October 1, 2015 at 12:55Paul Graham “Two Types of Judgment”
As part of the quest to find all the essays of Paul Graham in Russian , I came across 2 publications, which were translated, but they do not have access. I had to turn on the skills of undercover work, and so I found the translator himself, who kindly rummaged in his archives (eight months ago, however, passed) and provided the text for publication. Thanks, Dmitry siberiano .
Second Ghost Essay - Organic Startup Ideas . Who knows how to resurrect this - habrahabr.ru/post/91158 , I will be very grateful.
By the way, who wants to help with translations - write in a personal.
We are already translating 6 essays: Why YC, Inequality and Risk, The Word “Hacker”, Revenge of the Nerds, The High-Res Society, Design and Research.(I hope that the plagiarists-seashniks have enough brains and they don’t “steal” them this time)
Two kinds of judgments
Source text: Two Kinds of Judgement , April 2007
Translation: Dmitry Lebedev, 11.11.2007
People have two different ways of judging you. Sometimes a correct judgment is the ultimate goal. But there is a second, more common type of judgment in which there is no such purpose. We usually attribute all judgments about us to the first type. Perhaps we would live happier if we realized which judgment is and which is not.
The first type of judgment in which to judge you - the ultimate goal, includes court cases, classroom assessments, and most competitions. Such judgments, of course, may be erroneous, but since the ultimate goal is to judge you correctly, there is usually the opportunity to appeal. If it seems to you that you have been condemned, you can file a protest that you were treated unfairly.
Almost all the judgments that are made about children are of this type, so from an early age we get used to thinking that in general all judgments are the same.
But in fact there is a second, wider class of judgments, where a judgment about you is just a means to something else. These judgments include those that apply to university admissions, hiring and investment decisions, and, of course, on dates. Judgments of this kind are not really about you.
Put yourself in the shoes of the team player. For the sake of simplicity, suppose the game has no role, and you need to select 20 players. There will be several stars that obviously will have to be in the team, and many players who definitely aren't. Your judgment makes sense only in boundary cases. Imagine that you "screwed up" and underestimated the 20th of the best, because of which he did not enter the team, and his 21st place took his place. You got a good team anyway. If the players have the usual distribution of skills, then the 21st player will be only slightly worse than the 20th. Perhaps the difference between them will be less than the measurement error.
The 20th player will probably feel condemned. But your goal here was not to do a service for assessing people's abilities. The goal was to recruit a team, and if the difference between the 20th and 21st best players is less than the measurement error, you still did everything optimally.
Even applying the word “dishonest” to such an erroneous judgment is wrong. The judgment was not intended to give a correct estimate, but to select a sufficiently optimal set.
What confuses us is the apparent position of the power of the selector. Because of this, he seems like a judge. If you treat the judge of you as a consumer, not a judge, then you will not expect honesty from him. The author of a good novel would not complain that the readers were dishonest with him, preferring hack-work in a bright cover over his work. Perhaps stupid, but not dishonest.
Early education along with self-centeredness makes us believe that every judgment about us is about us. In fact, most are not at all. This is a rare case when being less selfish means being more self-confident. Understand how important it is for most people to accurately evaluate you. For example, due to the normal distribution of most contestants, it is not at all important to judge accurately, although it is in this case that the judgment is most powerful. Realizing this, you will not perceive the refusal so personally.
It is very curious that a less personal perception of failures will help you get fewer failures. If, in your opinion, the one who judges you will try to do it for sure, you can allow yourself to be passive. But most judgments are very influenced by random, external factors, most people who judge you are more like fickle buyers of novels than wise and insightful judges. The more you realize this, the more you can do to influence the outcome.
A good place to apply this principle is to go to college. Most students who apply to universities do this with the usual childish mixture of feelings of their own insignificance and self-centeredness: insignificance is that they believe that admissions committees are all-seeing; egocentrism - that is, it is assumed that the commissions are interested in them so much as to dig into the admissions documents and find out if the applicant is good. Together, all this makes applicants passive when submitting documents and feel hurt in case of refusal. If they understood how fast and impersonal the selection process would be, they would make more efforts to file themselves and would accept the refusal not so personally.
Another 107+ articles by Paul Graham on Habré.
(Who wants to help with the translation - get connected)
P.S.
