[HN Gopher] On limitations that hide in your blindspot
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On limitations that hide in your blindspot
Author : jger15
Score : 186 points
Date : 2024-03-18 22:29 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.henrikkarlsson.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.henrikkarlsson.xyz)
| koliber wrote:
| This is one of the most powerful things you can learn to do.
| Question your own assumptions, with the goal of seeing what is
| holding you back. It literally unblocks you and allows you to do
| things you never considered doing before.
|
| Recently I had an insight about this with my kids and wrote an
| article about it: https://koliber.com/articles/breakthrough-
| thinking
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _Point of view is worth 80 IQ points_ --ACK
|
| I currently like the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_space antimatroid model;
| think of it as a graph, or like tech/skill-trees in video games.
| Sometimes you can unlock a new skill simply by combining (taking
| the meet of) two skills you already have mastered (X [?] Y = Z);
| other times the only way to get to a (join irreducible?) new
| skill is to make some sort of 'leap' from a single existing
| skill; these are much more difficult because (Y [?] Y = Y) so you
| need inspiration to get from Y to Z.
| benreesman wrote:
| I really enjoyed this essay (and have made a note in _my_ little
| Moleskin I carry everywhere to pay more attention to Escaping
| Flatland).
|
| It's full of observations and insights I'll be chewing on for
| days at least but what strikes me immediately is the exhilaration
| of the love story: certainly I've known for a long time that I
| wanted something like that even if I wouldn't have used those
| words. And I applied a crude heuristic: I only got seriously
| involved with partners who were in some important sense _smarter_
| than I am, but I think this essay has given me words for
| something I intuited long ago but never quite got by the scruff,
| which is that only once or twice if that did that represent a
| person who _made me better at becoming better_ , and it was long
| enough ago I didn't realize the gravity of that in time to make
| the necessary choices.
|
| The exhilaration derives from remembering what a game changer
| that represents when you encounter it, and for me at least how
| all the brighter colors and incandescent bliss and endless
| possibility and so many other unpronounceable intangibles that
| falling truly in love represented.
|
| There's something magical here and the authors have succeeded in
| setting at least one pen to paper (and physical paper at that)
| trying to pull on a thread long neglected.
| w10-1 wrote:
| > a person who _made me better at becoming better_
|
| True that.
|
| The article has its own blindspot, which is to understand the
| problem as a blindspot - as a lack of information due to some
| (remediable) deficiency.
|
| But the story showed it was instead a matter of will, or
| agency. His girlfriend obviously knew she could learn; she just
| needed to decide that it was her job to learn instead of
| depending on others to teach.
|
| Indeed, nearly every story on point (like the comment about
| Bridgewater practices) purports to be about information
| (delivering unwanted news), but is in fact about the will to
| change.
|
| This is important because there's a ton of advice out there,
| and people who feel that giving advice is how they can help.
| But often that makes things worse: the person already feels
| disabled, and advice not taken basically conveys that they're
| faulty - disabled.
|
| Greek philosophers argued about the phenomenon of akrasia
| (weakness of will), generally falling into the same trap that
| we do, thinking knowledge will somehow solve it. But there's
| actually plenty of evidence that more knowledge constrains your
| sense of possibility.
|
| Mechanistic psychologists might argue for impedance-matching:
| challenging people without breaking them, so they achieve a
| rate of change above their expectations - but then expectations
| change. (Successful and powerful people are notoriously unhappy
| that their trajectories are not increasing.) Conversely,
| buddhists say to expect nothing and accept everything; then
| people become happy but low-achieving.
|
| Sometimes what really helps is to show someone that they can
| change. As the story suggests, love itself, and bringing
| someone out of a small town, helps. As the Bridgewater comment
| and the 2010's workplace suggests, joining some group where
| peers are humble and activated can be inspiring. Therapy
| suggests realizing that all your fears are self-generated
| delusions that disappear when you stop pumping energy into
| them. (Nietzsche's spirit of gravity is a monkey on the
| shoulder, that eventually hops off.)
|
| So perhaps the best of all is the advice above, to notice
| whether you're more yourself when with certain people. Those
| people Aristotle would call your friends; in the Nichomachean
| ethics friendship is the highest form of happiness because
| we're most actualized among those who get/demand/expect/elicit
| the most from us.
| parasti wrote:
| This is very well written. Aside from the topic at hand, I had a
| realization that an essay written in this manner (from the
| context I assume with input from at least two people) feels as if
| written by superhuman, combining the individual insights of each
| into a greater, more insightful whole. It's obvious, I suppose,
| but this idea had never crystallized for me before reading this.
