A few months back, Peter Hurford made a post about weirdness points on the effective altruism forum. He argues:
Weirdness, of course, is a drawback. People take weird opinions less seriously.
The absurdity heuristic is a real bias that people — even you — have. If an idea sounds weird to you, you’re less likely to try and believe it, even if there’s overwhelming evidence. And social proof matters — if less people believe something, people will be less likely to believe it. Lastly, don’t forget the halo effect — if one part of you seems weird, the rest of you will seem weird too!
(Update: apparently this concept is, itself, already known to social psychology as idiosyncrasy credits. Thanks, Mr. Commenter!)
…But we can use this knowledge to our advantage. The halo effect can work in reverse — if we’re normal in many ways, our weird beliefs will seem more normal too. If we have a notion of weirdness as a kind of currency that we have a limited supply of, we can spend it wisely, without looking like a crank.
I think the idea of weirdness as a currency we have a limited supply of is not a good way to think about weirdness, and I would like to talk about why.
It is suggestive to me that most successful social movements have, well, a fair number of weird people in them. Objectivism has strange opinions on everything from altruism (bad!) to Aristotle (cool!) to roads (should be privately owned!) and an Objectivist became chairman of the Federal Reserve. Much feminist theory has been developed by communists and socialists; the concept of “intersectionality” essentially means that if you want to endorse the weird idea of gender equality then the weird ideas of anti-racism, anti-ableism, anti-poverty, and LGBT rights come as a package deal; pretty much every good feminist writer is a fat hairy dyke. Evangelical Christianity has achieved a fair amount of political power despite the existence of Quiverfull people. This could just be a correlation issue: maybe the social movements would all have managed to be even more successful if they’d dropped the not kissing until marriage, private ownership of roads, and awesome fat hairy dyke writers. But it still seems like minor evidence against weirdness points being important.
For private figures– by which I mean people who are effective altruists, but don’t write, lead a meetup, or speak to the media– I think there are two important considerations. First, weirdness is relative to your social group. Hurford mentions that “punk rocker vegans” are spending their weirdness points fighting lookism. This is true if you are a punk rocker vegan and everyone you interacts with wears khakis and plays basketball. However, most punk rocker vegans are friends with other punk rocker vegans. If they took Hurford’s advice and cleaned up and dressed in a mainstream fashion, they would be the weird ones and they would pay the price of weirdness for small benefit. Similarly, endorsing guaranteed basic income among my friends doesn’t cost me anything, because pretty much everyone thinks of GBI as a reasonable thing to advocate for.
Second, there is a legitimate concern about the effective altruism movement as a whole being perceived as a bunch of rich technolibertarian programmers. However, since we actually are a bunch of rich technolibertarian programmers, who are friends with a bunch of other rich technolibertarian programmers, if we attempt to minimize weirdness, we are going to minimize weirdness relative to, well, rich technolibertarian programmers. For instance, nowhere in Hurford’s post does he mention atheism, despite the fact that effective altruists are much, much more atheist than the general population and being perceived as anti-God makes it harder to reach out to religious people, who typically donate more to charity.
For public figures, I think it’s important to consider what your role is. People being interviewed may wish to project a We’re Normal Just Like You vibe. People leading meetup groups may want to be as neutral as possible in order to attract the widest possible variety of attendees. However, a lot of the public figures in the effective altruism movement are writers, and I suspect that– far from being a cost– being strange may actually be a benefit to writers.
Think about it. How often have you heard someone say “this writer is really original! Whenever I read them, I end up thinking about things in a new light. Even when I don’t agree, they’re always interesting”? Conversely, how often have you heard someone say “ugh, this writer keeps saying the same thing over and over again. It’s boring. I know what they’re going to write before I open the article”?
And then imagine that you mostly endorse positions that your audience already agrees with, positions that are within a standard deviation of the median position on the issue, and then you finally gather up all your cherished, saved-up weirdness points and write a passionate defense of the importance of insect suffering. How do you think your audience is going to react?
“Ugh, they used to be so normal, and then it was like they suddenly went crazy. I hope they go back to bashing the Rethuglicans soon.”
On the other hand, if you argue for weird things, you are acquiring an audience that is open-minded and interested in weird things, and they might be more likely to endorse the weird things you care most about– or at least consider them.
Finally, I’d like to talk about two last points. First, even if you endorse Hurford’s position 100%, you don’t have to stop being weird all the time. At the sex party, no one knows you’re an effective altruist. In the privacy of your own home, you should feel free to sign up for cryonics, date multiple people, and dress however you like. With some basic privacy protections, the Internet makes it easier and easier to have one identity that conserves its weirdness points and another that speculates wildly– or even multiple identities optimized for different social groups.
