A stronger essay should have been titled "How to Think."
How to Think for Yourself
651–660 of 874 posts
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#652Earlier 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…
What’s happening in our culture seems more like a case of several competing conventions, split on tribal lines, rather than individuals thinking their way to unique positions.
Do you think this is only uniquely happening now? I can’t think of a time on earth that hasn’t happened, implicitly or explicitly. (Depending on your definition of “tribe”...tribe of one?). The exceptions don’t last long: Nazi Germany, Mao’s China (Xi’s?), Stalin’s Soviet Union...
Never has it been easier to see this clearly, though, than in the current era of instant access and sharing of information and opinion.
But in the US, individuals thinking on their own is almost a core cultural value. Although more honor'd in the breach than in the observance in some circles.
Not just because the founding of the US was based upon a break with convention of colonization and an hereditary royalist system. Most immigrants (at least before the age of air travel) made a radical permanent individual decision to leave the Old World and come to the Americas, when most around them were staying. So it is in the DNA, so to speak.
Still a core value to most in the US, I would venture to say. We honor self-reliance and unconventionality when we read Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman for example. Might be a more significant core value for the heartland of the US than the coastals. Farming will do that to a person.
You folks are still reading Emerson and the like, right?
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#653Accept the duality of your human nature. You think as a collective and as an individual at the same time.
It's a matter of budget. When you do things that don't matter too much to you, you are damn happy to think exactly like the next guy, reusing the existing knowledge as is without a second thought.
For instance: how do you boil an egg? For all I care, I leave it in boiled water for 10 minutes. I am more than happy to never challenge this conventional wisdom because I'm spending all my time trying to think out of the box while searching for a new sorting algorithm.
Now put a chef in my place. They could have their own specialized/unconventional boiling technique while saying all sorting can be done with bubble sort.
Always restrict your conclusions within the appropriate context. For every person different things matter, you can't think for yourself for every piece of knowledge. There isn't enough time. If people didn't copy and follow along (while inovating in their special domain) we would still live in the stone age
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#654Earlier 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…
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.
I have not been directly involved in academic research, but from what I understood, results gets published, whether they met the goals or not. It is still novel and valuable to publish why this certain approach or idea did not work as expected as long as you followed scientific standards.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#655If you want to fit in and get along with most people, it's best not to think for yourself.
that's what conventional-thinking people do. independent-thinking people don't want to fit in, they instead gather followers (other conventional-thining) to follow them
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#656Am I the only one is getting pretty bored of "formula for success" content? This essay and other's like it, without evidence or data, implies that some of us know the formula for success. I get it, the things that change convention are unconventional at first. This is the definition of unconventional. I agree with the general vector of his essay but this is just boring to me. Here is my formula for success (in case a…
I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. You might be broke and posting from your mom's base…
I'd rather hear stories from people who fucked up hard than some celebo with yet another generic advice
You know, learn from mistakes of others.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#657[deleted]
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you missed the point of the article. It explains why Bob is better than Sally in job A, but Sally is better than Bob in job B. Perhaps you figured that out, but I can't see that from your response, so I'll give you why this was so impactful for me. I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. After two degrees, three internships, three years of…
> I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding?
Maybe they founded boom?
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#659Accept the duality of your human nature. You think as a collective and as an individual at the same time. It's a matter of budget. When you do things that don't matter too much to you, you are damn happy to think exactly like the next guy, reusing the existing knowledge as is without a second thought. For instance: how do you boil an egg? For all I care, I leave it in boiled water for 10 minutes. I am more than happy…
I like this point. Instead of "question everything", "question that which you are interested in".
After all, asking - let alone answering - every question would simply take too much time.
Re: How to Think for Yourself
#660Every time a new pg essay comes out, comments appear saying how much he and his essays have changed (for the worse, of course). I think this perception has the nicely ironic property that it exists because it's false. pg hasn't changed. He can't; he's too weird (nonconformist, if you prefer). Traits at that level just are. What's changed is his status. Becoming rich and famous changes how people perceive you. What so…
I imagine the qualities of his essays which "piss others off" are exactly those qualities that I most value.
For instance, I enjoy how each essay seems to take an abstract and detached look at something widely taken for granted. It then extracts some valuable insights that are often too hard to see without this lofty view. I personally love this.