How to Think for Yourself • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#351

Post by skybrian » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #316

skybrian wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that claiming you’re independent-minded is sort of like claiming you’re a genius. You’re not supposed to make this claim yourself. Graham doesn’t make this claim explicitly, but by writing about this subject he makes it implicitly. How do you avoid making this claim? I think it’s to remember the the trap of fundamental attribution error. People are not always independent-minded or always conformist. Th…

> It seems to me that claiming you’re independent-minded is sort of like claiming you’re a genius. You’re not supposed to make this claim yourself. Graham doesn’t make this claim explicitly, but by writing about this subject he makes it implicitly. I think that is one reason to react against the essay, but not really. My problem is fundamentally that it seems like, with the rise of VC worship (I really don't know wha…

I’m too isolated to say how many people engage in “VC-worship” but in any case, I don’t believe this is limited to VC’s? Confident explanations of social issues are everywhere and there are other popular authors of them.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#352

Post by Hongwei » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

walleeee wrote: post #345

Hongwei wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion that building a business is a zero-sum game. At the basic level, a farmer who sows a field and harvests a crop is making the world one harvest richer, and no one poorer. Ditto for the carpenter making a table or mechanic fixing a car. PG addressed this long ago: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html Scientists turn money into knowledge. Entrepreneurs turn knowledge into mone…

I don't think building a business is zero-sum in principle. Your point about a farmer creating value is well taken. Our present measures of economic value are notoriously short-sighted though (i.e., willing to ignore hard-to-quantify externalities); did the green revolution create value? It vastly improved yield, but if we don't make serious changes in the next 50 years, it will destroy the viability of agriculture.…

I agree with you that current market incentives do not capture externalities like environmental harm. (eg. soil erosion, in the case of a farmer who doesn't rest his fields)

I hope to convince you to hate the game, not the players. So that we can focus our efforts at the root cause. And to take a measured approach: it's not all bad. I'd rather have our current quality of life (in Canada) than to live in a pre-industrial world in the longhouses of the Aboriginal Peoples who used to live where I do. It seems romantic, but I'm sure I'd be a terrible hunter. I choose to believe that human progress will continue to solve the problems we face, in time. Because historically we always have. Let's root for more Elon Musks instead of hating on the average capitalist.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#353

Post by doc_gunthrop » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #196

bob33212 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a large socialist/anti-capitalist/woke movement on Twitter and a somewhat in the real world as well. I assume PG would like to call all those people out directly. But he cannot because in the current media and social climate the news summary will read: "Older White SV Billionaire living in England tells poor American minorities to stop complaining because their politics would lead to an economy with less inn…

If it only exists on Twitter, but not in the real world, then why is it worth addressing or expending emotional energy or essays on?

> There is a large socialist/anti-capitalist/woke movement on Twitter and a somewhat in the real world as well.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#354

Post by jstummbillig » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

zw123456 wrote: post #344

As an inventor holding over 70 patents, I often get asked "can you teach me to be innovative?" My answer is that you already are but you have been taught not to be. It is not that you need to learn to be innovative you have to unlearn to be compliant. School, military, most big companies all have many rules and expectations which essentially train the innovativeness out of people. I agree it is in human nature to be…

> As an inventor holding over 70 patents

Can/Did you elaborate on this? Sounds exciting, I would love to hear more about how you got started and what kind of work you do.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#355

Post by mariodiana » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #256

> There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. As someone who once made their living as a scientist, I can tell you from firsthand experience that while this is technically correct, the conclusion PG wishes to draw from this: > One of the mos…

The difference between true genius and your regular old smart person is that it takes about all the brainpower the smart person has to understand something that's pretty complicated, and their thinking then becomes locked in. The effort not only cements their conceptual understanding; it cements their emotional attachment to their understanding. By contrast, the genius has the brainpower to understand a thing, understand alternative explanations just as well, and then innovate beyond all that.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#356

Post by walleeee » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

Hongwei wrote: post #347

_jal wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion that building a business is a zero-sum game. It isn't either/or. Nearly all businesses do "create value". Nearly all businesses also compete for a limited supply of customers, because nearly all markets can produce more outputs than are needed. The ratio between the two matters a lot to the character of the company.

