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How to Think for Yourself
391–400 of 874 posts
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#392PG 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…
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Re: How to Think for Yourself
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
While this activity can be useful, I think it is simultaneously at the root of many of our social problems today. You cannot ask this question about literally everything. Well, you can, but you'll end up questioning things that are universally accepted (Which way is North? Is gasoline flammable?). So naturally you dial it back, and you ask questions only about things that seem wrong, or that you particularly care abo…
> that means less independent thinking, paradoxically. This is indeed the paradox of our times. An accelerated technology shift (the global computer network) has generated large amounts of people who are rationally self-reliant to a fault, since they are either the only ones in their social circles who understand the new tech or the only ones who can spend a lot of time reading stuff from the internet. This cult of "…
Shared culture and norms are necessary for social harmony, and reduce the costs of law enforcement. Social harmony generally makes people happier as long as they are included in the mainstream, while internalized law enforcement frees up money for other uses. I see those as the main advantages of conformity.
I think however that it's generally true that conformity diminishes progress and positive change. Whether that's worth the loss of a shared culture depends. I think the current state in the US where there are two cultures which divide the population into two modes is harmful, since it makes society fractious and hostile. We could do for more conformity, now.
However if that were to shift back to a mass culture with various countercultures chafing against it, I think then more independent thinking would be good. I think mass cultures are the rule rather than the exception now, and most other places could do for more independent thinkers.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#394> 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…
Seems like that depends on what kind of conventional startup wisdom you're thinking about. For example, from what I've read about SaaS business plans, the conventional approach is drawn from the experiences and data of hundreds (or thousands?) of SaaS companies. It's not done with scientific rigor, but it's not individual founders making hasty conclusions based on their own outcomes either.
Understanding the conceptual model behind a SaaS business plan, the kind of metrics that people find valuable and concrete techniques that other companies have found effective seems worth doing even if you have your own theory or approach that's explicitly different—for the same reasons lisper mentioned for scientific knowledge, just at a smaller scale.
I single out SaaS not because it's necessarily more systematic than other tech business plans—I suspect that it is, but don't have a real basis for that—but because I've read more about that than other kinds of companies. I'm sure there is a lot of valuable collective knowledge for any sort of product or company you want to build and the advantages you get from learning that should outweigh any priming effect the knowledge has, as long as you are intentional in deviating from the "conventional" path.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
If one pictures the changing of norms as a process that behaves like the shifting of domain boundaries within a magnet, then you could both be right!
Why would I have any reason to picture it in that way?
Well, as a toy model to compare to reality to see if it improves your insight into how societal changes happen, I guess. And if it doesn't, you can discard it.
But if you entertain it, it suggests that sudden shifts in culture (acceptance of gay marriage, for example) proceed along the boundaries of social groups, where people are influenced by both their closest friends and family and the prevailing external "field", until they "flip their poles" and align with the neighbouring domain, at which point it becomes more likely that their other friends and family will do the same, and so on.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm guessing a lot of his readers somewhat identify themselves as nerds? And sad to say, quite a few of the nerds I know / knew have some raging superiority complexity going on. Same type of people that put down anyone that spent their HS or College years partying / social life / etc., rather than "perfecting" some worthwhile craft, like software development, writing, or whatever. Not saying that PG is like that, at…
Yeah, I get the sociological aspect, but I don't think I've heard someone use the word nerd for at least a decade. It's a blast from the past.
The fact it's 2020 seems to escape a good portion of people in their 40's who still think its 2004 and that they're hip and young. I can only think this is a similar cultural ossification for older people.
I know that's an issue for me because I recently got introduced to a bunch of YouTuber's with millions of followers that I'd never heard of. I actually find that level of cultural disconnect a bit worrying.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#397> 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…
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Re: How to Think for Yourself
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Seems like that depends on what kind of conventional startup wisdom you're thinking about. For example, from what I've read about SaaS business plans, the conventional approach is drawn from the experiences and data of hundreds (or thousands?) of SaaS companies. It's not done with scientific rigor, but it's not individual founders making hasty conclusions based on their own outcomes either. Understanding the conceptu…
But that's collective wisdom for how to do something - not collective wisdom that something can't be done. If the industry had decided that SaaS was impossible, that would be an example of collective wisdom to ignore.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where have I implied I hate the players? I certainly don't, nor do I think everything is terrible. I'm sorry it came off as such. > I choose to believe that human progress will continue to solve the problems we face, in time. Because historically we always have. This is where we disagree, I think. I don't see good evidence for this. I hope I'm wrong and you're right.
I hope so too :) And fair enough, thanks for the the kind discussion, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
Likewise! No problem, friend
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#400> 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…
Another option to:
"One of the most effective techniques is one practiced unintentionally by most nerds: simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. "
Is to be aware of them, and to be aware that they may not be correct, or they may be correct and there are better and more effective beliefs now (new theories, but they may not be as well proven, yet), and better ways in the future (new theories/frameworks that aren't proven, or can't yet exist due to other lacking ecosystem components like technology or math or thought processes (Like open source back in the day, and then it won).
My response to all this is to consciously be aware of what I know and how old it is, and that there are probably better ways to solve these problems, or simply engineer the problem away (e.g. better password policy vs simply replacing it with SSO with good MFA).