The Strength of Being Misunderstood

I only half joke, because becoming a super-idiot liberated me from the perfectionism and the addiction to approval that caused a stultifying and primal narcissistic fear of criticism.

If you are struggling with this, take it from someone on the other side of it: It's ok, you're an idiot.

Is this a trend with high value that some people are getting huge gains for themselves from? I think so.

Alternatively is it an echo chamber of high status people signalling just how contrarian they are? I suspect that some trend victims do this. However I think Sam Altman is just reflecting his thoughts in an essay to help him explore his own understanding, by getting feedback from others.

I believe there is something of real value within the trend: I have seen too many extremely successful people (in business, science and the arts) that have said they relied upon contrarian thinking to help them achieve success. I recognised the belief first in a 1998 book by George Soros, where he vividly wrote of his struggles (internal and external) with his own contrarian thinking.

My favourite example however is Jim Keller, in an interview by Lex Friedman, where Jim casually states “Imagine 99% of your thought process is protecting your self conceptions and 98% of that's wrong. Now you've got the math right. How do you think you're feeling when you into that one bit that's useful and now you're open and you have the ability to do something that's different?”.

When some of the undeniably smartest people in the world start saying the same thing, it is worthwhile listening and learning from them. While avoiding the famous wrong-thinking like Linus Pauling.

If you aren't correct, this post will do nothing for you but make you bull-headed and closed off to criticism.

It's also an observably necessary trait for paradigm shifting scientific progress, since advancing a new paradigm requires defending the claim that every other subject matter expert is actually wrong, and human nature being what it is they will never react kindly to that assertion.

The ability to make that bet and be right (unless you just flipped a coin), took some skills or insight, and that likely took effort and time, but then that only bought you space which probably should have been granted in the first place. Even junior developers get some space to work.

Now you've done all that work just to be able to work on the problem and you now have to deliver, which may or may not be easier than the initial bet. If it's easier, you've just fought an unnecessary battle to be able to do something you know you can do.

How many other unnecessary battles are you going to have to fight?

This seems like it gets in the way of progress more than anything. I don't want to be misunderstood in this way. If they misunderstand, one or both of us has messed up. Maybe I need more or better proof, or maybe I need to explain it better, or maybe it's the other side who needs to do more work.

There's definitely a strength in being misunderstood, but it's not about moving ahead (getting space), it's about finding out who you shouldn't be working with. This is sometimes a very hard signal to get.

In practice, however, things are more complicated. You have to be really certain of what you're doing to go so much out there. If you're misunderstood, things will become more difficult -- less funding chances perhaps, less people to talk with and exchange ideas, less people who understand and check your decisions -- it has to be sufficiently important and certain to overcome those problems.

The central issue however is learning. We want future (and current) generations to learn from our mistakes and non-mistakes. We want to share our insight with others. If we are misrepresented, this learning gets sacrificed, as well as your communication of ideas to peers, by definition. That's a small tragedy.

You still have to do what you have to do, so to speak, if you must. The ultimate judge is not history, not the newspapers or peers, but your impact on the world, on the people (including yourself) -- not only now of course, but into the future as well.

It's ambiguity that I wish Sam would have anticipated, and adjusted for, but the content is nevertheless good advice, once you contextualize where Sam is coming from (a VC spotting market opportunities):

In a certain context, misunderstanding IS a strategic advantage, if you're spotting a market opportunity, and have the resources to exploit the mismatch. You keep a window of opportunity open as long as the misunderstanding persists among those with resources who would otherwise compete.

In another context, interpersonal communication, misunderstanding is NOT a strength, if your goal was to convince people to be on your side. It means you need work on your communication skills. The title is a poor personal maxim to live by, and I hope not the takeaway people had.

This.

The thing that makes me the most crazy about the internet is the number of people who pay an excessive amount of attention to me and remember ridiculous stuff about things I said years ago or whatever and are just wrapped around the axle about how I am not entitled to my stupid opinion or something.

And I just always feel like "If you think I'm so dumb or something, why in the hell do you clearly and obviously invest so very much of your time, effort and memory in tracking details about me and my life? Good lord."

There.

Now, I wouldn't conflate being successful and being loved by people.

“They’ll like us when we win!”

Not a bad philosophy, but you still need to have enough confidence in your own vision.

What you should be concerned about is a different 2 degrees of freedom- who you care about, and whether they're right.

I guess I misunderstood.