| xyzelement wrote:
| One of the main things that attracted me to working at
| Bridgewater is the company culture geared explicitly at helping
| you discover your blind spots.
|
| A lot of the discomfort that people associate with the company
| has to do with that: the recorded meetings, the "brutal" feedback
| etc are all designed to make you see what you have been resisting
| seeing.
|
| There is a part of us that wants to grow and there's a part of us
| that resists the pain of growth. Being someone who values growth
| and is willing to go through the discomfort doesn't make the
| process itself easier for you - you still have to do the work.
| It's challenging but in retrospect you look at the kind of person
| you are a year or five years down the line and you feel good
| about it.
| bumby wrote:
| I do think there's a downside to this culture, or at least
| something to guard against. It works when there is a clear
| intention to improve, but there can also be a tendency towards
| negativity and downright cynicism. Sometimes, "brutal" feedback
| becomes a mechanism of maintaining the status quo rather than
| fostering growth. It reminds me of the Oscal Wilde quote to the
| effect of "a cynic is someone who knows the cost of everything
| and the value of nothing." It creates a lack of psychological
| safety, where people are afraid to speak up with different
| ideas and the culture stagnates.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I have a hard time imagining that it's truly brutal in both
| directions. Is the executive team really made to justify a
| large bonus for themselves when the rest of the staff is
| asked to accept lower than inflation adjustments, as an
| example?
|
| I'd bet it's "brutal" but with a lot of information asymmetry
| preventing the sorts of feedback I described.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Sure. Ray Dalio got public negative feedback all the time.
| bumby wrote:
| Can you clarify? I took the GP comment as asking whether
| subordinate employees give leadership negative feedback.
| That's a very different animal than general public
| feedback. I think that distinction is important because
| internal feedback tends to be much more relevant due to
| the amount of non-public information employees have. I
| suspect the GP point was that "brutal" feedback tends to
| flow downhill within an organization.
|
| Would you expect a custodian to be able to talk to Dalio
| and say something like, "You know, your desk looks like a
| pigsty and a cluttered environment can lead to a
| cluttered mind and cluttered thinking."
| andsoitis wrote:
| > suspect the GP point was that "brutal" feedback tends
| to flow downhill within an organization.
|
| At companies with a strong feedback culture, critical
| feedback tends to flow in exactly the opposite way you
| describe: it is directed upwards...
| willcipriano wrote:
| You have to understand why someone would find this
| surprising though right? Its counter to all human nature
| I have observed. It's like telling me you have water
| running uphill on your property, I'm right to have
| questions, the most reasonable explanation is some sort
| of trickery is at play.
| swatcoder wrote:
| It's funny to have to say this in a thread about explicit
| feedback and psychological safety, but:
|
| Nobody here was suggesting that your question was foolish
| or that it was not asked in earnest surprise. _Clearly_ ,
| this is something that surprises you and that's fine.
| Good on you for asking questions to better understand!
|
| Encountering something that is "counter to all human
| nature I have observed" is a good clue that you've been
| carrying a big a blindspot of your own. There are _many_
| traditional cultures and modern communities that are
| quite forward about feedback and criticism in a pervasive
| way. Often, in these groups, continued authority is
| earned exactly _through_ one 's handling of open
| criticism from their subordinates.
|
| Do you process it in stride and contextualize it?
| Acknowledge the person for sharing it? Hold strong in
| your own self-assurance? Fold it into your future
| decisions? Or do you defensively fly off the handle and
| repress those who you see as threatening you?
|
| I'm sorry if you're only familiar with that last
| strategy, but it's not nearly universal. In this case,
| the water really does flow uphill in a lot of places.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| This is an extraordinarily condescending comment, with a
| lot of weakly justified assumptions about the other
| commenter.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I am not the person you're replying to but I reached the
| same conclusion that they have. When someone claims as
| impossible that which you have experienced (and in fact,
| experienced consistently across decades) - at some point
| you have to conclude that they simply lack the experience
| that would make this as obvious to them. It's not a bad
| thing but it's just kinda real.
|
| It's like the opposite of survivorship bias. Because you
| have only seen things go badly, you conclude the good is
| impossible, something like that.
