I can't be the only person who doesn't want to be a successful person. Most problems worth solving won't be solved in a way that benefits individuals in the manner described. Optimizing for self-gain just leads to more investors and fewer problems getting solved.
The Right Kind of Stubborn
211–220 of 249 posts
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#212I once inherited a very thorny performance problem with a service. Thorny as in, the previous engineer was ordered to give up and move on because our boss was worried it was adversely affecting their mental health and their performance on other tasks. I quickly learned that every person who found out I was working on this problem was eager to share the same three or four ideas on how to fix it. All of these ideas wer…
And did you fix the performance problem?
No. My boss kept me busy with other things. After the work my colleague had done, he was convinced that we weren't going to solve it, and the idea that I was going to get to work on it turned out to be kind of a white lie so the original engineer could mentally let go and get his sanity back. I didn't have many fresh ideas anyway.
In retrospect, there's an obvious suspect. It was early AWS days, and our deployments were controlled by sysadmins, who refused to give us any access to the infrastructure on security grounds. Our dev boxes were in our datacenter. They promised us the infrastructure we were running on was 100% reliable and consistent, but it probably wasn't.
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#213I like this article a lot. I think a lot of the distinction between persistence and obstinance comes down to identity, attachment, and self esteem. Almost everyone who is persistent or obstinant has something to prove. They have some deep-seated feeling that they need to demonstrate something to their community, a sense that maybe their value is in some ways conditional on what they provide. Content people who feel a…
The distinction you outline reminds me of Carol Dweck's "Growth Mindset" research. She suggests (based on studies) that children praised for being "smart" become afraid to take risks which might show them less than perfectly smart. They become consumed with "image maintenance" to the point of even tearing down peers so as to look "smarter" than them. By contrast, she suggests children praised for effort, learning, progress, and related things learn to be persistent even when things are difficult, uncertain, or have a learning curve. If the distinction you draw is correct, perhaps "obstinate" people were praised as smart and "persistent" people were praised for hard work and stick-to-it-iveness and related things?
"What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means" by Carol Dweck https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actuall... "[It is a common misconception that] growth mindset is just about praising and rewarding effort. This isn’t true for students in schools, and it’s not true for employees in organizations. In both settings, outcomes matter. Unproductive effort is never a good thing. It’s critical to reward not just effort but learning and progress, and to emphasize the processes that yield these things, such as seeking help from others, trying new strategies, and capitalizing on setbacks to move forward effectively. In all our research, the outcome — the bottom line — follows from deeply engaging in these processes."
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
doubtful. Stubbornness is so common that's it's unlikely to have a roundabout reason for why it exists.
Royalty used to have lot of children…
Yeah but common peasants have tons too. There was no birth control back then.
The common peasant should dominate the gene pool given the massively larger proportion relative to royalty.
But I’m just making conjecture here as much as you. Who knows? you could be right.
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#215I like this article a lot. I think a lot of the distinction between persistence and obstinance comes down to identity, attachment, and self esteem. Almost everyone who is persistent or obstinant has something to prove. They have some deep-seated feeling that they need to demonstrate something to their community, a sense that maybe their value is in some ways conditional on what they provide. Content people who feel a…
But the obstinates are mostly failing. So it can't be important to them to be right. It's more important to them to be consistent. Changing your mind about something to them is backpedaling. They are letting down everyone else who believes the same stuff. Probably some obstinates fell for the all-American "believe in yourself" nonsense. If you just have confidence and believe in yourself, you will succeed in spite of…
> But the obstinates are mostly failing.
I don't think this is true. For the majority of tasks which are small and relatively easy, both obstinate and persistent people will hit the winning solution on the first try and can't be distinguished.
It's only when you hit a really large or hard problem that these psychological differences start being more apparent.
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#216I can't be the only person who doesn't want to be a successful person. Most problems worth solving won't be solved in a way that benefits individuals in the manner described. Optimizing for self-gain just leads to more investors and fewer problems getting solved.
I do really think that PG often glosses over what he really means when he says "success." From a critical view, you could interpret the word to mean solely financial/economic success. Given his occupation, I would imagine that's his intention with the term.
