Log Thots 4: Conformity

This is an analysis of a blog posted by ThotRevulsion(a nickname I have for someone with many sock accounts). I cut out certain sections for conciseness, as this one is rather long. Link is right here if you want to read it for yourself.

https://www.minds.com/LogicianMagician/blog/the-conformity-conundrum-962313826272673792

Let’s get started.

At the moment, it seems that in order to succeed at much of anything, we must conform. Whether it be to a certain perspective or in regards to what words we are allowed to use to express thoughts. If we don't abide by a status quo driven accepted mode, then we are ostracized in the social ecosystems and, in a roundabout way, made economically inviable.

This first paragraph sets up a rather self defeating idea, as I am about to illustrate. The suggestion is that we must conform to certain orthodoxy in order to be successful, to which I say…

That’s just called the free market. People decide who they wish to associate with and do business with. The idea that this prevents the expression of thought is laughable, as here we see him doing exactly that. He is expressing his thoughts freely, and we are able to access them. Anyone with an internet connection and that url can read this blog, provided Minds is still running. He could post this exact blog other places and have the same effect. Already, his claims don’t hold up to even rudimentary scrutiny.

As economics is tied to our biological survival; this is an attack on our livelihood.

No, people just don’t like your content, and thus do not pay you for it. It is no more other people’s job to support you than it is your job to pay me money; if you do not purchase one of my books, that is not an attack, that is you exercising freedom of choice. We will be returning to this idea, but I want you to keep this framing of people simply not associating with Thot as an outright attack in mind.

The inherent problem with our current state of conformity, is that in order for everyone to agree on something and thereby conform to it, it must be simple. Simplicity is not realistic, as reality is quite complicated. We are agreeing on an overly simplistic lie; an oversimplification logical fallacy.

Wrong, and even outright hypocritical. You are suggesting that ALL things society agrees upon are simple? Who’s the one making gross oversimplifications, again? Also, you suggest that because simplicity is “not realistic”, it must be wrong? Than why, in this very blog, do you put forward your own equations that could not possibly be more simple?

Logical fallacy + cognitive bias = delusion

Conformity = delusion

It seems that when Thot makes a simple claim, he believes it is okay to conform to it. It’s just everyone else who is missing the nuance when they try to make a claim that is simple.

To state something like this, you either need zero self awareness, or you are a troll. And if this is a troll, I would paraphrase Metokur: If you act like a moron, and say you were intentionally trolling when people call you a moron, then there comes a point where you must realize that you are still acting as a moron. At a certain level, you are being the thing people perceive you to be, even if you claim it as intentional.

So, in regards to this conformity-simplicity axiom he’s trying to put forward; I work in software. There are enormous numbers of industry standard practices we must adhere to. Things like not storing passwords in plaintext files, not allowing the persistence of deprecated code, following certain design principles in how we structure data access… the list is a mile long. These are far from simple things, as I probably couldn’t make the layman understand what I’m talking about without them spending a couple years at least studying the relevant subjects. But anyone who understands them agrees on their value, as they increase security and stability of the system. People who don’t follow them invariably have issues with security and stability. The cause and effect is simple, but not the rules themselves. Conformity does not require simplicity.

The majority are simple-minded. By simple-minded, I mean, typically, they don't want to put forth too many calories to assessing a situation; a lack of mental complexity. We could describe mental complexity as far-reaching lateral connectivity; perceiving cause and effect further into the distance of the equation of logic and/or thought.

Wonky word choice aside, this was an unfortunate avenue to take this blog. Here, with an unnecessary number of words, he suggests that simple minded people are less able to think about long term consequences. But remember what he said earlier?

If we don't abide by a status quo driven accepted mode, then we are ostracized in the social ecosystems and, in a roundabout way, made economically inviable.

So, he starts by suggesting that he is unable to find success because of his behavior, which causes others to discriminate against him. Then, he states that people with simple minds don’t think ahead about the repercussions of their actions.

