Don’t Be An Asch-Hole

Develops the thought experiment from his 'Asch story': imagine waking to learn your strongly-held belief was the plant in an alien Asch conformity experiment — everyone else 'saw through' it as obviously absurd. Which of your beliefs survive that? Uses the antebellum-slavery case (a Southerner brought to the present would abandon pro-slavery views even without new facts) and asks whether a smart person could get the benefit via pure thought experiment — invert the absurdity heuristic (imagine the OPPOSITE seems absurd and watch what justifications your brain generates). Applies it to his own abortion vs. vegetarianism views, a Christianity dream, and a commenter's motivational reframe (imagine everyone else with your ADHD/depression outperforming you).

Quality 65 · Strong. Strong floor. A clever, memorable rationality tool — the 'is this belief just conformity? invert the absurdity heuristic' intuition pump is genuinely useful, and the slavery example lands. Held at the Strong floor because it's short (1,217 words) and meandering (riffs on several applications of his own prior story) rather than a developed argument; comparable to SSC-172 Virtue of Silence (70) but slighter.

Claude’s paradigm shift 48 · Moderate. Moderate (48). The 'Asch-test your own beliefs / invert the absurdity heuristic' framing is a mildly fresh intuition pump, but conformity and the absurdity heuristic are established rationalist furniture.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Minor (2). A within-blog rationality tool; the quoted 'live your life so the Asch debriefing won't be humiliating' line circulates a little, no material reach.