I guess the issue is that it's really difficult to draw the line between being unreasonable or even momentarily irrational and just being delusional. It's hard to admit to yourself that you're delusional, so that quote, which gives lots of people comfort and seems attractive in some ways, probably leads a lot of people down paths which have no possible return - or delusion, and it can destroy their lives and others (like this current crisis).
To get back to the article, yeah, some irrationality is probably necessary, because it takes irrational (unreasonable) people believing they can do things other people gave up on. But the important thing is probably being aware that you can be unreasonable and not letting that drive. There's a book, Becoming Steve Jobs, that is probably my favorite Jobs bio, because it's really about him learning to mitigate those flaws and becoming better in his second go around because of it. Steve was certainly delusional at times, and he shouldn't have been encouraged. You know, like denying the paternity of your child. Steve really personally hurt himself and others because of that kind of irrationality and it wasn't a positive in that context.
I think there are a lot of other people that do some really kind of delusional stuff, but we accept that because they are successful. You know, like Musk slurring an innocent person (or being really premature on every self-imposed deadline, or Holmes being a complete fraud. I've got no doubt that given enough time the latter probably would have figured out enough to pull half of a rabbit out of a hat to prove to people they had it all figured out, but it doesn't mean they weren't delusional, and it doesn't mean that that's healthy for them or us as societies to encourage lying to yourself and others, even if sometimes you get lucky.
Guess I'm just complaining. I see genuinely crazy stuff posted on HN and other places and to me irrationality isn't sexy, it's something that we need to do a better job of being honest about.
> I guess the issue is that it's really difficult to draw the line between being unreasonable or even momentarily irrational and just being delusional.
"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." - Bruce Feirstein.
The only thing that "unreasonable" means is that when you tried to convince someone they should stop a certain course of action, you could not convince them and they did not refute you using logic. Mostly, the term is used as a polemic device to point out people whose axioms disagree with your own.
A lot of people simply have faith in their abilities, and a priori argumentation is not even a valid way of testing whether that faith is misguided. They are irrational because Empiricism is the opposite of Rationalism.
To get back to the article, yeah, some irrationality is probably necessary, because it takes irrational (unreasonable) people believing they can do things other people gave up on. But the important thing is probably being aware that you can be unreasonable and not letting that drive. There's a book, Becoming Steve Jobs, that is probably my favorite Jobs bio, because it's really about him learning to mitigate those flaws and becoming better in his second go around because of it. Steve was certainly delusional at times, and he shouldn't have been encouraged. You know, like denying the paternity of your child. Steve really personally hurt himself and others because of that kind of irrationality and it wasn't a positive in that context.
I think there are a lot of other people that do some really kind of delusional stuff, but we accept that because they are successful. You know, like Musk slurring an innocent person (or being really premature on every self-imposed deadline, or Holmes being a complete fraud. I've got no doubt that given enough time the latter probably would have figured out enough to pull half of a rabbit out of a hat to prove to people they had it all figured out, but it doesn't mean they weren't delusional, and it doesn't mean that that's healthy for them or us as societies to encourage lying to yourself and others, even if sometimes you get lucky.
Guess I'm just complaining. I see genuinely crazy stuff posted on HN and other places and to me irrationality isn't sexy, it's something that we need to do a better job of being honest about.