Post-Singularity Contrarianism

How to be an original thinker in a rapidly evolving world

To truly win in the post-singularity, or at least stay sane, you must strive to be a contrarian.

A contrarian, by definition, is someone who takes the opposite side of the popular opinion. This definition is incomplete, as it should come with the added, unsaid, modifier at the end of the definition - “And is eventually right.”

That is why contrarians are valuable & well-respected eventually, when they’re proven right. It’s not simply enough to take the opposite side of what everyone else is saying. You must also be right.

Warren Buffet is someone whose name comes up when you google “Famous Contrarians”, along with investors like Bill Ackman & Michael Burry, but outside the finance & investing circles, here are some contrarian thinkers today that I find deeply interesting.

Peter Thiel - First outside investor in Facebook in 2004, where he owned 10% of Facebook for $500,000. He made over a billion dollars in Facebook’s IPO, 8 years later. He’s a gay man who supported Trump during his first run - back when it was taboo in tech to do so. He single-handedly funded Hulk Hogan’s case against Gawker and put the anti-tech gossip magazine out of business, back when it was taboo to go against mainstream journalists. If all this isn’t enough, he started Thiel Fellowship which funded Vitalik Buterin, Dylan Field (CEO of Figma), Shahed Khan (Founder of Loom), Ritesh Aggarwal (Founder of Oyo Rooms), Lucy Guo (Founder of scale.ai), and others.

The best place to learn about Peter thinks about the world is through YouTube, and by reading his book “Zero to One”.

Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji is someone who has always been directionally right on many things that seem crazy to have been correct on, in hindsight. From covid lockdowns and mask mandates, to teaching a class about Bitcoin when it was trading below $100, Balaji has been right more than he has been wrong, and he technically hasn’t been wrong even once. His current prediction is that the US would enter hyperinflation soon, so he’s one person to closely follow.

YouTube is a great place to find out about him. He’s on X, as well as on Substack, and his book “The Network State” is a must-read.

Naval Ravikant - Many people know Naval as the founder of Angelist, but he has also written legendary tweet threads like “How to get rich (without getting lucky), back when it was taboo for leaders in tech to philosophise online - compared to now, where every founder has to have a social profile and tweet at least 3X a day to remain relevant. Naval’s uniquely gifted in boiling down his thoughts into neat, tweet-sized insights, and almost all of them are worth reading if you have the time.

He’s available on X, as well as frequently talks on Airchat- a platform he recently founded that I’ve previously written about. If you have the time, listen to his podcast appearances on The Tim Ferris Show & Joe Rogan Experience. Once you’re done, listen to them again. Then read The anthology of Naval, available for free online.

There are many others I can keep on naming, but if you’ve never heard of the above people, I can assure you that going through their talks, books & podcasts would be enough to drastically improve your life.

You won’t agree with everything they say, but then again, if you agree with everything someone says, you’re not thinking for yourself, which is what this essay is about.

To be contrarian, you must first learn to be an original thinker.

II.

One of the best ways to be an original thinker is to force yourself to think critically about things. It sounds simple but the vast majority of people simply don't do this.

They don't do this, because for most things, it's not required.

It's wasted mental effort. There's a "way" to do most things, to think about things, and this has worked, usually for a long time. Very few people should question this "way", as doing this vocally, you risk getting attacked by the majority.

To make things worse, despite you questioning the conventional "way", despite you trying to think critically, despite you going against the grain, spending your mental energy & time, risking your reputation and social status, you might find out that you were wrong all along. Being an NPC, which I’ve written about previously, has tremendous advantages, and that’s why the vast majority of people are.

Thinking that’s truly original is uncomfortable, painful even, which is why most aren't likely to engage in this regularly, but it is vital for arriving at the truth.

I was reminded today about how painful this process is, despite priding myself as an avid practitioner. I was browsing reddit instead of programming, as one does, and one of the posts was Logan Paul pushing his dog off his boat -

For the uninitiated, Logan Paul is a YouTuber who is also a WWE wrestler and infamous for various controversies such as upsetting people of Japan, tasering dead rats, and launching a crypto project (Crypto Zoo) that took money from people but never delivered.

