Paul Buchheit: Whose reality are you living in? Whose reality would you rather live in? | Hacker News Reader

Paul Buchheit: Whose reality are you living in? Whose reality would you rather live in?

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

19 pointspaul13 comments

It is possible to live in multiple frames at once. Difficult, and very stressful, but possible.

When I was first asked to co-found my startup, I immediately became very unhappy at work. It was just too much cognitive dissonance. Once I had a startup (which had been my life's goal all along), why waste 8 hours a day working for somebody else, where I'm so much less productive?

Over time, I adjusted. I just saw work as having one set of rules and expectations, and startup as having another set of rules and expectations. So I gave up trying to introduce more productive technologies at work, because it wasn't going to happen anyway. And I adjusted my expectations for productivity downwards, because hey, my boss doesn't know that you can do better than JavaEE levels anyway.

End result: I'm much happier at work, which is perceived as being more productive because most people judge based on attitude instead of results. And then I go home and do everything my boss tells me not to on my startup. Only downside is that my startup may launch before my project at work does, which renders moot one of my main reasons for keeping the day job.

It's similar to switching keyboard layouts. When you first learn Dvorak, you will forget how to touch-type on Qwerty. But if you keep typing on Qwerty, eventually they'll start separating in your mind. For a long time, I would automatically type Qwerty whenever I saw a Gnome desktop and Dvorak when I saw Windows. Then it further refined itself into typing Qwerty whenever I saw Netbeans and Dvorak whenever I saw AIM. Now I'm basically fluent in both layouts, and can consciously switch between the two of them.

Also, I suspect every startup founder will have to undergo another frame shift eventually: shifting from the general startup culture to YOUR startup culture. Right now, most of us are internalizing the values of Startupping, News.YC, Ruby on Rails or Python, and various entrepreneurial blogs. Eventually that'll have to shift to the cultural values of the particular startup that you found. Any past or present YCombinator founders around to comment on this?

Frames are, of course, just an abstraction, not actual discrete entities. Another way of understanding it is to think of your frame as a linear combination of other frames. If two or more heavily weighted frames are in conflict, as they were in your case, then there's going to be some stress.

From your description, it sounds as though you actually switched frames at work from that of an idealist trying to do the best possible job, to that of a cynic who just plays along with a system you don't respect. This new frame is more compatible with your startup frame, since it understands that stupidity of large organizations creates opportunities for startups to succeed.

A very interesting article, but I think your model of a mental frame which you define as the biased and limited way in which information is perceived or understood. is a bit malformed as information isn't really perceived, it is processed at a higher level than perception. Integrated sensation or Perception is the lowest level of awareness humans have with the least amount of variability among members of the species. There is not often much debate about perception, such as the building on a certain block is brown vs. green. Or the shape that something you see is a bicycle vs. a car. etc. Perception is in fact the most objective faculty we have - our direct connection to the real world.

Now to say that our prior thinking can change our perception, I disagree. I think that people can actively evade perceptions they have by trying hard to ignore them, especially those perceptions that indicate that an idea held by the perceiver is incorrect in spite of the emotional need of the perceiver to continue to hold the incorrect idea.

You say that As far as you can tell, that frame is reality. Clearly, a mental model is not reality, it is a model of reality. If your theory were true, we probably couldn't even participate on this forum as our differently modeled realities wouldn't allow a common language that so relies on commonalities of perception and concept formation.

But I agree with your actual point that it is important to associate with people who share similar views about the world, people who have a similar sense of life. It can be very destructive to a person's view of what is possible in the world if everyone they spend time with is pessimistic and skeptical.

When I was in Architecture school, all of my professors tried to convince us students that there were no new ideas, everything had been done. That nothing great was created/designed/invented by individuals, it was all thanks to groups. That the heroic in architecture was impossible and undesirable. That Wright's Falling water was banal, just a bunch of concrete plates stacked up above each other. All of this foolishness was washed away when I worked for Paul Rudolph in NYC who single handedly was designing some of the most beautiful and heroic buildings I had ever seen. The experience saved my world view of what is possible.

