Notions of weirdness vary a lot. Also, individual instances of weirdness will be visible to different people. Both these challenge the idea we should bother having aggregated measurements of weirdness at all. People’s sensitivity to weirdness also varies, sometimes in complicated ways. Some people are actually more receptive to ideas that sound weird. Other people will believe if someone is both successful and weird they must know something others don’t. Others are willing to ignore weirdness if allied with it. This is all very complex.
I think our social brains already do a good job of keeping track of all these important details. Trying to consciously score different traits, beliefs, and actions for an aggregated weirdness score seems like a recipe for anxiety and disaster to me. I don’t think it’s worth worrying about. Inauthentic strategies like this are too hard and unpleasant to sustain.
Notions of weirdness vary a lot. Also, individual instances of weirdness will be visible to different people. Both these challenge the idea we should bother having aggregated measurements of weirdness at all. People’s sensitivity to weirdness also varies, sometimes in complicated ways. Some people are actually more receptive to ideas that sound weird. Other people will believe if someone is both successful and weird they must know something others don’t. Others are willing to ignore weirdness if allied with it. This is all very complex.
I think our social brains already do a good job of keeping track of all these important details. Trying to consciously score different traits, beliefs, and actions for an aggregated weirdness score seems like a recipe for anxiety and disaster to me. I don’t think it’s worth worrying about. Inauthentic strategies like this are too hard and unpleasant to sustain.