
Intellectual hipsters and meta-contrarians - j_baker
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metacontrarianism/
======
metamemetics
The underlying assumption of this article every step of the way is that one's
underlying motivation for argument, debate, or discussion is _to signal social
standing_

I would argue instead that the most intelligent people find it innately
enjoyable to talk about ideas. They are motivated by a desire to decrease-
uncertainty and clarify-understanding.... they realize social standing is
often an illusion and not overly worth worrying about.

~~~
ckuehne
There's no contradiction to your argument. I innately enjoy looking at
beautiful women and eat delicious food without (always) being aware that the
ultimate cause for the enjoyment is increase in genetic fitness.

Or more to the point: I innately enjoy winning games or working creatively
just as the male bower bird [1] finds innate desire to build richly colored
bowers to attract females.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird>

~~~
Confusion
There is a contradiction, because the argument in the article assumes the
signalling of social standing is THE reason for the behavior.

Opinions like

    
    
      A person who is somewhat intelligent will conspicuously
      signal eir intelligence by holding difficult-to-understand
      opinions. A person who is very intelligent will 
      conspicuously signal that ey feels no need to 
      conspicuously signal eir intelligence, by deliberately not 
      holding difficult-to-understand opinions.
    

are incredibly annoying. It's one of those opinions that are almost impossible
to defend against or disprove, because of the vague nature of 'conspicuously'
and 'difficult-to-understand'. Actually, I think you can attack it as form a
meta-contrarianism itself: anti-intellectuals will hold the above opinion,
intellectuals will denounce that opinion and meta-contrarians will claim that
'people cannot help but be influenced by concern for their social standing, so
there is some truth in the assertions of anti-intellectuals that intellectuals
show behavior which seems to be intended solely to make it harder for non-
intellectuals to enter their field', which polarizes into the quoted opinion.

~~~
ericb
Would someone explain the whole "eir" and "ey" thing to me? Is this an attempt
at hipster spelling--demonstrating they are so smart they don't need to
conspicuously spell correctly?

Did I miss something?

~~~
noahlt
The words are genderless, singular pronouns.

~~~
ericb
So a commenter can go hipster meta in his or her writing with standard
pronouns?

~~~
nkurz
Yes, although I'd argue that it's not meta-hipster but meta-geek. If you
wouldn't use 'grok', you probably wouldn't use 'eir'. In the same vein,
putting your punctuation outside your quote can either be a simple mistake or
meta-grammarian protest. Even the choice of single versus double quotes is
signalling, consciously or not.

The problem is not correctness, but whether the signal is properly received by
your audience. You chose 'his or her', but was this a conscious choice? And at
what level? Was it because you fear being judged poorly for the grammatically
correct but non-politically correct 'his'? Because you find 'eir' pretentious?
Because you find substituting 'her' to be an affectation?

To me, 'His or her' is a signals that you are aware that language can be
sexist, and want to show that you are not. I think it correlates with college-
educated American liberal born after 1960, or one who has learned his English
from such.

I fit these characteristics, but usually consciously choose 'his', hopefully
signalling that I detest linguistic contortions for the sake of signalling
political correctness, but more likely just being judged an unrepentant
sexist. If I don't want to take this risk, I switch to an across-the-board
'her', as I feel this is more effective at actually combatting sexism.

Have you read Hofstadter's essay on "Purity in Language"?
<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html>

------
drblast
I remember this phenomenon from high school English class. The teacher would
ask an obvious question, and inevitably someone would reflexively provide the
non-obvious wrong answer.

I assumed the thought process was this: a teacher hardly ever asks questions
with obvious answers, and I rarely understand what's going on, so when I give
an answer I'm going to say the opposite of the obvious answer because that
will probably be right.

It's similar to how under-educated people will use reflexive pronouns and
words they don't understand in order to sound educated or important.

