Here is a simple model that suggests that non-conformists can have more influence than conformists. Regarding a one dimensional choice x, let each person i take a public position xi, and let the perceived mean social consensus be m = Σiwixi, where wi is the weight that person i gets in the consensus. In choosing their public position xi, person i cares about getting close to both their personal ideal point ai and to the consensus m, via the utility function
A possible extension involves multiple issues where where changes in weightings get transferred across issues. In such a set-up you should be conformist on issues you care less about and non-conformist on those you care more about, everything else equal. You gather weighting/reputation through your conformism on the former issues and spend them through your non-conformism on the latter.
If human cognition is evolved to follow norms, or more precisely to select which of a competing set of norms to follow, it's unclear doing a weighted sum to discover how norms evolve is a good model. That is, most ai default to m without any reflection on personal preferences. And how things evolve is ai latches on to a new m prime proposed by a particular faction.
So you point may be valid. That non-conformists have more influence than conformists. But if the mechanism is the influential non-conformists is the one who wins at coalition politics in getting followers to believe in a new m prime, it's not clear your math is modelling what's going on.
When you say that is what happens when everyone simultaneously solves what exactly is the formal claim? is it just a Nash equilibrium or a coalition proof Nash equilibrium or something else?
Your hypothesis seems plausible, and should be straightforward to model in the framework that I've given here - anyone want to give it a try?
A possible extension involves multiple issues where where changes in weightings get transferred across issues. In such a set-up you should be conformist on issues you care less about and non-conformist on those you care more about, everything else equal. You gather weighting/reputation through your conformism on the former issues and spend them through your non-conformism on the latter.
C.f. "Spend your weirdness points wisely".
https://www.lesswrong.com/p...
Also didn't you say somewhere that you didn't have a view on most isdues? Seems to fit with this.
I'm not modeling norm formation or coalition politics. I would of course be interested to see such models of this sort of situation.
I only calculated a Nash equilibrium. It may satisfy other properties, but I'm not making any claims about that.
If human cognition is evolved to follow norms, or more precisely to select which of a competing set of norms to follow, it's unclear doing a weighted sum to discover how norms evolve is a good model. That is, most ai default to m without any reflection on personal preferences. And how things evolve is ai latches on to a new m prime proposed by a particular faction.
So you point may be valid. That non-conformists have more influence than conformists. But if the mechanism is the influential non-conformists is the one who wins at coalition politics in getting followers to believe in a new m prime, it's not clear your math is modelling what's going on.
When you say that is what happens when everyone simultaneously solves what exactly is the formal claim? is it just a Nash equilibrium or a coalition proof Nash equilibrium or something else?