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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#541

Post by np_tedious »

Arubis wrote: post #421

Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality, like PG's become a synecdoche of SF VC-fuelled startup culture as a whole. Whether that's him changing, or me, or the world, I'm not certain--but I still look forward to them simply because the ensuing discussions here on HN tend…

It's sort of like power of positive thinking / self help book stuff, but for nonconformism and thinking differently. Even if repetitive and sometimes lacking rigor, I'll probably keep reading everything he posts. I could use that influence.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#542

Post by Apocryphon »

stingraycharles wrote: post #532
brlewis wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come I know exactly where this essay is going? This is the question I've been thinking as I've checked back in on comments here a few times this morning. Why do so many people "know" that this essay is all about aggrandizing pg's own intellect or that of startup founders, when it's almost entirely composed of two parts: (1) discussion on when independent thinking is and isn't valuable, and (2) advice on cultiva…

I think the root cause is some “conflicting” mechanism where people associate pg’a writings with a following, which has been carefully cultivated. This article being about “how to not be a follower” in itself is at odds with that, and as such it entices heavy scrutinizing from the audience. In a way, it’s incredibly difficult to establish whether or not this article is conforming to existing ideas or not, when there’…

You either die an intellectual martyr, or you live long enough to see yourself become a thought leader.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#543

Post by closeparen »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #234

Can someone explain the constant reference to nerds in PG's essays? I feel like it's a concept straight out of a 1970s-90s low-budget movie and hasn't been accurate or relevant since...

There is a pretty clear strain of personality that shows up early in life and is suspiciously correlated with becoming a programmer. It’s rare enough that most people don’t meet others who share it until they get past K12 and start to aggregate in self-selected universities and workplaces. It’s pronounced enough to be obvious to one’s peers and often causes some degree of social alienation. In the 1970s-90s the stereotype is that such people were relentlessly bullied as losers. Since the rise of Big Tech the dynamic has shifted a bit from “you’re not one of us and we hate you, loser” to “you’re not one of us but you’re obviously going to be rich some day, so please remember us fondly.”

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#544

Post by quantumwannabe »

tim333 wrote: post #380
moralsupply wrote: post #263

To get negative votes in Hacker News: * Post something that is factual, but the crowd doesn't like * Post something that is logical, but the crowd doesn't like * Post a link to something reasonable, but that the crowd doesn't like Just to say that Hacker News is a highly biased community. There's very little space here to discuss anything that is not "conventional" beyond some bits of technology. When a topic touches…

Surely negative votes if the crowd doesn't like will pretty much happen by definition any place people can down vote?

HN is worse than other sites because if a comment is downvoted early on by a handful of users, the upvote button disappears and it can’t be upvoted later by others who agree with it. So there is no way of knowing the true score of a comment if the people who dislike it found it first.

HN also literally disappears downvoted comments by making them unreadably light colored and eventually hiding them to all users who haven’t enabled the “Show Dead” setting.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#545

Post by acalzycalzy »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #467
x87678r wrote: post #404

Some of my biggest regrets are doing what I thought was best when I should have done what everyone else was doing. This ranges from from not buying an overpriced house 20 years ago, to not partying at college, to following some interesting but unpopular technology. Its not all bad doing things your own way but you have to be careful about straying too much.

You regret not partying at college? My biggest regret from college is binge drinking and staying up too late to basically faff around chasing frivolous pleasure. If I had drank half as much and partied half as much, I'd have gotten much more accomplished.

“I’d have gotten much more accomplished”

Not really. You say that now as if your non partying time would have been perfectly spent toward a goal of bettering yourself. In actuality you probably would have just putzed around in your dorm not doing anything that would have impacted your professional life trajectory.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#546

Post by wildermuthn »

ineedasername wrote: post #250

To be a successful scientist... you can't publish papers saying things other people already know PG may have some good insights sometimes, but it's rare I see him get something so completely wrong as this. Reproducing research to demonstrate a result was correct or not is a cornerstone in the foundation of science. A fundamental problem in the research community is that incentives as misaligned to support that initia…

But reproducing research results does produce new knowledge: enhanced validity of the original research. Or on the contrary, decreased validity. Both outcomes result in the creation of new (deeper) knowledge.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#547

Post by carlisle_ »

Razengan wrote: post #538
carlisle_ wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham is in desperate need of people in his life that tell him 'no'.

