university to another and one major to another mid-undergraduate... and thus ended up taking five years for my bachelor's) by wearing fake fox ears and tails, and later a bright blue cloak. Not because I wanted to make a statement. Not because I was TRYING to make everybody's day a bit more surreal, though that was definitely a bonus. Just because I wanted to, and wasn't about to let conformity get in the way.

One of my professors had a problem with this. One. And it's telling that rather than say "I have a problem with you wearing that sort of thing in class", he instead insisted that it was disruptive to other students. Now, I could have argued my position, taken a poll of my classmates, or complained to higher authorities in the department. Instead... I took off my ears whenever I was in that professor's class, because I was paying to learn that course, and I wasn't about to let a problem that may have been wholly the professor's, or legitimately the other students', get in the way of that just because I wanted to wear a ridiculous outfit to class.

I do admit that I probably would not have been so respectful and mature had I been eleven years old learning Potions. I do recall being respectful to my Chemistry instructor at twelve years... but then, I wasn't wearing an unusual outfit, there. ;)

Yeah, I've definitely had to learn the hard way to tone it down with respect to having ideas and interests that run completely orthogonal to familiarity with peers/society.

Perhaps what annoys me even more is when I like something that coincidentally has associated with it one of those Outside The Box groups, when I don't want to be associated with that group, or more accurately, don't want to have to hear the canned response for it, whatever it may be.

For example, I like heavy metal and anime, but have no desire to be a part of those counter-cultural groups. Unfortunately, it's pretty hard for me to talk about either of those things without people -- both inside and outside those ciricles -- from assigning me to that bin. It's not harmless categorization either: being considered to fit in those bins has pretty strong social baggage attached to it.

This strikes me as an unfortunately place and time-sensitive OvercomingBias/LessWrong post. As the moral character and fashions change with the change of generations, it's going to lose its edge. While the reader is going to vaguely understand the general idea...they may not really 'get' why or that cryonics was that far outside the overton window to begin with. It might warrant relooking at or retelling this particular set of stories in a more recent context later on. I wonder if the retelling of the Sequences later on end up doing just this.

But the question is, is the expected utility and the probability of success of dissenting high enough to outweigh the risks? A true dissenter would face the risk of being ostracised and potentially losing their grounds to be paid attention to - in which case only the dissenter would experience any change: that of the quality of their life experience drastically dropping. Furthermore, what if dissenting actually causes a decrease in expected utility? (e.g. It would be better to conform now and dissent later when one has gained a high enough status to be listened to.)

When does the benefit outweigh the cost? When is it better to outright dissent rather than to introduce a shift in thinking from inside the pack?

All throughout highschool I wanted to learn to play the guitar. But at that point in time almost everyone I knew was learning to play the guitar, and I sure wasn't going to do what everybody else did. Now, six years later, I'm finally learning. It's a real shame let my disgust of conformity drive me away from putting off something I now love.

If only people were saner.

We should create a process to rate the degree of dissent of every action, story, idea. That way after a small inventory, we could all have our 'dissent score'. And by this way know if we have to correct our biais towards more social efficiency or towards more edgy thoughts.

What say?

The overcoming bias link in footnote 3 is broken, here's a working version:

https://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/06/against_free_th.html

Funnily enough, while I did not wear a clown suit to school, I did wear a bright green cape. Not for any particular reason either. Perhaps it would be wise of me to make that effort to avoid being biased towards nonconformity. I wouldn't consider myself an iconoclast though, although now that I think about it, my goal of combatting aging with the idea of living forever has earned me many criticisms. 
I suppose I just haven't thought to measure how lonely my beliefs are.
That said, there are also the beliefs I keep to myself in the name of conformity, so I've come to the conclusion that humans are complicated.

Asch’s conformity experiment showed that the presence of a single dissenter tremendously reduced the incidence of “conforming” wrong answers. Individualism is easy, experiment shows, when you have company in your defiance. Every other subject in the room, except one, says that black is white. You become the second person to say that black is black. And it feels glorious: the two of you, lonely and defiant rebels, against the world! 

It’s probably worth noting that most people are actually pretty okay with being lone dissenters—at least if we’re going by Asch’s conformity experiments. The original studies have been a bit overblown in psych textbooks, which tend to portray conformity as more rampant than it really is (see here and here). In reality, individualism shows up more often than you’d think. In the original study, about 35.7% conformed, and in a recent replication, it’s around 33%. None of this really contradicts what Yud said here, though, just adds a little nuance. Most people aren’t conformist sheep.

http://www.overcoming-bias.com/2007/06/against_free_th.html.

This link should be: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/against_free_thhtml (removing the hyphen will allow a successful redirect).

Thanks for starting this rebellion, Eliezer.