Reading how to build something, marketing products, this and that. Everybody has their own opinion, but is it worth spending time and listen to others?
Is it better to just start and do what you think is good and learn from your own mistakes?
Realise that there is no "your" thought. First of all, the language you acquire as a child, for years, indebts you deeply to society. The things you can think are limited by the language delivered to you by society. If you are a so-called "creative" then you'll probably add a few words or ideas to that corpus, maybe you'll "re-organize" or "re-order" it a bit. That is an exception though. The idea of purely independent thought is an illusion. It follows that independent action is also an illusion (your idea of what to do next, as well, tends to be borrowed!) Thought is moving through mind to mind, and it has its own existence, its own nature.
1. All thought is fantasy
2. Some of that fantasy happens to pass the test of reality
3. Most thought is borrowed
4. Thought existed before you, will exist after you
5. Society is the manager of thought, not the individual
6. Thought advances as a whole
7. Without collective thought as a substrate, the individual won't function
> The things you can think are limited by the language delivered to you by society.
To even begin to decide whether this claim is scientific (testable), thoughts and their content need to be defined physically here.
And why care about pre-given thoughts? I care about my emotions more. Thinking is just an utility guided by them. "What you think is good" is certainly more about emotion than ideas. One can walk back from their emotion, starting from a clean sheet, gradually reconstructing the desired idea by bit - most languages have the necessary primitives available.
> The idea of purely independent thought is an illusion.
There's no need for one's thinking to be dependent on anything more or less than reality relevant to one. No culture other than one's private own needs to be included as dependency. No need to copy or almost copy another culture as well.
> It follows that independent action is also an illusion (your idea of what to do next, as well, tends to be borrowed!)
My idea of what to do next comes from my rationality. Rationality can be rebuilt independently, at least in part that covers a big part of everyday life, when a minimal amount of education consisting of self-evident truths is given. So my behavior is only dependent on me having acquired a number of ideas useful to me individually that I have also sanitized.
> 1. All thought is fantasy
"All even integers are divisible by 2." What are you trying to imply? Fantasy can be made to conform to rules and to be useful directly as functional data.
> 3. Most thought is borrowed
"Most" by what metric?
> 5. Society is the manager of thought, not the individual
I think that an individual can become the "manager" of their own thinking as well by degree such as allowed by their cultural environment plus that of their capability.
> 6. Thought advances as a whole
What?
> 7. Without collective thought as a substrate, the individual won't function
Please explain in more detail why and what is 'collective thought'.
> To even begin to decide whether this claim is scientific (testable), thoughts and their content need to be defined physically here.
Where did you get the idea of "scientific"? Where did you get the idea of "begin"? Where did you get the idea of "definition"? Where did you get the idea of "physical"? Etc. You didn't create any of those ideas. Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence? I see society dancing through your mind!
And if I keep going through your entire answer, "most" of the ideas are borrowed. Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement. In this case, the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality') :)
When I tried to refute you, I remembered about basic concept of computing, the way the technological progress is generally made and technologies of security in general. These things are totally both essential and hardly rebuildable from scratch, and latter two may also need to be continuously developed. So there is a vital dependency on these.
But outside of security concerns, if you have developed in a culture that contains the concepts of abstraction, general encoding and a basic set of abstract thinking primitives, have enough of abstract thinking skill and an inclination to think autonomously, you can rebuild any concept that you should care about practically. I posit that only the more "basic", primitive ideas are vital for effective thinking. If you lack them, you are screwed, but if you just lack higher-level ones, you can work around that easily if you care. And I think that the abstract thinking skills needed to build ideas are in large part not acquired directly from culture; they consist of some elementary abstract thinking ideas together with higher-level methods and other private mental tools which are rarely shown to you and which you typically develop on your own.
I can see that one can be (un)privileged to develop in rich/poor enough culture. But one can audit their understanding of a culture - at least always in a most basic way, and again by a degree dependent on the amount of "hints" from cultural environment and personal capability.
