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In the most independent-minded people, the desire not to be told what to think is a positive force. It's not mere skepticism, but an active delight in ideas that subvert the conventional wisdom, the more counter intuitive the better.
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Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief.
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When I read history I do it not just to learn what happened, but to try to get inside the heads of people who lived in the past. How did things look to them? This is hard to do, but worth the effort for the same reason it's worth travelling far to triangulate a point.
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First, you want to avoid situations that suppress curiosity. The most important active step you can take to cultivate your curiosity is probably to seek out the topics that engage it. Few adults are equally curious about everything. It's up to you to find your niche that sparks curiosity the most...
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The third component of independent-mindedness, curiosity, may be the most interesting. To the extent that we can give a brief answer to the question of where novel ideas come from, it's curiosity. That's what people are usually feeling before having them.
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According to Paul Graham, internal structure of independent-mindedness has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity.
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If your goal is to discover novel ideas, your motto should not be "do what you love" so much as "do what you're curious about."
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But this pattern isn't universal. In fact, it doesn't hold for most kinds of work. In most kinds of work β to be an administrator, for example β all you need is to be right. It's not essential that everyone else be wrong. And here the distinction between independent-minde...
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Understanding where you fall in the spectrum from conventional to independent-minded can be tricky. Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. And the independent-minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, a...
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Some strategies to follow to cultivate independent-mindedness:
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There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. A scientist can make the most impact if his or her ideas are correct as well as novel. An essay will be more interesting if the essayist has something unique to say. An investor will find room to mak...
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Other curated ideas on this topic:
Don't let anybody tell you your novel ideas are almost like practical jokes.Β Β
All mainstream ideas of today were "stupid" back in the day.Β Β
Like letting strangers sleep in your house. (AirBnB)
We are building self-doubt by caring about what people think, something which holds us back to do what we want to do.
We need to accomplish something that will be admired, but not be bothered by what people say or think during the entire process. Most people do not care about you and are t...
To be more independent-minded, be sceptical.
When someone says something to you, ask yourself "is that true?"Β Β
You'll find "yes" is not always an answer.Β Β
Some of what most people believe in will be proved false in the future, see if you can guess which ones.
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