The Right Kind of Stubborn

I became aware of this quite recently (on this site too IIRC), but it's worth noting that the "growth mindset" findings of the last several decades haven't quite panned out or been replicable upon further review: https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/24418/are-...

I agree the Persistent / Obstinate paradigm seems quite similar, and if anything for those reasons I'm inclined to be (obstinately :P) skeptical.

Less relevant to engineering etc., but I personally find a lot of "successful people do X, unsuccessful people do Y" findings, especially when presented as "innate" or "personality" features, are pretty similar to IQ, the marshmallow test, and other things where it's a frequent victim of selection bias for how scarce resources were in one's upbringing or cognitive development.

> Persistence and obstinacy often overlap in practice, sharing traits like energy, imagination, resilience, good judgment, focus on a goal, and listening intently.

Obstinacy is defined by a lack of imagination, good judgement, and intent listening.

> For example, Copernicus and Galileo were considered obstinate for his heliocentric theory, but history proved him right. This shows that the line between persistence and obstinacy is often drawn in hindsight.

History didn't prove them right, science did. The fact that people considered them obstinate does not mean that they were. The only future where they would still be considered the obstinate ones is one run by obstinate people. They had the evidence, which was ignored by obstinate heliocentrists. Heliocentrists did not have convincing reasons for their belief that Copernicus/Galileo ignored.

Still disagree. The most prolific writers are journalists, and most of their stuff is absolute garbage.

On top of that, most of the most successful people on the planet write little or nothing. They are too busy doing.

I like his articles, but the artificial constructs sometimes drive me up the wall. After reading through a fairly rudimentary strawman about outcomes defining the difference between obstinacy and persistence, we reach the last paragraph that trades a poorly defined word (persistence) for five poorly defined words (imagination, focus, energy, judgement, resilience)

persistence is also defined by flexibility in thinking, appetite for risk/comfort with uncertainty, low ego. equally useless

(I still love you PG, despite my dyspepsia)

There's an old anecdote where I think Pascal, but I'm not sure, argued the existence or non-existence of God in front of the king with another philosopher. Maybe-Pascal exclaimed loudly and with great confidence "A plus C equal B squared! Therefore God exists! COUNTER!" The other philosopher didn't know much about mathematics, had no idea to reply, got flustered, and "lost" the argument.[1]

And honestly, I'm not sure I would have done better in the moment. On reflection? Sure. But in front of the king, presented with a completely unfamiliar argument stated with great confidence and demanding a reply? Yeah, maybe not. Even on topics where I have reasonable in-depth knowledge I sometimes really doubt myself when someone says something very wrong with great confidence, and sometimes I really double and triple-check things to make sure I'm not making a right fool of myself.

Few years back I ordered a sandwich at a deli. Still looking at the menu, the lady asked what I wanted. "Ehhh, well, ehmm, I don't eat meat, so, ehhh, something without that". "Oh, I have chicken!" And she said this so quickly and with such confidence that for a few seconds I was genuinely doubting whether "chicken" was meat or not and wasn't really sure what to answer.

I guess she had a bit of "a moment" and we had a laugh about it afterwards, but I thought that was a pretty interesting and harmless example of how you can really start doubting yourself.

NFTs are another example. When I first heard of it, I thought I had not understood it correctly because "surely it can't be this dumb". And for months when all the NFT hype was raging I thought it must be some very complex crypto bonanza I wasn't really understanding. All the obscure jargon and lingo the NFT people confidently use aided that notion. I'm not really interested in crypto in general, but finally gave in and did some more in-depth reading on it. I found that no, it really is that dumb, and I had understood it correctly months ago, and all the jargon was just meaningless bollocks word salad.

[1]: I read about this years and years ago, I can't find anything about it right now and this anecdote may be false, but it seemed trust-worthy enough at the time to remember.