Is it better to just start and do what you think is good and learn from your own mistakes?
1. All thought is fantasy
2. Some of that fantasy happens to pass the test of reality
3. Most thought is borrowed
4. Thought existed before you, will exist after you
5. Society is the manager of thought, not the individual
6. Thought advances as a whole
7. Without collective thought as a substrate, the individual won't function
To even begin to decide whether this claim is scientific (testable), thoughts and their content need to be defined physically here.
And why care about pre-given thoughts? I care about my emotions more. Thinking is just an utility guided by them. "What you think is good" is certainly more about emotion than ideas. One can walk back from their emotion, starting from a clean sheet, gradually reconstructing the desired idea by bit - most languages have the necessary primitives available.
> The idea of purely independent thought is an illusion.
There's no need for one's thinking to be dependent on anything more or less than reality relevant to one. No culture other than one's private own needs to be included as dependency. No need to copy or almost copy another culture as well.
> It follows that independent action is also an illusion (your idea of what to do next, as well, tends to be borrowed!)
My idea of what to do next comes from my rationality. Rationality can be rebuilt independently, at least in part that covers a big part of everyday life, when a minimal amount of education consisting of self-evident truths is given. So my behavior is only dependent on me having acquired a number of ideas useful to me individually that I have also sanitized.
> 1. All thought is fantasy
"All even integers are divisible by 2." What are you trying to imply? Fantasy can be made to conform to rules and to be useful directly as functional data.
> 3. Most thought is borrowed
"Most" by what metric?
> 5. Society is the manager of thought, not the individual
I think that an individual can become the "manager" of their own thinking as well by degree such as allowed by their cultural environment plus that of their capability.
> 6. Thought advances as a whole
What?
> 7. Without collective thought as a substrate, the individual won't function
Please explain in more detail why and what is 'collective thought'.
Where did you get the idea of "scientific"? Where did you get the idea of "begin"? Where did you get the idea of "definition"? Where did you get the idea of "physical"? Etc. You didn't create any of those ideas. Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence? I see society dancing through your mind!
And if I keep going through your entire answer, "most" of the ideas are borrowed. Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement. In this case, the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality') :)
The name of the theory derives from the philosophical concept mimesis, which carries a wide range of meanings. In mimetic theory, mimesis refers to human desire, which Girard thought was not linear but the product of a mimetic process in which people imitate models who endow objects with value. Girard called this phenomenon "mimetic desire", and described mimetic desire as the foundation of his theory:
"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires."I had a discussion with a friend and he gave a good example. There are some people (A) who do 55% of the work (5% more than the expected) and display that in really good quality. Then there are others (B), who want to achieve 95% plus but end up getting 45%. Now from the perspective of someone who doesn't know what is going on, the 55% seems to be doing better than the 45%. Therefore, the person A will now snowball into a more opportunity, while person B gets discouraged because they wanted to do hard thing.
So, instead if B did what A did in a good way, the trust and judgement of B would have increased. There is no reward in society for trying and "failing". There is only reward for taking risk and succeeding. Probably it incentivizes people to follow into a path that can attract others.
Disclaimer: These are my opinions and they have their own biases.
For example, in the simpler case of pure technology. Try building in React and only then do the React course. You’ll come with the confusion and questions and know what to get out of it.
In business it is trickier because the amount of poor information out there is ridiculous. Even good information can be bad if it is bad for you specifically. As people often way overconfidently propose they have cracked the code to making money.
Which is ridiculous.
It is easy to see how silly it is if you reframed that in terms of employment. “The secret to $200k/y. Our blueprint shows you how to make $200k/y as a medical doctor…”. What if you hate being a doctor or are no good at the various innate skills needed!
Another part of the answer is that very few people are experts at all of the skills needed to start a business: being a domain expert in some field, understanding technology, understanding business and money, understanding people, being good at communicating, understanding design, being a good writer, etc. If you're smart, you know that you don't know everything, and you're willing to hear out the advice that others provide.
I agree.
The important thing is some people have informed opinions on topic X.
Most people don’t have an informed opinion on topic X.
Where topic X is not a topic where all opinions are equal, e.g. who should be elected to office Y, the appropriate role of religious practice, and what is sexy.
Starting is not incompatible with valuing informed opinions.
Sure finding informed opinions can be hard without experience in topic X. But learning to identify uninformed opinions is straightforward work.
Good luck.
Make stuff that works first.
But, yes, I would say sometimes it’s beneficial to not only ignore, but also to not even know how others before you have solved a similar problem. Pathways established in our minds are obstacles to invention.
You may or may not be capable of learning from the mistakes of others; which is the prime reason for listening to others. The other reason is gathering ideas for things to do; and it sounds like you've already got that covered.