
If You Don't Have A Non-Mainstream Opinion, You Can't Be Successful - kloncks
http://blog.cubeofm.com/if-you-dont-have-a-non-mainstream-opinion-you
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zck
Are any of these non-mainstream opinions? Of course the first three are now,
but that doesn't matter (I don't care to think what "mainstream" opinions of
computing limits are). I'd wager you can't find a successful person from one
hundred or two hundred years ago who had an opinion that would _today_ be
considered non-mainstream. It's like when people try to argue against Darwin,
saying he was racist -- it was the mainstream opinion of the time.

Besides, all four quotes are bad examples. Nietzsche's quote has to be looked
at in the context of the 1880s. Certainly that opinion was quite mainstream
then -- the first woman to be awarded a PhD in Mathematics was only in 1886
(source: <http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/firstPhDs.htm>).

Carnegie's quote -- ignoring the part about race -- is a simple history
question. _Was_ there ever a "danger of war" between Germany and others? I
won't try to answer it, as I don't know. Either way, what matters is what
other people thought at the time.

Einstein's quote is simply about facts. Was there the "slightest indication"
that nuclear energy was possible? Science marches on -- before the industrial
revolution, was there the slightest indication that horseless carriages were
possible?

Von Neumann's quote makes more sense when you think about the theory of
computation. Computers today still run on the Von Neumann architecture from
the 30s and 40s -- any progress has been optimization, and does not push the
limit any farther. You still can't sort a list in less than O(n log n) time,
or sum n values in less than O(n) operations. As far as I know it, the only
thing to push the limits of computing is quantum computing, which is currently
in its infancy.

Of course, none of this means that you should think _only_ "mainstream"
thoughts -- if you never ask what else is possible, you won't do anything new.
But progress marches on -- _everyone_ has mainstream opinions today that will
be non-mainstream decades hence.

~~~
roundsquare
Interesting, I agree with your facts but I read the author is meaning the
exact opposite.

I.e. the author was asking us to take note of these mainstream opinions that
brilliant people had and how wrong they are. In other words, even if brilliant
people think you are wrong, you may still be right.

~~~
zck
Wrong doesn't necessarily correlate with "non-mainstream". There's a point to
be made here, but all I'm getting from this article is "famous people can be
incredibly wrong too".

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DanielBMarkham
One of the things that is important in my own value-system is to cherish
eccentricity. As the author points out, the entire race is becoming more and
more homogenized.

I'm not going to spell out a list of eccentricities. Oddly enough, if I did a
good job of it you guys would just vote me down.

I will, however, point out several of the ways that society is creating more
and more conformity: sites like this, the use of medical diagnosis to cover
simple human differentiation, the use of various mental illness labels to
cover formerly fine behavior, widespread rampant consumerism teaching people
they are all basically the same consumer, use of new laws to control what is
or isn't acceptable, use of social intervention as an excuse to make
everybody's private behavior now a public concern.

The species desperately needs outliers. We need our (peaceful) Ted Kacinskys
And we're getting better and better at finding them early and fuzzing them
out.

~~~
jamii
> the entire race is becoming more and more homogenized

Not necessarily. Improved communications do increase the mixing rate of
different cultures but they also allow subcultures to form more easily. Just
walking down the street this weekend in London and observing the range of
different fashions displayed - urban casual, gothic, cyber-industrial,
'traditional' english (guy in a straw boater and summer jacket). Even 50 years
ago such diversion from the norm would have been viewed as downright peculiar
and is now taken for granted.

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killedbydeath
I had to remove two of the three negations in the title to understand it: You
need a non-mainstream opinion to be successful. Does anyone else have to do
this mental exercise to understand?

~~~
zck
Take the contrapositive:

If you're successful, then you have a non-mainstream opinion.

~~~
nostrademons
That contrapositive isn't quite accurate, because it indicates a different
time-order than the original. "If you don't have a non-mainstream opinion,
then you can't be successful" implies that you must have non-mainstream
opinion _before_ you become successful. "If you're successful, then you have a
non-mainstream opinion" indicates that you have a non-mainstream opinion
_after_ you become successful. It's fairly likely that your non-mainstream
opinion before becomes the mainstream opinion afterwards. After all, isn't
that almost the definition of "successful"?

~~~
roundsquare
Good point about time. Just for fun...

Assume t0 < t1

Original: NOT(NOT(Mainstream(t0))) ==> NOT(Succesful(t1))

Contrapositive: Successful(t1) ==> NOT(Mainstream(t0))

Edit: Small edit for clarity and spelling.

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scott_s
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright
Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

\- Carl Sagan

Be cautious about valuing being non-mainstream for its own sake. The valuable
thing is not being non-mainstream, but being non-mainstream and _right_. What
you are different about matters.

If you value being non-mainstream for its own sake too much, then you risk
that being a part of your identity. That is dangerous because then it will be
extremely difficult for you to rationally consider arguments and evidence that
you are wrong. And most new ideas _are_ wrong.

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donaq
_it does not matter exactly what you think different about, but just somehow
be different from them_

I think it does matter. Believing that 1 + 1 = cucumber, for example, has
gotten me nowhere over the years, and I'm giving it up as of now.

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DenisM
If there is activity X and people who practice it usually achieve result Y,
chances are that by engaging in that activity you will achieve the same
result.

Therefore, if you keep doing what normal people do you will achieve the same
result they did - which is to say an average life.

