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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#91

Post by hinkley »

andi999 wrote: post #81
meheleventyone wrote: post #4

It feels like independent mindedness and conventional mindedness is a false dichotomy and that most people are somewhere between each depending on the subject and context. Moreover if you subscribe to the dichotomy you're probably doing a poor job of creating an environment that encourages people to be independent minded. At the organizational level it feels completely normal that it will become more conventional wit…

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 think if you pick apart Jobs’ vision statements, you can infer that he decided long ago on a type of customer he wanted to sell products to, as did Bill Gates.

While it’s news to me that he was numbers driven, I’m not necessarily surprised. Those numbers didn’t make him pander (much), while in other hands numbers often do.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#92

Post by hnracer »

He hit the nail on the head but I think the framing of the investor's objective is not complete. The search for alpha is usually not about finding ideas that everyone thinks is bad but are actually good, although that does sometimes happen. Instead it's about finding totally undiscovered perspectives that lead to new insights into the market structure, market data or underlying market mechanisms that nobody considered before. There's large numbers of Easter Eggs that need to be unlocked. It's secret knoweledge, an unknown unknown.

The world of start-ups is a little different. It's more rare to have a totally novel idea that nobody has thought of. In that space I think his framing is spot on.

Regardless, there's enough similarities that I think it's fair to group them together.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#93

Post by rorykoehler »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #71
lonesword wrote: post #23

Did anyone find the article too long? Don't get me wrong - the first few paragraphs were engaging and thought-provoking. The rest of the article looked as if it could be condensed to two paragraphs. This is not a criticism - I'm just curious to know if I was bored because I have a short attention span, or if the amount of novel/useful content in the article plummeted sharply beyond the first few paragraphs.

Like many of PG’s essays about psychology or society, the problem is that this essay is basically an aphorism or a self-help book: there’s no logic here, no citations, no connection to facts. It’s just a bunch of feel-good BS for libertarian-minded tech workers. I get the impression that the length is (at least unconsciously) making up for the absence of rigor. A few paragraphs of “stuff that has no real argument but…

I’ve been pretty critical of PG’s essays recently but I thought this one hit the spot. Go into twitter right more and search for “great reset” for a perfect mirror of this paragraph for example:

> Without this fastidiousness about truth, you can't be truly independent-minded. It's not enough just to have resistance to being told what to think. Those kind of people reject conventional ideas only to replace them with the most random conspiracy theories. And since these conspiracy theories have often been manufactured to capture them, they end up being less independent-minded than ordinary people, because they're subject to a much more exacting master than mere convention.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#94

Post by rorykoehler »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #85
nickthemagicman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue the same things about Plato or Descartes or Locke philosophy. But a lot of things have been built upon their wisdom and thinking.

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…

He gave a few examples of independent thought.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#95

Post by karlerss »

base698 wrote: post #80
peterlk wrote: post #8

Excellent article > When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself "Is that true?" This is one of my favorite things to do, though the list of people who will talk to me again after I do it is very short. (Edit: To be extra clear... While this is a bitter pill - I do not like it when others do it to me - I do find it to be very effective for reinforcing good faith in close, trusting relationships. I also…

He mentions in the next sentence: "I'm not suggesting that you impose on everyone who talks to you the burden of proving what they say" > When you hear someone say something, stop and ask yourself "Is that true?" Don't say it out loud. I'm not suggesting that you impose on everyone who talks to you the burden of proving what they say, but rather that you take upon yourself the burden of evaluating what they say.

I have found it useful to ask "why do you think this true?" instead. When there's enough time of course.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#96

Post by Consultant32452 »

austincheney wrote: post #89

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…

I think you have these two backwards. By definition a populist is promoting the rights and power of the people against privileged elite. It's no surprise the privileged elite consider populist an insult. And it's the moderates, the privileged elite, that have to instruct the proles about what's best for them.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#97

Post by yawboakye »

Being able to divide people into independent-minded and conventionally-minded is itself conventional thinking. It's also sadly narrow. There is no one I know who is independently minded in all disciplines of life or, likewise, conventionally minded. In sports, there's no one as independently-minded as the top stars (read reviews by their coaches and teammates for a sense of this). But in other disciplines, especially religion, they're are amost the most conventionally minded: adopting all sorts of rituals to solicit the help of God during the game.

This extends beyond sports. Descartes, arguably the father of modern philosophy, was a devout Catholic, even refusing to publish a paper after Galileo's declaration got him in trouble with the Catholic Church. If the soubriquet "father of modern philosophy" doesn't imply independent thinking, I don't know what else would. And then there's his Meditations on First Philosophy where he's severely blinded by conventional-mindedness to "discover" God as the first principle.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, someone writing about independent- and conventional-mindedness should at least take some pain to explain that in any individual you'll see both. That there are no independent-minded people nor conventional-minded people, but only in ways that we carry out our activities.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#98

Post by edw519 »

Another place where the independent- and conventional-minded are thrown together is in successful startups. The founders and early employees are almost always independent-minded; otherwise the startup wouldn't be successful. But conventional-minded people greatly outnumber independent-minded ones, so as the company grows, the original spirit of independent-mindedness is inevitably diluted. This causes all kinds of problems besides the obvious one that the company starts to suck

I can think of no better example of this than Hacker News.

Years ago, independent-minded people came together for the liveliest "out of the box" discussions on the internet.

Eventually those people started to get shouted down until sadly, many of them left.

I wish I knew what to do about that. I imagine people way smarter than me have been struggling with this for some time.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#99

Post by username90 »

jonny383 wrote: post #79

The very premise of this article is an oxymoron. "How to Think for Yourself" (by reading instructions on how from someone other than yourself)

Someone who is already an independent thinker doesn't need this advice though. However someone who is a dependent thinker who see Paul as an authority figure could maybe listen a bit and become a tiny bit more independent than he were before.
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