How to Think for Yourself

This reminds me, a long time ago I saw a couple of videos of Steve Jobs at a retreat for Next Computers (in the early phase of the company); now can only find an edited version. I was surprised to see how market analysis his argumentation was driven; while they created something great, he didnt sound independent minded but more like subject to his customers.

> I do feel like articles like this are mostly used to cover up and excuse hostility, bad work environments and Jobs esque management styles.

I don't think so but I definitely dislike the mentioned points as well and probably this should be more unambiguous. At the same time, hostile and toxic work environments tend to encourage aggression towards regular employees with different opinions. Therefore I find the article quite encouraging.

No - Plato, Descartes, and Locke all referenced actual history when formulating their ideas about politics - PG doesn't even mention an example of an "independent-minded" person! - and at least Descartes and Locke heavily cited the past generations of political philosophers that came before them.

It is also worth noting that at least Plato/Descartes/Locke were investigating deep questions of political philosophy with little precedent and which is almost impossible to observe empirically. By contrast, PG has an entire century's worth of psychology theory and experiments that he is ignoring out of pure arrogance.

Yeah, I mean a LOT of people - scientists, software developers, etc - already struggle to do things correctly, let alone in a novel way. There's huge value in work that is not groundbreaking.

For the sciences for example: Repeat or (re) confirm someone else's theories. Repeatability is one of the most important parts of science, and if all the scientists only pushed to do something new, instead of double-checking others' work, science would become something ego-driven and vague.

For software development (my and most people on here's jobs), 99% of it is not building something new. Build something good first. Quality standards, testing, accessibility - how much software do you know that actually does that right?

I've worked with so many people during my consultancy stint (myself included I guess?) that would always pursue the latest and greatest - they wanted to innovate, they wanted something fresh and new. So rarely did they spend more than two years at any one customer. The worst offenders would swoop into a company, advise technology X, then fly off again without ever having to live with the consequences.

And that does not make you a better developer. It scratches your personal itch maybe, but you've caused potentially millions in lost productivity and the inevitable rewrite by more sane developers further down the line.

I'm trying at the moment to do things Right. Build software for the next ten years, instead of the next six months. I'm struggling a bit because the project is big and I'm just a solo developer, but I like to think the mindset is right. I mean I'm not doing anything new, it's just a CRUD application in the end, but it's important that it's done right due to the sheer amount of data (width, not so much amount).

The article mentions politically extreme politicians being niche conformists, point #7. I find the difference between an extreme politician and moderate one is that the moderates advocate for their constituents, which requires two things: listening to their constituents and compromising on political ideals to attain an interest desirable to their constituents.

Extreme politicians instead tell you want your opinion is. That opinion is often a form of populism because otherwise nobody would give it the time of day. Extremes are only relevant when they have a following.