| bumby wrote:
| I did not read the original comment as "claims as
| impossible" but rather "not very generalizable". One of
| the important things about receiving feedback IMO is to
| steelman the feedback as much as possible.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // It's like telling me you have water running uphill on
| your property, I'm right to have questions, the most
| reasonable explanation is some sort of trickery is at
| play.
|
| Skepticism is one thing but it's good not let it blind
| you to exceptionally good situations you can learn from.
|
| Instead of your water running uphill analogy - I'd use
| marriage. Most marriage ends in divorce today, but if you
| see a couple that has been successfully married for
| decades, do you go "that must be bullshit" or do you go
| "I wonder what they are doing that others aren't doing"
| and seek to learn from that for your own life.
|
| FWIW I am a Bridgewater alumni and can attest to the
| absolute ease of giving negative upward feedback - but
| you can also look at the outcomes. World's most
| successful hegefund across 4 decades, a highly desirable
| place to work, and a place where alumni "graduate" from
| to be massively successful elsewhere. Does that sound
| like "just another place where my cynical world view
| applies" or does it sound like "a place that has actually
| figured out something special and is able to stand out
| against the backdrop" - and thus is worthy to learn from?
| xyzelement wrote:
| // Would you expect a custodian to be able to talk to
| Dalio and say something like, "You know, your desk looks
| like a pigsty and a cluttered environment can lead to a
| cluttered mind and cluttered thinking."
|
| Absolutely!
|
| Take a look at rays Ted talk for a few examples. They are
| representative.
| novok wrote:
| I've worked at a small place with "radical candor" (it's a
| book) and how I think about it is like working with power
| tools while walking on a tightrope. It's really easy to
| screw up and cut off someone's hand, and I think
| bridgewater fires a lot AFAIK or has a lot of turn over as
| a result.
|
| Another thing is that it can easily make people pretty
| defensive, and you need very mature and forgiving/accepting
| people or rough and tumble culture (think Linus Torvalds)
| for it work properly. It's very easy to hide emotions with
| intellectual rationalizations unfortunately.
|
| I also think it can be very useful and push to excellence,
| but most IMO don't have the emotional maturity to pull it
| off properly. I think it's the same reason why a lot of
| startups die because of cofounder conflict.
| xyzelement wrote:
| That's a great hypothetical that may apply in some places.
| What made Bridgewater a one in a million company is precisely
| that we all opted in to operating in this transparent and
| "harsh" way.
|
| I never worked at a place with as much "psychological safety"
| as BW because the culture was explicitly "you must say what
| is in your mind". Every other place that I heard talk about
| psychological safety has so much walking on eggshells that
| real problems couldn't be called out.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > What made Bridgewater a one in a million company is
| precisely that we all opted in to operating in this
| transparent and "harsh" way.
|
| I find this very hard to believe. I can buy that everyone
| knows, and even accepts, the risks coming in, but that
| doesn't mean that everyone opts into it, except in the
| weakest possible sense of opting in (the sense in which I
| opt in to cookie collection, for example, but weaker--
| because I just _want_ to get to a website, whereas the
| people 'opting in' to this feedback system _have_ to get a
| job, and may not have the resources to pick and choose).
| xyzelement wrote:
| // whereas the people 'opting in' to this feedback system
| have to get a job, and may not have the resources to pick
| and choose
|
| That's just not what it is in practice. The kinds of
| people these companies hire have a lot of choices. Nobody
| is in position where the only company that will hire them
| is the world's premier and most selective hedge fund.
|
| In reality most people who entered BW, were either
| "poached" from top-tier financial firms (and more
| recently FAANGS) or were graduates of top schools who had
| other offers. Materially nobody faces the choice between
| unemployment and "living the principles" - people opt
| into BW from among their choices _because_ the culture
| appeals to them.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > It creates a lack of psychological safety, where people are
| afraid to speak up with different ideas and the culture
| stagnates.
|
| One person's psychological safety is another person's
| inability to give honest feedback to a teammate who's a drain
| on everyone.
|
| It's a fragile balance that should be maintained carefully by
| talented leadership.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't know if I agree with the first statement, but I
| agree that leadership plays a big role.
|
| I think psychological safety is the opposite of what you
| described. According to Adam Grant, it's the ability to
| give candid feedback without interpersonal risk. Related to
| my original comment, it's the ability to share ideas, even
| half-baked ones, without fear that they will define you as
| a person. The downside to "brutal" feedback is when people
| conflate the idea with the person sharing it.
| xyzwave wrote:
| Tangent, but I never realized the original for this great
| Alan J. Perlis quote:
|
| > A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the
| cost of nothing.
