The book reads like two books, but it could have read like one, if the second half had got onto the systemic and structural aspects of contrarianism
Large groups being contrarian about the same thing at the same time, such as global warming scepticism, is inefficient , because other possiblities are left unexplored.
High quality contrarianism requires a lot of investment into a small number of areas. David Icke style contrarianism about everything is inefficient because it is too thinly spread.
I'm taking my central example of good individual contrarianism to be the kind of people who become experts on some disease they have , whereas even a mainstream expert is spreading their time across N diseases, not just one.
You can also increase the global likelihood of correct contrarianism just by having a really good distribution, avoiding the problem of clustering on particular issues -- it simply raises the odds.
Quality in contrarianism is by no means all about individual smatuness: effort and luck are also important.
Being a good contrarian individually, and organising contrarianism globally are very different issues. "How can I be a good contrarian" and "how can we increase the overall baseline of correct contrariansim" are different questions.
All societies are very far from optimising their contrarianism. Bay area rationalism has a problem if its own, in that it encourages clustering around a short list of issues.