
“Strong Opinions Loosely Held” Might Be the Worst Idea in Tech - revvx
https://blog.glowforge.com/strong-opinions-loosely-held-might-be-the-worst-idea-in-tech/
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eddof13
In egalitarian non-competitive environments I am 90% in agreement that this
can be useful, however as a philosophy for life I am certain that you will get
further by speaking with conviction (strong opinions loosely held), and I
don't consider it good advice to give someone outside of those environments.

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jjn2009
Understanding the uncertainty of a decision is important to make good
decisions however, software massively benefits from first mover advantage so
there is a reason why absolutism (even when usually wrong) is actually
beneficial. For every conversation you have where you debate the nuanced
merits of a direction you give your competitor that many more minutes of time
to beat you to the punch. Facebook isn't doing bad because zuckerberg decided
to use PHP. Most technology companies have the luxury of being wrong, what
should be elaborated on here is how this theory doesn't apply to new areas
people from tech want to apply it to (see: anything that has risk you have to
actually consider).

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aeternus
Yes, there also often is not a single correct choice for many technology
decisions. What is important in many cases is to pick a direction and get
everyone aligned.

This doesn't hold for all types of decisions.

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hactually
I'm 50% sure this is a good article.

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User23
I’m 100 percent certain it’s 90% terrible advice unless you never want to make
staff or higher.

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gubbrora
A person with strong opinions loosely held is unreliable. Today they fully
agree with you and tomorrow you're the devil.

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azhu
So you would rather they tell you the wrong thing twice? C'mon.

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webmaven
The problem with "strong opinions, loosely held" is that "strong" and
"loosely" are poorly defined.

"Cubicles are worse than open-plan offices" is a strong opinion, but so is
"Only brain-dead worker drones would put up with having to work in a cubicle."

Putting an uncertainty measure on the two statements won't have the same
effect (to be clear, adding an "I am 90% sure that.." preface to the second
statement changes very little).

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stouset
“Strong” refers to to the level of passion with which you will defend the
opinion.

The point is that you are willing to passionately argue for your side—as
opposed to passively avoiding debate—but that you’re not simultaneously
ignoring the arguments presented by the opposing side.

The original article here is seemingly little more than a straw man argument
against the quoted philosophy.

