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[You can take] an authority defying position [that you] can share with like-minded folks and which might later lead to glory, while avoiding most of the accuracy-reducing costs of disagreement: be contrarian on questions, not answers. (More)
People love to discuss and argue, but usually not on topics where everyone expects everyone to agree. Instead, it is the prospect of disagreement that gives energy and life to most conversation. Even if your conversation partners nod in enthusiastic agreement, they expect that others out there would not so easily agree.
Sometimes people agree with majorities and at other times they agree with minorities. When they take the latter route they often proudly claim that this shows they are motivated mainly by truth, as that explains their willingness to suffer disapproval from a majority.
But in fact, taking a minority position can show your independence and defiance, and it can often get you more attention, which you can use to show how likeable, clever, and articulate you are in the way that you take your contrarian position. Also, sometimes a minority is especially grateful for your show of loyalty to them. And you may hope for larger reputation gains if you are later proved right for taking a minority, relative to a majority, stance. Thus it isn’t at all obvious that being contrarian in this way reliably shows one’s truth-orientation.
As the above quote indicates, there is another kind of contrarian, who instead of taking unusual positions on familiar questions, focuses on unusual questions. Contrarians of this sort are less likely to be wrong and to cause the larger world to go wrong in listening to them. And they contribute more to an intellectual division of labor, wherein we all specialize on different mixes of topics, and then share our conclusions with each other.
But while a topic contrarian seems to contribute more to our all becoming better informed on everything, topic contrarians gain far fewer advantages from their stance. Human conversations tend to follow a norm of sticking to whatever are the current common topics, and so those who speak to other topics are mostly ignored. For example, in policy worlds, there’s a saying that there’s no point in releasing a white paper on a topic that hasn’t been in the news in the last two weeks.
So while audiences often listen especially attentively to position contrarians, they may not even hear a topic contrarian. Which means they are much less likely to notice how likable, clever, or articulate you are about that. Few will see your talking about a weird topic as showing loyalty to them. Yes, you might later gain reputation if your topic later becomes more popular, but usually folks will just see you as bad at following fashion.
I thus conclude that topic contrarians can better argue that their stance suggests a truth orientation, as they gain so much less in other ways.
Position Vs. Topic Contrarians
I wonder whether the unpopularity of topic contrarians is related to the fact that it is much easier to introduce a topic in a discussion when one can connect it to the preceding (or at least some earlier-discussed) topic.
Sure, you can advocate a minority position to show how clever and independent minded your are.
You can also signal how clever, interesting and unlike all those merely disagreeable people who just defend the wrong side of the debate by being a topic contrarian. Indeed, you simultaneously signal how you have interesting things to say and novel thoughts but aren't so gosh as to get people upset or start arguments by advocating views that are socially disfavored.
Indeed, I'd actually go so far as to say this is the *more* acceptable and status conferring route. I mean compare the social status of someone who does ig nobel winning type research (topic contrarian) to someone like Charles Murray (issue contrarian). Compare being really into the physical security of elevators or building your own languages or even genetically engineering humans to be aquatic where you might get a ted talk with, say arguing for challenge trials or suggesting school isn't teaching useful skills. Or the whole cottage industry of intellectualish books (freakonomics, mathematics of love etc..) that show the public some topic or set of questions they hadn't before really thought about is interesting.
Also, I think your own posts suggests the opposite. Your posts suggesting you take the ideas that some UFOs could be aliens seriously (issue contrarianism) was social status costly while your posts using your model about hurdles for intelligent life plus lack of evidence of grabby aliens (topic contrarianism) was a social status boon.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your distinction or maybe your defining topic contrarianism much more narrowly but, ultimately, being into unusual topics mostly might fail to interest others while contariarian issues advocacy has a large built in set of critics who often just call you dumb without considering your reasons.