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‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

commoncog.com

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Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#111

Post by dwd »

jakeogh wrote: post #91
dwd wrote: post #25

It unfortunately doesn't work because people in general don't get that knowledge progresses and what may previously been considered a truth, no longer is - and that should be how it works because we learn and grow as a civilisation.[1] But it's not - people don't accept that what they were told previously is no longer correct. A good example is the current arguments around mask wearing. By originally saying don't wea…

Why not wear the masks forever?

In places like Japan you are expected to wear a mask if you're sick, so there's no reason that shouldn't become standard in the West.

More important could be that workplaces require staff to either stay home and not infect the office when they have the flu, or wear a mask if they have to go in.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#112

Post by huffmsa »

On the contrary, I've found that one of the worst things you can do when demonstrating / deploying a machine learning model is to show the underlying prediction confidences.

You can be right 95% of the time, but critics will only remember, and fault the whole system, because of a single, incorrect, but high confidence error.

Which would be reasonable if that erroneous prediction had fat tail consequences, but in cases I've had this happen, it has not

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#113

Post by fapjacks »

atq2119 wrote: post #90
opan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free Software involves both licensing and ethics.

Parent poster clearly meant licensing in the sense of accreditation for the people involved. I.e. there is no formal barrier to entry, which is great on the one hand, but it also means that there are pretty unqualified developers out there.

Anybody who's done hiring will attest that "formal barriers to entry" (i.e. accreditation via certifications and degrees) say very little about a programmer's ability to produce valuable output. Hiring would not be "the big problem" in tech if one could simply outsource the hiring decision to such a formal barrier to entry. But, since formal barriers to entry are demonstrably useless signals specifically for hiring programmers, we resort to all sorts of other superstitions which, when put together, at least bestow a visceral sense of being able to divine a person's ability to produce valuable output. People and companies all seem to have their own preferred superstitions, almost none of which include your "formal barriers to entry".

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#114

Post by dsr_ »

CarbyAu wrote: post #46
BeetleB wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, when faced with a fork in the road, it's important to choose. Often it doesn't matter which - but if you vacillate, and especially if you are leading - then you can fail by not choosing. The number of times people think they are at such a fork where non-action is worse than any action is an order of magnitude more than in reality. In my experience, most of these cases are reflective of a social i…

Not sure where I heard it but: "No decision is a decision." IE Decide to put off your decision until later. People agitating for everyone to "voice their opinion now" are often looking to form a mandate from those opinions.

In the lyrics of Rush's _Freewill_:

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#115

Post by kashyapc »

redelbee wrote: post #8

I think a better headline for the post would have ended with “... doesn’t work that well for me.” The author tried the “strongly held” strategy, found it difficult, and decided to justify another strategy of asking “how much are you willing to bet on that?” instead. Why not both? After all, deciding “how much to bet” is probably one kind of fairly strong opinion. It’s at least strong enough to bet on. Betting strateg…

On how do you tell apart a bad opinion from a good one, the ancient Stoics (lately I'm quoting them more, as I'm immersed in their writings) have some thoughts here. For the longer version, you have to read their works[1], but to give an extremely simplified version, without butchering the concept:

The Stoics have this notion of 'impression' and 'assent'. It goes like this: An impression of walking strikes you. But only after you told yourself "yes, it is fitting for me to walk", thus giving your 'assent' (agreement) to it, will you actually go for a walk. Of course, we know that we don't actually verbalize like that; as it all happens too quickly. Their goal here is to not evade responsibility to shape ones own judgements, opinions, and even emotions "in accordance with reason".

Thus, the Greek philosopher Epictetus' favourite way of describing the Stoic project is: "making correct use of mental impressions".

