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They don’t adopt, they espouse. They talk a lot, they signal with a few purchases (or purchase attributes) but they rarely turn them into embodied lifestyle habits. Actually *adopting* a value in that deep sense is approximately as hard as quitting smoking in the median case
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Replying to @vgr
I mean but people constantly adopt values that are incredibly bad at forming coalitions. Countless radicals get persuaded by some set of arguments and end up basically dropping off the social graph because they don't have any in with anyone else as a consequence.
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Hmm. I don’t know. Most of these minority idealists die in obscurity. People who model highly contagious and imitible behaviorswhile strongly embedded have a much more decisive impact on the evolution of norms. Idealism typically only has an impact when it acquires guns.
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Idealists constantly test and implement alternative tools, organizational forms, social norms... doing the development necessary before mass adoption. I could point to tons of things now in mass use that started and could only start amid a small circle of self-isolated idealists.
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Example. Melvil Dewey invented the Dewey decimal system and hanging file folder (impactful). He was also a noted anti-Semite. Possibly there was a connection within his life. But most people who use the Dewey system and hanging file folders did not also adopt anti-Semite values.