8 ms·

There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I wonder how much of it you can really be seen without looking at things from inside a startup. A lot of is based on w

by wheels 18y ago

There's a lot of good stuff in here, but I wonder how much of it you can really be seen without looking at things from inside a startup. A lot of is based on what Paul's written and while I've read most of his essays, I didn't really get some of the points until they were up close. It's kind of like earlier today I was struggling through a paper written on a topic of advanced mathematics that I'd never worked on before. I asked a friend with a PhD in math if he could explain it to me. He used the same terms that I didn't understand from the paper in his explanation. So, I stared at the paper for another two hours. I doodled on my whiteboard. I could visualize the solution to the problem, but I couldn't work out the mechanics. Eventually it dawned on me, and it was really simple ... in retrospect. I think a lot of things are like that. Parents try to warn their kids about their mistakes and it rarely works. I think the real lesson, perhaps, is to not be afraid to fail. Bite off more than you can chew and be willing to fail and learn from it. You'll definitely make mistakes, and your startup may fail, but you can at least be certain that you'll learn an enormous amount in the process and that you'll be able to carry that knowledge with you the next time you take a swing.

Alex3917 18y ago
Similarly, I've noticed that proverbs and aphorisms only become useful after you've been burned by violating them a bunch of times. It's weird because you can be told them and understand what they mean immediately, but just because you understand what they mean doesn't make them meaningful. Or something. It's almost like you aren't able to fully grok the proverb until you have a certain outlook on life or the right schemas or perspectives, but it's impossible to gain those just by hearing the original saying. (This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something. Perhaps something to do with constructivism.)
- cperciva 18y ago
  (This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something.) I think what you're looking for is two words, not one: "Experience matters".
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    Yeah, but why? Why should it be true? Logically I see no reason why experience should matter, but it clearly does. I should be able to just read a proverb and grok it and be better off for it, but I can't, it doesn't work that way. Why?
    - skmurphy 18y ago
      For things in the realm of an idealized problem solving domain, say mathematics or chess, you can learn a lot from a proverb. But many insights in life can't be reduced to writing, especially those involving either self-mastery or other people (and startups, alas, involve both). If you read the history of an event how does that compare to living through it? Can you learn to ride a bike from a book? The challenge with a startup--like many other things in life--is that you need to integrate many different inputs, your own hopes and fears among them, and negotiate a working consensus with your co-founders.
    - gruseom 18y ago
      I should be able to just read a proverb and grok it and be better off for it, but I can't Maybe proverbs are more tags than content, like labels on bottles: the label tells you what's in the bottle, but to absorb it you have to drink the contents. If that's right, then proverbs' main value is in retrospect - i.e. they help to organize experience and talk about it, but not to replace it. I know I've sometimes snorted at a proverb as being totally obvious, or a useless cliche, only to get hammered by experience and later go, "Oh, so that's what it meant."
      - Alex3917 18y ago
        That reminds me of the saying, "The map is not the territory." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation Unfortunately Wikipedia fails to mention what the current academic consensus on that is.
        gruseom 18y ago
- asdflkj 18y ago
  It's an instance of a more general pattern: your rational mind is superseded by another, more primitive part of you, which really only understands one type of "argument"--Pavlovian conditioning. A lot of things started to make sense when I began viewing myself this way (e.g. willpower). The second major revelation was that this primitive part should not be dismissed as weakness or a useless carryover from a different evolutionary era. I know that in my case, if I always acted in ways that seemed perfectly rational to me at the time, with nothing inhibiting me, I'd be dead many times over by now.
- euccastro 18y ago
  That can be explained, in part at least, by the fact that proverbs are often oversimplifying overgeneralizations, contradictory with each other, such that for every situation in life there is at least one proverb that seems like it 'would have helped'... and a bunch of others that would have been unhelpful or misleading. At hindsight time, our pattern-craving minds are more eager to recall the truisms that best apply.

by wheels 18y ago

Alex3917 18y ago

Similarly, I've noticed that proverbs and aphorisms only become useful after you've been burned by violating them a bunch of times. It's weird because you can be told them and understand what they mean immediately, but just because you understand what they mean doesn't make them meaningful. Or something. It's almost like you aren't able to fully grok the proverb until you have a certain outlook on life or the right schemas or perspectives, but it's impossible to gain those just by hearing the original saying. (This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something. Perhaps something to do with constructivism.)

cperciva 18y ago
(This is really hard to describe for some reason, I feel like I'm missing a word or a concept or something.) I think what you're looking for is two words, not one: "Experience matters".
- Alex3917 18y ago
  Yeah, but why? Why should it be true? Logically I see no reason why experience should matter, but it clearly does. I should be able to just read a proverb and grok it and be better off for it, but I can't, it doesn't work that way. Why?
  - skmurphy 18y ago
    For things in the realm of an idealized problem solving domain, say mathematics or chess, you can learn a lot from a proverb. But many insights in life can't be reduced to writing, especially those involving either self-mastery or other people (and startups, alas, involve both). If you read the history of an event how does that compare to living through it? Can you learn to ride a bike from a book? The challenge with a startup--like many other things in life--is that you need to integrate many different inputs, your own hopes and fears among them, and negotiate a working consensus with your co-founders.
  - gruseom 18y ago
    I should be able to just read a proverb and grok it and be better off for it, but I can't Maybe proverbs are more tags than content, like labels on bottles: the label tells you what's in the bottle, but to absorb it you have to drink the contents. If that's right, then proverbs' main value is in retrospect - i.e. they help to organize experience and talk about it, but not to replace it. I know I've sometimes snorted at a proverb as being totally obvious, or a useless cliche, only to get hammered by experience and later go, "Oh, so that's what it meant."
    - Alex3917 18y ago
      That reminds me of the saying, "The map is not the territory." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation Unfortunately Wikipedia fails to mention what the current academic consensus on that is.
      - gruseom 18y ago
asdflkj 18y ago
It's an instance of a more general pattern: your rational mind is superseded by another, more primitive part of you, which really only understands one type of "argument"--Pavlovian conditioning. A lot of things started to make sense when I began viewing myself this way (e.g. willpower). The second major revelation was that this primitive part should not be dismissed as weakness or a useless carryover from a different evolutionary era. I know that in my case, if I always acted in ways that seemed perfectly rational to me at the time, with nothing inhibiting me, I'd be dead many times over by now.
euccastro 18y ago
That can be explained, in part at least, by the fact that proverbs are often oversimplifying overgeneralizations, contradictory with each other, such that for every situation in life there is at least one proverb that seems like it 'would have helped'... and a bunch of others that would have been unhelpful or misleading. At hindsight time, our pattern-craving minds are more eager to recall the truisms that best apply.