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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#461

Post by walleeee »

texasbigdata wrote: post #436
Arubis wrote: post #421

Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality, like PG's become a synecdoche of SF VC-fuelled startup culture as a whole. Whether that's him changing, or me, or the world, I'm not certain--but I still look forward to them simply because the ensuing discussions here on HN tend…

I mean if you’re a human and you’re trying to generate weekly content or similar, there should be some kind of s-curve in your production function. No one is novel enough to come up with new ideas ad infinitum (sp?). Dudes been writing for how many years?

That's the thing. Why is he trying to generate content constantly if he has little to say?

I have my own theories (elaborated elsewhere in this thread), but it's a question that needs asking.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#462

Post by mcguire »

typon wrote: post #205

I find reading this article a very uncomfortable experience. It's just assertion after assertion without evidence to back them up. Do people believe this guy because he's rich?

Because he's rich, and this is his forum.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#463

Post by fractionalhare »

strofcon wrote: post #454

"To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can't publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet." Oof, first paragraph and he's entirely wrong. That's rough. One of the most worrisome aspects of the world's take on science lately is that reproduction of published results…

In fairness, PG's statement there is correct if you consider it descriptively rather than prescriptively, for exactly the reason you outlined in your comment. As a positive statement of fact about the current ethos of science it's correct. Less so if you interpret it as a normative imperative.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#464

Post by coolgod »

strofcon wrote: post #454

"To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be correct. Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You can't publish papers saying things other people already know. You need to say things no one else has realized yet." Oof, first paragraph and he's entirely wrong. That's rough. One of the most worrisome aspects of the world's take on science lately is that reproduction of published results…

Depends on what your definition and metric of success. If all academia cares about is citation count then PG makes a good argument.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#465

Post by MinusGix »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #137

Is it helpful to differentiate Discovery vs. Invention? When a scientist discovers a physical behavior, or a oceanographer a new species, it's a discovery that others could make. The phenomena exists, they happened to find it first. When a composer invents, they are likely creating music that no other human would have created. If they hadn't composed it, it would never have existed. Both of these activities seem to r…

You could frame it as discovery being finding something out about the thing. So you find out the color of the trees in fall, the sun that an asteroid is about to fall into, or a person's name. For invention, you are usually deliberately creating it. Your composer works on the music to become better, and chooses better chords to play. The programmer modifies his code to fix an issue he noticed, thus making the invention better.

I think they are separate. Even if they are 100% related, all from the same factors of psychology, it would still be useful to differentiate them.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#467

Post by WhompingWindows »

x87678r wrote: post #404

Some of my biggest regrets are doing what I thought was best when I should have done what everyone else was doing. This ranges from from not buying an overpriced house 20 years ago, to not partying at college, to following some interesting but unpopular technology. Its not all bad doing things your own way but you have to be careful about straying too much.

You regret not partying at college? My biggest regret from college is binge drinking and staying up too late to basically faff around chasing frivolous pleasure. If I had drank half as much and partied half as much, I'd have gotten much more accomplished.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#468

Post by lowcodetv »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #440
Karunamon wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a side-effect here. If you're interacting in a place where straight-up calling bullshit on someone is socially unacceptable (HN, Wikipedia talk pages, many professional settings), then your first suggestion will simply take the place of calling bullshit and have the same effect.

> straight-up calling bullshit on someone is socially unacceptable I think it's not about social acceptance. It is unacceptable because if you call them bullshit without giving good reasons why you think so it is not advancing the discussion in any good way. You are not contributing anything except your personal opinion. If you do have good reasons to explain why you think they are wrong you don't need to call them n…

Exactly. It's definitely cognitively dissonant to say to someone, "You're wrong, let me see your facts... but I don't have facts about why you're wrong."

I think something to reiterate is that it never goes well when you tell the other person that you disagree with them. A person is not just one idea, they're made from thousands... You're merely disagreeing with one idea, and that should be made clear when you're speaking with them. Regarding the parent comment's terminology of "calling bs", that's a bit of a harsh way to put it, or approach it, if you're trying to reconcile a difference of opinion over a single idea, and not fundamentally pointing at another person and saying, "You are your one bad idea and I don't like either."

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#469

Post by MinusGix »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #189
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the majority is clearly right on most questions This is exactly the idea which the statement counteracts. You're trusting the majority opinion because it is the majority. Yet it is not always right, and you can give yourself a huge advantage by questioning it for yourself. ... or you can continue being a follower of majority opinion. The choice is up to you. By the way, the majority opinion has been wrong about the…

> Yet it is not always right, and you can give yourself a huge advantage by questioning it for yourself. Assuming you have a reason to. If the majority assumed the shape of the earth was a cube based on the information they had at the time, and you came along and noticed something to refute that, of course that is valuable. But if you are refuting that simply because the majority assumed it, that doesn’t seem useful.…

They aren't arguing that you should simply not trust the majority at all, but that you should be willing to evaluate the majority's beliefs. There are obviously limits on this, and I think you are trying for a far too absolute interpretation of what they were saying.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#470

Post by gist »

Arubis wrote: post #421

Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality, like PG's become a synecdoche of SF VC-fuelled startup culture as a whole. Whether that's him changing, or me, or the world, I'm not certain--but I still look forward to them simply because the ensuing discussions here on HN tend…

> Over the years, I've found PG's essays much less compelling. As some sibling comments here have noted, there's a level of self-assuredness that feels increasingly disconnected from reality

This most likely comes from spending not only a long time but also a large amount of time around 'a certain type of person' more than anything.

Maybe an example is how many people reacted to those workers who delivered packages, food or pumped gas when the pandemic first set in with lock-downs in some states. All the sudden it was as if those people were pure gold in a way that they never even existed or were thought about before (by certain people).

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