It is hard to reconcile Jobs’s self-description with his above-average performance.
You haven’t quoted any self description of Steve Jobs. There’s no reason to read “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” as him saying that he isn’t smart.
If he look at Wikipedia it says about him in 1972:
Atari’s cofounder Nolan Bushnell later described him as “difficult but valuable,” pointing out that “he was very often the smartest guy in the room, and he would let people know that.”
Someone who’s arrogant in the sense of letting other people know he’s smarter then them is a poor example for the point you want to make.
I think you’ve pinpointed the difficulty I ran into before I decided to just post it; Grothendieck was self-effacing, while Jobs was self-aggrandizing, and there isn’t really enough in common for Jobs to say something that would present him in the same light as Grothendieck. Even the quotes I did have, from other people, were kind of stretching the bounds of credulity (e.g., the Samsung quote is preceded by ‘the consumer perspective is that...‘, and then he goes on to talk about re-marketing android as being better than apple). I guess was trying to compensate for the ‘worse-than-average effect’ by using a different industry, but there should be a better/quicker way to recalibrate your self-image.
Grothendieck was self-effacing, while Jobs was self-aggrandizing, and there isn’t really enough in common for Jobs to say something that would present him in the same light as Grothendieck.
I don’t think it’s pretending. They are both human, after all. Explaining away the difference in statements as situational bias (math is unpopular, so Grothendeick perceived it as hard; business is popular, so Jobs perceived it as easy) does not seem irrational to me. If we dissolve the question of blame, then why should praise be any different?
If Jobs perceived business as easy and people around him perceived him to be good at business there no difficulty in reconciling the two.
Proposing a situational bias that makes the statements difficult to reconcile is strange. There no reason to rationalize the point made to be right. Beliefs have to pay rent.
So the rent it pays is something like when you put up a sign “DO NOT DISTURB—AUTOMATED GUN TURRETS INSIDE” on your apartment. It doesn’t change the fact that you have to pay rent, or the dollar amount, but it means you can spend less effort on negotiating late payments, because the landlord will wait just a bit longer before kicking you out.
In terms of anticipation, it’s something like “if I did it over again, I’d still have done the same thing, because my behaviors were dictated by circumstance”. I guess it’s sort of like timeless decision theory.vs causal decision theory; in TDT, you can trust that your past self has modified you to make the correct decision in the future, while a causal decision theorist would not trust such an assumption.
You haven’t quoted any self description of Steve Jobs. There’s no reason to read “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” as him saying that he isn’t smart.
If he look at Wikipedia it says about him in 1972:
Someone who’s arrogant in the sense of letting other people know he’s smarter then them is a poor example for the point you want to make.
I think you’ve pinpointed the difficulty I ran into before I decided to just post it; Grothendieck was self-effacing, while Jobs was self-aggrandizing, and there isn’t really enough in common for Jobs to say something that would present him in the same light as Grothendieck. Even the quotes I did have, from other people, were kind of stretching the bounds of credulity (e.g., the Samsung quote is preceded by ‘the consumer perspective is that...‘, and then he goes on to talk about re-marketing android as being better than apple). I guess was trying to compensate for the ‘worse-than-average effect’ by using a different industry, but there should be a better/quicker way to recalibrate your self-image.
Then why pretend that they are similar?
I don’t think it’s pretending. They are both human, after all. Explaining away the difference in statements as situational bias (math is unpopular, so Grothendeick perceived it as hard; business is popular, so Jobs perceived it as easy) does not seem irrational to me. If we dissolve the question of blame, then why should praise be any different?
If Jobs perceived business as easy and people around him perceived him to be good at business there no difficulty in reconciling the two.
Proposing a situational bias that makes the statements difficult to reconcile is strange. There no reason to rationalize the point made to be right. Beliefs have to pay rent.
So the rent it pays is something like when you put up a sign “DO NOT DISTURB—AUTOMATED GUN TURRETS INSIDE” on your apartment. It doesn’t change the fact that you have to pay rent, or the dollar amount, but it means you can spend less effort on negotiating late payments, because the landlord will wait just a bit longer before kicking you out.
In terms of anticipation, it’s something like “if I did it over again, I’d still have done the same thing, because my behaviors were dictated by circumstance”. I guess it’s sort of like timeless decision theory.vs causal decision theory; in TDT, you can trust that your past self has modified you to make the correct decision in the future, while a causal decision theorist would not trust such an assumption.