Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Strength of Being Misunderstood

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 59 posts

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#31

Post by DoreenMichele »

_y5hn wrote: post #8

If you're bringing something new, people will misinterpret and take it in worst possible meaning. If they understand the value of it. Congrats, you've now got competitors! There. Now, I wouldn't conflate being successful and being loved by people.

If you're bringing something new, people will misinterpret and take it in worst possible meaning.

If you are doing something new, how do you even express it effectively?

Let's say you invent a new form of housing and all the words that currently exist for various forms of housing don't really describe what you do? You basically have to make up new language entirely for a scenario like that.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#32

Post by DoreenMichele »

artemisyna wrote: post #6
woko wrote: post #5

I don't understand what the strength of being misunderstood is.

Seems like the difference between being fine being wrong in the short term (the "strength" part) in order to be right in the long term.

More like "sticking to your guns when you are being perceived as wrong and waiting to be proven right when you are sure the objective evidence is on your side, never mind what other people are currently saying."

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#33

Post by gnramires »

This article does not go deep enough, but it is in the right way. What matters is doing the right thing. Even the history books don't matter, even your long term 'status' doesn't matter, nor what people think, in principle. If you really did the right thing overall, and are seen as a monster... well, so be it.

In practice, however, things are more complicated. You have to be really certain of what you're doing to go so much out there. If you're misunderstood, things will become more difficult -- less funding chances perhaps, less people to talk with and exchange ideas, less people who understand and check your decisions -- it has to be sufficiently important and certain to overcome those problems.

The central issue however is learning. We want future (and current) generations to learn from our mistakes and non-mistakes. We want to share our insight with others. If we are misrepresented, this learning gets sacrificed, as well as your communication of ideas to peers, by definition. That's a small tragedy.

You still have to do what you have to do, so to speak, if you must. The ultimate judge is not history, not the newspapers or peers, but your impact on the world, on the people (including yourself) -- not only now of course, but into the future as well.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#34

Post by robocat »

The new “contrarian” religious belief that many thought leaders are now writing about.

Is this a trend with high value that some people are getting huge gains for themselves from? I think so.

Alternatively is it an echo chamber of high status people signalling just how contrarian they are? I suspect that some trend victims do this. However I think Sam Altman is just reflecting his thoughts in an essay to help him explore his own understanding, by getting feedback from others.

I believe there is something of real value within the trend: I have seen too many extremely successful people (in business, science and the arts) that have said they relied upon contrarian thinking to help them achieve success. I recognised the belief first in a 1998 book by George Soros, where he vividly wrote of his struggles (internal and external) with his own contrarian thinking.

My favourite example however is Jim Keller, in an interview by Lex Friedman, where Jim casually states “Imagine 99% of your thought process is protecting your self conceptions and 98% of that's wrong. Now you've got the math right. How do you think you're feeling when you into that one bit that's useful and now you're open and you have the ability to do something that's different?”.

When some of the undeniably smartest people in the world start saying the same thing, it is worthwhile listening and learning from them. While avoiding the famous wrong-thinking like Linus Pauling.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#35

Post by nostrademons »

plutonorm wrote: post #24

But no one ever remembers. I've taken a stand on many an unpopular position that turned up good. Not only do people forget that you said anything but they manage to convince themselves that they knew all along. The time horizon of most people is far too short for this tactic to work.

You need to trade on it, ideally with money or productive goods, not words or status. Words and history gets rewritten. Ownership does not. Own something that most people think is useless and then prove to them that they desperately need to have it. Then you can sell it to them and use the money for other things.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#36

Post by username90 »

robocat wrote: post #34

The new “contrarian” religious belief that many thought leaders are now writing about. Is this a trend with high value that some people are getting huge gains for themselves from? I think so. Alternatively is it an echo chamber of high status people signalling just how contrarian they are? I suspect that some trend victims do this. However I think Sam Altman is just reflecting his thoughts in an essay to help him exp…

I think the main value of contrarian thinking comes from building up better understanding of the world by being wrong a lot and then forcibly changing your mind through arguments.

If you are a contrarian throughout school and college and assumes most things they teach are wrong until you are sufficiently convinced you come out much better than someone who just accepted everything at face value simply because now you ingrained the difference between correct, uncertain and false deep into your mind. Just being a contrarian without doing all the work required to become a good contrarian wont get you any awards, you will just be wrong a lot.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#37

Post by username90 »

im3w1l wrote: post #28
User23 wrote: post #23

This makes me think of a fun Feynman essay, "What do you care what other people think?" I believe that the common response to that is to assume that it's meant to be snarky or something, but I view it as an honest question. Therefore I often find myself asking myself, "what do you care what other people think?" Sometimes the answer is "nothing really" and sometimes it's more like "well this group of other people have…

As an honest question, because there are perks to being liked. You will be given access to this and that.

There are also cons to being hated, like losing your job. Doesn't even have to be anyone at work hating you, if enough people hate you they will fire you anyway due to outside pressure.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#38

Post by User23 »

username90 wrote: post #37
im3w1l wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an honest question, because there are perks to being liked. You will be given access to this and that.

There are also cons to being hated, like losing your job. Doesn't even have to be anyone at work hating you, if enough people hate you they will fire you anyway due to outside pressure.

This and GP’s reply are both totally valid answers to “what do you care what other people think?” As you can see it’s situational.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#39

Post by ackbar03 »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #30
motohagiography wrote: post #15

Being misunderstood is a great temporary moat. I could write a book on this, but suffice it to say, I didn't have confidence in my own vision until I took the time to really look at others and realized that the main difference between me and the average idiot was that I had bothered to look at the ideas of other idiots at all. It was like their entire ontology had become an ant farm. It was the moment I realized, I a…

I have a similar take, but I framed my thought around failure. I realized there are hundreds of ways that my life will get worse by taking some kind of choice, and also hundreds of ways that my life will get worse if I take the opposite choice. So by embracing the fact that is quite likely that I will fail, I got rid of the fear and the paralysis.

I can sort of resonate with this. I also realized that once I make it my default assumption that whatever it is I plan to do is most likely going to result in some sort of dumpster fire, and if I'm still ok with it, than the fear, concerns over other people's judgment, everything goes away. But of course it has to be important enough that you are genuinely on with it failing

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#40

Post by throwaway0a5e »

nayuki wrote: post #13

Sam echoes some of the things Paul said. For example, "[T]he best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas. I've written about this before: if a good idea were obviously good, someone else would already have done it. So the most successful founders tend to work on ideas that few beside them realize are good. Which is not that far from a description of insanity, till you reach the point where you see results." -- ht…

>Sam echoes some of the things Paul said

I was really hoping you were gonna have a quote from the religiously important Paul.

People have been saying proverbial (in the most literal sense of that word) crap for all of human history. Sure you can wrap extra words around simple concepts like "be determined", "communicate effectively" and "pick your battles" but most of this stuff is just the same few hundred takes on the same handful of attributes that make one successful in life being written time and time again but in the languages and with contemporary examples of whoever is doing the writing.

Post reply on HN