Huh. I’ll have to update on the intelligence factor.
I’ll also concede that there’s at least mild evidence that severely mentally ill people are potentially more dangerous, but I still think the generalization of “mentally ill people are more likely to be dangerous” is unfounded for general, day-to-day purposes.
i.e. if someone responds badly because I’m clearly mildly schizophrenic, but doesn’t respond equally badly to me being clearly male, then obvious this isn’t any sort of sane risk-reward evaluation. It’s just a bias against a group of people (“the mentally ill”)
Overall, I think we agree that Certain Sorts of weirdness are judged in a way that is inconsistent with the actual risks (i.e. me kissing my girlfriend doesn’t harm anyone, but people still object to lesbianism)
I think we also agree that cultures all have “tolerable” sorts of weirdness, such as the Silicon Valley dress code (but good luck getting away with that as a lawyer or a doctor!)
And I think we agree that some cultures, while still having taboos, have fewer taboos. Equally, that while all cultures have norms, some have more inclusive norms.
So if we define weirdness as simply “violating social norms or taboos” then we can see that, yes, weirdness does get a negative reaction. Yet you say that “weirdness alone isn’t damning” and I’m not sure what would constitute this sort of “quintessential weirdness”.
Is there genuinely some other aspect of behavior you’re looking at, or are you just exploring how weirdness ties in to cultural taboos and social norms?
Eh, I’m mostly bouncing ideas around; I was originally annoyed by the lack of strength in Caplan’s argument—and I still don’t think it’s very solid. But also I’m interested in how norms and judgements work in general, and have been jotting down a few ideas that could make another post. I’ve also somewhat revised my opinion as to what extent humans are tolerant of weirdness; I guess Caplan primed me to think of economics and daily life and business models, not gender and sex issues, a more touchy area.
Maybe we could call:
WeirdA = “surprisingly different”
WeirdB = “violates social norms”
And I agree that humans don’t tolerate WeirdnessB (pretty much by definition), and Caplan’s argument is that innovation requires WeirdnessA, and I’m saying that how much WeirdA imples WeirdB depends of the society (and the topic at hand).
(I don’t think there’s much confusion left at this point, this is a big discussion for such a small blog post).
Huh. I’ll have to update on the intelligence factor.
I’ll also concede that there’s at least mild evidence that severely mentally ill people are potentially more dangerous, but I still think the generalization of “mentally ill people are more likely to be dangerous” is unfounded for general, day-to-day purposes.
i.e. if someone responds badly because I’m clearly mildly schizophrenic, but doesn’t respond equally badly to me being clearly male, then obvious this isn’t any sort of sane risk-reward evaluation. It’s just a bias against a group of people (“the mentally ill”)
Overall, I think we agree that Certain Sorts of weirdness are judged in a way that is inconsistent with the actual risks (i.e. me kissing my girlfriend doesn’t harm anyone, but people still object to lesbianism)
I think we also agree that cultures all have “tolerable” sorts of weirdness, such as the Silicon Valley dress code (but good luck getting away with that as a lawyer or a doctor!)
And I think we agree that some cultures, while still having taboos, have fewer taboos. Equally, that while all cultures have norms, some have more inclusive norms.
So if we define weirdness as simply “violating social norms or taboos” then we can see that, yes, weirdness does get a negative reaction. Yet you say that “weirdness alone isn’t damning” and I’m not sure what would constitute this sort of “quintessential weirdness”.
Is there genuinely some other aspect of behavior you’re looking at, or are you just exploring how weirdness ties in to cultural taboos and social norms?
Eh, I’m mostly bouncing ideas around; I was originally annoyed by the lack of strength in Caplan’s argument—and I still don’t think it’s very solid. But also I’m interested in how norms and judgements work in general, and have been jotting down a few ideas that could make another post. I’ve also somewhat revised my opinion as to what extent humans are tolerant of weirdness; I guess Caplan primed me to think of economics and daily life and business models, not gender and sex issues, a more touchy area.
Maybe we could call:
WeirdA = “surprisingly different” WeirdB = “violates social norms”
And I agree that humans don’t tolerate WeirdnessB (pretty much by definition), and Caplan’s argument is that innovation requires WeirdnessA, and I’m saying that how much WeirdA imples WeirdB depends of the society (and the topic at hand).
(I don’t think there’s much confusion left at this point, this is a big discussion for such a small blog post).
Doesn’t seem to be any confusion, thanks :)
Hopefully I was helpful in revising your opinion to include other areas of behavior :)