Second, Hurford completely fails to engage with the fact that some people can’t help but be weird. He says: “if you’re a guy wearing a dress in public, or some punk rocker vegan advocate, recognize that you’re spending your weirdness points fighting lookism.” But… not every guy wearing a dress in public (or, more crucially, everyone read as a guy wearing a dress in public) is doing it to fight lookism. It is possible to be weird for reasons other than politics. In fact, perhaps the majority of people read as men who regularly wear dresses are trans people assigned male at birth. Telling them “don’t be weird” is not saying “make slightly different fashion choices”, it’s saying “be in pain and hate your body for the rest of your life.” Similarly, dressing well and communicating in neurotypical-approved ways are harder for a lot of people with disabilities. I don’t think this discussion is complete without acknowledging that the tradeoffs are far steeper for some people than they are for others.
Thing of Things 
Eric S Raymond once argued that effectiveness in convincing people was improved by being very wierd in some ways but not at all in others.
‘Even when I don’t agree, they’re always interesting’ applies to him IMHO.
LikeLike
Here it is: http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-revenge.html
Under ‘The Accidental Revolutionary’ 7th paragraph
Tl;dr:
‘The trick is to sound challengingly weird but convey a reassuring aura of honesty and simplicity.’
LikeLiked by 1 person
ESR really has a lot of good useful notes on what it’s like to be charismatic scattered across his site and blog. I thought he was just an arrogant prick until I came into my own charisma, now I appreciate his willingness to talk openly about stuff that makes people think you’re an arrogant prick for talking about it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah. I often wonder whether he is trying to look more awesome than he actually is, or whether he is actually more awesome than I expect him to be. To err on one side is to drink his Kool Aid, to err on the other is to be excessively suspicious & doubtful.
LikeLike
ESR on this very topic, contra Alas: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1046 [cw: speaking ill of the dead]
LikeLike
Let’s not forget that sometimes someone is effective in spreading an idea because they take it absolutely seriously. Would Richard Stallman be more effective if he were less weird? That seems unlikely.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have a number of opinions to which most people would react rather indifferenly, but which would be considered extraordinarily strange here. I do not dare spell them out, even anonymously.
LikeLike
Aargh. You’ve made me curious now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Okay, I’m into astrology.
LikeLike
Assuming it’s tropical astrology, what’s your take on the precession of the equinoxes?
LikeLike
There is confusion regarding the meaning of “astrological sign”.
The confusion stems from the fact that each sign happens to share a name with a constellation.
By definition, the sign of “aries” is the slice of sky where the Sun appears to be during early Spring. This has always been the definition of “aries” since astrology began. The constellation of Aries is a distraction.
The concept of “Aries” allows an astrologer to say for example that “Mars is in Aries” meaning that Mars currently appears to be in the same slice of sky where the Sun appears to be during early Spring this year.
LikeLike
The confusion seems legitimate, though, given that astrological signs are the names of constellations, and were explicitly linked with them by the classical astronomers. It seems a bit revisionist to unlink them now, not to mention arbitrary — if the constellations don’t anchor the signs, then what does?
LikeLike
“if the constellations don’t anchor the signs, then what does?”
I just told you the definition of Aries, what more do you need?
“It seems a bit revisionist to unlink them now, not to mention arbitrary”
It is based on the observation of how the position of planets affects people.
I think that part of the problem is that people assume that astrologers are simpletons who only know that people born in a certain period of the year are supposed to be Scorpio or whatever. If that was all there is to astrology, then you’d expect astrologers to remain unaware that the stars are no longer where they used to be at a given time of the year until 21th century skeptics point it out for them. You may think that astrologers are deluded – that is a discussion for another day – but I hope you realize that astrology has always been a sophisticated, astronomically informed endeavor, which bears little relation to the BS of magazine columns.
The point is that there is no way that astrologers throughout history could have failed to notice the precession of the equinoxes, and if they decided that it is the areas defined by the position of the sun at different times of the year that matter, and not the constellations, it is because they noticed that it was the former that related to the observed influence of planets upon people, and not the latter.
Of course, if you don’t believe that astrology is even partly based on the observation of how the planets affect people, then *that* is where our disagreement lies.
LikeLike
By the way I can oh so much feel the weirdness points build up…
LikeLiked by 1 person
In case it isn’t clear yet, what defines the signs is the region of the sky covered by the image of the sun during a third of season.
Aries is the slice of sky covered by the image of the sun during the first third of spring.
Taurus, the middle third of spring.
Gemini, the last third of spring.
And so on.
This may seem useless to describe the position of the Sun itself (as opposed to just saying “middle of spring” or whatever), but it’s important relative to all the other celestial bodies whose images move across the signs.
LikeLike
@ ululio
This is fascinating. You’re right, it’s a weird belief here, but you seem like a reasonable person.
