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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#141

Post by k_sze »

karlerss wrote: post #95
base698 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sound like the classic "How Do You Know?" question in Theory of Knowledge.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#142

Post by jimbokun »

Garlef wrote: post #110

> An essay that told people things they already knew would be boring. You have to tell them something new. I think there's something off about this statement: A lot of people enjoy watching a new marvel movie once or twice a year while the movies themselves are more or less reiterations of the previous ones. People seem to enjoy the repetition. The same seems to be true for essays: People enjoy finding their own thou…

> A lot of people enjoy watching a new marvel movie once or twice a year while the movies themselves are more or less reiterations of the previous ones. People seem to enjoy the repetition.

The success of the Marvel movies is obvious in retrospect, but nothing like them had ever been done before.

Thor, Iron Man and Captain America were not considered among the popular Marvel Characters. Spider Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four had already been licensed by other companies, but no one cared to do the same with what became the foundation characters of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Having a cinematic universe where major characters had their own movies, plus movies where they banded together, was common in comics, but never on the big screen.

Keeping the characterizations largely true to the comics, when many directors had wanted to make them more "sophisticated" or "adult", also displays independent minded thinking.

Would anyone have predicted a sci-fi romp with a talking squirrel and walking tree the general public had no familiarity with would be a massive success?

Making Thanos the protagonist of the "Hero's Journey" in the climax of the whole series I think was a bold decision.

There are many other ways these movies were bold and creative and, yes, independent minded, leading to success that would have been impossible with conventional thinking.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#143

Post by jyriand »

goto11 wrote: post #88

Fun observation that everybody in this community consider it positive to be "independent minded". But the author seem to fall into the same trap at the end: When I wrote "The Four Quadrants of Conformism" I expected a firestorm of rage from the aggressively conventional-minded, but in fact it was quite muted. They sensed that there was something about the essay that they disliked intensely, but they had a hard time f…

Also:

> There may even be a phenomenon like Dunning-Kruger at work, where the most conventional-minded people are confident that they're independent-minded, while the genuinely independent-minded worry they might not be independent-minded enough.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#147

Post by Agreed99 »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #131

PG sure has been on a kick about how brilliant of an independent thinker he is in a sea of conformity. It's clear in all of his writing that he's perpetually beating around the bush about some current itch he has, I wish he would just come out and say it with out pretending to be a deep thinker: > Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? I mean, taken outsi…

Agreed. He obfuscates his point behind emotionally pompous British semantics.

His orthodox of privilege was obviously a public lovers quarrel with Thiel (who was, around the same time, also ranting like a god-headed buffoon in essays to the tune of “the rubes need masters! villainous cackle” on blogs around the web).

They have little information advantage, except in the form of ephemeral financial capital. Human tradition states “rich person = extra special” so we rubberneck at them.

Beneath the pretentious veneer it’s contemporary businessmen. Let’s see them resolve longstanding issues in society and science.

Wagging business success in the face of people who weren’t born yet isn’t terribly novel and their real output isn’t that useful to the future.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#149

Post by piscisaureus »

dijit wrote: post #39

So, I might have a controversial opinion here. My mother raised me to think for myself, it was a heavy emphasis of my upbringing and important for her. However I'm now in situations where the world is divided and asking questions (in order to make my own mind up) is considered some kind of admission of guilt for being part of the "other". For example: Asking someone why they think immigration is good/bad. If it's a b…

> However I'm now in situations where the world is divided and asking questions (in order to make my own mind up) is considered some kind of admission of guilt for being part of the "other". For example: Asking someone why they think immigration is good/bad. If it's a belief they hold, I'm interested in knowing the thought process and making my own conclusions based on something I might not have known. But the act of asking the question makes the person, who may not have put too much original thinking in; quite defensive.

It may be a matter of knowing when to stop. My personal experience is that most people will try to answer even sensitive questions when you approach them with genuine interest and make some effort to formulate questions in a way that doesn't imply some sort of value judgement. If this is difficult, just be explicit and explicitly say you're not trying to judge or offend them.

Sure enough, you'll hear people make an argument that you find unconvincing, or they may not answer the exact question that you asked, and some people will even admit they don't know why they believe something. When that happens, you'll have to accept that as their answer (and draw your own conclusions in silence).

People do get hostile when you keep "nagging" - asking more and more questions - when it's clear that they aren't interested in the subject or haven't thought about it much. To the other person it feels like you're either trying to make them feel stupid or change their mind. And you're getting none the wiser anyway because those who do not get offended will just make up their "reasons" on the spot.

Obviously avoid the mistake to ask someone for their opinion, and then immediately returning the "favor" by giving your opinion on the matter.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#150

Post by edw519 »

fallingfrog wrote: post #117
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…

shoutedDown != disagreed
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