"The idea of audit" consists of 3 concepts available virtually to all, so if it isn't available, which it almost always is, it can be rebuilt if you care enough.
Culture feeds you, but it can control you only by omission of essential general ideas of various levels. There aren't many of them, and they are self-evident, useful strictly for the user and can be used to rebuild any ideas missing from your environment that are needed to conduct a lot of stuff.
> Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence?
At least, when I borrow stuff, I analyse it, sometimes modify and then subscribe under the result. If I am sure that it is good for me, it can become mine.
I have emotionally audited all of my thoughts.
> Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement.
On which level, though? You probably know how big is the myriad of electronic circuits that can be made from simple elements such as wires, resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors and diodes and seldom other. And more complex circuits are made from simpler ones with ease (I don't mean effort, I mean viability of a decent result) using composition and interfacing, given decent skill. About "rearrangement", same applies, skill here being abstract thinking - although thinking is far more complicated than circuit design, I believe thought is compositional. Of course, there is no way around the dictionary of basic primitives, but it is available almost everywhere where there is relevance.
Creation of data is "rearrangement" of a tiny set of digits.
> the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality')
Either substantiate or don't write this. This is not helpful without an explanation.
I would be interested to hear you address my point about construction of ideas.
I apologize for not addressing your concerns point by point, but here are some general thoughts:
The kind of reasoning you are engaging in now was done by Descartes long ago, during Newton's time. It involves building up knowledge from the bottom up, starting with first principles. Descartes had some genuinely interesting ideas about how perfect concepts could be constructed. You can read his book on methods; they are remarkable, but they do not tell the whole story. Descartes himself made many scientific errors, despite his "perfect" and "rational" system for arriving at "true and sound conclusions." Popper's falsifiability is not the end-all-be-all of scientific thought either. Both Descartes and Popper do not represent the final word on what science is or should be.
Unlike Descartes, we observe real scientists supplementing rational ideas with empiricism—how actual people learn and think in their daily lives. How they go about life matters. Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations. Marvin Minsky referred to it as "common sense," etc. It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day (though they are not without utility in enhancing new methods).
Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field. It involves communication, challenges, numerous guesses, trial and error, and so forth. Therefore, the development of new ideas and the exploration of new frontiers are deeply interdependent at the civilization level.
In summary, I believe that "individualism" is incompatible with reality; the true nature of reality is "interdependence." Dependency is a fact of life. However, due to certain surface-level cultural ideas and the significance people attach to their self-importance, the unrealistic concept of "individualism" often prevails at the linguistic level over the more realistic idea of "interdependence."
> Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations.
I don't see it, sufficiency doesn't entail necessity.
> It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day
Expert systems are about automation of decision. I talk not about automation, but just a minimal, basic dependency on culture as opposed to complete dependency and no hope of novel thinking outside of it.
> Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field.
I want to know how this requirement would be quantified. Which society do you need for a given amount of progress?
> "individualism" is incompatible with reality
Why can't one, in principle, recreate some design on their own that they lack, of less complexity than rocket science or AGI?
mimetic theory is an interesting lens to look through for that question. Rene Girard in particular sheds some light on this - it's quite compelling (lifted from wikipedia):
The name of the theory derives from the philosophical concept mimesis, which carries a wide range of meanings. In mimetic theory, mimesis refers to human desire, which Girard thought was not linear but the product of a mimetic process in which people imitate models who endow objects with value. Girard called this phenomenon "mimetic desire", and described mimetic desire as the foundation of his theory:
"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires."
There seems to be some of kind of bias in establishing trust when it comes to quality. If someone sees a high quality work, the judgemental fuse gets triggered and the person who is judging probably tries to give them priority compared to someone who hasn't.
I had a discussion with a friend and he gave a good example. There are some people (A) who do 55% of the work (5% more than the expected) and display that in really good quality. Then there are others (B), who want to achieve 95% plus but end up getting 45%. Now from the perspective of someone who doesn't know what is going on, the 55% seems to be doing better than the 45%. Therefore, the person A will now snowball into a more opportunity, while person B gets discouraged because they wanted to do hard thing.
