[coffeemug]

> stubbornly defiant -- Yep. That sounds about right. That’s me. That’s every good entrepreneur I know.

That's also every bad entrepreneur I know. Being stubborn is easy. Being stubborn and right is really, really, really, really, really (did I say really?) hard.

[delluminatus]

Obstreperous doesn't mean "stubborn" (at least not in the definition given), it means that you are "defiant", and that defiance is stubbornly maintained. I don't think you did this deliberately, but it seems like a mistake to just assume "stubbornly defiant" == "stubborn".

edit to elaborate: IMO, "defiance" is a positive trait, because you have to be willing to defy others in order to be able to assert yourself. In that sense, it is an integral part of self-confident action. On the other hand, unqualified stubbornness is a sign of insecurity in my opinion. People use "stubborn" as a positive descriptor, but my experience is that stubbornness is a mistake based on an assumption that changing your opinion or ideas makes you seem weak.

So, I for one would like to describe myself as "stubbornly defiant" but not "stubborn" in general. I am only stubborn with respect to a few key things which I think should never be permitted to be compromised, and one of those is my independence and self-determinism. But I am not stubborn about ideas or even beliefs.

[jaf12duke]

It's actually less of question of whether you're right or wrong. Since most of us are usually wrong most of the time.

Really good engineers don't want to be told what to do, because they want to run experiments and see the result for themselves. The best can do so very quickly.

Thus, they have strong opinions, weakly held.

[debacle]

Being right in general is hard. It's more important to be able to admit that you're wrong on a dime.