Contrarianism Is Downstream From Being Right

Are you a contrarian? Or just a fool?

The question to ask is:

Are you MORE OFTEN RIGHT than others?

If not — then you’re just a fool, aren’t you?

Of course there’s the question of payoff

Maybe your scepticism makes you unduly reject prevailing wisdom sometimes,

And maybe it makes you susceptible to sometimes give too much credit to the unlikely

But maybe those times that you are RIGHT, where everyone else is wrong — is when you reap the bulk of your REWARDS

Of course, this doesn’t excuse poor epistemology, does it?

If you say a lot of stupid shit — you’re still a stupid fool

Or just disingenuous

It’s still poor epistemology. Truth matters

HEDGING your bold contrarian takes is quite enough to absolve you

Doubting is good

It’s undue confidence which is the problem

It’s the problem of the blind conformist masses, against which contrarians rebel

But it’s a problem of rebels too, of contrarians too — who often rebel but robotically — with none of the EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE necessary to challenge the consensus

Consensus is consensus for a reason

And let me repeat: if your outcomes are inferior to others — then your contrarianism is still just foolishness

You CAUTIOUSLY entertaining a midwit conspiracy theory still renders you a stupid fool

If you’ve nothing to show for your scepticism — then you should perhaps stick to the mainstream, and the experts

Needless to say, I believe most contrarians are fools

It’s the same call that freed us from delusions of religion, and brought about scientific and technological revolution

It just has to be immediately tempered by reality and scepticism… scepticism about the scepticism itself

I believe we have been having too little of the latter, recently, in our culture

Hence you have erosion of completely reasonable standards and the death of trust,

combined with extreme proliferation of gurus, mountebanks, charlatans, grifters, and utterly amoral actors

Temper your contrarian impulses with reality,

by trying to actually make your contrarian ideas WORK, in the real world,

And temper your scepticism with more scepticism,

Be sceptical of your sceptical impulse

And temper your sense of the exceptional with constraints of the average

Don’t let the average keep you from exploring the exceptional

but don’t let the exceptional poison your idea of what the average, therefore the most likely, is

And temper your taste for extraordinary with even stronger taste for extraordinary evidence

And finally, temper your fucking arrogance by putting your money where your mouth is,

and by holding yourself accountable to every statement you ever uttered

and of course, to put it even more simply,

maybe TRY BEING MORE RIGHT THAN OTHERS, first

and MORE RIGHT where it matters,

if you can’t pass that test — then maybe you’re just a stupid fool, and contrarianism is not for you

Nocturnal Contemplations