
Conformity Excuses - cinquemb
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/06/conformity-excuses.html
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adambmedia
Nobel prize winner Czesław Miłosz writes brilliantly in The Captive Mind how
intellectuals, elites and creatives alike, essentially the intelligentsia of
Krakow, Poland, were easily conscripted into the communist propeganda machine
by various mechanisms which were essentially human weakness towards
conformity.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind)

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paganel
It reads like an interesting article, but I couldn't understand the emphasis
about what's "popular" and what's "unpopular". Maybe because I'm already in my
mid 30s, but I for myself couldn't care less if what interests me is either
seen as popular or unpopular, the same as I don't care about what people think
about the music I listen or the movies I watch. Is there something I'm
missing?

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dkarapetyan
Yes. Your experience is atypical. Most people like being in groups. I don't
think religion works if people don't have a strong drive for conformance.

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lostmsu
I think religion works because parents coerce their children into it by
denying them basic live necessities if they do not comply. E.g. they will not
eat until they pray.

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gagege
Do you _really_ think that's how it works in any but the most abusive
families?

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lostmsu
Yes, I actually think that's how it works in "normal" (or rather typical)
families. We will never know until somebody actually has a poll of some kind.

Also, what do you mean by "the most abusive"? If we are talking the entire
world, I'd guess that's how it works in >80% of religious families. Perhaps
that number is lower in US, but not by much. Considering how abusive it is,
I'd say the most families are "the most abusive".

P.S. in the first para by "normal" I mean that if you ask many random
religious people of age 30+ most of them would consider that behavior normal.

I bet if you don't put any bad words in your question like I did in my
statement, and simply ask "would you consider normal making child pray before
he can eat?" even among well-educated religious people many will answer "yes".
Try on your close friends, eye opening thing it is.

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dragonwriter
> P.S. in the first para by "normal" I mean that if you ask many random
> religious people of age 30+ most of them would consider that behavior
> normal.

I was raised in a religious household, am 30+, and don't consider coerced
prayer of the type that seems to be described [0] normal (in fact, I find
coerced prayer theologically unsound.)

OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised to find it fairly common.

[0] An expectation of respectful silence while someone else leads prayer, or
an offer without obligation to lead group prayer, certainly. But coerced
prayer is another thing altogether.

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lostmsu
I understand, that it does not apply to all people, but, obviously, those
considering it normal won't comment here.

Do you have children? If you do, do you coerce them into your religion (btw
what is it)? If you do, how?

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dkarapetyan
Studies show people in groups are more relaxed than loners. This is not a ding
against loners but there are pretty significant evolutionary drivers for
conformance. It stands to reason we'd be biased.

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rukuu001
True, but the other side of this is the bystander effect - wouldn't you like
to be the one person who acted when everyone else stood by?

Not that it would be very relaxing.

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frenchie4111
Even if we assume that all of the beliefs (eg: likes/dislikes) of all actors
are logical (and not just because our friends think that) we can still see
some evidence for why groups conform. We are all choosing our beliefs based on
what information we have. The majority of our information comes from, and is
shared with, our group. All of the people in our group are working with very
similar sets of information, and are therefore likely to have very similar
beliefs.

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dkarapetyan
If you were purely logical and rational you would seek to diversify your
information sources but people actually do the exact opposite. They go out of
their way to not be exposed to out-group information sources and will often
violently oppose such sources. Even within the group dissenting voices are
silenced.

There is no logical or information theoretic perspective that justifies or
explains conformance behavior. It's all pure biology.

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jimbokun
"But when we look at our conscious thoughts and motivations regarding our
specific behaviors, we find almost no conformity pressures."

Yeah, I couldn't get past this sentence, sorry.

How self unaware can you possibly be to not recognize conformity pressures in
your own thinking?

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dkarapetyan
HN is one giant non-comformance conformance party. You're more unaware than
you thought.

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gagege
I like to call it the Hot Topic phenomenon.

