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

41–50 of 59 posts

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#41

Post by bingojess »

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…

You are looking too much into this. The more people act on contrarian business ideas, the more longshot potential unicorns VCs can invest in. The seminal YC example is Airbnb, letting strangers sleep on a mattress at your house. Sam and other VCs no doubt personally know many founders who face skepticism and self-doubt towards their startups, this is aimed at them.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#42

Post by bagacrap »

npmaile wrote: post #17

I feel like the strength of being misunderstood is more like the strength of being correct. Just because other people don't understand you doesn't mean you are correct. If you aren't correct, this post will do nothing for you but make you bull-headed and closed off to criticism.

agreed. FTA: "A common way this happens is by eventually being right about an important but deeply non-consensus bet."

It seems pretty obvious that it's profitable (to one's wallet as well as ego) to be right when everyone else is wrong.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#43

Post by idclip »

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 feel we should talk. Any book advice?

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#44

Post by a4444f »

Being understood is impossible (an illusion). There is nothing to understand. Following social conventions is possible. But life is not (necessarily) about following social conventions. Nor is it about not following social conventions.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#45

Post by a4444f »

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…

Neither addiction, perfectionism nor being an idiot is OK. The word OK has an opposite meaning. A different matter is whether it is possible to be without addiction, perfectionism or idiocy.

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#47

Post by TT3351 »

ublaze wrote: post #18
sharker8 wrote: post #12

Format of a techno-optimist essay. Formulate a common neurosis that people are self conscious about. State common knowledge about this neurosis. State that the common knowledge is an oversimplification. Break the problem into a graph on two axes. Bonus points if you help people think they are avoiding identity politics in some way with this new knowledge.

I wonder what we get if we feed enough essays like these into GPT-3. Enough self help books to make a living, I suppose.

By publishing AI content or by reading AI content and self-improving?

Re: The Strength of Being Misunderstood

#48

Post by LoveMortuus »

So many people especially students these days are so afraid of asking what does that mean or questions in general... It's quite sad and painful when the professor asks if everything is understood and then it's dead silence but a few minutes later you get classmates sending you messages with questions... I think people are too scared of being wrong or just appearing clueless to the society, even though I've quite often told them that you have to fail if you want to succeed and each failure gets you closer to success. But I guess they didn't understand what I meant and they didn't ask for explanation...
Post reply on HN