I know there is a better name for this than "meta-contrarian." Unfortunately
my education is failing myself here. :-)

~~~
crystalis
You might be thinking of hypercorrection, which does seem to intersect at
points with meta-contrarianism.

------
nkurz
"Meta-contrarianism" is a good phrase to capture this phenomenon. In
computers, I associate it with the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABA_problem>
and in life, with the joke about
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down>

The part that misses for me is his (my pronoun choice is conscious signalling
[double 'l' is too, I suppose {as are the parentheticals}]) emphasis on
triads.

For me, the key concept is that one never knows which level one is at. There
is no absolute "level 1", just the "level n" that you occupy, and "level not
n", which is never clearly n - 1 or n + 1.

One frequently assumes that those who disagree with you are missing something,
but every now and then you have to wonder if they actually one ahead. And it
happens often enough that people I think I agree with are actually viewing the
situation in a completely foreign way.

Are there philosophical movements that deal with these situations? What names
would I search for? What should I read?

------
rdtsc
I wonder how conscious is this process?

Do people really tell themselves things like "aha, I'll show them that I am
rich buying something I don't need that's expensive" or does the desire to buy
something extravagant and expensive just pop into their head out of nowhere
and they are just compelled to do it.

Also, what is the strength of the desire to signal among all groups? Perhaps a
poor person has a stronger desire to signal that they are rich than a rich
person to signal that they are not poor. I think that's the second axis -- how
much one signals.

If it is conscious, where does the refusal to signal fall into? Like the
author mentions, it would seem that an intellectually honest person should
rationally analyze themselves, and steer clear of this kind of trap.

~~~
araneae
Well, my beliefs are pretty meta-contrarian, and I think it stems from a
desire to be different. So those old-rich may look at the new rich, feel
disgusted that they may possibly be put in the same "bucket" as them, and try
to find some way to distinguish themselves from them.

That's how I went from Democrat to Libertarian. And then Libertarian to
libertarian. And then libertarian to ?.

If I were going to be less self-effacing, I could also say that any time my
beliefs are held by a large number of people, I start to question them,
because it's not possible for a large number of people to both agree and be
perfectly correct...

~~~
jbooth
++ to you for the self-awareness. Personally I saw how libertarian arguments
were just so fun to make and just so unworkable in any real world situation
and skipped the whole trap, stayed a democrat. But I've made my own meta
contrarian points (trying to tell my liberal friends that the iraq war was a
good idea) and almost always been borne out wrong by reality.

Turns out if your motivations veers from "truth" to "it feels good to make
this argument", you're gonna steer yourself wrong.

------
waterhouse
To the extent that "contrarian", "meta-contrarian", "meta-meta-contrarian",
etc. people spread themselves over the ideological map, it becomes difficult
to win favor by adopting a particular viewpoint (e.g. you'll get the
contrarians and the meta-meta-meta-contrarians, but you'll piss off the meta-
contrarians and slightly alienate the uneducated and the meta-meta-
contrarians), and in the proximate future, people will adopt viewpoints more
for other reasons--hopefully, because they care about the issue and have given
it serious thought.

Once the zero-sum game of winning relative favor becomes saturated with fierce
competition, new people will be discouraged from entering it, and will spend
their effort on more productive things.

Also, once you notice a bunch of similar people (meta^n-contrarians) who argue
several different sides of an issue, you stop thinking of each side as being,
e.g., "traditional country folk vs. college students"; the ideas become
dissociated from groups of people, and your opinion of an idea becomes
dissociated from your opinion of a group. All you have to go on is the shape
of the idea itself, which, I think, is the best way to approach ideas if
you're searching for truth.

A while ago, someone posted the story "Rent a White Guy", which demonstrated
how some clever Japanese companies took advantage of their potential clients'
or investors' prejudice towards white CEOs by "renting" a white guy to act
like a top executive for the duration of the company's presentation. I thought
this was a good thing, because prejudiced investors who found out about tricks
like this would have to stop bothering about the issue with future companies,
unless they put a fair amount of effort into investigating whether the real
CEO was in fact white. This would make things better for naive Japanese
companies who didn't even consider the issue and just had their (Japanese) CEO
do the presentation; and it would reduce the advantage of companies who did
have white CEOs. I think this is all to the good.

For people who do real work and just can't be bothered to think about putting
on peacock feathers, hardcore hipster fakers are friends and protectors. They
make it harder for civilians to tell the difference between a "hip" guy who
deliberately dresses unfashionably and a guy who dresses unfashionably because
he doesn't think about how he dresses, he thinks about other things. This
makes it easier to be a nerd (defined as someone who can't be bothered to do
things because they are fashionable). I, for one, thoroughly approve of these
people.

