Normies vs Statistical Normality

There are many different kinds of people. We hear about and from suburban professional Americans ("normies") a lot because a lot of our shared stories about what is going on are about them.

Microeconomically rational agents with similar beliefs and preferences will usually act similarly, and a statistical normal can emerge from this. But sometimes the details of a situation mean that the best thing to do looks very unusual.

Normies aren't microeconomically rational. Their main motivation is that they feel safe if they resemble some shared idea of normality, and scared otherwise. This is a cybernetic perceptual-control process. Normies will often justify their own actions, and reward and punish others', on the basis of what is normal. This leads to ganging up on people who aren't trying to follow the herd, even if they aren't hurting anyone.

If you're holding onto an autonomous perspective, you're alienated from opposition to autonomous perspectives. That doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. It just means you're in a conflict. It's helpful to be able to understand and predict the actions of people who are trying to hurt you, but it's not helpful to misinterpret a conflict as a disagreement you ought to try to reconcile.

Normies claim to be a larger and more powerful coalition than they actually are by conflating their conformity target with statistical normality. This can make it seem more dangerous or surprising than it is to be out of sync with normies.

This line of thought is a response to Lulie Tanett, who wrote on Twitter, "if you’re alienating or unable to relate to normal people, you’re doing intellectualism wrong". I asked her what she meant by normal, and she responded:

- steady job
- nothing that looks like a mental illness
- nowadays typically working class

1 in 5 Americans have a diagnosable mental illness, and 2 in 5 do not participate in the labor force at all. Accurately modeling this situation can make your story about what's going on deviate a lot from the normie narrative. But most people are excluded from the normie narrative. So being deviant by normie standards can bring you closer to the statistical average and help you relate to more people than a normie can!

5 thoughts on “Normies vs Statistical Normality

  1. M

    "Microeconomically rational agents with similar beliefs and preferences will usually act similarly, and a statistical normal can emerge from this."

    this part doesn't seem right.... when I saw it the first time, my intuition was that if normal means having an autonomous perspective, then a convergence might not necessarily produce a statistical average. (can't tell if major or minor sticking point and don't know if it's answerable with reference to its original context)

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  2. anonymous

    Where are you getting the idea that "most people are excluded from the normie narrative"?

    >1 in 5 Americans have a diagnosable mental illness, and 2 in 5 do not participate in the labor force at all.

    By your own numbers, these people are not in the majority.

    There seems to be a disagreement between you and the person on Twitter about the class of a "normie." FWIW, I'd say everybody who is not very poor or very rich can be a normie—i.e., people who call themselves middle class.

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  4. Craken

    Her response was incomplete. Your interpretation also has problems.
    Instead of "steady job" she ought to have said "people with a steady job or retirement from such." Now, we're not excluding 40%--maybe 20%.
    She said "nothing that looks like a mental illness," which you interpreted to mean a "diagnosable mental illness." She meant, I would bet, a common sense definition of mental illness, not any state of mind caught in the ever-widening diagnostic nets psychiatrists weave to impress their ingroup and alleviate their collective penury. Per common sense, the number is probably closer to 10%.
    And she's correct that the working class is mostly protected from the pathological propaganda consumed by the semi-educated classes--who vastly outnumber the educated classes.

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