It is tempting to simply look at what seems to work for most people and try that. And when trying that costs little money and not a big time investment, neither a long waiting time, then sure, why not?
But when it is not the case, here is something to consider: why aren’t you already doing what most people are doing? If you and your situation was exactly average, you would probably do it already. It is likely that there is something special about your case—and it can suggest the common solution would not work for you.
For example, most people find their romantic partners through their circle of friends. If you are social, if you have a large circle and hang out with them a lot, it would probably happen to you more or less naturally. If you are like 25 and it did not happen, it suggests something is different—maybe you are not very social, maybe you don’t have much of a circle or you have the kind of circle that is not very conductive to this and so on.
The meta of this is that relatively easy to pick up popular ways of doing things. We adsorb it through our socialization, social life, upbringing, media, life in general. If you don’t do something that is popular, there is something unusual there. Of course it is not certain that the reason for you not doing it would also cause it not working well for you if you tried. Yet I do see a certain correlation. What are the primary reasons for not doing something popular? You don’t like it, it is too difficult for you, or you tried and it did not work. If you don’t like something or it is too difficult, it could still work for you, but the cost would be high so it may be better to look for a different, less popular solution that may not be so efficient: but less painful for you. Lower benefit but far lower cost.
When a popular solution requires a lot of investment, I think the primary really good reason for trying it is that despite it being popular it somehow never occured you to try it. This can happen—after all not everybody spent all their aspects of their life swimming in mainstream. For example, I was a rocker between 15 and 18 and had this big metal hair that really did not look good for my face, and when I figured I need to look better to attract girls more efficiently (than 0) it felt like a big surprising relevation that maybe having short hair like about 98% of guys out there could be a good idea. I was simply isolated from mainstream hairstyles in my circles where everybody looked like Axl Rose. But even in this case there was another reason—it felt painful, like giving up an aspect of my identity. It was not really clear where the sweet spot of cost/benefit lies.
Another valid reason to try costly mainstream solutions besides it somehow not having occured to us is if we find that the primary reason we are not doing so is that we out-clevered ourselves from it. This happens. When I was 17 everybody told me doing body-building would improve not only my romantic success but pretty much every aspect of my life. But I was “too clever” for that—I did not like the idea of imitating the “meat pies” whom I considered stupid. Sure an iiiiintellectual man should not do a sport that is like some peasant carrying heavy things, but something sophisticated and classy like fencing, right? I must say it was difficult to overcome my too-cleverish snobbery. But again it had a cost-benefit accept: do I really want to improve things or do I want to poke my nose on people who are more succesful than me? NOT doing the later—however wrong and stupid it is—was still emotionally costly. I think that was called growing up.
Yet… between 2005-2010 I was pretty much fed up how literally every programming blog presses unit testing hard. I argued with them that it does not work in every field—in my ERP field there are no units at all, every function can be seen as taking a 10GB database as a parameter in the sense that every subroutine can read any table and make decisions based on that, so beyond user acceptance testing it is all about hiring people who juggle the connections in their heads. So I had good reasons for not trying it, but even if I didn’t, the fact that everybody was yelling about unit testing yet almost nobody in ERP really did it was an evidence that it is not for us: if we had no specific reason for not doing so, we would have went with the mainstream long ago, because that is the EASY thing to do.
Group pressure to conform with the mainstream, the popular is a fairly big thing for humans and I would say we are at some level hardcoded for it, hardcoded for want to be “in”, to follow the popular fashions.
And this is why I have lower confidence for advice of the kind to try solutions that work for most people. They are popular. We are pressured to do it anyway. It is easy to swim with the mainstream, and if we had no specific reason to do so we would already do so. And that specific reason may—not sure, but may—mean we have something special about our situation that would make the mainstream solution either not work well for us or be too painful/costly.
Recommended algorithm: if easy, try anyway, if hard, try if you have reasons to suspect that the main reason for not trying it yet is either too-clever snobbery or being in a pocket subculture.
You’re conflating what’s popular with what works. Just because something is popular among most people doesn’t mean it works for most people. It just means they think it’s working. Given their often small sample sizes and only circumstantial evidence for drawing that conclusion, it shouldn’t be too surprising that a lot of people are doing things that don’t work for them.
It seems that it is often the case that people are doing things that work for them for reasons they don’t necessarily understand. For example, one of the great benefits of church is that you meet a lot of people of the same general culture, economic status, and belief system… which is good for networking and dating. Likewise, prayer seems to be a fairly effective self-regulation/self-calming system. (Contrariwise, Religion has had comparatively limited success in dealing with large-scale political/ethical issues and personal risk-management (“Jesus, take the wheel!” is not a sound safety strategy).)
Therefore, I would accept that going to church and praying are rational activities… But I still don’t believe that most people do them for the most rational reasons.
Which isn’t to say that DeVH might not be conflating what’s popular with what works. But I suspect that looking at what’s popular will quite often find you things that work.
as a contrarian; I naturally invalidate the public opinion. I think I would benefit from taking note of the public or common process and considering the validity of it as an option; instead of being as dismissive. The post above helped to suggest that.
For example, most people find their romantic partners through their circle of friends. If you are social, if you have a large circle and hang out with them a lot, it would probably happen to you more or less naturally. If you are like 25 and it did not happen, it suggests something is different—maybe you are not very social, maybe you don’t have much of a circle or you have the kind of circle that is not very conductive to this and so on.