1. Is there any consensus about the mechanism that creates astrological effects? E.g., do people think it’s gravity / known physics, supernatural phenomena or something yet undiscovered? What do you think?
2. What’s your opinion on the state of the evidence in favour of astrology — where would you put it on a scale from “interesting, not implausible idea” to “observed in several large, well-designed studies with the same results”?
LikeLiked by 1 person
My question is not whether astrologers are “deluded”, but whether their claims are empirical, i.e. linked to something external and measurable. If the definition of “Aries” is just “a particular, arbitrary 30-degree arc the sun occupies at a certain time of year”, then astrology is not making empirical claims; it is merely defining its terms, and therefore its results, however it sees fit. Sterility doesn’t even rise to the level of delusion.
LikeLike
How timely: http://xkcd.com/1512/
LikeLike
Stillnotking: The empirical claims of astrology are about how the movements of planets affect people. The signs and other astrological concepts are defined according to the observed relationship between planets and people.
Astrologers decide that a certain point in the sky is the border of Aries because they *observe* that when a planet is on one side, it affects people in a certain way, and when it is on the other side, it affects people in another way. That’s where the definition of Aries comes from. It is ultimately empirical, and what makes it empirical is not whether it’s about constellations or times of the year, but whether it is based on things astrologers *notice* about *people* and their reactions to planetary positions.
By the way you seem to think that a season based definition of signs is more arbitrary than a constellation based one. You have it backwards upon this. Constellation are not something external and measurable, but entirely arbitrary grouping of stars. You can bundle together stars however you like. Seasons, on the other hand, are not negotiable.
Nita: I’m quite eager to answer those questions; I hope I’ll have time to post more comments later.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This may seem to contradict my previous comment, but…
We shouldn’t be discussing “weirdness” in general because:
There’s weirdness and weirdness.
In my experience weirdness is only feared if it ticks certain boxes, such as:
1 – Weirdness that is physically disgusting.
Example: being slovenly.
2 – Weirdness that implies you are a loser.
Examples: being slovenly. Making spelling or grammar mistakes while being a native speaker. If I say I’m a foreigner, suddenly all my linguistic mistakes are forgiven.
3 – Weirdness that violates the “sacred cows” of your interlocutor.
Examples: defending the Chinese political system among Americans. Defending astrology among rationalists.
4 – Weirdness that implies you must be a member of a group hostile to your interlocutor.
Example: if I tell a right winger that I’m vegan, they will suspect me of being a leftist. Yet they would hardly react negatively to a vegan who gives proof of being a right winger. Veganism is feared not for itself, but as a proxy for leftism.
5 – Weirdness that implies you belong to a non-hostile foreign group WHILE you’re partaking in activities reserved for members of a certain group.
Example: if I go to a goth concert dressed as a different specific subculture (not directly opposed to that of goths), all the goth there will hate me for ruining the dress code. However, the same people will have a neutral reaction to me in any other setting.
On the other hand, weirdness that can be explained simply by assuming that one belongs to some unfamiliar group, is not particularly feared. There is what I call the “foreigner effect”: people actually liking foreigners even though they are so very weird.
LikeLiked by 5 people
(also, no, I’m not a Chinese communist)
LikeLike
Are you at least a right wing vegan?
LikeLike
Conclusions: since it helps to get your weird points accepted if you present yourself as coming from a different group from that of your interlocutor (that is, a foreigner), it might in some cases be a good idea to just be yourself instead of pretending to be the “normal” person (that is, one belonging to the same group as your interlocutor) which you are not.
As long as you mind tidiness, dress codes and sacred cows.
LikeLiked by 1 person
(scratch “dress codes”, that does conflict with the way I used dress codes to make an example in the previous comment, although what I mean is that you may have to temporarily masquerade at a superficia visual level just for the sake of people’s estethic sensibilities without trying to outright “pass”)
LikeLike
I should have said: as long as you mind tidiness and sacred cows. And generally not being mistaken for an outright ideological enemy.
LikeLike
“Evangelical Christianity has achieved a fair amount of political power despite the existence of Quiverfull people. ”
Actually this illustrates your point about the relativity of weirdness. When Evangelicalism was catching on, in the late 70s early 80s, it caught on in a specific ethno-cultural demographic, and for those people the weirdness was actually a comforting, familiar weirdness. The Quiverful thing came along much later and by then the founder effect of the wholesome weirdness prevented it form tainting the brand.
Another example of the relativity of weirdness is military hairstyles, which at times have been quite out of phase with broader society. in one setting they are the norm, not weird at all; in the other they stand out like Superglued spike Mohawks.