But if you replace that term with something like "virtue" or "eudaimonia" and read from that perspective, there can sometimes be some truths to glean from his writing. Nothing really novel, but interesting to read nonetheless.
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#217I like this article a lot. I think a lot of the distinction between persistence and obstinance comes down to identity, attachment, and self esteem. Almost everyone who is persistent or obstinant has something to prove. They have some deep-seated feeling that they need to demonstrate something to their community, a sense that maybe their value is in some ways conditional on what they provide. Content people who feel a…
Bob, Since you’re the GPP author - as someone who recently published a Steam title and has glowing community reviews, I wish your comment was the article. pg just doesn’t do it for me. It’s a nonsensical word salad of half-baked conjectures and aphorisms. There’s nothing to discuss because there’s nothing thought provoking in there. I am however glad it spurred you to write something worth reading (again).
> as someone who recently published a Steam title and has glowing community reviews
Congratulations!
> pg just doesn’t do it for me.
For me, he's hit or miss. He has a writing style that tries very hard to boil things down into very simple terms while also approaching subjects that are deep and complex. Often the result is so oversimplified that it misses the mark.
But I do believe pg is thinking deeply about this stuff and there's often insight in his writing even if the narrative ends up too simple and self-satisfied for my taste.
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#218I like this article a lot. I think a lot of the distinction between persistence and obstinance comes down to identity, attachment, and self esteem. Almost everyone who is persistent or obstinant has something to prove. They have some deep-seated feeling that they need to demonstrate something to their community, a sense that maybe their value is in some ways conditional on what they provide. Content people who feel a…
Counterpoint: contentment is a prerequisite for healthy sustained effort. It’s easy to get up every day and chisel away at something inch by inch - sometimes with little to no perceptible progress - when you are fulfilled elsewhere in your life.
This is a good point!
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#219I like this article a lot. I think a lot of the distinction between persistence and obstinance comes down to identity, attachment, and self esteem. Almost everyone who is persistent or obstinant has something to prove. They have some deep-seated feeling that they need to demonstrate something to their community, a sense that maybe their value is in some ways conditional on what they provide. Content people who feel a…
Great comment. I remember someone I knew, saying “I can’t tell if it’s an asset or a defect! If I’m stubborn , it’s a defect, but if I’m tenacious , it’s an asset.” > That's no indictment of contentment, maybe changing the world is overrrated. I think a significant number of “world-changers” have not had personal happy endings. They may have done a lot of good, but it didn’t do much for their own personal happiness.…
> I remember someone I knew, saying “I can’t tell if it’s an asset or a defect! If I’m stubborn, it’s a defect, but if I’m tenacious, it’s an asset.”
I've had very similar conversations with my therapist many times. The conclusion I've come to is that almost every personality trait has both adaptive and maladaptive aspects. You can try to maximize the former and avoid the latter, but ultimately any personality superpower you have is going to bring some consequences along with it.
I try to be more accepting of the fact that most of the psychological stuff is comes from one side coins where the other sides are often my most valuable attributes.
Re: The Right Kind of Stubborn
#220I like this article a lot. I think a lot of the distinction between persistence and obstinance comes down to identity, attachment, and self esteem. Almost everyone who is persistent or obstinant has something to prove. They have some deep-seated feeling that they need to demonstrate something to their community, a sense that maybe their value is in some ways conditional on what they provide. Content people who feel a…
Your analysis seems to assume that the only form of motivation is external. By this logic, persistent/obstinant people do things because they hope for some external reward (e.g., praise, recognition, fame, possibly financial compensation). The difference is merely at the granularity of the goal this is attached to. My experience is that the persistent people I know have at least some degree (and often a large degree)…
I think the line between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is very blurry.
If you're doing something because you want some recognition or fame, that's arguably extrinsic: you're doing the thing because you want other people out in the world to pat you on the back. But while you're doing the work, you're mostly thinking about how good it will feel to get that pat on the back. At that point, is it really that different from other instrinsic motivations?