~~~
Psyonic
Your ideas about the white fake CEO's make sense, but I'm not so sure about
the hipsters. The problem there is even though hipsters do dress
"unfashionably", they always do it in a way thats different than those who
aren't trying at all. In other words, most people don't have trouble
distinguishing the two.

------
luciferous
Meta-contrarians are just early-adopters of the synthesis stage of a
dialectic:

"Hegelian dialectic... a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis,
which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being
resolved by means of a synthesis."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic>

Anyway, could these be programmer triads/dialectics?

    
    
      * Objects are superior/closures are superior/Scala?
      * Statically-typed/dynamically-typed/some combo of both
      * Optimize/generalize/do each as required
      * Waterfall/Agile/(TDD/BDD?)
      * Relational/NoSQL/???

~~~
olalonde
Couldn't resist to complete the last one:

    
    
       * Relational/NoSQL/The tool for the job

------
apu
What's with the weird misspellings/typos all over the place? Like 'ey' for
'he', or 'eir' for 'their'?

~~~
j_baker
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun>

~~~
anurag
Isn't usage of Spivak pronouns itself a form of meta-contrarianism? (gender-
biased / gender-neutral / Spivak)

~~~
gort
The author isn't suggesting that something being meta-contrarian actually
makes it wrong...

------
sev
"But why would being deliberately uncool be cooler than being cool?"

I think that's a wrong question to ask, because "hipsters" aren't being
deliberately uncool.

A better question would be: "why is not following what the mainstream does
cooler than following it?"

And the answer to that is simpler: because it shows a sense of leadership.

------
_delirium
It's an interesting problem, because there _is_ some benefit in intellectual
areas to not over-signalling "intelligence", imo. Nobody likes the hipster,
but nobody really likes the insecure mid-level intellectual who goes out of
his way to speak like a thesaurus, either (the intellectual equivalent of
buying too much jewelry). Seems tricky to find exactly the right balance!

~~~
lotusleaf1987
I always think the best speakers are those who use clear, concise, and easily
understood language. There is no sense in trying to confuse your audience or
show off how obscure your vocabulary is. That is why I always preferred
Hemingway or Steinbeck to Fitzgerald or Joyce.

~~~
celoyd
I think that’s good as a rule, but I’m not sure it holds for cases like Joyce.
If you want to write a book that has to do with how experience is translated
into language and vice-versa, transparent language might not be best.
Sometimes confusion can be a very deliberate and controlled effect, like in
David Foster Wallace (who’s also on the front page today).

Just like Picasso could draw a realistic portrait when he wanted, Joyce
sometimes used very simple and conservative prose. But I would agree that
_most_ people who use long words (like most people who use more than one
perspective per painting) shouldn’t.

~~~
cparedes
If we want to be a bit more precise with our thoughts, then we sometimes have
to break out the longer words for instant clarity (given a dictionary, that
is.) Technical fields need jargon in order to communicate a lot of metaphors /
concepts in the least amount of paper and time as possible.

But I agree with lotusleaf1987: sometimes, I just want to yell, "JUST SPIT IT
OUT IN PLAIN LANGUAGE." I think it's easy for someone to fall into the trap of
getting too enthralled with the jargon and not understand the concept behind
it, so they can reformulate the concept into a more understandable metaphor...

~~~
celoyd
Sure. I wasn’t really thinking about technical writing. It’s good to remember
that people like Einstein and Feynman could happily explain their work in
_very_ simple terms.

------
crux
I found myself completely stymied once that article got to the section about
death. I haven't read their other articles on the subject, but they seem to
find it rather uncontroversial to assert that anyone who thinks that death is
ultimately good, and not bad, is 'pretending to be wise'. That seems insane to
me. Does anybody think that a world without death—or even human death—would be
less than hellish? Is it really false wisdom to be glad that living things, or
living people, do not infinitely multiply, age, expand, consume resources? Or
even false wisdom to try to see the good in the death of an individual?

