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

How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 874 posts

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#31

Post by vgmartin »

fvdessen wrote: post #3

The decrease of independent minded as an organisation grows seems an almost universal phenomenon. It happens to startups yes, but also to forums, bands, fashions, the internet, games, religions, politics, etc. Basically anything new will target independent minded people, and anything successful will target conventional people. It's sad for the independent minded, but is there anything that can be done about this ?

Yes, the independently-minded people who created the original organization and the value must refuse to let parasitical people in.

pg cannot use this term in his essays, but it boils down to that, at least in the software space.

In agriculture etc. of course conventional minded people do excellent work and create tremendous value.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#33

Post by vgmartin »

Yet again an excellent essay. It is very sad that these days pg is literally the only one in the programming space who writes essays for free spirits.

Ten years ago these opinions would not have been extraordinary, but programmers as a group seem to have been subject to successful $BIGCORP reeducation in the last decade.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#34

Post by adnzzzzZ »

The distinction between independent-mindedness and conventional-mindedness is captured more correctly I think by a trait called politeness as defined here https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5863998_Between_Fac... Independent-mindness would be similar to low politeness (coupled with high openness, but I'll ignore that for now), and those people would be more likely to be like this than not:

* Make enemies.

* Oppose authority.

* Believe that I am better than others.

* Seek danger.

* Put people under pressure.

* Try to outdo others.

* Believe only in myself.

* Impose my will on others.

* Love a good fight.

* Seek conflict.

* Think too highly of myself.

* Tell tall stories about myself.

* Play tricks on others.

* Enjoy crude jokes.

* [Comment loudly about others.]

* [Enjoy being reckless.]

* [Do dangerous things.]

You get the point. In my opinion, you don't really get to be independent-minded without the negatives that come with it. For instance, most conspiracy theorists are highly independent-minded people. They definitely reject authority, and they're highly curious and contrarian about established narratives.

This recent small debate I found on Twitter is a good illustrative example of it. https://twitter.com/ModeledBehavior/status/13280235538249932... The account in question (https://twitter.com/toad_spotted) was someone who got the pandemic right earlier than most people, so conventional-minded people followed it because it was a good source of information about the virus overall. But now that another situation has come up where independent-mindedness can also show itself to be useful (and potentially right), conventional-minded people will dislike it, just like they disliked it when the outcome of the virus wasn't yet known.

I felt like mentioning this because I feel like there's a lack of appreciation for how exactly the negative aspects of independent-mindedness manifest themselves in real life, and without that appreciation for the negatives of it I think it's easy to misjudge how independent-minded someone actually is and to also misjudge people who are more independent-minded than you because they seem more difficult to get along with.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#36

Post by candu »

As far as a practice of mindful examination: yes, this makes sense. Examining your thoughts, and the spoken assertions of others, is valuable if only to train critical thinking.

I do think it's possible to prize independence in this regard too much, though. Taken to the extreme, it's a sort of personal not-invented-here syndrome: it can shut you off from valuable sources of ideas and mentorship, and cause you to endlessly re-tread mental ground that's already been covered. Taking the successful scientist as an example: they "stand on the shoulders of giants", and their "independent" thoughts are only possible because they're immersed in, and actively synthesizing, lots and lots and lots of "conventional" thought.

The "independent" breakthrough is just one small iteration on heaps of "conventional" thought. The "independent" product is just one small iteration on heaps of "conventional" technology. It's the deep familiarity with the "conventional" part, and thinking through what all that really means and makes possible, that makes the "independent" part possible.

So: are you really thinking independently? Or are you just thinking blindly, without that familiarity?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#37

Post by inglor_cz »

lonesword wrote: post #23

Did anyone find the article too long? Don't get me wrong - the first few paragraphs were engaging and thought-provoking. The rest of the article looked as if it could be condensed to two paragraphs. This is not a criticism - I'm just curious to know if I was bored because I have a short attention span, or if the amount of novel/useful content in the article plummeted sharply beyond the first few paragraphs.

Yes, I did.

While I generally like PG's essays, I wished this one was about half its actual size. As if PG resigned on brevity this time.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#38

Post by qznc »

bambax wrote: post #24

It is surely a mere coincidence that every time PG makes up some category of elite people he finds himself right in the middle of it.

Everyone is the hero in their own story.

Don't know where i got it from. I usually use it as a reminder that even evil people like Hitler consider themselves as the good hero. Maybe in difficult circumstances. I don't want to compare PG to Hitler though.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#39

Post by dijit »

So, I might have a controversial opinion here.

My mother raised me to think for myself, it was a heavy emphasis of my upbringing and important for her.

However I'm now in situations where the world is divided and asking questions (in order to make my own mind up) is considered some kind of admission of guilt for being part of the "other".

For example: Asking someone why they think immigration is good/bad. If it's a belief they hold, I'm interested in knowing the thought process and making my own conclusions based on something I might not have known. But the act of asking the question makes the person, who may not have put too much original thinking in; quite defensive.

There's another drawback here too: which is that you can't experience everything. I can't live with the experiences of an American Black Woman who emigrates to England as a White English Man who lives in Sweden; it's just not possible, thus it requires strenuous effort to empathise.

There will always be a line in which we just have to take things at face value, in computer terms "understanding the contract" between components.

Thinking for yourself is overrated as society is not built for it if you want to fit in.

Post reply on HN