Seeing this man push his dog off a boat - who could've suffered massively and likely injured because of the propellers under the boat, and then seeing him pretending to care & jump off the boat to rescue his dog and saying "I was so afraid", is enough reason to immensely dislike him.

The comments on Reddit show that my initial reaction to this, is exactly similar to everyone, with people raising their voices and wondering why WWE doesn't just fire him.

I've trained my brain to consider the opposite of the base case for a long time, to the point where it is now automatic. I was asking myself questions such as,

"Maybe, he does need the views. Maybe he ensured that the propellers won't hurt his dog in some way, like testing beforehand or training his dog correctly. Perhaps, it wasn't intended and the hand we see in the video wasn't pushing the dog - but was intended to catch him. You can hear them shutting off the engines immediately, which may indicate that this was a planned stunt as…"

While this automatic process was running, I suddenly felt sick for thinking this way.

Clearly, this person doesn't deserve the benefit of my doubt. Who am I trying to defend? And why? The poor helpless dog could've died or got seriously hurt, and instead of joining the crowd on Reddit, I am looking for reasons to defend him?

It was uncomfortable, but I realized something important while doing this.

What I was doing - was necessary. I was trying to think critically by considering every perspective, and I'm sure that even if this was uncomfortable, I'll be closer to the truth at the end of the process rather than reflexively adopting the opinion of the crowd.

Later in the day, I saw Logan Paul tweet a slow-motion video of the act, denying that he pushed his dog.

If you look at the video, it’s less clear that he pushed his dog, given that now we see a different pair of hands there. So, despite the uncomfortable nature of trying to think deliberately about the opposite of what everyone was saying, that was closer to the truth. If I had continued, I probably would’ve slowed the video down eventually and figured this out myself.

If I hadn’t trained my mind to do this, I would’ve been a part of the mob trying to cancel him and get him fired. Instead, I was not, which is going to be very important in the coming years when it’s your friend or co-worker, facing a mob trying to cancel them. Would you try to score in-group points with the mob, or would you think originally?

If it’s the latter, you must start training today.

III.

It is possible to train your mind to do this - and it involves reframing your mindset to deliberately think differently.

If you're prone to always thinking negatively, as many people are, training your mind to be positive is a fantastic exercise to improve your overall quality of life. You might meet someone and immediately think negatively of them. This doesn't always happen, but it can and does happen especially if the person looks different / talks different / says or does something that is dislikable.

In such a scenario, if you train your mind to think thoughts like "What's good about this person? What can I learn from them? How can I help them? How can they be better?" and at first, you might have to be deliberate about thinking positively like this. You have to deliberately pause your default mode of thinking, or let those default thoughts flow by and switch to this mode deliberately. With time, it becomes automatic.

This works for people as well as for situations where if you're prone to always thinking of situations as negative - you can reframe them to a positive in your mind.

It also works when you're understanding or learning something new - and it is especially powerful in that context. When you're learning something, it's easy to assume you have really understood it when you're just reading through something. But try to catch yourself from moving on - really think about what you're learning, apply it to different contexts, figure out what it is connected to, figure out where it came from, figure out why it's important and how it can be useful.

In the case of math, it can be useful to consider every theorem as something that doesn't exist in a vacuum but usually connects beautifully to some other thing and it's especially rewarding when you figure that out by yourself. It's hard to do this, and requires time and mental effort, but by the end of this process you will have learned more thoroughly than most of your peers.

In almost all situations, it’s always a great idea to invert - take the opposite side, and then start from there. It’s uncomfortable, as shown above in the Logan Paul fiasco, but inverting is one of the best ways to get closer to the truth, especially when the inversion is taboo. That’s how you become contrarian, and if you’re intelligent about patiently seeking the truth, you’ll be closer to a contrarian who is right.

IV.