I agree with you completely. There are certainly rent-seeking businesses that do not create value (or net value?). And the majority of businesses are competing in (disrupting) existing markets. Even if they don't increase total consumer spending by offering better products and winning market share, they do increase consumer _wealth_. I'm glad I can buy a 65" 4k TV for as much as my parents paid for a 15" CRT 20 years…

> I find it disingenuous to claim, as the OP did (perhaps unintentionally), that innovators are bad faith actors playing a zero sum game. Surely that's the exception, not the norm. Just as there are bad actors in academia and any other profession.

I didn't intend to claim bad faith. As you point out there are surely bad actors in any field. More common, I think, is the (most likely subconscious) Lippmann effect: "We are peculiarly inclined to suppress whatever impugns the security of that to which we have given our allegiance."[0]

[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1919/11/the-bas...

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#357

Post by Darkstryder » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #346

lisper wrote: post #256

> There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. As someone who once made their living as a scientist, I can tell you from firsthand experience that while this is technically correct, the conclusion PG wishes to draw from this: > One of the mos…

The huge difference between tech startups and science is that in science, the conventional wisdom has recorded justifications and collected evidence that you can look up and understand, while in tech startups the conventional wisdom is advice made up by businessesmen who succeeded once, or sometimes succeeded zero times, and shared over drinks at the local pub. The usefulness gap between scientific knowledge and cult…

Unfortunately the bias against negative results in scientific publications cause a lot of scientific dead-ends to be non-public as well.

A lot starting researchers (such as PhD students) that are left without adequate supervision are likely to reach a dead-end someone previously encountered but did not publish anything about.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#358

Post by sundarurfriend » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

fractionalhare wrote: post #241

sundarurfriend wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PG sure has been on a kick about how brilliant of an independent thinker he is in a sea of conformity. If your first reaction reading this essay is "PG is trying to big himself up as an independent thinker", that tells me more about your attitude and mental state than about PG. Forgive the cliche, but "great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people" is a decent heuristic, with g…

The problem with a comment like this is that there's no detailed rebuttal. What you've given here is more of an aloof dismissal which is implicitly judgmental. If you're willing to bucket peoples' minds into greatness or smallness based on a single observation of their message board activity, how is your response substantively different from the thing it's criticizing? This is to say that I reject the premise; your c…

> how is your response substantively different from the thing it's criticizing?

That is a fair criticism. I still think there is a difference in degree between (A) reading a long, thoughtful article and responding with unkind speculations about the author, and (B) reading such speculation that has little content in it and responding in turn with unkind speculations about the comment's author; but only a difference of degree, not of kind, I admit.

> your comment would put a chilling effect on frankly discussing other people, as though the only way to do so is through irrationality and gossip.

The proverb I quoted would do that, sure, which is why it's explicitly marked as only a decent (not excellent) heuristic. There are honest, thoughtful ways to go about discussing and criticizing people. Speculations and borderline conspiracy theories are not among them.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#359

Post by eloff » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

Hongwei wrote: post #327

walleeee wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this may attest to the value of (apparent) novelty/innovation in PG's sphere. Seeming unconventional and disruptive has better ROI than spending years mining the history of human thought. He doesn't do science, he funds and markets products. He's competing to capture pieces of a finite pie, not creating knowledge. More broadly, he promotes a zeitgeist which has made him wealthy. I wonder if this has something…

Sorry but I strongly disagree with your assertion that building a business is a zero-sum game. At the basic level, a farmer who sows a field and harvests a crop is making the world one harvest richer, and no one poorer. Ditto for the carpenter making a table or mechanic fixing a car. PG addressed this long ago: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html Scientists turn money into knowledge. Entrepreneurs turn knowledge into mone…

Value and compensation aren't necessarily coupled. Think of school teachers. It's clearly an incredibly valuable job preparing the next generation of society, but pays a miserable wage before the intervening of unions, and still not great even with that.

But there's more teachers available in the labor market compared to demand than computer programmers, so the latter command a much higher salary. Even though I would say many deliver much less value to society.

Or negative value like Facebook engineers. Sorry, I couldn't resist that cheap shot, and I do believe Facebook is a net negative for society.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#360

Post by Apocryphon » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

RickHull wrote: post #214

For those railing against this essay, who feel that PG is fluffing himself up and patting himself on the back like a nerdy middleschooler -- you've missed the big point, badly. PG writes unapologetically, directly, and simply, and this may pattern match to a naive middleschooler, but you are letting your base instincts cover up the fact that PG is wise, has earned his stripes, and is sharing his wisdom, unapologetica…

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand pg. The wisdom is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical business most of the insights will go over a typical reader’s head. There's also pg’s positivistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Sam Altman literature, for instance.