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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#151

Post by enraged_camel »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #131

PG sure has been on a kick about how brilliant of an independent thinker he is in a sea of conformity. It's clear in all of his writing that he's perpetually beating around the bush about some current itch he has, I wish he would just come out and say it with out pretending to be a deep thinker: > Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? I mean, taken outsi…

Agreed. For someone who once wrote an essay titled "Keep Your Identity Small", PG sure has fully embraced an identity of "independent thinker".

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#152

Post by troelsSteegin »

So, to be independent-minded is to be actively evidence-seeking, as opposed to being conventionally reflexively consensus-accepting. Positive traits are skepticism, honesty, and curiousity. As a complement, it always helps to be smart. Start ups attract and benefit from independent-minded doers. It's nice to think about "independent-mindedness" as a superpower.

There's one thing missing. Being useful. If you frame a start up experience as an opportunistic search for a sustainable market, plus rigorous service to customer experience in that market, it helps a lot to have strong drive to be relevant, to serve. A ideal organization will help independently minded people to be mission-effective. That suggests an organization that is flattish, decoupled, and with explicit goals and values. But won't an organization, pragmatically, also need incorporate conventionally-minded people - who can also be smart and useful? A ideal organization for the "conventionally minded" suggests hierarchy and normative culture and policies. What's the right structure for a mix of "independent" and "conventional" contributors?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#153

Post by aeoleonn »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #145

I’m completely fine with being conventional minded. It’s saved me from using MongoDB, nodejs, and countless other fads.

hilarious and true-- hype trains are drains. I'm with ya on mongodb. nodejs is awesome though :) that sweet sweet async event loop. sure, the language has some imperfections-- it's not perfect for all use cases (nor is any other)-- but overall I enjoy working with it. the community is fantastic as well.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#154

Post by psysharp »

> More generally your goal should be not to let anything into your head unexamined.

I can accept this way of reasoning if 'unexamined' is not directly linked to attention. The brain consistently tries to automate thoughts/behaviours and with confidence comes relaxation in the attention muscle, as to say well defined areas will need less 'examination'.

On another note, there's a reason why conventions exist and it is not always the right path to opt for independence. Being able to relate to people is a huge blessing and should not be completely overruled if the object is piece of mind.

All in all an intresting article

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#155

Post by meheleventyone »

hnracer wrote: post #103
meheleventyone wrote: post #4

It feels like independent mindedness and conventional mindedness is a false dichotomy and that most people are somewhere between each depending on the subject and context. Moreover if you subscribe to the dichotomy you're probably doing a poor job of creating an environment that encourages people to be independent minded. At the organizational level it feels completely normal that it will become more conventional wit…

It's a spectrum and I'm not sure that Paul would dispute that, he might define the bottom 60 percent of the spectrum as "conventional-minded" and the top five percent as "independent-minded", especially if we think this trait increases superlinearly as we move up the quantile distribution. This dichotomization lowers the resolution but can work practically

Right but it's not even a single spectrum. It varies by topic and context. You can be an independent thinker in some regards but highly conventional in others. As others have pointed out this essay is actually highly conventional for a certain point of view. So whether you're viewed as a conventional or independent minded person is also a subjective factor of the community around you.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#156

Post by fallingfrog »

edw519 wrote: post #150
fallingfrog wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but how do you have a lively discussion but also have nobody’s ideas getting shouted down? Would a lively discussion involve everyone agreeing with one another? Edit: people are apparently not getting my central point here: it might be that, if you’re a conformist, you see a whole bunch of people nodding and saying roughly the same things and think, “this is a lively discussion!” But then see people disagreeing…

shoutedDown != disagreed

Explain. In what way?

Edit: I tried to just post that I think I understand where you’re coming from: people disagreeing but without giving actual reasons. Which is toxic. And guess what: I got “you’re posting too fast”. Thanks for enabling real discussions by nonconformists, hacker news!

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#157

Post by unityByFreedom »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #131

PG sure has been on a kick about how brilliant of an independent thinker he is in a sea of conformity. It's clear in all of his writing that he's perpetually beating around the bush about some current itch he has, I wish he would just come out and say it with out pretending to be a deep thinker: > Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? I mean, taken outsi…

Seems more like reposts than beating around the bush to me.

He maintained a significant following through essays and probably feels it still works.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#158

Post by hedberg10 »

edw519 wrote: post #98

Another place where the independent- and conventional-minded are thrown together is in successful startups. The founders and early employees are almost always independent-minded; otherwise the startup wouldn't be successful. But conventional-minded people greatly outnumber independent-minded ones, so as the company grows, the original spirit of independent-mindedness is inevitably diluted. This causes all kinds of pr…

Make a community hard to use for the conventional-minded.

Dark patterns, but for user selection.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#160

Post by DrNuke »

Folks, do not shoot the messenger (aka PG) here: he actually created something novel fifteen years ago, while coalescing brilliant minds around something people needed. He even went on making an institution of that! With the miracle turned institution and now organization, it is human to look back and preach to the good savages of today.

More in depth, this is maybe the difference between the do-it-first American approach and the study-it-first English attitude? Special relationship at play, you know, but the world is multipolar today, so you also have the socially regulated Euro approach and the paternally autocratic Chinese approach to reconcile. All these, even without taking rogue approaches into consideration.

Maybe the ultimate dream of PG these days is being acknowledged as the headmaster of outsiders, connecting curiosity with prototyping for the markets, in that by-passing the canonical school curricula by virtue of intuition by necessity and fast implementation?

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