You missed (3) where independent thinking isn't valuable you find the unhappy and the conventional; the latter group having a fairly large stack of poor qualiti

You missed (3) where independent thinking isn't valuable you find the unhappy and the conventional; the latter group having a fairly large stack of poor qualities.[1] Oh, and (4) how do you know you're really independent minded? It's "more a matter of nature than nurture" after all. Someone could be lying to themselves. "Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. And in any case, it genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything." Dunning-Kruger and all. In fact, you can't even trust the ne plus ultra: the conventional minded have to be curious in order to find out what the conventions are, no? But then, I'm being critical here, and feeding "a firestorm of rage from the aggressively conventional-minded"; I clearly show all of those poor qualities. (I'm trying hard to figure out how "One of the most effective techniques is one practiced unintentionally by most nerds: simply to be less aware what conventional beliefs are. It's hard to be a conformist if you don't know what you're supposed to conform to" doesn't imply that ignorance is a virtue.) I am a bit disappointed Paul doesn't mention some of the downsides to independent thinking; he seems to regard it as an unalloyed good. "Founders can delay the problem by making a conscious effort only to hire independent-minded people. Which of course also has the ancillary benefit that they have better ideas." The problem here is that those independent-minded people are going to want to see their ideas in action---even if those ideas disagree with those of the founder. (Hence unhappiness and the promotion of conventional thinking.) (I notice that Paul picks out "administrators" and "middle management" as specifically conventional. I wonder if extending that to "management" would strain the cognitive dissonance of those readers he personally knows?) I do like the fine distinction of "Fastidiousness about truth doesn't imply that an independent-minded person won't be dishonest, but that he won't be deluded. It's sort of like the definition of a gentleman as someone who is never unintentionally rude." I certainly have always found it advantageous to prefer the presence of those who know they are lying. [1] Unskeptical, indifferent to truth, herd-minded, humorless, and incurious, with poor thinking and poor ideas.