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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#661

Post by duderific »

lilactown wrote: post #567
Kranar wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's conventional wisdom, but I simply disagree then. Just because everyone tells you not to buy a house doesn't mean you should buy one. I didn't buy my house because everyone told me not to, that would be incredibly stupid. In fact I would even go further and say that doing the opposite of what everyone tells you to do for the sake of being contrarian is worse than just going with the flow. You can listen t…

I am 99% sure ska is saying that "lots of people would have suggested to buy a house in 2009." I was not in a position to buy then, but IIRC the market had plummeted the previous year and was at an all-time low; if you were in a position to buy, it was a great time to do it.

I have to disagree a bit here. I remember at that time, 2009, nobody knew whether the market had bottomed out or not. There was still extreme nervousness with regards to asset prices. Prices actually bottomed out in around 2012, which is when my wife and I bought our first house. We didn't do it because we knew it was going to be the bottom; it just so happened to be when we had saved up some money and found a place we liked. Point being, I think the OP is correct; most people in 2009 were saying not to buy, from an investment perspective, because it was thought that prices were likely to keep dropping.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#662

Post by nwienert »

dang wrote: post #636

Every time a new pg essay comes out, comments appear saying how much he and his essays have changed (for the worse, of course). I think this perception has the nicely ironic property that it exists because it's false. pg hasn't changed. He can't; he's too weird (nonconformist, if you prefer). Traits at that level just are. What's changed is his status. Becoming rich and famous changes how people perceive you. What so…

What’s a strong disagree you have with him? For if he is so non-conformist certainly you disagree with him on a few things.

What makes him weird in his thinking compared to your typical Bay Area tech person? They all seem to value non-conformity, thinking from first principles, growth, etc.

What view would you’d say is truly contrarian? One that most here would disagree with?

Most of the critique here isn’t about him saying something people just disagree with. He’s not being radical in any way whatsoever. The critiques here all have to do with the fact that he’s saying aggressively conventional things that are framed as the opposite. Banal, backwards and self-congratulatory. It’s not that he’s said anything disagreeable in content.

You’re fighting against different people with each point you make. It’s like you made a field of straw men and then shot each down. You do the same thing with critiques of HN itself: “people always have said this”, where the “this” is vague and has often been different at different times. If what they say is different then maybe some are right, maybe the “this” was right at the time, and now it’s a different this, and it’s right now. Just because a choir sounds bad doesn’t mean a few voices aren’t correct.

Paul is an aggressively conventional guy. He’s your super stereotypical “slightly nerd techie”. He excels at second order thinking (“everyone says X, but have you thought of Y”) but then he just stops there. He never contends with his own second order contrarian idea, he just builds reinforcements around it. This essay is kindergarten chalkboard aphorism “Think Outside the Box!” framed as real contrarianism, which is why he gets flak.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#664

Post by hutzlibu »

jfengel wrote: post #431
eloff wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value and compensation aren't necessarily coupled. Think of school teachers. It's clearly an incredibly valuable job preparing the next generation of society, but pays a miserable wage before the intervening of unions, and still not great even with that. But there's more teachers available in the labor market compared to demand than computer programmers, so the latter command a much higher salary. Even though I would…

I'm not even sure it's true that there are more teachers than programmers. But the pool of money for paying programmers is large and expanding, because we can easily calculate the value they produce, while the monetary value of teaching is harder to measure. It doesn't help that teaching is presented as a "caring" profession, that you do for the love of your charges. Teachers don't threaten to jump to a different sch…

"and to have school districts run by the people who might otherwise run Fortune 500 companies"

What bothers me with this "race for the best", is that there is a finite amount of people running fortune 500 companies.

My main problem with the school system is that even good teachers can't teach their full potential with all the outside constraints regulating their classes.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#665

Post by retsibsi »

dang wrote: post #636

Every time a new pg essay comes out, comments appear saying how much he and his essays have changed (for the worse, of course). I think this perception has the nicely ironic property that it exists because it's false. pg hasn't changed. He can't; he's too weird (nonconformist, if you prefer). Traits at that level just are. What's changed is his status. Becoming rich and famous changes how people perceive you. What so…

I know he's probably significantly richer now, but did people really perceive him as an underdog after he made millions from Viaweb?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#666

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #636

Every time a new pg essay comes out, comments appear saying how much he and his essays have changed (for the worse, of course). I think this perception has the nicely ironic property that it exists because it's false. pg hasn't changed. He can't; he's too weird (nonconformist, if you prefer). Traits at that level just are. What's changed is his status. Becoming rich and famous changes how people perceive you. What so…

[deleted]

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#667

Post by neckardt »

Judgmentality wrote: post #650
aerosmile wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the point of the article. It explains why Bob is better than Sally in job A, but Sally is better than Bob in job B. Perhaps you figured that out, but I can't see that from your response, so I'll give you why this was so impactful for me. I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes. After two degrees, three internships, three years of…

> I quit the industry and started from scratch as a tech entrepreneur looking for a more fulfilling career path What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding?

> > I went into Aerospace Engineering thinking that I'll be able to design radically different looking airplanes.

> What is it you're doing as an entrepreneur you find so rewarding?

The aerospace industry rewards making minor improvements to conventional airplanes rather than building something novel. Entrepreneurship rewards building something new and "radically different", which is what he was looking for in the first place.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#668

Post by kerpilo »

PIKAL wrote: post #618

I knew from as far back as I can remember that I was totally different from most people. I always thought that most people were the same. I grew up stricken with independent mindedness. If you are smart enough to blend in despite having a completely different way of thinking then it would be ok but I am the kind of person who cannot hide what’s inside. It ruined my life. Most people live a life of luxury simply by th…

I identify with both your sentiment and what PG wrote.

Going through life with this feeling of disconnection is very consuming, and can have severe consequences personally and professionally.

Time is especially unkind for independent thinkers who do not achieve what others consider success, fast enough. Being unconventional and 'creative' while young is something passable and understandable... maybe even fashionable depending on where you live. But being of the same mindset and past your thirties is not generally acceptable, unless you have show a measure of financial/professional success.

I would love to see PG write about this, if he has experience observing or living through these sentiments.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#669

Post by darkerside »

I find it interesting that conventional thinkers are described as "sheep" in this article. In my experience, most people who I thought were shallow or "conventional" thinkers were not. Rather, they cared about different things than I did. They were independent thinkers, questioning assumptions, in the field where they were expert or passionate, and conventional thinkers everywhere else because they want to save their mental energy for the areas they care about the most.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#670

Post by nhooyr »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #531
Apocryphon wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand pg. The wisdom is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical business most of the insights will go over a typical reader’s head. There's also pg’s positivistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy draws heavily from Sam Altman literature, for instance.

lol this reads like a copy-pasta meme you'd see on Reddit

seriously right, this whole thread is very confusing.
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