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Comment by mef | Hacker News Reader

Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?
If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you just think whatever you're told.

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.

Is it a possibility that someone has controversial opinions but could be unafraid of expressing them to a group of peers?

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It's possible, yeah, but you have to be particularly insensitive to both verbal and nonverbal rejection cues in order to be willing to do it more than once.

Ever pitched a controversial opinion to a group of peers? You'll find that a lot of people look down at their hands, or away from you, or at each other with a blank/expectant/fearful face.

Or downvote you to hell.

This can depend a lot on the particular peer group and the opinion holders position within it. Plenty of people will state proudly that they hold certain controversial views (often borderline racist etc) but they tend to surround themselves with people who either hold those views themselves or by people who are meek enough to accept the views without resistance so the social penalty doesn't apply.

you have to be particularly insensitive to both verbal and nonverbal rejection cues

I think that might be me. I have to figure out a way to test this.

Usually they look me in the eye and argue with me. Which I'm ok with.

This is addressed here: http://www.paulgraham.com/resay.html

"The Conformist Test doesn't consider a third possibility: that you simply don't care what anyone thinks."

True enough. But considering how very hard it is to disentangle yourself from the thinking of your time, someone who comforts himself with this thought is almost certain to be mistaken. It's not enough to be an ornery cuss. You have to be Voltaire, and then some.

>"Is it a possibility that someone has controversial opinions but could be unafraid of expressing them to a group of peers?"

Sure, but if you want to be able to do it more than once you need to be...

1.) Useful enough to someone that the people you offend or scare can't simply discard or destroy you.

2.) Content with a count of friends that hovers near and will almost certainly reach 0 repeatedly.

3.) Prepared to deal with people who feel righteous glee in taking the most extreme misinterpretations of your words possible and maliciously applying them to you and yours.

4.) Plastic enough in your thinking that in the face of new evidence you're able accept not just that you were wrong, but that you've hurt and alienated people over things you have now reversed on.

Related to this, one thing I find interesting is that I actually have to filter myself far more when speaking anonymously online than I do in person.

I get the impression that online communications tend to be scored more often than understood. It's up or down, agree or not, run across a hot-button keyword and idea is instantly categorized and binned as this or that.

Face to face, when you can pair a threatening idea with a calm and friendly face or something which sounds wrong with a visible intelligence people tend to more amenable to understanding.

Friendships build on bitten tongues aren't much use anyway.

Answer to your question: michaelochurch ?

.. and other(?) Aspies, such as myself.

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