I have never heard of him outside of HN and I’m not even sure why he’s considered important here. Could someone fill me in? He does remind me of a games reviewer with the same name from the awesome ZZAP! magazine for the Commodore 64. Or wait was that Paul Glancey

Not to be rude, but if you googled his name you would have found all the information you could possibly need about why he’s considered important. For convenience here’s a link to his Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(programmer)

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#548

Post by [deleted] »

jononor wrote: post #174
username90 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being independent is mostly negative. Prison is full of independent thinkers. However the small share of independent thinkers who actually got many things right are way more valuable than any conventional thinker as it is them who push society forward. Glorifying them is absolutely warranted.

The value that an independent thinker is able to create is usually predicated on a large amount of more conventional thinkers. No need to pit the two against eachother, or glorify the one any more than the other.

[deleted]

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#549

Post by dzink »

To add on top of PG's arguments: A podcast with Barry Diller made me realize that small active memory in a person may have a lot to do with them becoming perceptive, intuitive, and thus innovative. Diller underlined many times how he struggles to remember, but has as a result learned to perceive ground truth through experience instead.

I've confirmed this in a number of conversations with founders and other professionals, so it is possible the formal research surfaces more. Here are a few of stories from people I know:

1. A left handed, night owl, bathroom builder with horrible memory, who loves his work and can easily find a way to improvise to achieve the right results on projects, even if volunteering in a different country with different materials and house structures (wood vs brick) where he doesn't speak the language.

2. A doctor with amazing memory (can recite most movie lines ever heard and medical books ever read) who becomes timid and conservative about any new approach unless the best possible route is taken.

3. A founder who has benchmarked their brain on different tasks with different amounts of sleep deprivation. They have noticed in some states (nap, and high protein no-carb meal after sleep deprived state) the brain kicks into gear and comes up with amazing solutions to previously un-crackable problems while in other states repeat tasks flow much faster without over-think.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#550

Post by mcguire »

brlewis wrote: post #491
mcguire wrote: post #410

" Ditto for essayists. An essay that told people things they already knew would be boring. You have to tell them something new. " How come I know exactly where this essay is going? It is yet another "start-up founders are genetically, intellectually, and emotionally superior; the rest of the muggles are so envious." Does Paul think everyone except startup founders works on an assembly line? " You see this especially…

> How come I know exactly where this essay is going? This is the question I've been thinking as I've checked back in on comments here a few times this morning. Why do so many people "know" that this essay is all about aggrandizing pg's own intellect or that of startup founders, when it's almost entirely composed of two parts: (1) discussion on when independent thinking is and isn't valuable, and (2) advice on cultiva…

You missed (3) where independent thinking isn't valuable you find the unhappy and the conventional; the latter group having a fairly large stack of poor qualities.[1]

Oh, and (4) how do you know you're really independent minded? It's "more a matter of nature than nurture" after all. Someone could be lying to themselves. "Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. And in any case, it genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything." Dunning-Kruger and all. In fact, you can't even trust the ne plus ultra: the conventional minded have to be curious in order to find out what the conventions are, no? But then, I'm being critical here, and feeding "a firestorm of rage from the aggressively conventional-minded"; I clearly show all of those poor qualities.

(I'm trying hard to figure out how "One of the most effective techniques is one practiced unintentionally by most nerds: simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. It's hard to be a conformist if you don't know what you're supposed to conform to" doesn't imply that ignorance is a virtue.)

I am a bit disappointed Paul doesn't mention some of the downsides to independent thinking; he seems to regard it as an unalloyed good. "Founders can delay the problem by making a conscious effort only to hire independent-minded people. Which of course also has the ancillary benefit that they have better ideas." The problem here is that those independent-minded people are going to want to see their ideas in action---even if those ideas disagree with those of the founder. (Hence unhappiness and the promotion of conventional thinking.)

(I notice that Paul picks out "administrators" and "middle management" as specifically conventional. I wonder if extending that to "management" would strain the cognitive dissonance of those readers he personally knows?)

I do like the fine distinction of "Fastidiousness about truth doesn't imply that an independent-minded person won't be dishonest, but that he won't be deluded. It's sort of like the definition of a gentleman as someone who is never unintentionally rude." I certainly have always found it advantageous to prefer the presence of those who know they are lying.

[1] Unskeptical, indifferent to truth, herd-minded, humorless, and incurious, with poor thinking and poor ideas.

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