Further, the author takes it as uncontroversial that it is 'wrong' to dwell on
the problems of modern industrial society, and hypothesizes that one would
only do it in order to signal one's intelligence. They don't think it would be
useful—indeed, necessary—for many people to spend a lot of time thinking about
the ills of A just because you can conclude that it is a greater good than
not-A? Is that really the only way that it works? If I mention that industrial
society destroys the environment and alienates the individual, then my
argument must be, 'therefore, it is ultimately an evil, and we should scrap it
for unelectrified villages.'

I like the way the author illustrates the signalling effect in terms of
consumption, culture, and even cocktail party conversation; but I'm not sure
the mechanism is quite as strong as they think.

Another way of putting it is: a lot of the intellectual arguments that the
author likes to cast as counter signalling games can just as easily be
characterized as successive philosophies and arguments that respond to the
facts available to them and the values of the societies in which they arise.
You COULD say that very intelligent people who don't want to give aid to
Africa are motivated by a need to counter-signal the rather intelligent people
who do; or you could say that they are motivated by their own understanding of
the best way to increase the economic condition in Africa. If both of those
could be said of any person, what value does this psychological model really
have?

~~~
endtime
>they seem to find it rather uncontroversial to assert that anyone who thinks
that death is ultimately good, and not bad, is 'pretending to be wise'.

Eliezer talked about this at at the Singularity Summit...I can't find the
slides, but his subsequent update of Harry Potter and the Methods of
Rationality (yes, really) pretty much said the same thing. The relevant part
starts around halfway down this chapter:
[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

I think this is a pretty common position among the
futurist/transhumanist/singularitarian community. The standard inductive
argument is basically "I want to be alive tomorrow, and tomorrow I will feel
the same way. Therefore, I will never want to die."

Edit: Oh, the other point that is often made is that if you grew up on a
planet where everyone randomly got hit over the head with a baseball bat every
few minutes, there would probably be people who talk about how this is a good
thing, because it helps you greater appreciate the bat-free minutes and helps
you stay on your toes, etc. But, other things being equal, as an Earthling you
probably wouldn't want to go and live on that world. Likewise, if you came
form a society where people didn't die, and someone offered you the
opportunity to completely cease to exist one day, you probably wouldn't take
it.

~~~
Psyonic
What if we argue, not from the good of the individual, but the good of
society? Isn't there a saying that goes something like, "Society progresses
one funeral at a time?"

~~~
pjscott
Sure, but consider the cost: all those people, _dead!_

Doesn't that bother you? More to the point, does it bother you enough that
you'll consider possible nonlethal ways for society to advance? If you're
biasing your arguments in favor of the status quo, it's easy to forget to look
for a third option.

~~~
crux
In that case, it seems like what we're really trying to do is envision or
bring about a world in which death ISN'T a good thing. If we can bring about
an existence without overpopulation, decrepitude, destruction of the
biosphere—and maybe with interplanetary colonization, to boot—then death won't
be a good thing anymore. But death is not the evil there. Suffering is. I
don't think anyone would argue that death is an ULTIMATE good, unless they
worshiped Kali or were just hoping to get into heaven—but as long as we live
in a world with suffering, decay, and limited resources, put me down in the
death column. The cost might be 'all those people' but the alternative is
horrible to contemplate.

------
RyanMcGreal
At first I thought the author had inadvertently let some typos slip through,
and that slightly annoyed me. Then I realized on further reading that the
author was deliberately using third-person pronoun neologisms, and that
seriously annoyed me.

~~~
cruise02
I just started reading it in a Cockney accent and it turned out fine. ;)

~~~
pjscott
I just figured that the author was winking while being partially serious, and
it turned out fine.

