 Hey guys coming to you from Atlanta, Georgia today, and I want to give you a theory. Tell me if this correlates with your experiences It's a theory about a type of person Very popular very common type of person that you see everywhere every social circle every movement has Probably the majority of participants are of this type This type of person is more concerned with how fashionable their ideas are Rather than how accurate their ideas are They care much more about the appearance of being social civil having the right Ideas that look good that reflect well on them for having high-class ideas Then they do having correct ideas even if the correct ideas are unpopular This is a theory I've been working on for many years because as somebody who's in the minority camp I don't care about the popularity of my opinions I found lots of backlash Lots of criticism of my ideas purely on fashionable grounds not on logical or intellectual grounds But I'm reminded of this because of a kerfluffle that happened in the libertarian community This a speaker at a conference Jeff Deist use the word Words blood and soil now. There's a whole group of people of a certain type Who are saying oh, this is Nazi dog whistling or this just doesn't look good You can't use those words in civilized discourse in the modern world So anyway, here are some properties of This type of person. I think it's psychological properties. You could personality properties But I'm seeing correlations Everywhere with this type of person like I said number one their ideas are based on fashion ability almost one level below it there's this belief about Social behavior and antisocial behavior that kind of rooted at how they judge ideas is they want ideas to be Socially acceptable and inclusive that you can't have any beliefs that come across as being Antisocial because that means you're not you're not cool Really this group of people reminds me of kind of like a click of teenage girls that it's the popularity and coolness Fashion ability is much more important than consistency in pursuit of truth. Anyway, I've noticed philosophically speaking that an Extremely common idea amongst this type of people is a version of relativism comes in many flavors but The idea that well, you can't know truth You can't know objective truth that would be antisocial that would be kind of juvenile In fact, they look down on claims of having access to some kind of truth is being simplistic naive something like that I think I understand what's going on here. I thought a lot about this Really strong correlation between these type of people and relativistic beliefs I think it has to do something with like this that when you are a relativist And you say there's no firm foundation for critical thinking everybody's ideas just like just as well-founded as everybody else's We're just stating our opinions. Nobody's wrong It is almost Immediately more socially acceptable if you're in a group of people and you can say something like nobody in here is really wrong We're all just trying to grasp bad with little glimmers of truth But really maybe I'm a percent closer to truth than you but really, you know, we're all we're all don't know what we're talking about That's way more fashionable than the more correct belief which to say everybody in this group is wrong Most likely and unless you've done a massive amount of really hard research about Foundations of philosophy and critical thinking you're just spouting opinions that are ill-formed Which of course is my belief a few other people's beliefs, but that is true If it's the case that truth is discoverable, then it's also the case that almost nobody knows what the heck they're talking about The other thing I've noticed along these lines is that there's actually a a Pride in the relativism. There's a pride in I would even say paradox and contradiction in somebody's own belief system There's a certain individual comes to mind that I had a limited professional relationship with years ago that is very much of this type very much of the fashionable type and we were talking about philosophy and contradiction and he said almost verbatim that in Consistency intellectual consistency is the mark of a limited mind that you Are you grow up when you accept the inconsistencies and the words he used a quote from Walt Whitman? I am large. I contain multitudes In other words, if I contradict myself, so be it. I'm bigger than that. I'm okay with that I'm okay with contradiction and tension in my worldview It's kind of an extreme example, but I think there's a measure of Fashionable pride that people have with this mindset when they're talking about Inconsistency like yeah, we're all inconsistent, you know, who are you to say you're consistent? You don't realize how inconsistent everybody's worldview is. There's also a very strong judgment Ironically enough an antisocial judgment ironically enough That these people have towards people like me who are more of the rationalistic Tendency whose purpose in communicating is to try to communicate true information and not say nice things that make you more popular There's a kind of like that dude that dude's on the spectrum like he doesn't have many friends Right. There's a there's a which I guess it's almost predatory and could be explained I think fairly consistently in this way of thinking but there's There's a kind of intentional cutting out of People who are going to be in your friend circle Challenging your Relativistic beliefs are challenging your sometimes silly beliefs in whatever area of thought So if you're if you were gonna be try to a cool fashionable kid and you've got old Joe over here That's in your friend circle telling everybody why he's wrong and talking about ideas and oh, he's like ruined in the feng shui man So there's a kind of social incentive to cut out objective thinkers from your friend circles or clear Thinkers with a backbone people who really genuinely have a backbone who are willing to stand up for what they believe in Cut them out of your social circle because they're gonna cause tension and that's true. I Do personally cause tension in social circles in some circumstances because I want to talk about ideas not in an aggressive way Not in a mean way. I'm just Okay with the idea that people are wrong all the time ideas are important and so Somebody gets a little embarrassed for having a wrong belief. That's okay. That's part of the process of discovering truth So I've also noticed another correlation with these people they tend to be more on the artistic End of the spectrum