or: Invisible Social Consensus is Real And Can Hurt You

Related: Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them, both in terms of the claim being made, and in that I am certainly being Alice and/or Alex here.

I think the biggest blind spot most people have about how they make decisions, both for what they do and what they care about, is the passive role of social pressure. Active social pressure is annoying, and most people recognize it, and can, if they so choose, push back. There are several problems there; you have to recognize that social pressure and social reality are separate from physical reality, and you have to notice what you yourself want, and distinguish that from what you’re told to want, and you have to actually find it in you to push back. Not easy. But the benefits, at a certain level of intelligence, become obvious: Doing only the things your environment rewards is a bad way to accomplish anything novel, and every improvement is a change. For that and other reasons, many people achieve this. (And good for them!)

But that's not actually the end of pushing back against social pressure. It's a good start [...]

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
April 14th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rBa5YcPeFTwWfu8G7/everyone-has-a-plan-until-they-get-social-pressure-to-the

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Social Pressure To the Face” by Czynski

LessWrong (30+ Karma)