

Some will always say you're wrong - sachitgupta
http://sivers.org/wrong

======
gavanwoolery
People have told me all manner of things...they seem a bit too ready to give
me advice, as if I were completely naive. I've done my fair share of stupid
things, and I willingly listen to advice from others, but I do not like it
when people critique me being myself. The most common criticism I get is that
I am too kind for my own good. What is the world coming to when being kind is
a bad thing, as if I should be expected to crawl over everyone just to rise
one step higher? It does not seem to occur to anybody that I do kind things
willingly, not because others expect me to. We were all going direct to
heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

~~~
vecinu
_they seem a bit too ready to give me advice, as if I were completely naive._

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.

~~~
gavanwoolery
I too am definitely "guilty" of giving out more advice than I probably should.
However, some advice is good-natured (even if critical), whereas other advice
is sometimes too much a projection of personal beliefs or unhelpful (i.e "That
idea will probably fail"). I have definitely "grown up" a bit in terms of
taking advice though - I used to think I was right about everything (even if
outwardly humble). It is definitely not easy to put yourself in the mindset of
another person.

------
mcgwiz
Well said.

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.

------
peteretep
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright
brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

\-- Carl Sagan

~~~
kamaal
Not sure what you are trying to say. Entertaining somebody is pretty
difficult. Try to make a crowd 5000 people laugh and go back to their home
thoroughly entertained.

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.

~~~
ordinary
_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.

------
mion
Awesome as always, Derek is truly a well of wisdom.

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.

------
pshin45
OP reminds me of something PG once wrote:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html>

_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.

------
pshin45
Brings to mind the saying I first heard way back in elementary school -
"What's right is not always popular and what's popular is not always right."

When you're "right", you become Steve Jobs. When you're actually wrong, you
end up being Kim Jong Il:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bhTFSjzD0Y>

~~~
matdrewin
Good point.

------
TheBiv
This is great advice.

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.

------
ascotan
"Then every time they say you’re wrong, that’s a sign you’re doing it right."

Then again maybe you ARE wrong and you're just not paying attention....

[http://www.spreeblick.com/wp-
content/uploads/2006/05/schoolf...](http://www.spreeblick.com/wp-
content/uploads/2006/05/schoolforthegifted.jpg)

------
giis
> Then every time they say you’re wrong, that’s a sign you’re doing it right.

I really loved this line :)

~~~
codex
If someone says you're doing it right, then, is that a sign you're doing it
wrong?

~~~
omegant
Both are oversimplifications, what are the real reasons behind their
judgement? are you trying to breath water on the beach and the one telling you
that you are wrong is part of a rescue team. Or you have invented the radio
and the one telling you wrong is a cleric that things that sound is the voice
of evil?. Maybe examples are a bit extreme. It also depends on the moment,
place and people: if you are a scientist that has discovered a liquid that
let´s you breath water or a tribal leader is using the radio to organize a
genocide, probably the situation is not the same.

------
unimpressive
Since somebody always seems to mention it when an article hits the top of HN
with no comments, what _is_ the most upvotes an article has gotten without a
comment? Is there a service that tracks things like this?

Note: At the time of writing this article has no comments.

~~~
collypops
If I was to make a guess, I'd say that the lack of comments has a lot to do
with nobody wanting to be the one to tell Derek he's wrong. I find it
refreshing.

~~~
sivers
Good point!

Of course, I came here expecting to see a bunch of people saying I'm wrong.
:-)

~~~
gfodor
Turns out, you were wrong about that.

------
maeon3
By this logic, someone who likes to exercise a lot will have people who tell
them them are too athletic. Some people don't like to exercise at all, and
others will tell them they are too lazy.

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.

------
MostAwesomeDude
Sometimes, you _are_ wrong.

~~~
MojoJolo
True. That's why it's hard. We don't know who's wrong until we get there.

~~~
PakG1
I'd revise that. It depends on the context. Is it a discussion of known fact
or a discussion of various possible not-yet-known outcomes? With known fact,
can say before you get there. And a lot of discussions would tend to converge
on known fact, rather than not-yet-known outcomes. It's only the truly
groundbreaking stuff that we don't know. And if we're restricting the subject
to startups, how many startups in the world are truly groundbreaking?

OK, maybe you can still throw out the argument that we don't know. But I can't
do that confidently.