for what reason I'm not quite sure But they especially seem to be drawn to the Alvarn guard the brand new the cutting edge brand new Just think back to the teenage girl analogy, right? What was cool a cool fashion last month is now so lame this month Right, it's cool to be like, oh, that's not cool. I'm way cooler than that. You're wearing those shoes. Oh my gosh That's so last week so last month Right, that's cool. That makes you cool separates yourself So I think that's part of the draw to the avant-garde even when it gets avant-garde turns into absurdism like you know But in crucifix is crucifixes into a pool of urine and calling it art because hey, that's cool It's avant-garde But also just the artistic-ness is something And I have two x two potential explanations for one is these people's brains work a little bit differently And so they are naturally better artists They are can't they have access to some part of their brain Which is representing since dated to them in a way that they can express more effectively maybe or What I suspect might be going on is it's cool Art at least our current modern culture is seen as cool being on the edge being individualistic Oh, wow, he sees the world so differently Nobody gets him, you know, it's cool. And so that's why people are drawn into it I'm leaning more that direction the former, but I don't know now a really strong correlation I've seen is with these type of people and tendencies towards mental health issues So definitely with the artistic I think lots of people know that like they're a lot of really artistic people Sometimes be a little crazy, but I think Manic depressive people Tend to think more like this or I've just seen the correlation a million times that if somebody is like Aggressively, you know truth doesn't exist. Everything's relative and you're so anti-social to think anything otherwise, and I can't entertain it Well, those people tend to have mental problems sometimes significant mental problems depression anxiety Again, this isn't a judgment. It's just a correlation interesting correlation Here's another correlation that I've seen and tell me if this rings true to your experience is that this type of person tends to be very promiscuous That the idea of sexual commitment to one partner is seen as is Disparished is like seen as archaic and like silly and if you can sleep around why wouldn't you because it just makes so much more sense That might also have a correlation with the mental health that kind of the emotional instability problems the fashion ability like the insecurity Problems, I would say a lot of this comes from insecurity people want social acceptance And so they're willing to do whatever they can to get that kind of social acceptance another correlation that I've seen very strongly Is that this type of person? tends to be Way more okay with lying Lying in small ways lying in big ways again. This seems to correlate with all the other all the other pieces puzzle here But a communication to them I think is less about trying to communicate the truth as much as it is social signaling So it's just as virtue signaling and if in the process of virtue signaling you lie That's okay because the end is to look better in the social group to raise your social status and in some kind of social hierarchy Rather than to communicate true information. I Just experienced this recently with the Jason Brennan fiasco, right? Here's a guy fits pretty much all of these criteria and Lies like explicitly lied about me smeared me as an individual in several ways Explicitly lying and is obviously okay with it. I Don't think that's a coincidence which interestingly enough ties into the last Thing that correlation that I've noticed which is that these people tend to be on the political left not a judgment Just a statement of an observation that by and large if you fit these criteria, I'm gonna put a 98% Call here that you are closer to the traditional left and you are the traditional right and maybe you're a left Libertarian in Jason Brennan's case or of the others the Horwitz's of the world if you're in the libertarian circle You don't have to be a literal. You know, I have to be a communist but these Psychological properties I've seen almost Universally, maybe with a few exceptions, but none are honestly coming to mind. I'm sure maybe I could come up with you correlate with people who are on the left which Not coincidentally If you listen to leftist rhetoric people left-wing rhetoric Even if it's explicitly communist or a left libertarian or whatever it very much is about the community It's about us. It's about working together. It's not not being Xenophobic, oh my gosh, if you're you're xenophobic, right? That's the big that's the big slur That means you're like the least cool person in the world doesn't really matter of course what they mean by xenophobic But being on the left is cool convert you signal easier You can be you could be proud of your Cosmo universal Cosmopolitanism Everybody's your friend. There is no truth. So nobody's really wrong. Everybody's part of big 10 philosophy and Also correlated I think with lots of arguments on the left not purely cerebral, right the truth is Not actually fundamentally what's important a lot of left-wing theories, especially when you're talking economic theories, which are totally backwards They always slip in ethics. They always slip in morality. They also they always slip in virtue signaling into their Economic and political analyses. It's pretty much inevitable And if you don't see it immediately just to ask a few questions dig a little bit under the surface and you'll find this like social signaling posturing virtue signaling Type of behavior. So those are my experiences. Those are my observations I still don't quite know how to deal with these observations are lots and lots and lots of people in the world That are in prominent positions And so I'm not sure if the appropriate reaction is to just let them quack, you know, let the ducks quack And that's the way it is they're gonna Just kind of ignore them or if it's to persuade I've seen very little evidence of these type of people being open to rational persuasion, especially if what they would be persuaded to is Unfashionable, it's pretty much impossible Yeah, I don't exactly know what to do with that psychological trait But I wonder if other people have experienced the same thing that I've experienced if so Tell me about your experiences or these what are the other correlations that you've seen with this type of person that I've described