He just insinuated that he, himself, is simple minded. That’s not me calling him that, it is his own logic which implicates him. How unfortunate. It’s even more unfortunate when he drifts so close to self awareness:

The further we track the cause and effect equation potentiality, the more effort it takes. The simple-minded do not put forth the effort and thereby stay blissfully unaware.
That is where the "ignorance is bliss" quote rings painfully true.

As a quick aside, I recall him claiming elsewhere that intelligent people couldn’t conform even if they wanted to, but is that really true? I would expect higher minded people to be more capable overall than simple minded people, generally. This is a strange assertion, but one I believe that is deliberately made as an excuse for why Thot can’t seem to interact with people, despite his claims of being superior to them in every way.

Let’s move on. Here, he misunderstands multiple things, which I think tells me quite a lot about his life experiences. First, religion:

For example, in regards to religion; all one must do is feign religiosity and join a prominent church. Then people are more apt to trust that person and even do business with them. All you have to do is live a lie in public, then go home and be quite the opposite; sleep well at night and be successful.

This is horrendously misinformed, and suggests that either Thot has never been to a church, or has only been to very poor quality churches. My family has taken me to church since a young age, spanning multiple different physical locations, so I’m rather familiar with them. It is generally frowned upon to talk business at church, to the point where they might even pull you aside to confront you about it if it becomes too overt. People do not routinely hand out business cards at church, as that is not the point of church. Usually, people talk about their week, their struggles, their successes… basically anything except doing business. Church is focused on the development of the person, not the bank account.

Now, do people who go to church together more often do business with each other? Maybe, I never really thought about it that way because it’s far too simplistic of an answer to be true(lol)… that is, with no real evidence provided to support it.

But this idea would naturally apply to all kinds of social groupings. It’s a well known practice called networking. You meet people, engage in social activities with them, learn about them, tell them about yourself, and maybe work together on professional endeavors. The idea that this primarily happens at church rather than at the millions of other kinds of social gatherings shows a genuine misunderstanding of what churches are meant for. I’m rather confident things like being in a college fraternity or having good professional references are far more beneficial to future success than being a part of a well known church.

Moving on.

On social media and out in the so-called real world; there is conformity of a certain vocabulary. Curse words, for example; arbitrarily deemed inappropriate for no other reason then to paint some of the population as villains and virtue signal to the sense of self; pink by myself into the pious Ivory Tower of Morality.

This one is fascinating. Either he lives in an absurdly puritanical area, which I kinda doubt, or he has never had a real job. At every single job I’ve had, people swore. A lot. Like… consistently. It’s just a bad idea to swear like a sailor at a professional interview because it paints you as someone not in control of their own words, as well as being unable to communicate in a professional manner.

I’ve actually written about profanity in a different blog. Basically, most reasonable people don’t(or shouldn’t) really care, because it’s the intention behind the words, and not the words themselves, that matters. Though I personally don’t swear because it both is not my natural way or speaking, nor do I desire to arbitrarily age gate my explanations, I have no problem with other people swearing. In fact, plenty of successful people swear both publicly and privately. So, again, this assertion is unsupported by that pesky thing we call reality.

There is also the status quo driven opinion that we must be polite at all times; negative feedback has become a crime because it fights back against the status quo driven delusions of the day. It is for this reason that the majority have agreed upon the status quo driven opinion that we shouldn't be "rude". They don't want to be forced to question their beliefs of which, somewhere inside, they are insecure about.

Here, we see Thot clearly not understanding how human interaction works. If you approach someone with antagonism, expect them to respond in kind. If you provide someone with negative feedback in a more polite and understanding tone, they are more likely to engage with you. I’ve changed multiple people’s minds this way, and I’ve had my mind occasionally changed in turn. It’s called civility, it’s called open discussion. Thot is unable to differentiate between negative feedback and being rude, and feels it necessary to couple the two together. That’s a great way to reinforce your own position, but unless you have some fantastic points(which Thot usually doesn’t, as I have shown), you won’t be convincing anyone to change their mind.

