YCOMBINATOR PROTIP: if your examples include "tech CEOs" you are hopelessly out of touch with the problem

It's funny how every techbro talking about censorship dives immediately for The Enlightenment as this awesome period where white males got to argue with each other in coffee shops without noticing how inequality was so great that the working classes in the colonies universally rose up, how rapacious corporations exploited the triangle slave trade or how the conditions whereby white intellectuals did whatever the fuck they wanted led directly to the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire. Because here's the thing: Ain't nobody talking about "censoring ideas" they're talking about consequences.

This is the reason universities are always full of angry kids: it's the first time they've had any power whatsoever and they know in their bones that it's likely the last. Sure, blame the tattletales for propping up the moldering bones of civilization and don't notice that it's been the steady advancement of economic radicalism that has given the United States a Gini coefficient between Djibouti and the Ivory Coast. "Drown the government in a bathtub" is absolutely the guiding principle of those reactionary conformists.

The entire argument - white, born-privileged rich dude - is that people are sick of white, born-privileged rich dudes getting to do whatever the fuck they want. More than that, they're sick of libertarian sociopaths insisting on their right to do whatever the fuck they want in the name of "independence" when everything they do crushes the shit out of people who didn't get to study in Florence.

And they all know - much as they did when they were in college - that there's fuckall they can do to stop you. They all know that you could run them over in your Tesla X and never spend a day in jail. So they can dunk on you on Twitter. That's it. That's all they got.

Yeah. While you were busy insisting that information wants to be free and moderation is terrorism, you created an ecosphere full of angry disenfranchised poor people howling at you. That's your bed. Lie in it.

When measuring conformism, of course, you have to say with respect to what, and this changes as kids get older. For younger kids it's the rules set by adults. But as kids get older, the source of rules becomes their peers. So a pack of teenagers who all flout school rules in the same way are not independent-minded; rather the opposite.

Since one's quadrant depends more on one's personality than the nature of the rules, most people would occupy the same quadrant even if they'd grown up in a quite different society.

I think these statements contradict each other. On the one hand, the source of rules to which you are conformist or independent depend on your peers — your social context, if I may — and on the other, your "conformist—independent identity" is somehow independent of that society? Unless the claim is more that people sort themselves into social circles based on their alignment. But in that case, the customs protecting free inquiry haven't been weakened; Paul Graham has just accidentally sorted himself into a conventionally-minded circle.

Instead, I'd claim that one's alignment on this chart can vary significantly based on their social context. I find that I've shifted from "passively independent" to "actively independent" towards my parents as I've matured and become independent from them. In my research lab, I am pretty comfortable staking strong opinions and disagreeing with my advisor on technical issues, but when the topic is about what I need to do and when I need to do it by, I am much quieter as I'm her student and she holds that power over me.

Further, vocal support by active independents for social norms that allow independence of thought might look a lot like active conformism. And, perhaps it is, since one's "conformist—independent identity" depends on those social norms! But that doesn't mean that those advocates otherwise make active conformist choices.

Since Paul left the exact social context he's thinking in vague, I can't really say a lot more about what he's thinking about. I will say that the situation at universities is complex; administration has taken a lot of power from faculty, but perhaps those faculty have been hoisted by the petard of their independence, which makes cooperation difficult at times and prevents them from using their power effectively. (Leaving aside the possibility that PG is instead discussing the situation of assholes being allowed to be assholes, as nobody ought to defend that position.)