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‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

commoncog.com

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Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#61

Post by mercer »

RealityVoid wrote: post #51
ofrzeta wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this "theory" that one trait of successful people is forgetfulness. In my experience they tend to forget their mistakes and also forget the source of their successful ideas.

I tend to suffer from this, only in the _other_ dirrection, in that I forget when I give something or I add something or I help with something or I forget conflicts with people and slights reeal easy. My mistakes and failures, I remember vividly. Does that set me up for anti-success I wonder?

It can be a recipe for serious anxiety issues, I suppose.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#63

Post by thanhhaimai »

didibus wrote: post #56
asveikau wrote: post #37

> For instance, Steve Jobs was famous for arguing against one position or another, only to decide that you were right, and then come back a month later holding exactly your opinion, as if it were his all along. Unrelated to the larger theme of the post, but I absolutely hate it when people do this. I thought it sounded like a silly parable until I saw people do it in real life. At which point I concluded it was some…

I'm someone who does that I believe. I don't see it as a bad thing. I'm not going to go and pretend it was my idea, it's just that I take a while to make up my idea of what's right, and I'll discuss edge cases and all kind of issues with others really thoroughly and strongly, I'll do that with many people, about the same thing. And then I'll kind of form my own opinion from that, which could be 90% of person's X, and…

It's not a bad thing if people are careful about giving credits. I have seen both extremes of that:

1) The type who does exactly what the OP said, treat people like trash and think when they commit to an idea, they are often right. When they change their opinion, they don't give credit either, since they want to maintain the image that they are often right. I have seen great teammates left due to those people. I would not want to work with those people either.

2) The second type also hold strong opinions. When they change their view, they attribute it to people who brought it up. They don't care about maintaining an image that they are "often right". They genuinely thanks the people who brought them good arguments that changes their strongly held opinions. It's not about who invented the idea. But they understand it's good to appreciate people from which you get the new idea. I love working with those people. I try to give proper credits to people when they show me new ideas.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#64

Post by qznc »

kazinator wrote: post #38

The fix: > Use Probability as an Expression of Confidence If the probability is just some made up number reflecting a hunch, it's no better at informing us to take an action or drop an opinion. It's just a way of talking about how weakly we are holding the opinion, and not the real deal from statistics. The concept still provides no concrete framework for assigning the probability, and for taking action. E.g. do you…

You just have to compute the expected value. Let's say we play a game where you have to invest $10.

If you have a 65% chance to win and winning means you get $2 on top of your $10, then abort the plan. The expected value is $12×65% = $7.80 which is less than your investment.

If you have a 35% chance to win and winning means you get $30 on top of your 10$, then continue. An expected value of $40×35% = $14 is worth it.

In reality, the tricky part is often to assign numbers (How much does it cost to switch to Rust? How much errors does the stricter type system catch?) but the framework is available.

Ok, also look up the Kelly criterion because you can go bankrupt even with a high expected value.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#65

Post by asveikau »

thanhhaimai wrote: post #63
didibus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm someone who does that I believe. I don't see it as a bad thing. I'm not going to go and pretend it was my idea, it's just that I take a while to make up my idea of what's right, and I'll discuss edge cases and all kind of issues with others really thoroughly and strongly, I'll do that with many people, about the same thing. And then I'll kind of form my own opinion from that, which could be 90% of person's X, and…

It's not a bad thing if people are careful about giving credits. I have seen both extremes of that: 1) The type who does exactly what the OP said, treat people like trash and think when they commit to an idea, they are often right. When they change their opinion, they don't give credit either, since they want to maintain the image that they are often right. I have seen great teammates left due to those people. I woul…

And I don't think the worst part is failing to give credit necessarily. People legitimately forget things, and they independently come up with the same ideas. The problem is when it's wrapped in egotism and inability to see that the person who suggested it earlier did so with good intentions, and might be worth listening to in past, present and future.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#66

Post by smegma2 »

karlkatzke wrote: post #62

> It is quite difficult for the human mind to vacillate between one strong opinion to another The author has apparently never met someone on the autistic spectrum with ADHD and who has enough life experience to know how to be wrong gracefully.