If you are interested in getting into Y Combinator and you are close to Graham's ideas, write in a personal letter, I have a couple of ideas.
Is your startup ready to apply for Y Combinator?
Second Ghost Essay - Organic Startup Ideas . Who knows how to resurrect this - habrahabr.ru/post/91158 , I will be very grateful.
By the way, who wants to help with translations - write in a personal.
We are already translating 6 essays: Why YC, Inequality and Risk, The Word “Hacker”, Revenge of the Nerds, The High-Res Society, Design and Research.(I hope that the plagiarists-seashniks have enough brains and they don’t “steal” them this time)
Two kinds of judgments
Source text: Two Kinds of Judgement , April 2007
Translation: Dmitry Lebedev, 11.11.2007
People have two different ways of judging you. Sometimes a correct judgment is the ultimate goal. But there is a second, more common type of judgment in which there is no such purpose. We usually attribute all judgments about us to the first type. Perhaps we would live happier if we realized which judgment is and which is not.
The first type of judgment in which to judge you - the ultimate goal, includes court cases, classroom assessments, and most competitions. Such judgments, of course, may be erroneous, but since the ultimate goal is to judge you correctly, there is usually the opportunity to appeal. If it seems to you that you have been condemned, you can file a protest that you were treated unfairly.
Almost all the judgments that are made about children are of this type, so from an early age we get used to thinking that in general all judgments are the same.
But in fact there is a second, wider class of judgments, where a judgment about you is just a means to something else. These judgments include those that apply to university admissions, hiring and investment decisions, and, of course, on dates. Judgments of this kind are not really about you.
Put yourself in the shoes of the team player. For the sake of simplicity, suppose the game has no role, and you need to select 20 players. There will be several stars that obviously will have to be in the team, and many players who definitely aren't. Your judgment makes sense only in boundary cases. Imagine that you "screwed up" and underestimated the 20th of the best, because of which he did not enter the team, and his 21st place took his place. You got a good team anyway. If the players have the usual distribution of skills, then the 21st player will be only slightly worse than the 20th. Perhaps the difference between them will be less than the measurement error.
The 20th player will probably feel condemned. But your goal here was not to do a service for assessing people's abilities. The goal was to recruit a team, and if the difference between the 20th and 21st best players is less than the measurement error, you still did everything optimally.
Even applying the word “dishonest” to such an erroneous judgment is wrong. The judgment was not intended to give a correct estimate, but to select a sufficiently optimal set.
What confuses us is the apparent position of the power of the selector. Because of this, he seems like a judge. If you treat the judge of you as a consumer, not a judge, then you will not expect honesty from him. The author of a good novel would not complain that the readers were dishonest with him, preferring hack-work in a bright cover over his work. Perhaps stupid, but not dishonest.
Early education along with self-centeredness makes us believe that every judgment about us is about us. In fact, most are not at all. This is a rare case when being less selfish means being more self-confident. Understand how important it is for most people to accurately evaluate you. For example, due to the normal distribution of most contestants, it is not at all important to judge accurately, although it is in this case that the judgment is most powerful. Realizing this, you will not perceive the refusal so personally.
It is very curious that a less personal perception of failures will help you get fewer failures. If, in your opinion, the one who judges you will try to do it for sure, you can allow yourself to be passive. But most judgments are very influenced by random, external factors, most people who judge you are more like fickle buyers of novels than wise and insightful judges. The more you realize this, the more you can do to influence the outcome.
A good place to apply this principle is to go to college. Most students who apply to universities do this with the usual childish mixture of feelings of their own insignificance and self-centeredness: insignificance is that they believe that admissions committees are all-seeing; egocentrism - that is, it is assumed that the commissions are interested in them so much as to dig into the admissions documents and find out if the applicant is good. Together, all this makes applicants passive when submitting documents and feel hurt in case of refusal. If they understood how fast and impersonal the selection process would be, they would make more efforts to file themselves and would accept the refusal not so personally.
Another 107+ articles by Paul Graham on Habré.
(Who wants to help with the translation - get connected)
P.S.
If you are interested in getting into Y Combinator and you are close to Graham's ideas, write in a personal letter, I have a couple of ideas.
Is your startup ready to apply for Y Combinator?