Four Quadrants of conformity by Paul Graham

New idea July 2020. See his comment on why “cancelling” is blowing up in colleges now.

This comes from http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html (July 2020)

This article read aloud with image made by the speaker is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrjglIEwbtI

Four Quadrants of conformity

One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism. Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system whose horizontal axis runs from conventional-minded on the left to independent-minded on the right, and whose vertical axis runs from passive at the bottom to aggressive at the top. The resulting four quadrants define four types of people. Starting in the upper left and going counter-clockwise: aggressively conventional-minded, passively conventional-minded, passively independent-minded, and aggressively independent-minded.

I think you’ll find all four types in most societies, and which quadrant people fall into depends more on their own personality preferences than beliefs prevalent around them[1]

Young children offer some of the best evidence for both points. Anyone who’s been to primary school has seen the four types. The fact school rules are so arbitrary…