The descriptive part is great, but the prescriptive part is a little iffy. The optimal strategy is not choosing to be “radical” or “conformist”. The optimal strategy is: do a Bayesian update on the fact that many other people are doing X, and then take the highest expected utility action. Even better, try to figure out why they are doing X (for example, by asking them) and update on that. It’s true that Bayesian inference is hard and heuristics such as “be at such-and-such point on the radical-conformist axis” might be helpful, but there’s no reason why this heuristic is always the best you can do.
The descriptive part is great, but the prescriptive part is a little iffy. The optimal strategy is not choosing to be “radical” or “conformist”. The optimal strategy is: do a Bayesian update on the fact that many other people are doing X, and then take the highest expected utility action. Even better, try to figure out why they are doing X (for example, by asking them) and update on that. It’s true that Bayesian inference is hard and heuristics such as “be at such-and-such point on the radical-conformist axis” might be helpful, but there’s no reason why this heuristic is always the best you can do.