------
redthrowaway
There is some truth here, especially in regards to more intelligent people
taking a mainstream view that lacks the illusion of nuanced thought. That
said, I find it hard to read an article on "intellectual hipsterism" that
claims the average IQ of their readers is 145. The page the author links to in
support of that claim mentions two giant caveats: First, IQ is a notoriously
difficult to measure metric of questionable validity, and second, _the scores
are self-reported_. The reported values range from 120-180. Essentially, the
survey suggests that the top half of their readership is in the top 1% of the
national population. Even their bottom half is in the top 10%, by their
statistics. This suggests a fatal flaw in the survey, and to mention the
resulting statistic in such an offhand manner and with no warning to the
reader of the problems with it suggests at best laziness, and at worst
intellectual dishonesty on the part of the author. I find it hard, therefore,
to take their argument at face value. That's not to say it's invalid, merely
that the author's conduct does not support its validity.

~~~
nkurz
I would take it at face value.

First, the author is taking for granted that his readers are intelligent
enough to realize that self-reported IQ scores are inaccurate, that IQ as
measured is not equivalent to any real world intelligence, and that the
accuracy of IQ tests is limited once one gets out to the extremes. He links
directly to the survey --- what more can he do?

Second, I'd guess that the numbers are about right. In the same way that one
would be safe assuming that the posters to StackOverflow are probably mostly
in the top 1% of programming ability out the entire population of the world, I
think it's likely a site dedicated to debating 'meta-contrarianism' might
select quite precisely for people who can score well on standardized tests.

I'm not a regular reader, but I know enough about the site to suggest a
solution: come up with a means of testing your hypothesis, and put up some
money to back it. The more direct the better: bet them $1000 that none of the
regular posters can show a bona-fide IQ test result higher than 160 (or
whatever cutoff you think fairly accounts for the limited accuracy of the test
at the extreme).

And then report back to us if it was money well spent!

~~~
redthrowaway
I'd rather not, thanks ;)

I'm sure if I challenged someone to come up with a result of 170, there'd be
at least one person out there who could do it. My money is far better spent on
tuition and beer.

Now, if I was a psych major, I might be able to get approval for a study
comparing the congruency of self-reported IQ scores with measured, neutral
ones in self-described intelligent communities. I'd apply for funding to set
up testing for those who took the initial survey, and see what the results
are.

~~~
nkurz
That's a good plan too. They'd probably go for it. In the commentary on the
survey, Eliezer (founder of the site, also present here) doubts the estimate
too.

It's worth noting that one of the central tenets of LessWrong is that it can
be just as bad to underestimate one's knowledge as to overestimate it. As a
result, some things which look like boasting are really just attempts at
accuracy, carried through to a level not normally seen in polite discourse.

Other things, of course, are just boasting.

------
noibl
There's more to Intellectual positioning than signalling one's intelligence,
even if the underlying motives are assumed to be more-or-less base. Hipsterism
in general is about being ahead of the curve, not necessarily being the
smartest in the room. With Intellectual Hipsterism that means being conversant
with the latest ideas, not the most complex ideas. To be up-to-date with the
latest radical thinking gives one a privileged position in the discourse
because the proportion of the group for whom your input seems novel and
interesting becomes greater. This puts the Intellectual Hipster at odds with
the mere 'meta-contrarian' because a conservative opinion conservatively
argued will never be perceived as novel or interesting. The Intellectually
hip[1] will therefore argue in favour of a passé or seemingly discredited
position using novel (conbinations of) techniques and references, thereby
making the retro idea cool again!

\--This post sponsored by the IH Institute, Salt Lake City--

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizek>

~~~
Psyonic
Last I heard the IH Institute was in Portland...

------
doki_pen
Hmm.. It is fun to come up with a different angle on a common argument, even
if you don't seriously believe it. Could it be just nature encouraging us to
signal intelligence? Maybe. Does it matter? I know sex is for making babies,
but I still enjoy it. I didn't stop when I figured out that it was only
enjoyable for the purposes of evolution.

------
DanielBMarkham
Lesswrong couldn't be more wrong.

Or rather, they missed the point entirely.

This article reminded me of somebody who is pissed because they lost an
argument, so they desperately search around for some kind of label or dirt to
throw at the people that beat them. I don't know the history here, but it sure
feels that way.

To put it simply: people do not take positions simply to counter-signal. Yes,
some do, but it's a dangerous game to start labeling huge swaths of your
fellow men because of something _some_ may do. They use the example of the old
rich and the new rich. The old rich didn't consume, looking down their noses
at all the new money folks who spent like banshees.