Not sure what you're getting at here, but this sounds like a rare occurrence i.e. difficult

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#67

Post by renewiltord »

gnicholas wrote: post #59
renewiltord wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples below. Weak opinion: I cannot conclude anything about why my car won't start. Strong opinion: I think my battery is dead and that's why my car won't start. Strongly held: I tested the battery and voltage and current are within good thresholds. I still believe what I believed before. Weakly held: I tested the battery and voltage and current are within good thresholds. I have adjusted my belief about what I be…

Thanks for the examples. Is it possible for a weak opinion to be something other than "IDK why X is happening"? That is, can it be an affirmative opinion about some causal relationship or future event? Honestly, if someone asked me whether the WO example above was strong or weak, I would tend to say it is strong because it is a categorical statement. To me, a weak statement would be "I think my car won't start becaus…

I think in the context of the original statement it was a heuristic for searching for truth, i.e. "to know, form hypotheses then subject them to falsification tests".

So yes, in the meaning of SOWH, all WO are ones that leave you unable to progress. Your reading of 'categorical implying strong' is reasonable, imho, in just the meaning of the word 'strong'. It's just not what I believe was the intended meaning in the statement of SOWH.

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#68

Post by bane »

asveikau wrote: post #37

> For instance, Steve Jobs was famous for arguing against one position or another, only to decide that you were right, and then come back a month later holding exactly your opinion, as if it were his all along. Unrelated to the larger theme of the post, but I absolutely hate it when people do this. I thought it sounded like a silly parable until I saw people do it in real life. At which point I concluded it was some…

We have a client who is like this. It's intolerable, but also so predictable that we basically deal with it by just weaponizing it. We know that when we present information to him, we simply work towards building a message that he will take as his own eventually. Initially he'll crap all over the idea, but invariably will return a few weeks later with a "great idea" that will just be what we told him and then we'll basically get to do whatever we wanted to in the first place.

It requires some ego squelching but in the end we accomplish what we want and everybody ends up relatively happy. However, even after years of successes, this particular client still treats us like the hired help (which I suppose we are).

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#69

Post by gnicholas »

renewiltord wrote: post #67
gnicholas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the examples. Is it possible for a weak opinion to be something other than "IDK why X is happening"? That is, can it be an affirmative opinion about some causal relationship or future event? Honestly, if someone asked me whether the WO example above was strong or weak, I would tend to say it is strong because it is a categorical statement. To me, a weak statement would be "I think my car won't start becaus…

I think in the context of the original statement it was a heuristic for searching for truth, i.e. "to know, form hypotheses then subject them to falsification tests". So yes, in the meaning of SOWH, all WO are ones that leave you unable to progress. Your reading of 'categorical implying strong' is reasonable, imho, in just the meaning of the word 'strong'. It's just not what I believe was the intended meaning in the…

Interesting, so the SO part of SOWH just means "have opinions that can be validated"? That seems very weak, no pun intended. Would anyone go around advocating for people to have WO, using that definition? I guess if that's what it means, then SOWH is pretty vacuous.

Perhaps it's my background (law, economics, logic) but I assumed that "strong" referred to "the strong form" of an argument or hypothesis (such as the efficient market hypothesis). I never understood why someone would say it's better to embrace strong forms of arguments, since these tend to be more extreme (and IMO, things tend to be wrong more when they are taken to extremes).

Re: ‘Strong Opinions, Weakly Held’ Doesn't Work That Well

#70

Post by 082349872349872 »

"Skate to where the puck is going to be" is an example of SOWH working well. A weak opinion (waiting to get clearer data) would result in skating to where the puck has been. A strongly held opinion would result in skating to where the puck isn't going at all, and has never been.
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