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‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

commoncog.com

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Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#151

Post by godelski »

marcosdumay wrote: post #131
godelski wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I DON'T trust my own reasoning. I can do this adversarial process as described in this article on my own, but that's incomplete. People outside of me have information and ways to view things that I don't. Others work as a discriminator and you update your opinions and views as more information comes in and challenges your own ideas. But it is because I don't trust my own reasoning that I read textbooks, seek…

So, you are describing exactly the idea. It is to trust your own reasoning , not information or ideas. Reasoning is a process.

Exactly, and I think some are missing that. I will say the things I believe with confidence, but I have no illusions that I don't have all the information and an incomplete picture. Things can always be improved.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#152

Post by yellowstuff »

I think you can draw an analogy between probability and counting. Negative numbers seem weird and very different from positive numbers, but for many applications 0 is not a particularly interesting boundary, and you benefit from not treating negative and positive numbers as two different cases. EG, I could owe you $2 or -$4.

In probability, 50% feels like it should be a special boundary. But often there's a lot of benefit to not treating it that way, and treating a 49% belief more like a 51% belief than like a 10% belief.

It sounds trivial written out, but how often do people behave that way?

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#153

Post by cutemonster »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #104
zimpenfish wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly I DON'T trust my own reasoning. I have this and it's a real problem for software development because everyone expects a senior to be gung-ho about their solutions and perfectly confident. Whereas I'm always asking for second and third opinions about things and people (largely management but occasionally other developers) view that negatively.

Baseline political paradox - humans demand extraverted confidence from leaders more than they demand competence. If you're confident you can make mistake after mistake and no one will care unless everything comes crashing down - and even then there's a fair chance you can make it someone else's fault. If you're merely very competent, taking time to research good solutions looks like indecision, not leadership, even i…

How can that problem be avoided? If you were to build your own company and hire and instruct people?

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#154

Post by cutemonster »

gklefnbkon wrote: post #144
jermier wrote: post #127

I do this on Hackernews sometimes. I just state my opinion, however weakly held, and wait for it to be torn apart, where I learn a lot, and all my biases are revealed to me. That's how learning works: you challenge your own assumptions, or let your assumptions to be challenged by others.

That does work to educate you, but has the side effect of distorting the discussion here. For instance, I'll see a bunch of comments recommending a particular approach for writing software. I might come away thinking most of HN approves of that approach, and so there must be something to it. But what if all those comments are just people trying out the idea, in hopes that other people will tear it apart? I don't thin…

What about adding "??" after such "show me how I'm wrong" statements? Ppl would still reply I think, but fewer/no one would be fooled?

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#155

Post by cutemonster »

jermier wrote: post #130
eska wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this in your first sentence? The technique that is being criticized as wrong here? That's not what this article is introducing.

By this I mean /stating my opinion/ or more precisely, revealing various unconscious biases I may have towards a subject. Sometimes stating an opinion is making the unconscious, conscious, and then learning the truth about a subject by the insights and replies of others. In other words, I'm shooting in the dark most of the time on HN and waiting to hit a target, or some truth I can salvage from the replies of others.

Did you try this in real life?

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#156

Post by rpdillon »

lambdatronics wrote: post #74

My take on "strong opinions, weakly held:" It's about combating your own confirmation bias by being willing to do the work of re-examining your conclusions in the light of new evidence. It's hard to do b/c we get emotionally invested, and also because once you make a conclusion an assumption, it becomes implicit & fades into the background -- so it's harder to question. On the flip side, it's also about trusting your…

This is exactly how I think of it. It very much reminds me of Carmack's talk about how quickly he can bust his own ideas that he's excited about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCBCk4xVa0

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#157

Post by cutemonster »

dsr_ wrote: post #114
CarbyAu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where I heard it but: "No decision is a decision." IE Decide to put off your decision until later. People agitating for everyone to "voice their opinion now" are often looking to form a mandate from those opinions.

In the lyrics of Rush's _Freewill_: If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

Maybe it's important to be clear with the others that indeed one had made a choice: to wait and learn more.

Rather than seeming uncertain, one can seem certain that there's not enough data

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#158

Post by cutemonster »

BeetleB wrote: post #23
barrkel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, when faced with a fork in the road, it's important to choose. Often it doesn't matter which - but if you vacillate, and especially if you are leading - then you can fail by not choosing. So, strong opinions: decisively go down one road; weakly held: turn around if information suggests it looks like the wrong road. You can only update your opinions if you engage with reality, which demands a certain…

> On the other hand, when faced with a fork in the road, it's important to choose. Often it doesn't matter which - but if you vacillate, and especially if you are leading - then you can fail by not choosing. The number of times people think they are at such a fork where non-action is worse than any action is an order of magnitude more than in reality. In my experience, most of these cases are reflective of a social i…

> 5 pt scale: 1 is strongly against, 5 is strongly in favor

Is one dimension all that's needed? What about adding: how certain do you feel that your opinion is right

Like, severity + probability maybe?

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#159

Post by renewiltord »

gnicholas wrote: post #69
renewiltord wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in the context of the original statement it was a heuristic for searching for truth, i.e. "to know, form hypotheses then subject them to falsification tests". So yes, in the meaning of SOWH, all WO are ones that leave you unable to progress. Your reading of 'categorical implying strong' is reasonable, imho, in just the meaning of the word 'strong'. It's just not what I believe was the intended meaning in the…

Interesting, so the SO part of SOWH just means "have opinions that can be validated"? That seems very weak, no pun intended. Would anyone go around advocating for people to have WO, using that definition? I guess if that's what it means, then SOWH is pretty vacuous. Perhaps it's my background (law, economics, logic) but I assumed that "strong" referred to "the strong form" of an argument or hypothesis (such as the ef…

Despite your belief that it is vacuous, WO is a pretty standard mode of operation for many. It usually manifests as "We just don't know enough. Let's collect more information." or "There's not enough to go on. Let's wait it out." etc.

i.e. unstructured search is more common than hypothesize-falsify despite the latter being established epistemology since early 1900s or before.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#160

Post by jakeogh »

dwd wrote: post #111
jakeogh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not wear the masks forever?

In places like Japan you are expected to wear a mask if you're sick, so there's no reason that shouldn't become standard in the West. More important could be that workplaces require staff to either stay home and not infect the office when they have the flu, or wear a mask if they have to go in.

Nobody is suggestion people go to work when they are sick. That's not new to the West, odd to suggest it is.

Fake masks:

https://stpauls.vxcommunity.com/Issue/Us-Experiment-On-Infan...

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