In deciding to be exceptional, I'm thinking of the courageous act of separating yourself from the crowd when it's safer to conform, when faced with a binary decision between the two. That decision can have lifelong consequences. A friend who could have been an olympic swimmer - but it was easier to not put in the effort, get a job at the local health food store, and get married. Or the brilliant kid with enormous potential, growing up in the bad neighborhood, who purposely fails at school to not get bullied.
I would separate the non-conformist whose conscience puts them at odds with a misguided but widespread popular opinion, from the contrarian. Being contrarian just for the sake of it can be silly sometimes. Although I still like those who consider that so much of their identity that they take contrarian positions even when unnecessary. If anything they are a non-yielding role model and we could use some of that, cause the scales are definately tipped in favor of conformity. It's drilled into us from a very young age.
> In deciding to be exceptional, I'm thinking of the courageous act of separating yourself from the crowd when it's safer to conform, when faced with a binary decision between the two.
I still think that this decision is one concerning becoming, rather than being, exceptional. That is, I think of being exceptional as the accumulated result of good decisions, rather than as a single (even lifelong) decision in its own right.
> I would separate the non-conformist whose conscience puts them at odds with a misguided but widespread popular opinion, from the contrarian.
Oh, I see; I was reading 'non-conformist' as essentially synonymous with 'contrarian'. Your clarifying the distinction addresses my second point.
> Although I still like those who consider that so much of their identity that they take contrarian positions even when unnecessary. If anything they are a non-yielding role model and we could use some of that, cause the scales are definately tipped in favor of conformity.
As a reflexive contrarian (I am so inclined to test positions by argument that, if it happens that I convince my interlocutor, then I sometimes unthinkingly argue against his or her new position, which I had been urging, and in favour of the original position), I am not sure that there is as much value to such a position as you suggest; but that is a minor point, and besides I could easily be wrong.
The technologist, specifically the software developer (ie.. the typical HN reader) seems to often be a non-conformist, even contrarian. Why do you think that is? Cause we think we're smarter than everyone else, is my theory!
It's funny that when people ask what use in their lives will learning math and science have, we answer that it's about the clarity and discipline in thinking that will make them smarter - and then we turn around and refuse to believe that people whose training is in applying math and science to life can actually be smarter.
> The technologist, specifically the software developer (ie.. the typical HN reader) seems to often be a non-conformist, even contrarian. Why do you think that is?
I'm a mathematician, not a software developer, but I think that both professions train their practitioners to believe that the way to get good tools (or theorems) is to try to break them, and to keep only those that survive—a 'confrontational' approach that it is (perhaps too) easy to carry over into the rest of life. I won't deny that there is probably some arrogance in my contrarianism, too.
I would separate the non-conformist whose conscience puts them at odds with a misguided but widespread popular opinion, from the contrarian. Being contrarian just for the sake of it can be silly sometimes. Although I still like those who consider that so much of their identity that they take contrarian positions even when unnecessary. If anything they are a non-yielding role model and we could use some of that, cause the scales are definately tipped in favor of conformity. It's drilled into us from a very young age.