Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctor_eval | Hacker News Reader

I agree with you, but I think the problem is more about the conflation in some people’s minds of conformity vs correctness. It’s fine to conform as long as doing so is close to optimal, or the cost of conforming to a non optimal solution is low. It works the other way too: sometimes conforming is simply cheaper than optimal, due to existing processes etc.

I often get credit for being right more often than not, but actually I just try to be a disciplined thinker and to understand the problem well enough to be able to make informed decisions. But I also get called a troublemaker for the same reason.

Drives me nuts. Isn’t trying to find the right answer actually the point?

View on HN

When egos get involved it’s not the right answer that counts but the answer that makes one look good. People might say they care about data and facts but what they really care for is data that reinforces their ideas

Depends on a person. Many will change their views if it opportunistically benefits them. Hypocrisy is rule rather than exception.

Even more people in power are not slaves to PR, just use it where needed.

Conformity and publicity are only a leaky barrier.

The critical part is discerning truthiness from truth.

Usually a truthy sounding statement will have a set of heavy underlying assumptions. Typical examples include ideologies and economics.

There's also a class of statements that cannot be reasonably verified, mostly pertaining to society and social organization. There, truth really does not exist unless someone (or nature) runs an experiment. Most ways of organizing society are valid, though some are mean/evil. Then again, some other ways are clearly hypocritical, illogical or demonstrably highly inefficient.

It's true, but worse is also better; of reasonable answers, the “right” one is often the one that will be popular enough for people to rearrange the world (sometimes retroactively) to make it right.

Trying to find the right answer often isn't the point.

Social forces often dominant decision making.

Social forces are not like natural forces, they're a result of an aggregate of many decisions, especially historical ones, of powerful people.

One does not have to bend to that, if they have enough power. (Can even defy laws, sometimes, which are decisions codified.) That's how society changed in the past and changes today.

Yes, masses can also wield power to defy social order.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com