Some will always say you're wrong
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I find myself guilty of this often, more so because I'm younger than most people I give advice to. Interestingly enough, the responses I receive always put me in a positive light and people tell me I act much older than I am.
Perhaps it's my tone or the way that I present an idea but people seem receptive.
A similar idea is that "you can't please everyone." (It's not the same idea, because this one presupposes an aim to please others where there wasn't necessarily one in the article.) This trips up many people, including myself at various points in my life. It can lead to juggling too many friendships, compromising one's values, accepting too many work obligations, feeling one's MVP isn't ready... As a result people may give up or burn out.
Accepting that you can't please everyone practically means being comfortable saying "no". Then, like in the article, you have the freedom to "bash on with a smile, being who you want to be" while pleasing some people at the same time.
-- Carl Sagan
I would say Bozo the Clown is equally a genius in his own merit.
At the end the person who works reaps the benefits of his work, people who laugh get proved wrong and then search ways to discredit the other persons work.
Laughing at some one is the last ditch attempt to make the person stop doing what they are doing. When you know you are incapable of doing something, and wish to stop others from doing so in the fear they will get ahead.
When I laugh at someone (who isn't a clown or comedian) falling on their own ass, it is not a last ditch attempt to stop them from falling on their ass. It's an expression of amusement at someone else's misery, or of gladness that it's not me being hurt, or of any of a thousand other emotions and reasons.
The point Sagan was making was that just because people are laughing at you doesn't make you a innovative or scientific genius. And just because someone tells you you're wrong doesn't make you right.
I was analyzing the psychological reasons behind this by introspection, and I think there's something to do with your brain trying to repel every little thing that is different from you somehow. It's there for a reason, so I guess that was probably useful 50,000 years ago.
I've realized that whenever you're trying to convince someone or trying to make them understand you, the way to do it is by showing them that deep deep down, you're not so different after all. I really wish more people would realize this. For instance, when you think about a thief, your mind says "Man, I really hate that guy. I would never do such a thing". But maybe he was just trying to feed his family. And that is something you would do.
The best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas. I've written about this before: if a good idea were obviously good, someone else would already have done it. So the most successful founders tend to work on ideas that few beside them realize are good. Which is not that far from a description of insanity, till you reach the point where you see results.
The first time Peter Thiel spoke at YC he drew a Venn diagram that illustrates the situation perfectly. He drew two intersecting circles, one labelled "seems like a bad idea" and the other "is a good idea." The intersection is the sweet spot for startups.
This concept is a simple one and yet seeing it as a Venn diagram is illuminating. It reminds you that there is an intersection—that there are good ideas that seem bad. It also reminds you that the vast majority of ideas that seem bad are bad.
So there are a lot of ideas that seem good which ARE good but maybe are just hard to execute or extremely competitive (i.e. Google or the iTunes store), there are a lot of ideas that seem bad which ARE bad (e.g. most startups), and there is an intersecting sweet spot in the middle, of good ideas that seem really bad in the beginning (Airbnb, the iPad, etc.). I think that is what Derek is referring to and this Venn diagram approach should hopefully clear up a lot of the "How do I know I'm actually right/wrong then?" confusion in this discussion.
When you're "right", you become Steve Jobs. When you're actually wrong, you end up being Kim Jong Il:
This is a great one liner.
The context simply does not point to situations in which the author personally experienced times when someone said he was wrong and how he benefitted from his own experience of determining right and wrong.
Then again maybe you ARE wrong and you're just not paying attention....
http://www.spreeblick.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/schoolf...
I really loved this line :)
Note: At the time of writing this article has no comments.
Of course, I came here expecting to see a bunch of people saying I'm wrong. :-)
You better pick which side you are on so you can shrug off the people laughing at you.
This ignores the point that the optimal spot on the spectrum is somewhere in the middle, or left of/right of center depending on the situation. This post ignores the fact that a starving artist should be proud of their ways when someone says they are not focusing on money enough. I prefer critically analyzing the substance of the cretique instead of just sticking to my position, and treating their mockery as always non-constructive.
OK, maybe you can still throw out the argument that we don't know. But I can't do that confidently.