Losing Faith In Contrarianism

When too many people try to adopt the contrarian position at once, it’s no longer contrarian. Mavericks become the new consensus-following herd. If everyone tries to outsmart each other by adopting novel or obscure contrarian positions, it leads to player-versus-player environments where the froth and chop of memetic war makes winning even harder.

When too many people try to adopt the contrarian position at once, it’s no longer contrarian. Mavericks become the new consensus-following herd. If everyone tries to outsmart each other by adopting novel or obscure contrarian positions, it leads to player-versus-player environments where the froth and chop of memetic war makes winning even harder.

This brings me to the single most obvious notion that correct contrarians grasp, and that people who have vastly overestimated their own competence don’t realize: It takes far less work to identify the correct expert in a pre-existing dispute between experts, than to make an original contribution to any field that is remotely healthy.

Windsor did not achieve superior results by going against the grain at every chance. Stubborn, knee-jerk contrarians follow a recipe forcatastrophe. Savvy contrarians keep their minds open, leavened by a sense of history and a sense of humor.

The first thing to realize is that it is both difficult and time-consuming to fully understand new ideas and evaluate them on their own merits. Sometimes, it is  socially risky  as well. As such, people will often instead evaluate the  intellectual legitimacy  of new ideas. 

A contrarian isn’t one who always takes the opposite path just for the sake of it. That is simply a conformist of a different sort. A true contrarian is one who reasons independently, from the ground up, based on factual data, and resists pressure to conform.