I think the arresting weirdness, for that time, of the initial hippy movement was a big part of its appeal.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There’s something interesting going on here. I agree that most likely the majority of people who read as men and wear dresses are trans women. However, most cis women in the US don’t actually wear dresses regularly (and some never do once they start making their own fashion choices), and at least according to my observations, neither do most trans women. And that doesn’t even seem to correlate with whether they read as male of female, which would make sense if it was done for the purpose of gender signaling (i.e. if you read as female anyway, you may wear anything, but if you otherwise read as male, and don’t want to be accidentally misgendered by strangers, it would make sense to unambiguously signal female gender by attire). An average human, regardless of their sex and gender, just wears jeans, T-shirt, and some sort of shoes with a flat sole (on a side note, that seems to be more true for white people than for other ethnicities, especially people of East Asian decent). So for most women, trans or cis, the ban on dresses would boil down to “on those exceedingly rare occasions when you make a fashion choice different from your typical one, don’t make it,” which is still oppressive, but not to the same magnitude.
But of course there are people (like me) for whom wearing dresses is an imperative, and overriding it is only acceptable in short term. Furthermore, it’s not unthinkable that within the conservative cluster of culture there are cis women, for whom this imperative is just as strong. So there has to be some factor governing the preferred gender expression and the strength of this preference, which isn’t gender itself. But if that’s the case, we can’t assume that the dynamics and consequences of overriding it necessarily mirror those of misgendering.
LikeLike
I’m curious about this. I’m not cis-by-default, so I have no trouble understanding trans people. But seeing dressing in a specific outfit, as opposed to having a different body, as an “imperative” is puzzling. There isn’t any genetic coding for “wants to wear a dress.” How do you think this preference would have expressed itself if you had grown up in an alternative universe/culture where no-one of any gender wore dresses, and you’d never seen one growing up?
(Forgive me if the questioning is insensitive.)
LikeLike
This is very puzzling for me as well, I was unable to find the answer in any literature on gender that I’ve read, and I don’t trust introspection on this matter. Introspection tell me that of course all my preferences are final values in the utility function, and they developed independently. Even the slightest amount of behaviorist self-reflection tells me that the probability independently developing preferences among hundreds of axes that just so happen to lie within the cluster of Western (ugh, can we have a better word for it? I like modern Chinese and Japanese fashion much more than American, and when I say “Western” I mean “not that of indigenous tribes and traditions inherited from the era before globalization”) standards of femininity is so low it can be safely dismissed. If I was thinking of myself as someone else, I would assign a very high probability to the idea that if I grew up in an isolated tribe where the only gender difference in attire is that men pain their body with vertical stripes, and women paint horizontally, I would be wanting to paint horizontal stripes, even though my subconsciousness replies “are you crazy? I want to wear dresses, not horizontal stripes.” Furthermore, I find it rather plausible that every time I think “that would fit me much better if I was shorter, had narrower shoulders and smaller feet” it’s just my rationalization for the actual subconscious thought “go to hell with your clever ideas, I’m a woman.” However, I’m either cis-by-default, or I thought about reductionism so much that I rationalized all my gender identity qualia away, so I don’t seem to have any sense that I can easily label “this is gender I belong to.” I don’t rule out the possibility that I might be transsexual, but I I have conflicting evidence here. On one hand, whenever I signal femininity by attire, and get referred to as male, it eeks me out a bit, while female references feel much better, although not as genuine (which is probably the closest I get to having gender qualia. However, I don’t know how to disambiguate it from “I tried to look feminine, and they didn’t compliment me on my skill of doing so by using female references, that sucks”). On the other hand, the preference for feminine gender expression didn’t manifest itself until late teens / early twenties, I’m more or less neutral towards wearing women’s pants and shorts, in general my hobbies and preferences cluster around nerdy male, in erotic content I prefer visuals to narrative, and I would see no point for myself in transitioning. Also, few times I used women’s single-occupancy restroom and fitting rooms because of a very high social pressure to do so (I’m sorry, but I have a limited budget of social defiance), and that didn’t invoke any feelings.
So that leaves me with the feeling that I just have fashion and look preferences, understanding that I’m clearly subconsciously optimizing for expressing extreme femininity, and no understanding why.
LikeLike
I’m so glad you pointed out the differing costs of ‘not being weird’. As an autistic person, a lot of my weirdness is high cost to suppress, or just not suppressable at all.
Another thing is that sometimes being openly weird primarily helps other weird people. Saying ‘I don’t wear a bra because of my sensory issues’ tells other female-assigned people that not wearing a bra because they have sensory issues is an option. Stimming in public shows people who are suppressing stims, and those who can’t help stimming, that stimming in public is an option. Even if others react badly to me, seeing someone act weird despite bad reactions can help someone else feel brave enough to do the same.
LikeLike