Well maybe there is a certain type of person who just doesn't spend that much.
Sam Walton was a billionaire, had a private jet, but he genuinely liked
driving around in his pickup truck and flying his older prop airplane. Lots of
folks get rich _because they don't spend so dang much._

That's the problem here: people who know what the hell they are talking about
and disagree with you might not be counter-signaling, _they may actually be
providing balance and some important things for you to consider to the
discussion_. But you can ignore all of that if you put them all in a big
bucket called "meta-contrarianism" and write their views off.

This is bullshit. In particular, it's a special form of elitist bullshit that
seeks to categorize instead of understand.

I wish the lesswrong guys happiness, health, and success, but at some point --
how do I put this nicely? -- you run out of smart things to say. This however
does not prevent you from taking up a lot of bytes saying it. (And I speak for
myself as much as anybody else) If you're running a blog, sure, spam us with
volume. Spray and pray. But if you're looking to provide some kind of
consistent quality like with a branded name and multiple authors and such?
More editing and reviewing and less self-serving pontificating. You need to
be, well, less wrong. :)

~~~
yummyfajitas
I think you are simply unfamiliar with lesswrong.

They write articles like this _all the time_ , and they are usually targeted
at biases which afflict lesswrong readers disproportionately. A quick look
finds at least 3 articles of this nature in the past 2 weeks [1].

The article also does not advocate for lumping people into the meta-contrarian
class and discounting their opinions. It explicitly says not to do that:
"meta-contrarianism is a real tendency in over-intelligent people, it doesn't
mean they should immediately abandon their beliefs; that would just be _meta-
meta-contrarianism_ ".

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ql/error_detection_bias_in_research...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ql/error_detection_bias_in_research/)
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distrac...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/)
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pw/the_affect_heuristic_sentiment_a...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pw/the_affect_heuristic_sentiment_and_art/)

~~~
rms
Also, the more recent articles on Less Wrong do have a tendency towards the
esoteric and insular. The best postings on Less Wrong were done by Eliezer
Yudkowsky a while ago, archived at <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>.

------
narrator
Well if you want to be a uber-meta-contrarian you learn the art and do your
own research. Otherwise you're just repeating what someone else said who
either did their own research, or pretended to in order support some pre-
determined conclusion.

------
Confusion
If there is any truth in what is argued, then this argument itself can be
considered to be a display of intellectual hipster meta-contrarianism.
Furthermore, _any_ balanced position/argument could be indicted as
'intellectual hipster meta-contrarianism'. In that case, this article adds
absolutely nothing to your understanding of the world and people's behavior.
It's just pretending to show some deep insight, by knitting together
platitudes about peoples' behavior in a seemingly novel and intellectual way.

Or, to be somewhat less of an 'intellectual hipster meta-...-meta-contrarian'
(ain't I (un)cool?): what is argued is _way_ to strong and _way_ to broadly
applied. 'Lesswrong' usually worries about the practicality of matters and
this, on the one hand, just not an important factor, and on the other hand,
irrelevant, even if it was, because you still have to counter the actual
arguments that are made. If being an 'intellectual hipster meta-contrarian'
means taking a balanced position, for instance on

    
    
      - KKK-style racist / politically correct liberal / "but there are scientifically proven 
        genetic differences"
      - misogyny / women's rights movement / men's rights movement
      - conservative / liberal / libertarian
      - don't care about Africa / give aid to Africa / don't give aid to Africa
    

then, by God, let's have more 'intellectual hipster meta-contrarian's. If it
doesn't _in practice_ , _for most 'intellectual hipster meta-contrarian's_
mean 'taking a balanced position', _for whatever reason_ , then I think it's
just an empty denomination.

------
narkee
Or you stop defining your beliefs based on the beliefs of others.

Problem solved.

