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How to Think for Yourself

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Think for Yourself

#831

Post by tartoran »

username90 wrote: post #62
amadeuspagel wrote: post #50

Like many of pg's essays there's an unqualified glorification of being independent. For example the suggestion that hiring conformist people is something that just happens. It seems more likely that companies more or less consciously hire such people, because a company where everyone thinks independently would be one where everyone wants to do something different, and nothing would get done, no one could agree on any…

Being independent is mostly negative. Prison is full of independent thinkers. However the small share of independent thinkers who actually got many things right are way more valuable than any conventional thinker as it is them who push society forward. Glorifying them is absolutely warranted.

I think you completely missed the point. Really not sure what independent thinkers have to do with prisons. Some of those may be thinkers who got into prison, but that’s a really small fractions. Prisons are filled with mostly non-thinkers who got there after their impulses led them on a wrong path.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#832

Post by archibaldJ »

For this article to be "useful" it should be treated like some kind of scripture in 420AD.

What's great about this article is not its content but that it exists and is written by someone with a considerable amount of influences in this world. I would argue that if you have been so-called independent minded for long enough most PG's articles would feel cliché.

Nonetheless, if you deeply values independent mindfulness and happen to enjoy PG's writings, you will find the article to be extremely powerful because these words can computationally touch something deep inside you. And that is nice.

This is pratically a piece you can meditate with.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#833

Post by astatine »

trabant00 wrote: post #757
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…

Largely, successful people have little idea what they did to succeed at something. I observed this first in others and then in myself when trying to teach others. One reason is - like PG says - the inclination for activities is more nature vs nurture than we like to think. We want the success to be caused by our choices and intelect. When it was largely chosen for us at birth. Another aspect is post fact rationalizat…

> Largely, successful people have little idea what they did to succeed at something

Well said. However, most don't seem to realize. There are people who are perfectly willing to pontificate using literally any situation and relating it to their success. Not sure, if it is them or the rest of the plebs who seek their views and put them on a pedestal.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#834

Post by kaitai »

waterhouse wrote: post #715
aerosmile wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right this moment I am asking myself how to shift more traffic from paid to organic. I created a list of about 10 ideas, the one at the top of that list being so out there that I had to immediately share it with the team. About half of the team members loved it and thought it will be the best thing ever, and the other half thought it's too expensive and we shouldn't risk so much money on an unproven concept that coul…

> I quickly learned that flight testing is all about reading regulations and checking the aircraft for compliance. Sure, there is some flying involved I recently watched some videos of people doing plane checklists; one had an error within two minutes, another had only one pilot doing the checklist while the other was away. I've also heard that humans skipping items or entire checklists is a general problem. Out of c…

The pilots I know also like a lot of order in the rest of their lives (matching plates, keep their tools in order, just the sort of daily-life organization that is somewhat alien to me). Not to the point of clinically-diagnosed OCD, because I don't think these pilots have intrusive thoughts and compulsions -- they just get positive feelings from having things organized and slightly more deterministic.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#835

Post by kaitai »

mdorazio wrote: post #716
aerosmile wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% get where you're coming from, but allow me to offer a counterpoint to your counterpoint. I don't know anyone who works at SpaceX, but a bunch of my classmates went to work for ULA (their competitor). I imagine that SpaceX is better managed, but the nature of work is the same - you're either calculating things using conventional wisdom, or you're writing simulations or coming up with other ways to achieve highe…

I respect your perspective, but it's one I mostly see in younger people. It's basically that personal achievement and being able to single-handedly deliver things are the most meaningful outcomes of work. The perspective that I've come to accept is that very few things that actually impact the world can come about this way. We didn't put men on the moon because some genius did all the calculations and fabrication him…

Won't address SpaceX though I know people there, but I too used to be on a track with an emphasis on individual accomplishment (academic mathematician) -- a lot about single-handed delivery. Sometime in my late 30s I realized that unfortunately, haha, the most impactful accomplishments are team efforts. To do big work, I realized I should find the right team. I am still working out what this means for my own career, but it's a huge change in mindset. And I'm working at a large, old-ish corporation now, and I think we are slowly & painfully changing how something very practical gets done.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#836

