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Comment by pendenthistory | Hacker News Reader

I don't mean to vilify them, I think it's just a matter of fact that if you habitually poke 100 holes in any idea, both your own and others, you will do the very safe thing.

If someone had taken risks, had ideas, seen some fail some work and they said my idea is bad, I would listen to them more for sure. Maybe my idea is bad, only time will tell. I'm not saying these people are stupid, many of them are smart. I think if you are smart it actually gets easier to poke holes in an idea.

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> I don't mean to vilify them, I think it's just a matter of fact that if you habitually poke 100 holes in any idea, both your own and others, you will do the very safe thing.

I always find it so interesting that the same principle can lead to many conclusions. Based on the people I know and my own life, I would have argued the opposite. The people who do not attempt to poke holes in every idea are those that just go with the "default", "safe" option. They have not meaningfully evaluated any options and simply taken face value where the default seems less complex and therefore the lowest risk/highest value (I.e, safe) option.

Exactly and that was sort of my point but I didn't want to push since its a bit of a personal thing but yes if you feel like someone poking a hole in your idea is a "bad thing" and equate it to "they don't believe in me", that creates a very toxic and resentment-based mindset. Whereas in your example, the feedback is just feedback, you don't treat it as something that is personal or has any moral implications. And if you have people willing to go deep and provide feedback (poke holes), it is likely logical to assume at some level they care deeply to at least engage even if its negative feedback. Ego is hard.

I promise you if you had the experience I've had you would understand what I'm talking about. Especially one friend has gotten me down. I share what I'm doing with him because he's actually in the right industry, just not technical. I've been showing him my technical progress, which may sound delusional, but I'm building something very cool that hasn't been done before, and when generalized has a high potential value. But every time I share I just get negative feedback, not constructive. I don't think he realizes he's doing it, and we're childhood friends. Anyway, I'm convinced this has value so I'm not giving up (I do get good feedback when showing it to potential users), but I would kill for even a "wow, that looks really cool".

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