[wkcheng]

This is a great article on the difference between an obstinate person and a persistent person, but I'm not sure the general public perceives them the same way that Paul does.

What I've found is that many times, people like the perceived confidence that obstinacy can bring. For example, let's say that someone points out a flaw in a plan. Person A responds by saying "That's not a real problem. It doesn't matter." Person B says "Ok, that's interesting. Let's dig into it." Person A (the obstinate person who doesn't listen) usually comes across as more confident in this encounter, even though Person B (the persistent person who is engaging) may actually end up learning something new and getting a better result.

This is especially true in public forums. If you go up on a stage and do a debate, the obstinate person comes across as more confident to more people. This doesn't mean that their plan is any good. But people will vote for them, give them money, etc.

For the record, I agree with Paul's assessment that persistence is a great quality and obstinacy is not. However, it's hard to actually get this across to the public.

[senthil_rajasek]

There are certain areas where the popular opinion is irrelevant. Warren Buffet said this in a more folksy way,

“It’s very important to live your life by an internal yardstick,” he told us, noting that one way to gauge whether or not you do so is to ask the following question: “Would you rather be considered the best lover in the world and know privately that you’re the worst — or would you prefer to know privately that you’re the best lover in the world, but be considered the worst?”

source: https://time.com/archive/6904425/my-650100-lunch-with-warren...

[autoexec]

> “Would you rather be considered the best lover in the world and know privately that you’re the worst — or would you prefer to know privately that you’re the best lover in the world, but be considered the worst?”

Both of those options sound terrible. It's a curse either way. I'd rather be known as publicly as "better than average" and privately know that I'm doing pretty well/my best.

If forced to pick between the two though, being publicly known as 'the best lover in the world' would seem most likely to present more opportunities to improve my skill/confidence. It's still a lot of pressure nobody needs.

[Yodel0914]

I mean, considered by whom? I'd like my partner's assessment of my ability as a lover to be more positive than my self-assessment. The reverse just sounds sociopathic.

[arp242]

There's an old anecdote where I think Pascal, but I'm not sure, argued the existence or non-existence of God in front of the king with another philosopher. Maybe-Pascal exclaimed loudly and with great confidence "A plus C equal B squared! Therefore God exists! COUNTER!" The other philosopher didn't know much about mathematics, had no idea to reply, got flustered, and "lost" the argument.[1]

And honestly, I'm not sure I would have done better in the moment. On reflection? Sure. But in front of the king, presented with a completely unfamiliar argument stated with great confidence and demanding a reply? Yeah, maybe not. Even on topics where I have reasonable in-depth knowledge I sometimes really doubt myself when someone says something very wrong with great confidence, and sometimes I really double and triple-check things to make sure I'm not making a right fool of myself.

Few years back I ordered a sandwich at a deli. Still looking at the menu, the lady asked what I wanted. "Ehhh, well, ehmm, I don't eat meat, so, ehhh, something without that". "Oh, I have chicken!" And she said this so quickly and with such confidence that for a few seconds I was genuinely doubting whether "chicken" was meat or not and wasn't really sure what to answer.

I guess she had a bit of "a moment" and we had a laugh about it afterwards, but I thought that was a pretty interesting and harmless example of how you can really start doubting yourself.

NFTs are another example. When I first heard of it, I thought I had not understood it correctly because "surely it can't be this dumb". And for months when all the NFT hype was raging I thought it must be some very complex crypto bonanza I wasn't really understanding. All the obscure jargon and lingo the NFT people confidently use aided that notion. I'm not really interested in crypto in general, but finally gave in and did some more in-depth reading on it. I found that no, it really is that dumb, and I had understood it correctly months ago, and all the jargon was just meaningless bollocks word salad.

[1]: I read about this years and years ago, I can't find anything about it right now and this anecdote may be false, but it seemed trust-worthy enough at the time to remember.

[nsguy]

I had a similar issue recently. Someone suggested a technical solution that based on my experience has zero chance of being correct. It was said with great confidence that makes me doubt my experience. Great confidence but zero supporting details or experience. For someone observing from the side there's no way to tell who is right and my double-take doubting my own experiences can appear to make the extremely confident but likely wrong person be the right one. For someone that really knows stuff, being 100% confident on nuanced/complex issues is very hard, you're used to moving forward with 90% or 80% or 95% confidence. I.e. you're very likely right, but there are can be surprises or something you didn't anticipate. For someone confident but wrong they have like 100% confidence for something that's 0% chance of success. As you say, this is a lot more difficult when you're put on the spot, e.g. the CEO might question what's the right decision in a meeting (the king in your example.). Often there's not enough time for a deep study and even after studying a problem it might still not be 100%.

Tough situations to handle.

[red_admiral]

Euler, not Pascal, but the story is most likely apocryphal anyway. See http://www.fen.bilkent.edu.tr/~franz/M300/bell2.pdf , which contains a link to a PDF discussing (and dismissing) the original story, and is a nice read on its own.

[bbayles]

The story you're thinking of is about Leonhard Euler, though it may not have actually happened (see Wikipedia on Euler).

[Suppafly]

>I found that no, it really is that dumb, and I had understood it correctly months ago, and all the jargon was just meaningless bollocks word salad.

My brother is an artist and absolutely refused to believe that the hype around NFTs was just bullshit. I'm sure if I called and asked right now, he'd still give me some word salad about how it's going to start paying off any day now. Now if anyone talks to me about NFTs, I send that me that Folding Ideas youtube video, 'Line goes up' and refuse to engage with them.

[pilingual]

Why are NFTs dumb?

How can I buy a digital asset sold by an artist?

[stcredzero]

What I've found is that many times, people like the perceived confidence that obstinacy can bring.

The problem with that method of evaluation, is that it's not First Principles. Basically, pg's essay in this case just reduces down to, "Is that person steered by First Principles thinking?"

[yellowapple]

Most people ain't steered by first-principles thinking, though, and that's the problem. To most people, first-principles-driven thinking lacks sufficient actionability; they just want definite answers, and first-principles-driven thinking tends to produce answers that are anything but definite.

[cassepipe]

Could we say that biologically/culturally receptive to performed dominance and being dominant has nothing to do with rationally understand the world. I think this is the whole point of the jock/geek binary opposition in culture even though, as all oppositionnal pairs in culture, they are often porquenolosdossed : Some people can perform dominance and do master rationality quite well and some can do neither. Maybe we don't notice it either because they don't fit the cultural mental map or because they are not part of our social milieus (too high or too low status) ?

https://youtu.be/wmVkJvieaOA?feature=shared&t=276

[wkcheng]

Yeah, "performed dominance" as you call it definitely is orthogonal to rationally understanding the world.

The problem is exacerbated by content and replies trending shorter over time. It's hard to have a nuanced and thoughtful take in 10 seconds. It's much easier to have a simple, easy to understand, "dominant" take in the same amount of time.

I wonder if there's a social solution to this, somehow.

[burningChrome]

Just in case someone is wondering:

Obstinate - Stubbornly adhering to an opinion, purpose, or course in spite of reason, arguments, or persuasion.

[mihaic]

This has been pretty much my experience as well, and honestly I think it's because most of the audience in any public forum hasn't ever needed to push through a complex project.

I was talking to a friend about this, and I've come to see this as the opposite of real-recognize-real, something like bullshit-interfaces-with-bullshit. That is, often people that haven't executed complex projects have a skewed view of the factors of success, something that they try to imitate and at the same time is more easily misled by people emulating the same signals.