If You Don't Have A Non-Mainstream Opinion, You Can't Be Successful | Hacker News Reader

If You Don't Have A Non-Mainstream Opinion, You Can't Be Successful

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28 pointskloncks14 comments

Are any of these non-mainstream opinions? Of course the first three are now, but that doesn't matter (I don't care to think what "mainstream" opinions of computing limits are). I'd wager you can't find a successful person from one hundred or two hundred years ago who had an opinion that would today be considered non-mainstream. It's like when people try to argue against Darwin, saying he was racist -- it was the mainstream opinion of the time.

Besides, all four quotes are bad examples. Nietzsche's quote has to be looked at in the context of the 1880s. Certainly that opinion was quite mainstream then -- the first woman to be awarded a PhD in Mathematics was only in 1886 (source: http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/firstPhDs.htm).

Carnegie's quote -- ignoring the part about race -- is a simple history question. Was there ever a "danger of war" between Germany and others? I won't try to answer it, as I don't know. Either way, what matters is what other people thought at the time.

Einstein's quote is simply about facts. Was there the "slightest indication" that nuclear energy was possible? Science marches on -- before the industrial revolution, was there the slightest indication that horseless carriages were possible?

Von Neumann's quote makes more sense when you think about the theory of computation. Computers today still run on the Von Neumann architecture from the 30s and 40s -- any progress has been optimization, and does not push the limit any farther. You still can't sort a list in less than O(n log n) time, or sum n values in less than O(n) operations. As far as I know it, the only thing to push the limits of computing is quantum computing, which is currently in its infancy.

Of course, none of this means that you should think only "mainstream" thoughts -- if you never ask what else is possible, you won't do anything new. But progress marches on -- everyone has mainstream opinions today that will be non-mainstream decades hence.

Interesting, I agree with your facts but I read the author is meaning the exact opposite.

I.e. the author was asking us to take note of these mainstream opinions that brilliant people had and how wrong they are. In other words, even if brilliant people think you are wrong, you may still be right.

Wrong doesn't necessarily correlate with "non-mainstream". There's a point to be made here, but all I'm getting from this article is "famous people can be incredibly wrong too".

One of the things that is important in my own value-system is to cherish eccentricity. As the author points out, the entire race is becoming more and more homogenized.

I'm not going to spell out a list of eccentricities. Oddly enough, if I did a good job of it you guys would just vote me down.

I will, however, point out several of the ways that society is creating more and more conformity: sites like this, the use of medical diagnosis to cover simple human differentiation, the use of various mental illness labels to cover formerly fine behavior, widespread rampant consumerism teaching people they are all basically the same consumer, use of new laws to control what is or isn't acceptable, use of social intervention as an excuse to make everybody's private behavior now a public concern.

The species desperately needs outliers. We need our (peaceful) Ted Kacinskys And we're getting better and better at finding them early and fuzzing them out.

> the entire race is becoming more and more homogenized

Not necessarily. Improved communications do increase the mixing rate of different cultures but they also allow subcultures to form more easily. Just walking down the street this weekend in London and observing the range of different fashions displayed - urban casual, gothic, cyber-industrial, 'traditional' english (guy in a straw boater and summer jacket). Even 50 years ago such diversion from the norm would have been viewed as downright peculiar and is now taken for granted.

I had to remove two of the three negations in the title to understand it: You need a non-mainstream opinion to be successful. Does anyone else have to do this mental exercise to understand?

it was fine for me, perhaps because the message is very obvious to me.

I got it at first but was confused later, so yes I had to at least re-read it too.

I really like the post though and I agree that we need different thinking people that stand their ground. It's a shame so many give in to the 'mainstream' to save themselves from a few weird looks and some embarrassments.

Take the contrapositive:

If you're successful, then you have a non-mainstream opinion.

That contrapositive isn't quite accurate, because it indicates a different time-order than the original. "If you don't have a non-mainstream opinion, then you can't be successful" implies that you must have non-mainstream opinion before you become successful. "If you're successful, then you have a non-mainstream opinion" indicates that you have a non-mainstream opinion after you become successful. It's fairly likely that your non-mainstream opinion before becomes the mainstream opinion afterwards. After all, isn't that almost the definition of "successful"?

Good point about time. Just for fun...

Assume t0 < t1

Original: NOT(NOT(Mainstream(t0))) ==> NOT(Succesful(t1))

Contrapositive: Successful(t1) ==> NOT(Mainstream(t0))

Edit: Small edit for clarity and spelling.

"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

- Carl Sagan

Be cautious about valuing being non-mainstream for its own sake. The valuable thing is not being non-mainstream, but being non-mainstream and right. What you are different about matters.

If you value being non-mainstream for its own sake too much, then you risk that being a part of your identity. That is dangerous because then it will be extremely difficult for you to rationally consider arguments and evidence that you are wrong. And most new ideas are wrong.

it does not matter exactly what you think different about, but just somehow be different from them

I think it does matter. Believing that 1 + 1 = cucumber, for example, has gotten me nowhere over the years, and I'm giving it up as of now.

If there is activity X and people who practice it usually achieve result Y, chances are that by engaging in that activity you will achieve the same result.

Therefore, if you keep doing what normal people do you will achieve the same result they did - which is to say an average life.

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