Further, weirdos have a much wider distribution of success, with many living miserable lives, and a few living great ones.
If the miserable lives are more likely that the great lives, it could mean that being a weirdo is bad on average; and yet we need the weirdoes to discover the potential new better ways of human existence. So it’s a trade-off between (guaranteed) short-term unhappiness, and (hypothetical) long-term happiness.
And, maybe, diminishing returns—if you have too many weirdoes, the paths they explore will often be the same (also because they copy each other), so the short-term unhappiness scales linearly, but the long-term research does not?
...which sounds analogical to the role of mutation in evolution. An improvement is only possible by mutation, but most mutations are harmful, so the organisms try to prevent mutation as much as possible, which could be seen as “hypocritical” if we anthropomorphise the species, given that the only reason they exist is that their ancestors have mutated. And yet.
I can’t fully pass an ITT, especially as conservatives tend to reject Utilitarian-style analysis in the first place. I think the underlying intuition is that it’s OK if the average wierdo suffers, as long as the really valuable ones get the benefit for most of the normals (or the representative normal maybe—it’s hard to pin down whether this is median, mean, some middle percentile, or what).
So, yes—weirdos are harmful on average, but beneficial often enough that we should discourage too many or too weird but not fully eliminate them. Kind of weirdly, this kind of diversity (willingness to accept a range of pleasantness and value of lives) is truly anathema to progressives.
If the miserable lives are more likely that the great lives, it could mean that being a weirdo is bad on average; and yet we need the weirdoes to discover the potential new better ways of human existence. So it’s a trade-off between (guaranteed) short-term unhappiness, and (hypothetical) long-term happiness.
And, maybe, diminishing returns—if you have too many weirdoes, the paths they explore will often be the same (also because they copy each other), so the short-term unhappiness scales linearly, but the long-term research does not?
...which sounds analogical to the role of mutation in evolution. An improvement is only possible by mutation, but most mutations are harmful, so the organisms try to prevent mutation as much as possible, which could be seen as “hypocritical” if we anthropomorphise the species, given that the only reason they exist is that their ancestors have mutated. And yet.
I can’t fully pass an ITT, especially as conservatives tend to reject Utilitarian-style analysis in the first place. I think the underlying intuition is that it’s OK if the average wierdo suffers, as long as the really valuable ones get the benefit for most of the normals (or the representative normal maybe—it’s hard to pin down whether this is median, mean, some middle percentile, or what).
So, yes—weirdos are harmful on average, but beneficial often enough that we should discourage too many or too weird but not fully eliminate them. Kind of weirdly, this kind of diversity (willingness to accept a range of pleasantness and value of lives) is truly anathema to progressives.