So my advice is to find the very best in whatever your field, and learn from it. If you aren't able to do a startup on your own yet, find a startup that is the most innovative with the best ideas, and learn from them. Don't let the pessimists get you down, but stay grounded and realistic about the possibilities. Too much optimism can be a bad thing as well, but keep in mind that great things are achievable.

I'm using 'perception' in the broader sense -- a person may _perceive_ that startups are too risky, that politician X is dishonest, that God is acting in their life, etc.

However, even simpler perceptions can be affected by our environment. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments "a high proportion (32%) conformed to the erroneous majority view of the others in the room when there were at least three confederates present, even when the majority said that two lines different in length by several inches were the same length"

I think the test you mention actually reinforces my case that perception is very uniform among most people. The test proved that group pressure can make someone who knows they are giving a wrong answer give a wrong answer, but that the perceptions were uniform (ie. the same person when confronted with the group pressure and went along with the wrong answer at one time, gave the right answer when the group pressure was removed.)

If you were to change the word perception to understanding in your essay, I would agree with you except when you say: As far as you can tell, that frame is reality. This is a big philosophical statement that a person actually manufactures reality in their head, which clearly isn't the case. It would also handicap people with that view, if they were really to try to live it consistently (which is impossible), from creating products that customers value because they would rely on their own manufactured reality in their head instead of looking out at the world and inductively and objectively determining the values people were really looking for in the products being produced. I'm guessing you really don't hold this view though.

The implication is not that people manufacture reality in their head, but rather that they model reality in their head (which is indisputable). You can try to improve your model, but it will always be just a model and subject to limitations and errors.

This realization actually HELPS us create products for other people, because we understand that the reality inside their head is different from our own, and can attempt to model their reality as well.

There is no dispute about people modeling reality in their heads, in fact I mentioned that in my first reply, but you claim that that model is reality for people when you say As far as you can tell, that frame is reality. Maybe this statement is not what you really mean?

The thing is, they don't just have the model sitting there looking pretty, they are using it to make sense of the world. It's like trying to detect a rootkit after it's been installed -- potentially very difficult because it can alter your whole view of things.

Here's another example, imagine that you are a creationist faced with fossil evidence for evolution. How do you deal with that? Maybe you think, "God must be testing my faith", after all, isn't that exactly what a meddling god would do? Now the fossils are proof of your meddling god! (who else could have staged such a clever test?)

The perception occurred accurately for the creationist, but then the opinions based on that perception had to be woven into a strange hypothesis in an attempt to circumvent the obvious contradiction between the fact (the perceived fossil) and the mental model of creationism in the perceiver's head.

A person has to be pretty far gone when they have automatized evading perceptual evidence to such a degree that they are no longer able to be consciously aware of the contradiction between their beliefs and what they perceive. This kind of evasion can be seen in cults, extreme religious groups, extreme political groups, where extreme = evading perceptual evidence that disproves your held beliefs. Usually group pressure is involved to automatize the evasion.

Perception (and I've been using it in the strictly integrated sensation sense) is our link to reality that enables us to make sure that our mental models don't fall off the deep end. Evade perception at your own peril.

"When I was in Architecture school, all of my professors tried to convince us students that there were no new ideas, everything had been done. That nothing great was created/designed/invented by individuals, it was all thanks to groups. That the heroic in architecture was impossible and undesirable. That Wright's Falling water was banal, just a bunch of concrete plates stacked up above each other. All of this foolishness was washed away when I worked for Paul Rudolph in NYC who single handedly was designing some of the most beautiful and heroic buildings I had ever seen. The experience saved my world view of what is possible."

Have you read The Fountainhead by any chance? :)

Yes I did - a great book. I liked Atlas Shrugged much better though. :)

I wonder how many people here like Ayn Rand's work?

Hopefully not to many.

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