So, instead if B did what A did in a good way, the trust and judgement of B would have increased. There is no reward in society for trying and "failing". There is only reward for taking risk and succeeding. Probably it incentivizes people to follow into a path that can attract others.
Disclaimer: These are my opinions and they have their own biases.
the first time i read this comment - i didnt quite get what you were saying. I've read it a few times...and i appreciate you taking the time to write that out :) It just clicked...Great observation!
For example, in the simpler case of pure technology. Try building in React and only then do the React course. You’ll come with the confusion and questions and know what to get out of it.
In business it is trickier because the amount of poor information out there is ridiculous. Even good information can be bad if it is bad for you specifically. As people often way overconfidently propose they have cracked the code to making money.
Which is ridiculous.
It is easy to see how silly it is if you reframed that in terms of employment. “The secret to $200k/y. Our blueprint shows you how to make $200k/y as a medical doctor…”. What if you hate being a doctor or are no good at the various innate skills needed!
A big part of the answer is that many people have a fear of looking stupid or having their ego shattered. You're probably not going to be laughed at for trying to do what others have already tried and that society accepts, but you risk being laughed at for trying some unique new marketing idea you came up with.
Another part of the answer is that very few people are experts at all of the skills needed to start a business: being a domain expert in some field, understanding technology, understanding business and money, understanding people, being good at communicating, understanding design, being a good writer, etc. If you're smart, you know that you don't know everything, and you're willing to hear out the advice that others provide.
We want to see the path before we walk on it. Sometimes it gives a new perspective we wouldn't come to on our own, other times it's a big distraction that feels like progress. I am an advocate of doing it yourself as far as you can and learn learn learn from your mistakes. The same bit of advice can be disastrous for one person and a game-changer for someone else, so you might as well try your intuition for problem-solving first and then see where you get stuck.
The important thing is some people have informed opinions on topic X.
Most people don’t have an informed opinion on topic X.
Where topic X is not a topic where all opinions are equal, e.g. who should be elected to office Y, the appropriate role of religious practice, and what is sexy.
Starting is not incompatible with valuing informed opinions.
Sure finding informed opinions can be hard without experience in topic X. But learning to identify uninformed opinions is straightforward work.
Innovation is not something we do in isolation. We build on the work of others. That means we need to study what others have tried. Your contribution will be layered on top of the work they have done. It can be tricky to both put yourself in the shoes of another in order to understand their work, concerns, and motivations while maintaining space for one's own ideas, approaches, and goals.
I was looking at something I thought I could use the other day, and I was so disappointed in the really awful API which made it unusable. So I took a look into the code ... it was majestic! Someone had way more time and ability to code the thing than they had ever put into considering whether it was usable or not.
It depends on what you are building, why, and frankly whether you have the potential to provide something both novel and useful.
But, yes, I would say sometimes it’s beneficial to not only ignore, but also to not even know how others before you have solved a similar problem. Pathways established in our minds are obstacles to invention.
The "learn form your own mistakes" phase must occur at some point, regardless.
You may or may not be capable of learning from the mistakes of others; which is the prime reason for listening to others. The other reason is gathering ideas for things to do; and it sounds like you've already got that covered.
If you learn from others you save yourself a lot of time. Imagine if you had to invent all of mathematics yourself. I think learning from your own experience is best but there is just not enough time to always do it.
society and culture are conformity, so to live in a society and/or culture and have some kind of influence or impact, you need to provide some kind of value that others deem as "good." We don't live in a bubble.
1. All thought is fantasy
2. Some of that fantasy happens to pass the test of reality
3. Most thought is borrowed
4. Thought existed before you, will exist after you
5. Society is the manager of thought, not the individual
6. Thought advances as a whole
7. Without collective thought as a substrate, the individual won't function