|
| https://cpsc.yale.edu/epigrams-programming
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Please say more about plusses of Bridgewater!
|
| The Fund is a great read and I'm sure it only painting a
| certain side of the story. But it made all the talked about
| Bridgewater stuff sound like a complicated distraction for a
| founder with some specific vision that was a bit odd. Meanwhile
| the working of the actual fund is based on hunches, insider
| gossip and large macro bets run by a very small team, while
| everyone is playing complicated status games.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I didn't read the fund but I read some of the articles
| released based on it when it published and it rang hollow to
| me.
|
| It had the vibe of a couch potato writing about an Olympic
| team complaining "look how harsh the coach is" - divorced
| from the reality of what it takes to be an Olympic athlete
| and that the athletes signed up for that kind of training.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Oh, I thought you meant you worked there.
|
| The fund is based on interviews with people who were pretty
| senior there. I mean, they no longer do, and the book is
| clearly giving things a negative light, but you can learn a
| lot from it about who can give who 'Brutal Feedback' and
| how a utopian vision becomes a dystopia for people further
| down the chain.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I did work there for two years within the investment
| engine - the old school core. It was a very
| transformative two years both as a professional and as a
| person so I got what I came for.
| bumby wrote:
| If you don't mind sharing, why did you leave?
| xyzelement wrote:
| I got fired. That sounds "bad" but part of working there
| is that you have to be sober about the reality and are
| willing to just engage with it as is.
|
| The reality is that my department was people-rich and
| pretty mature, so when COVID hit and the company looked
| to lean up, it looked to my area to trim. Out of my peer
| group, I am pretty sure I was the least valuable (I am
| excellent at what I do but I was the lest excellent in my
| peer group there) so I was let go.
|
| It was technically a lay-off but I am sober about the
| fact that I was chosen for the layoff because of my
| relative performance, which makes sense.
|
| (FWIW I was given a very comfortable severance package, I
| would even say very generous and I suspect some of that
| generosity was because I had recently had a child. While
| BW is a place that is "brutal" in terms of high
| expectations and feedback, it absolutely took care of
| people in this way.)
| sdwr wrote:
| That's the honesty and directness shining through!
| vipshek wrote:
| I was a software intern at Bridgewater in 2013. My impressions
| from that time are that Bridgewater had an interesting, unique,
| and very intentional culture, but at some point the firm grew
| and Dalio started thinking about how to scale that culture. He
| wrote the Principles book and had everyone read and discuss it;
| the Dots app was implemented; etc.
|
| The core cultural values seemed reasonable to me, but the
| efforts to scale the culture felt heavyhanded and seemed like
| they sometimes backfired. Attempting to quantify someone's
| "believability" based on subjective data collected on an iPad
| app was a bit silly and easily gameable. The fact that Dalio
| and other executives scored highest on basically every facet
| was an obvious sign that the system was a bit farcical.
|
| Maybe the company managed to solve some of those cultural
| scaling challenges after 2013? I wasn't around to see what
| happened after.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| If fact there was active work to make Dalio top on
| believability and have it flow from there. The developer
| behind it is extensively interviewed in "The Firm."
|
| Dalio and others being on top of rating was a way Dalio
| sanity checked the algo, per the book and was not happy when
| it drifted away from that standard.
|
| How much of the book's content is shaded by sour grapes is
| unclear though.
| a_c wrote:
| Knowing is one thing, wanting is another, and then there is
| acting. Sometimes it is peaceful to embrace who you are.
| Sometimes it is liberating to push to your limits. Most of the
| time, I'm giving myself excuse to be lazy
| vmoore wrote:
| I swing between my comfort zone, and growth mindset. Sometimes
| projects just become maintenance mode for a while, other times I
| expand my knowledge, try new things, learn from mistakes. You
| have to have a beginner's mind, and be willing to look pathetic
| on your first try and leave ego at the door. Become vulnerable.
| Mawr wrote:
| > When I met Johanna, far from there, in a university town, she
| made a deep and perplexing impression on me: the precision of her
| attention and the intensity of her curiosity were unlike anything
| I had seen, and yet, despite this, she was almost completely
| ignorant. If I mentioned the First World War, she would say,
| "When was that?" But if I explained an area I was researching, it
| would take her five minutes to cut through to the deep,
| underlying question that had eluded me for months.
|
| Knowledge and intelligence are orthogonal concepts. It's
| important not to conflate them.
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