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Comment by hvasilev | Hacker News Reader

You're saying that if he was not the asshole that he was, he would have achieved more. I'm saying that if he pretended not to be the asshole that he was, he would have achieved nothing.

You cannot go against your own nature. It requires too much energy and does not work, it lobotomizes you.

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You might be right. You might not. We have no way to know. Back in Newton's day a person could make huge leaps alone. Today I think there are few people who can make breakthroughs on their own now, or even do great work without collaborating. Maybe being an asshole was OK 400 years ago but it isn't now.

Also, suggesting it's OK to emulate Newton when you're not a genius is likely to have a worse outcome.

The point is that you should not emulate anyone and that you should be yourself, no matter what society tells you.

You are saying two conflicting things here:

- People should not emulate anyone.

- People should emulate you. (Think about how fundamental the change from emulating to non-emulating is for all their talking/reading/thinking patterns. I don't see how else can you reboot your personality short of emulating someone.)

If you're really convinced that there's a "true" version of yourself, you should read the 70s cult classic "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart. While not exactly earth-shattering prose, and while also following a general plot arc of increasingly graphic and violent sexuality, in the right setting it can be a deep reminder that there is not a single version of you. You make choices, sometimes arbitrary, sometimes circumstantial, sometimes due to other people, and those choices can illuminate entirely different aspects of who you are.

You're saying that your nature predestines you to be in a particular way, and that being an asshole is just something that you are.

In reality, your way of being is shaped by your life learning, of which your way of relating to those around you is a part.

Kids come with different personalities right out of the box, ask anyone with more than one kid. You've bought into some liberal propaganda that people are fully malleable objects. We are not. It is a combination between nature and nurture. I personally believe it is significantly more "nature" in this case.

There are certain aspects of your personality, like "arrogance", that the society might find unacceptable. That doesn't mean that they are bad for you or that you can change them.

Of course they are bad: you will be shunned by peers, you will have stunted communication skills. Interpersonal relations and communication is a critical skill for any endeavor where you don't work alone (I've no idea what is it that you do).

People are pretty malleable though, is the thing. We like to think otherwise because it’s cognitively simple to think people (and ourselves) are static objects as identities that don’t change over time. In fact, people are very dynamic and change dramatically over time in response to their environment, self-inflicted or not. It can be anything from sudden trauma causing drastic personality changes, puberty, or rigorous work at changing one’s maladaptive thinking patterns.

I think he's saying that Newton should have chosen not to be an asshole.

I don't know the history, so I won't speak to whether Newton was, in fact, a jerk.

But it is possible to recognize the asshole inside yourself and change. At least, I've been doing that in the past two years.

My life has been much harder as a result, but it's also clearly benefited both me and the people around me.

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