------
starpilot
Here's an "uneducated/contrarian/meta-contrarian divide" triad, about
Facebook:

what's facebook? / facebook is great! / facebook is beneath me, and I rarely
use it (Marco Arment: [http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/5-questions-with-
tumbl...](http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/5-questions-with-tumblrs-
marco-arment/) )

So, tech hipsters, you too can join in on the fun.

~~~
rms
/ Facebook is beneath me and I can't stop refreshing.

------
Tycho
It's a good read but this contour-signalling only works when you have two or
three levels at play. The question is whether his/her grouping of people into
two or three tiers is realistic, useful, or arbitrary. Upper-middle-lower-
upper-middle-middle class etc.

------
m-photonic
I can understand the article's placement of libertarianism at the top of the
political triad, but at the same time it does seem like (in online arguments
at least) people with nuanced positions more often make an effort to
distinguish themselves from libertarians than from liberals or conservatives.

~~~
araneae
Yes, those would be the meta-meta-contrarians.

------
ibejoeb
>In all three examples, people at the top of the pyramid end up displaying
characteristics similar to those at the bottom. Hipsters deliberately wear the
same clothes uncool people wear.

Hipsters are at the top of the fashion now? This is why I wear suits.

~~~
_delirium
But how do we know if you're wearing that suit ironically or not? ;-)

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-cant-anyone-tell-im-
wea...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-cant-anyone-tell-im-wearing-this-
business-suit,11185/)

------
olalonde
Conclusion: if you're part of the over-intelligent crowd, resist the
temptation of signaling.

Let's see if some meta^x-contrarian is going to argue with this :)

------
zeynel1
"the nouveau riche need to differentiate themselves from the poor, but the old
money need to differentiate themselves from the nouveau riche."

This is true; but there is a more fundamental reason for the newly rich to
spend money: it is freedom.

People who did not have the right to earn and spend money; when they gain
their right to earn and spend money; spend money to assert their freedom.

This is why women made spending money a ritual under the name of "shopping."
They celebrate their newly found freedom.

------
napierzaza
This is what a lot of HN posts are about. Or is this exactly what HN posts are
NOT about? I think so.

------
mambodog
So this is why I hate the idea of being expected to always put the toilet seat
down. I'm a meta-contrarian. Or am I just a bit of a dick?

------
onefortwo
When expressing in English my intelligence must be the half that when
expression in my native language. And my IQ must be on average. So I will not
read a post intended for a CI above 140, I only answer to the comment of
drblast guy. If a teacher ask a question with an obvious answer like what is 3
+ 3, then I can tell that it depends of the radix use are using, or if you are
using 3 as a polynomial in some finite character field, or if you are using
some computer language in which the symbols plus is concatenation of strings
and the given operation is an error. In any case perhaps any of those answer
should bother the teacher, so finally I should say excuse me ...

------
bambax
Death actually _is_ great. It's not being meta-contrarian to see that. There
was a great speech by Steve Jobs making just this point (and I don't think he
was trying to signal his intelligence by saying so?)

My death is bad for me (somewhat -- I'm not sure I'd enjoy living forever) but
great for the world.

I understand that the point of the article absolutely is not to argue about
the goodness or badness of death, but isn't it regrettable that the main
example they use is so flawed?

~~~
loewenskind
Nonsense. If people could live forever then they would have less children
instinctively. How often is a new Einstein born (or Steve Jobs for that
matter)? Was it _great_ that Einstein died?

Living forever, or even 10 times longer than we do now would change so many
variables there is no way to know what all would be affected.

~~~
bambax
My point was not to argue about the goodness of death either -- I would have
thought it was non-controversial.

It's a very good thing Einstein did die, since his most important work was
done in the first third of his life, and at the end he was simply denying that
quantum mechanics were real.

Besides, if death did not exist and "people had less children" (meaning
probably zero), Einstein would never have been born!

Please (re-)read what Steve Jobs had to say about death: _No one wants to die.
Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet
death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is
as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of
Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the
new._

From: <http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

~~~
loewenskind
Again, if death _weren't_ a destiny we all shared we can't know what that
would change in our culture, our mind sets, etc. Just as one example, how
would our views of war change if people no longer died of natural causes?

Btw, saying things like (paraphrasing) "It's good that Einstein died because
he really had nothing useful left to contribute" is extremely judgmental. We
have no way of knowing how much the realities of our current existence
affected his behavior, nor what he would have done by now if he were still
alive.