FWIW I met my first girlfriend through my circle of friends, at the age of 26. :-)
Idea: how NOT to use statistics for self-help
It is tempting to simply look at what seems to work for most people and try that. And when trying that costs little money and not a big time investment, neither a long waiting time, then sure, why not?
But when it is not the case, here is something to consider: why aren’t you already doing what most people are doing? If you and your situation was exactly average, you would probably do it already. It is likely that there is something special about your case—and it can suggest the common solution would not work for you.
For example, most people find their romantic partners through their circle of friends. If you are social, if you have a large circle and hang out with them a lot, it would probably happen to you more or less naturally. If you are like 25 and it did not happen, it suggests something is different—maybe you are not very social, maybe you don’t have much of a circle or you have the kind of circle that is not very conductive to this and so on.
The meta of this is that relatively easy to pick up popular ways of doing things. We adsorb it through our socialization, social life, upbringing, media, life in general. If you don’t do something that is popular, there is something unusual there. Of course it is not certain that the reason for you not doing it would also cause it not working well for you if you tried. Yet I do see a certain correlation. What are the primary reasons for not doing something popular? You don’t like it, it is too difficult for you, or you tried and it did not work. If you don’t like something or it is too difficult, it could still work for you, but the cost would be high so it may be better to look for a different, less popular solution that may not be so efficient: but less painful for you. Lower benefit but far lower cost.
When a popular solution requires a lot of investment, I think the primary really good reason for trying it is that despite it being popular it somehow never occured you to try it. This can happen—after all not everybody spent all their aspects of their life swimming in mainstream. For example, I was a rocker between 15 and 18 and had this big metal hair that really did not look good for my face, and when I figured I need to look better to attract girls more efficiently (than 0) it felt like a big surprising relevation that maybe having short hair like about 98% of guys out there could be a good idea. I was simply isolated from mainstream hairstyles in my circles where everybody looked like Axl Rose. But even in this case there was another reason—it felt painful, like giving up an aspect of my identity. It was not really clear where the sweet spot of cost/benefit lies.
Another valid reason to try costly mainstream solutions besides it somehow not having occured to us is if we find that the primary reason we are not doing so is that we out-clevered ourselves from it. This happens. When I was 17 everybody told me doing body-building would improve not only my romantic success but pretty much every aspect of my life. But I was “too clever” for that—I did not like the idea of imitating the “meat pies” whom I considered stupid. Sure an iiiiintellectual man should not do a sport that is like some peasant carrying heavy things, but something sophisticated and classy like fencing, right? I must say it was difficult to overcome my too-cleverish snobbery. But again it had a cost-benefit accept: do I really want to improve things or do I want to poke my nose on people who are more succesful than me? NOT doing the later—however wrong and stupid it is—was still emotionally costly. I think that was called growing up.
Yet… between 2005-2010 I was pretty much fed up how literally every programming blog presses unit testing hard. I argued with them that it does not work in every field—in my ERP field there are no units at all, every function can be seen as taking a 10GB database as a parameter in the sense that every subroutine can read any table and make decisions based on that, so beyond user acceptance testing it is all about hiring people who juggle the connections in their heads. So I had good reasons for not trying it, but even if I didn’t, the fact that everybody was yelling about unit testing yet almost nobody in ERP really did it was an evidence that it is not for us: if we had no specific reason for not doing so, we would have went with the mainstream long ago, because that is the EASY thing to do.
Group pressure to conform with the mainstream, the popular is a fairly big thing for humans and I would say we are at some level hardcoded for it, hardcoded for want to be “in”, to follow the popular fashions.
And this is why I have lower confidence for advice of the kind to try solutions that work for most people. They are popular. We are pressured to do it anyway. It is easy to swim with the mainstream, and if we had no specific reason to do so we would already do so. And that specific reason may—not sure, but may—mean we have something special about our situation that would make the mainstream solution either not work well for us or be too painful/costly.
Recommended algorithm: if easy, try anyway, if hard, try if you have reasons to suspect that the main reason for not trying it yet is either too-clever snobbery or being in a pocket subculture.
You’re conflating what’s popular with what works. Just because something is popular among most people doesn’t mean it works for most people. It just means they think it’s working. Given their often small sample sizes and only circumstantial evidence for drawing that conclusion, it shouldn’t be too surprising that a lot of people are doing things that don’t work for them.
It seems that it is often the case that people are doing things that work for them for reasons they don’t necessarily understand. For example, one of the great benefits of church is that you meet a lot of people of the same general culture, economic status, and belief system… which is good for networking and dating. Likewise, prayer seems to be a fairly effective self-regulation/self-calming system. (Contrariwise, Religion has had comparatively limited success in dealing with large-scale political/ethical issues and personal risk-management (“Jesus, take the wheel!” is not a sound safety strategy).)
Therefore, I would accept that going to church and praying are rational activities… But I still don’t believe that most people do them for the most rational reasons.
Which isn’t to say that DeVH might not be conflating what’s popular with what works. But I suspect that looking at what’s popular will quite often find you things that work.
as a contrarian; I naturally invalidate the public opinion. I think I would benefit from taking note of the public or common process and considering the validity of it as an option; instead of being as dismissive. The post above helped to suggest that.
FWIW I met my first girlfriend through my circle of friends, at the age of 26. :-)
totally possible. still anecdata.
This was helpful. I have some thinking to do.