The ironic part? He could change absolutely nothing about his content, not a single thing, and only change how he engages with people. If he didn’t block everyone who disagrees with him, didn’t spend his time trying to circumvent blocks, didn’t try to spam people he doesn’t like… he would probably be doing much better. He’s his own worst enemy in that he drives away everyone, even those who might otherwise be in agreement with him.

But probably the most bizarre thing about him making this point is that he is the single most sensitive person I’ve found on Minds when receiving negative feedback. Should he respond, expect mass downvotes, rapid fire comments with pre-loaded condescending memes, and a swift block to wrap it all up. I’ve personally seen this happen multiple times.

We know reality is complicated; our default mode is brave acceptance of whatever it is we know or do not know. In the instances where we do not know, there are a number of possibilities of which fluctuate in value or probability.

This right here is a fancy way of glorifying himself in his own tower of pious morality when he says he accepts what he does not know, and only believes things he knows to be true. And yet, throughout this blog, between the weasel words and meaningless platitudes, his claims are utterly illogical. Simple ideas are always untrue by their very nature? People go to church for the business opportunities? The general public is heavily discriminatory towards swearing, and doing so will get you blacklisted? Just a moment of scrutiny annihilates these claims. Making a claim about one’s own nature that is not supported by facts is the very definition of delusion. In fact, I’ll just put the definition of delusion right here for reference:

Delusion: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

I’ve grown tired of the circles that Thot talks himself in, so I will skip to near the end.

In closing, a succinct reminder... here is the logician magician equation...
As reality is complicated, whatever is agreed upon, is too simple to be true. Conformity = delusion.

I really, really love how he claims simple things that are agreed upon can’t be true, and then follows it up with a simple statement that he wants other people to agree with. But with there being only a few inconsequential lines left, I guess we are done. The Conformity Conundrum, in all its self contradictory glory. I will offer a few parting thoughts.

There is this underlying tone through most of Thot’s posts that I’ve seen. It’s this assumption that he is unique, a kind of “dark-web intellectual” who is going against the grain. But everything I’ve seen of his work is very reminiscent of the skeptic movement, albeit stuck back when it was growing to prominence. It’s openly anti religion, materialistic, and clearly designed to antagonize and offend people. The problem with this is it is more of a widespread trend online for content, and it is not hard to find people spouting eerily similar ideas to Thot. In fact, most of these people agree with Thot’s politics, down to the individual issues and tone they strike when proclaiming them; the tone being one of condescending moral shaming and grandstanding in the majority of cases. I’m not addressing any of their positions in this blog specifically, as all I wish to point out is Thot’s views are not unique nor novel. To claim otherwise is to willfully ignore an entire social movement that previously occurred, and now just happens to be left behind as counterculture moves back to the right. It’s teenagers thinking they know everything and rebelling against their parents.

Now, some final thoughts.

Conformity itself is merely a concept, not a good or evil moral choice as Thot wishes to present it. It is beneficial to conform to actions and ideas that are more in line with reality. It could even be said that conforming to a well supported fact is morally good. In fact, any argument is fundamentally an argument for conforming to some concept or behavior. Here, Thot is arguing that you should conform to his way of thinking, as he believes it is more correct than other ways of thinking.

Meanwhile, I see the more negative version of conformity as being something called group think, which is related but markedly distinct. It is not productive to immediately accept everything that is told to you by authority figures, even if whatever that might be is still correct. Asking questions and challenging ideas not only allows us to realize when something is wrong or unsupported, but it also allows us to gain a more nuanced understanding of things that are actually true. I think I’ve said this before in some other contexts, but I will reiterate here to close this out:

It is just as important to know why you believe as it is to know what you believe. Those who aren’t in control of their minds will inevitably be controlled by others.

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Same post on Minds