Yes, you have to be very careful. (And live in a place where the number of such people is large enough that it’s even viable as a strategy, and ignore/isolate yourself from the wider culture or still maintain resistance to it, and so on, which makes it inaccessible to a large number of people, but it seems close to ideal in the rare circumstances where it’s possible.)
I don’t know if “careful” is the right word—it’s more an issue of finding a good balance and the optimal point isn’t necessarily obvious. On the one hand, you should like your friends and not have them annoy you or push you in the directions you don’t want to go. On the other hand, being surrounded by the best clones of yourself that you could find doesn’t sound too appealing.
It’s a bit like an ecosystem—you want a healthy amount of diversity and not monoculture, but at the same time want to avoid what will poison you or maybe just eat you X-)
For nearly everyone, the opinion of one’s peers is the most powerful motivator of all—more powerful even than the nominal goal of most startup founders, getting rich...So the best you can do is consider this force like a wind, and set up your boat accordingly. If you know your peers are going to push you in some direction, choose good peers, and position yourself so they push you in a direction you like.
Someone—maybe on LW? -- said that their strategy was to choose their friends carefully enough that they didn’t have to resist peer pressure.
That has other dangers—e.g. living in an echo chamber or facing the peer pressure to not change.
Yes, you have to be very careful. (And live in a place where the number of such people is large enough that it’s even viable as a strategy, and ignore/isolate yourself from the wider culture or still maintain resistance to it, and so on, which makes it inaccessible to a large number of people, but it seems close to ideal in the rare circumstances where it’s possible.)
I don’t know if “careful” is the right word—it’s more an issue of finding a good balance and the optimal point isn’t necessarily obvious. On the one hand, you should like your friends and not have them annoy you or push you in the directions you don’t want to go. On the other hand, being surrounded by the best clones of yourself that you could find doesn’t sound too appealing.
It’s a bit like an ecosystem—you want a healthy amount of diversity and not monoculture, but at the same time want to avoid what will poison you or maybe just eat you X-)
Paul Graham wrote about that in A Student’s Guide To Startups: