Excellent post! If there's one overarching complaint about the tech community (and HN specifically), it would be this tendency to claim being completely rational, while faulting others for supposedly being corrupted by emotions.
It's wrong both in assuming that emotions are necessarily inferior to other modes of thinking, as well as in not recognizing that everyone makes decisions primarily on emotional grounds (smart people only get to make up better rationaizations).
Related: "advertisement doesn't work on me", "I only review primary data and come up with my own opinions", and every claim ever that some organization is a strict meritocracy.
>smart people only get to make up better rationaizations
This is something that I took long to learn and now preach to all friends who will listen:
"You're smart. For many life situations, that's not a positive. Whatever it is you want to do at any given moment, your mind will find a way to justify it no matter how wrong or unhealthy the action is. It takes a lot of work to reign in a smart mind working against you".
For an simple example, be around a person when they start going to the gym and then proceed to listen closely how they come up with excuses to not go any given day.
It's wrong both in assuming that emotions are necessarily inferior to other modes of thinking, as well as in not recognizing that everyone makes decisions primarily on emotional grounds (smart people only get to make up better rationaizations).
Related: "advertisement doesn't work on me", "I only review primary data and come up with my own opinions", and every claim ever that some organization is a strict meritocracy.