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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#701

Post by polote »

aerosmile wrote: post #694
RIDDLERTHIS wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would have been the right time? When you were a student studying during your first degree or your second? In hindsight, I think it is almost dubious to assume that exposure to this article would have helped you at any given time in the past. It's quite possible you would not have come to the same realization about tech entrepreneurship had you not obtained your AE and had the experiences that you did.

Fair enough - one article alone probably wouldn't have had the full impact. But I am envious of the generation of current high schoolers who can read HN all day. After a year or so, I imagine you can reprogram your mind quite a bit. Back in the late 90s, access to information like this was much more limited.

What you are getting from HN at your current age with your experience, is not the same that what your young self would have gotten from the same content

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#702

Post by jfengel »

bosie wrote: post #536
jfengel wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> because we can easily calculate the value they produce, I am not trolling but I would really, really like a citation on this. I hear this sentiment so often but nobody ever produced that calculation. Would be great (or maybe not ;)) for negotiations going forward.

I mean it in the simplistic sense that we can sum up the revenue of the software industry. That's not really a complete calculation but it's clearer than trying to measure the value add of teachers.... even though it's arguably more.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#703

Post by dang »

retsibsi wrote: post #665
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?

Yes, partly because he wasn't famous (so reading his essays felt like being part of a club) and partly because he was advocating for an underdog perspective (that of the smart technical founder). The idea that you could succeed through programming skill, talking to customers, and cutting out bullshit was enormously exciting, and the fact that Viaweb had succeeded doing it was more of an inspiring existing proof than something to identify against. People like me used to sit around talking about it as sort of a "home team makes good" story. Then they started YC to prove the point at scale, and did prove the point at scale—so much so that it's no longer so easy to remember how radical the thing was. If you're radical enough and proven right enough, people will eventually call you "aggressively conventional".

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#704

Post by VoodooJuJu »

ardit33 wrote: post #629
ryeguy_24 wrote: post #615

Am I the only one is getting pretty bored of "formula for success" content? This essay and other's like it, without evidence or data, implies that some of us know the formula for success. I get it, the things that change convention are unconventional at first. This is the definition of unconventional. I agree with the general vector of his essay but this is just boring to me. Here is my formula for success (in case a…

I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. You might be broke and posting from your mom's base…

It's funny you mention taking advice from successful pro athletes. I'm reminded of a great essay, "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" by David Foster Wallace.

He writes about his admiration for a successful pro tennis athlete, her intensity and dedication to her sport, and her strangely vacuous response to the question "How do you do it Tracy?" - which she answers with some vague platitudes. His point is: very successful people are so busy being successful, they're so deeply immersed in their craft, that they don't seem to even have the conscious introspective wherewithal to articulate what it is they're doing. Everything they know about their craft and their life is just so tacit to them. They've either never taken the time to really introspect, again because they're so caught up in just winning and getting things done, or they're just genuinely incapable of gleaning any wisdom from what it is that they do. So maybe it's not particularly useful to take advice from these people after all.

Now, this is probably the case for most such people, but there is a very small minority that do eventually cultivate the ability to articulate their internalized understanding and wisdom of their success to others. Maybe PG is one of them. Maybe not.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#705

Post by dboreham »

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #615

Am I the only one is getting pretty bored of "formula for success" content? This essay and other's like it, without evidence or data, implies that some of us know the formula for success. I get it, the things that change convention are unconventional at first. This is the definition of unconventional. I agree with the general vector of his essay but this is just boring to me. Here is my formula for success (in case a…

1. Luck 2. Don't screw up.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#706

Post by bosie »

jfengel wrote: post #702
bosie wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because we can easily calculate the value they produce, I am not trolling but I would really, really like a citation on this. I hear this sentiment so often but nobody ever produced that calculation. Would be great (or maybe not ;)) for negotiations going forward.

I mean it in the simplistic sense that we can sum up the revenue of the software industry. That's not really a complete calculation but it's clearer than trying to measure the value add of teachers.... even though it's arguably more.

well, the software industry is filled with non-software engineers. and if you go with the revenue angle, what do you do with companies that don't produce "value" (i.e. product doesn't sell)?

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#707

Post by yt-sdb »

darkerside wrote: post #669

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…

I agree. A few years ago, I read “The Conquest of Happiness” by B. Russell, and he made a compelling argument that living a boring life may be a prerequisite for great work in certain fields. One can imagine that in 500 years, we’ll still talk about results from Terry Tao—who I suspect is boring and conventional in many ways—while totally forgetting the work of exciting and controversial thinkers today.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#708

Post by jolux »

pgayed wrote: post #682
jolux wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many successful people overrate their personal characteristics and underrate the degree to which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. Fortune favors the prepared, of course, but I personally believe there are far more people in the world who are adequately prepared for success who do not succeed because they are under-resourced or poorly connected.

> because they are under-resourced or poorly connected This is soluble.

Often not by the people in that situation but as a society yes it absolutely should be soluble.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#709

Post by [deleted] »

aerosmile wrote: post #649
neolog wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Prior to Instacart, the conventional wisdom was that grocery delivery doesn't work Is Instacart profitable?

We'll find out soon from their S-1. That in and of itself is pretty remarkable for a business idea that used to be so toxic.

[deleted]

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#710

Post by tambourine_man »

I glanced over this entire day thread but didn’t find this questioning so here it goes:

Does no one else find that a “how to think for yourself” article is something of a paradox?

I mean, if you do follow through whatever directions are pointed out, you already failed.

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