How to Think for Yourself • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#111

Post by username90 » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #82

username90 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping quiet about things only helps so much. People can feel if you question them or not. I mean, there are two workers, A is always excited about everything his manager suggest and do while B mostly keeps his thoughts to himself. Who is more likely to get promoted?

I mean, your example literally assumed that independent minded person will be low status which implies low impact. In any case, the dichotomy between A and B is beyond false dichotomy situation. The range of possible decisions and behaviors warry quite a lot. But yes, having good relationship with manager definitely helps your career. It typically does not require being excited about absolutely everything.

Everyone starts out as low status, so that scenario is the most important to analyze.

> But yes, having good relationship with manager definitely helps your career. It typically does not require being excited about absolutely everything.

Do you think that questioning your manager doesn't make it harder to have a good relationship with him? As I said keeping quiet about it doesn't work, most people know when you aren't agreeing with them even without telling them.

My point about excitement is that a person will lose a lot of energy and excitement when they do things they feel are wrong. Others can feel that.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#112

Post by hnracer » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #50

Like many of pg's essays there's an unqualified glorification of being independent. For example the suggestion that hiring conformist people is something that just happens. It seems more likely that companies more or less consciously hire such people, because a company where everyone thinks independently would be one where everyone wants to do something different, and nothing would get done, no one could agree on any…

I can think of some other reasons why employers value degrees:

1- conventional mindedness, funnily enough. Everyone else has been doing it that way so I should.

2- protecting career risk in case the new hire sucks. You can point to their qualifications and say that anyone would've made that decision

3- "I have a degree, I'm good, and I subconsciously want to hire people that ticked the same boxes as me"

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#113

Post by gregwebs » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #109

gregwebs wrote: post #102

IMHO PG's best essay since thinking for yourself is a complex topic that underlies many of his previous essays yet is explained so well here. A few things stuck out to me that could have deeper explanations: I suspect conformity has just as strong of a relationship with childhood environment as genetics. Ironically heavy-handed parents trying to create conformity can create rebels. Loving and understanding parents ca…

Another idea for instilling independent thinking in kids is to troll them: https://imgur.com/a/GLDrD In the comics Calvin doesn't catch on, but in my experience if you keep making the tale taller and taller, kids will start to figure out what's going on and be more alert in the future.

I agree, it is one of the great joys of parenting :) I think it helps a lot with imagination, curiosity, and "fastidiousness about truth" since they need to keep evaluating whether what you tell them is true.

A deeper variant of this that I do is focus more on giving them incorrect justifications for things. This helps with evaluating the reasons given for why something is true rather than the idea itself.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#114

Post by username90 » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

hnracer wrote: post #108

username90 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming large groups of people can't think for themselves is both short sighted and insulting. But it is mostly true, at least in management positions. Independent-minded people by definition question authority so they are mostly relegated to low status positions. If you don't question authority then you aren't independent-minded. And no, questioning some authority figure just because some other authority figure t…

It's possible to be independent minded and not question management. You know internally that it's all BS (because of your independent mindedness) but don't vocalize it because you're employing a political strategy to which that would be harmful.

Lets say that your drive to be liked by your manager makes you express X more support for his ideas, or express X less arguments against them. Then the person with a more supportive base line will still appear more supportive even after this motivation adjustment.

You can work around this by just being better than your peers at manipulating feelings, but it is still a handicap.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#115

Post by goalieca » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

I see the title. I only read the comments. /s

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#116

Post by weeboid » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

How to Think for Yourself

"Read this article" :D

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#117

Post by fallingfrog » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #98

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 pr…

Okay, but how do you have a lively discussion but also have nobody’s ideas getting shouted down? Would a lively discussion involve everyone agreeing with one another?

Edit: people are apparently not getting my central point here: it might be that, if you’re a conformist, you see a whole bunch of people nodding and saying roughly the same things and think, “this is a lively discussion!” But then see people disagreeing with you and think, “what happened to this once lively community?”

But, it could also be that we’re talking about something else. But the parent post is too vague for me to tell. I sense a more concrete suggestion coming on? Maybe related to the power of downvotes to silence dissent?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#118

Post by postingpals » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:11 PM UTC

In many ways this is just an extension of his 4 quadrants of conformism essay, so I'll argue with it using ideas from that essay. I would argue that people vastly over estimate their degree of independent mindedness because although it's easy to be independent minded in one field, especially if it's one you have been studying for a while, it's incredibly easy to fall victim to common sheep-like mentalities about any other topic you're not an expert in. Just ask non-economists what they think of the economy, all of their answers, if not outright incorrect, will be canned answers stolen directly from whatever media outlet they use.

This is important to note because literally everyone does it. I don't actually know of a single person that has not done this, and I personally have done it so many times I question my degree of independence and free will all the time. So what can we say about this? Is no one independent minded then?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#119

Post by username90 » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

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…

PG just wrote down what he thinks about these things, sharing thoughts isn't a waste of time.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#120

Post by adnzzzzZ » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #98

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 pr…

4chan handles this perfectly, but it comes with a general unpoliteness and freedom that most people don't like. However, those aspects of it are exactly what keeps the community fresh and constantly re-inventing itself, because you need cultural artifacts (memes, ways of interacting, etc) to be generated that oppose whatever the prevailing narrative is, and those are harder to be generated if everyone has to be polite all the time.

So the solution is fairly simple: remove upvotes so the conventionally-minded can't decide on what's being discussed, and don't moderate based on politeness, but on subject. 4chan has lots of moderation, but it's mostly focused around which board the discussion should go in, i.e. if you want to talk politics go to the politics board, don't do it in the video games one or your thread will be deleted. This is obviously a solution that doesn't work for most people, but that's the price you have to pay if you want actual independent-mindedness in a community.