In 1968, a study known as The Smoky Room experiment, examined the phenomenon of conformity and group dynamics. Participants were placed in a room filled with smoke, and researchers observed their reactions to the situation. The study found that when individuals were alone, they were more likely to report the smoke and seek help. However, when they were in a group, many remained passive, influenced by the behavior of others who seemed unfazed by the smoke.

In the video, you can see people leaving the room immediately when others aren’t there, but when there are, they stay there for longer than 20 minutes.

I don’t know what I would’ve done if I were in that room. It seems trivially easy to claim that I would’ve walked out immediately, but I’m not certain I would have. This is just one study among many others that highlight how dangerous and universal conformity is, but post-singularity, it might be even more dangerous.

Humans bond as a tribe by sacrificing a scape goat. From Galileo to Zuckerberg, we’re experts at bringing out the pitchforks and pointing it at one person.

Right now, we’re doing it with someone who may or may not deserve it. But overall, cancel culture & mob justice thrives because we bond over collective violence against an "other”.

In the best case of AGI, where humans have unlimited time to engage with each other online, collectively, it’s going to be very important to think for yourself.

Mobs with unlimited leverage can not only cancel someone online, they can send a fleet of autonomous drones to your address.

Deepfakes which are indistinguishable are currently considered dangerous because of misinformation. AI generated videos are also catching the same allegations. However, the harm from both of these technology will be minuscule compared to the harm that collective groups will inflict on each other, driven by pure hate, hysteria & a pinch of apathy.

One person will be able to spin up 100 AI entities, generating the mass illusion of consensus around a certain topic, and before you know it, you will adopt the same opinion along with everyone else around you. Most of these will be harmless, but many will be clearly aimed at some motive of spreading hate against a person / group, and coupled with mimetically fit truths, these messages will virally divide & conquer the cyberspace.

Thus, polarization & divisiveness will continue to accelerate in a world where no one thinks for themselves, but everyone tries to maximize group-think. The only way to prevent his is to be a contrarian, to consider the perspectives which are taboo to your in-group, to take the side of the scapegoat, to search for truth and advocate for unity.

Are you voting for Trump? This question is important, not for you, but for everyone around you. The best way to know whether you’ve been captured by ideology is to receive different answers to the above question from your friends. If all your friends support the same political candidate, it’s time to make new friends - even if you consider that uncomfortable. Thinking of the other side as “evil” is the fastest way to halve your own intelligence & critical thinking capability. This is why participating in politics & identifying as being part of a political party, in general, have a bad effect on your critical thinking skills. You have to adopt all the beliefs of your party to be a true supporter, which means, you by-default, aren’t thinking for yourself.

Another question to ask yourself is - If all your friends are hanging out together with you, what are some things you believe in, that you would not consider saying? This works especially when your friends are diverse and hold different political beliefs, because even then, there are some things that you wouldn’t consider vocally speaking about. If there is none, i.e, you believe exactly what everyone else believes, you’re not thinking for yourself.

To think originally in a rapidly evolving, not only helps you win, it helps your group win as well, despite you going against them in the short term.

This is because truth, by definition, will affect your group regardless of what your group believes. By exposing and recalibrating group beliefs to the truth, you are helping them - even if they go against you. If you expect a bomb to go off in your dorm- but your friends all believe that bombs simply don’t exist, the only to save your friends is to vocally berate them for their delusions and dragging them out of the dorm.

Belief is powerful, especially when beliefs are instrumental, but truth is what you live in. In a constantly online world where everything that’s crazy and unusual fights for your attention, and a constant stream of crazy and unusual keeps getting pumped into the news cycle, being a contrarian is the best thing you can do for your mind.

So, dare to think independently. Dare, despite the opposition, to be original.

Speak your truths, however inconvenient they may be. For in doing so, you contribute to a post-singularity where ideas are tested, refined, and ultimately, where the collective can thrive on a foundation of well-examined beliefs.

This is how you truly win & stay sane in the post-singularity—not just for yourself, but for everyone around you.