            - - -
The same technique of impression/assent is also used, along with others, to diagnose "passions" (Greek, páthos—it's a loaded word that is used to categorize many emotions, including the debilitating ones). Thus, for the Stoics, the cause of any "passion" is an "error of judgement". What sort of error? Mistaken system of values—there's a ton more to this, but I have to skip it for brevity's sake. FWIW, some reading recommendations on this topic on a thread here[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22990579

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#116

Post by rezeroed »

Ah, good. I've always thought this saying to be utterly stupid. I was geared up for a rant, but now I see from the article that the guy who came up with it has done a poor job of distilling his approach into a catchy saying. His approach is basically agile; his catchy saying sounds more like bluster and bravado until you look stupid.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#117

Post by jt2190 »

jrockway wrote: post #77

> this is not how the human brain works To some extent, to succeed in the modern world, you have to override your instincts with a thought-out response to things. Whatever heuristics we've built up over thousands of years are interesting, but some of them don't apply anymore. (If you were a prehistoric human and you encountered a beehive, you'd eat all the honey. But now you can get hundreds of beehives worth of hone…

> "Strong opinions weakly held" means "argue your point but sometimes you're going to lose.

The definition is not about arguing with others (so there’s no “looser”), it’s about arguing with yourself to avoid being wedded to poorly thought out points of view. From the article (emphasis mine):

> Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the “strong opinion” part. Then – and this is the “weakly held” part – prove yourself wrong.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#118

Post by zbentley »

austincheney wrote: post #79
jrockway wrote: post #77

> this is not how the human brain works To some extent, to succeed in the modern world, you have to override your instincts with a thought-out response to things. Whatever heuristics we've built up over thousands of years are interesting, but some of them don't apply anymore. (If you were a prehistoric human and you encountered a beehive, you'd eat all the honey. But now you can get hundreds of beehives worth of hone…

I have found that in software that is wrong. If you want to succeed in software you need to do what is most popular which largely follows innate human behavior. Unlike many other professions there is no licensing, accredidation, or common ethic which means there is no standard baseline of competence. This is visually explained when thinking about the difference between success and capability and then viewing that dif…

> If you want to succeed in software you need to do what is most popular which largely follows innate human behavior

I totally disagree. Many of the most valuable, respected, and successful software engineers I've encountered have evinced deep distrust of what is currently popular in the field. Their avoidance of (and advocacy for continued avoidance of) new/trendy software fads, particularly on the frontend, enabled excellent engineering, and instilled a powerful attitude of pragmatism and productivity among their colleagues.

It's anecdata so take it with a grain, but in organizations big and small I've observed that some of the most successful and capable engineers are distinguished by antipathy towards popularity-driven engineering.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#119

Post by zbentley »

xtiansimon wrote: post #109

> “Why does the framework not work very well?“ Framework? That’s just silly. It’s a turn of phrase that helps you change your attitude or approach a problem from a new direction. “If at first you don’t succeed...” I suck. I’m never going to try again! Haha. I didn’t know the origin of the phrase, and that’s a testament to its creativity. As a life long learner, I found it useful in ways not related to the origin stor…

> Framework? That’s just silly. It’s a turn of phrase that helps you change your attitude or approach a problem from a new direction.

While you're welcome to interpret it however you wish, one of the main points of the article is that it is a methodological framework laid out by Paul Saffo[1], but that most people ignore the framework and focus on the catchphrase.

1. https://www.saffo.com/02008/07/26/strong-opinions-weakly-hel...

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#120

Post by justin66 »

jt2190 wrote: post #117
jrockway wrote: post #77

> this is not how the human brain works To some extent, to succeed in the modern world, you have to override your instincts with a thought-out response to things. Whatever heuristics we've built up over thousands of years are interesting, but some of them don't apply anymore. (If you were a prehistoric human and you encountered a beehive, you'd eat all the honey. But now you can get hundreds of beehives worth of hone…

> "Strong opinions weakly held" means "argue your point but sometimes you're going to lose. The definition is not about arguing with others (so there’s no “looser”), it’s about arguing with yourself to avoid being wedded to poorly thought out points of view. From the article (emphasis mine): > Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the “strong opinion” part. Then – and th…

> The definition is not about arguing with others (so there’s no “looser”), it’s about arguing with yourself to avoid being wedded to poorly thought out points of view.

That's one definition, but here is an exercise. If you meet someone who identifies with the phrase "strong opinions loosely held," ask yourself whether they're an argumentative asshole.

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