41–50 of 59 posts
What shitty advice. “Just go ahead and do whatever horrible things you want, don’t worry about whether people will hate you for them.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly understand this, but it doesn't go deep enough. Sure, I don't worry about what people consciously think of me, like "Does he think I'm incompetent because of that mistake I made? Does she like the way I'm dressed?". I'm more concerned with what they're not thinking, or rather the biases they may be unconsciously harboring about myself or others. Look at this [1], from a study on the relation of criminal sent…
But what if it's a self fulfilling bias in the sense that he actually will be a better leader precisely because that little unconscious man in people's minds will say those kinds of things to them and they will actually be more likely to follow his lead than if you put a weakling in his place who is technically better versed in software. As in, society is biased to pick the square-jaw guy for leadership, because soci…
Good leadership is less about convincing people to follow you than it is about being able to lead people in the right direction. David Koresh was highly charismatic and convinced a lot of people to follow him, but I doubt anyone would consider him a "good leader".
It is helpful to have awareness about how your behaivor and actions may affect others, depending on the situation and your relationship with them, and how they may perceive or react to it. I find the key is to have and develop values you consistently act and live by so even if someone reacts negatively or different from what you expected, you don't feel this means you did something wrong or need to change something about yourself.
During my life (especially school years but also early in my career) I have found that people who come across as thinking I am an asshole don't really think I am an asshole. In each and every case these people were relatively underprivileged and could be described as underachievers. In some cases these people had more money than me, or they had more academic achievements, etc., so their feelings can't just be describ…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what if it's a self fulfilling bias in the sense that he actually will be a better leader precisely because that little unconscious man in people's minds will say those kinds of things to them and they will actually be more likely to follow his lead than if you put a weakling in his place who is technically better versed in software. As in, society is biased to pick the square-jaw guy for leadership, because soci…
>they will actually be more likely to follow his lead Good leadership is less about convincing people to follow you than it is about being able to lead people in the right direction. David Koresh was highly charismatic and convinced a lot of people to follow him, but I doubt anyone would consider him a "good leader".
Often among roughly equally talented people what matters is to have a clear vision, any vision and to orient a whole group towards the same direction. It's really hard to judge in advance who is better in long term vision and strategy. Experts don't have a great track record in this and CEOs also don't seem to have a great sense of direction (ie their track record quickly regresses to the mean).
Leadership is to a large degree about crafting a convincing narrative and fostering acting in unison. "To make people long for the sea" etc.
I feel the issue with a lot of this advice like "don't care about what other people think about you", "be yourself" is, it tries to free people from one extreme (caring too much about what other people think for example) by talking about the opposite extreme. It is helpful to have awareness about how your behaivor and actions may affect others, depending on the situation and your relationship with them, and how they…
https://aeon.co/essays/so-you-re-surrounded-by-idiots-guess-...
When you're twenty, you worry about what people think. When you're forty, you don't care what people think. And when you're sixty, you realize that nobody was thinking about you in the first place.
That's what changes over time.
It is good to not care what people think about you. And bad to act like an asshole. If you act nice, and don't care what people think about you, you can't lose, and most people will like to have you around. Assholes might still annoy you, but when that happens, your friends will help you to feel better.
It's hard to be nice when you feel that the others are exploiting you in some way. Even if you can empathize with their situation, sometimes you cannot sympathize enough to put their well being over your own (mainly in cases where the absolute difference between the relative importance of their needs to your own, in your opinion as per your beliefs, is small). Well, I'm an antisocial shut-in so maybe this is a fringe…
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It's a great "mind-bown" insight story, but just not true. People do judge each other and have opinions and put them in little mental boxes all the time. Impressions matter and can make or break your life. For example, anyone who used to be fat and then loses weight can attest that it matters what others think of you and they do think things. It's comfortable and uplifting and "wise" to say that nobody cares but they…
>It's a great "mind-blown" insight story, but just not true. People do judge each other and have opinions and put them in little mental boxes all the time Yes, we all understand that people stereotype. I think you're getting bogged down in the details and missing the overall point, which is far more generalized. The above story is meant to be short and clever, and to do so it glosses over a few things that you're mea…
(Caveat that I haven’t looked into how deeply this has survived the psych and social psych replication crisis)