Post by Viliam1234 »

rdslw wrote: post #794
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…

It is even worse. This article is (yet another) attemp to romanticize and put to pedestal 'startup with a novel idea'. It is worth to mention that trying to trick/persuade/convince (choose freely) thousands (literaly) of people to go this path, benefits tremendously ycombinator - not the persuaded founders. Because for YC if only few are (hugely) successfull they win. Not so for the other thousands. The fact that few…

Money has logarithmic utility. If you build a successful company, your gain is proportional to logarithm of its profit. But your investor's gain is directly proportional to the profit.

So the investor will try to convince you to aim for 300% profit with 50% probability (compared to your original plan), because for the investor this simply means +50%. For you, it mostly means -50% probability, because the difference between having e.g. $10M or $30M is negligible compared to the difference between having $10M or nothing.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#837

Post by Viliam1234 »

ekianjo wrote: post #722
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.

> which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. If you are successful several times against the odds it's probably not just mere coincidence anymore. You know, stats.

With sufficiently large population, someone will randomly win against unlikely odds. For example, if there is a 1% chance your startup will succeed, but one million people try it, statistically one of them will have 3 successful startups in a row even without being better than average.

Though, realistically, the chance should increase for the following attempts, because you can reuse some resources and contacts you gained with the first success. The first startup is like "I need to succeed within three years, or return to a regular job to pay my bills". But if it succeeds, the second startup is like "I can keep trying as long as I want to, no pressure".

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#838

Post by Viliam1234 »

rytor718 wrote: post #730
ardit33 wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is an almost ironic response to the article for a couple of reasons that caught my attention (read: not a bad response, just somewhat ironic). The first was mentioned by someone else in the thread whose response i can't find again due to opening this in a different device: why is it more valuable to hear advice from winners than, say, a failure from their mother's basement as you put it? In relation to the artic…

Someone who failed because of doing everything obviously wrong from the start... that would be boring.

But someone who almost succeeded, and then failed because of X... if you want to try the same thing, you probably want to know about X. You probably want to know about X regardless, because it may generalize to other situations.

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#839

Post by cutemonster »

rdslw wrote: post #794
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…

It is even worse. This article is (yet another) attemp to romanticize and put to pedestal 'startup with a novel idea'. It is worth to mention that trying to trick/persuade/convince (choose freely) thousands (literaly) of people to go this path, benefits tremendously ycombinator - not the persuaded founders. Because for YC if only few are (hugely) successfull they win. Not so for the other thousands. The fact that few…

> trying to trick/persuade/convince (choose freely) thousands (literaly) of people to go this path, benefits tremendously ycombinator - not the persuaded founders.

Why so negative

It can be fun for the founders also if the startup fails, and not always anything to regret

And good for society in general with more innovation, eg YC's request for startups page: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

Many things there are really good for this planet

Re: How to Think for Yourself

#840

Post by cutemonster »

_laiq wrote: post #817
anovikov wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is the problem for those for who it doesn't work? How much do they get to lose? If they don't get accepted to the YC, they lose very little and it's just a short detour in their lives, certainly not the most boring or frustrating one, something to remember. If they get accepted to the YC, they clearly win vs the average folk because they get to know so many influential people and see how the world-class stuf…

I feel your example is a good portrayal of a life pretty much well-lived: you made money doing something you enjoy, met tons of people and fed your curiosity. But according to this essay, you followed a BAD path not innovative enough, and the hidden reason why it's bad is because it will never generate any sort of profit for YC. Now if you had tried 3 or 4 startups in that same timespan, burned through all your life…

> you followed a BAD path [ according to the essay]

I think not -- instead this seems quite un-conventional to me:

>> doing custom development for more than 20 years, made several million in the process

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