Paul Graham on Discarding the Assumption that it's all About Us

[Update: the blog post can now be found here]

In this post, Paul Graham starts writing about what drives bloggers to blog but ends up talking about the following. It's a very good read.

...The history of ideas since people first started writing them down is a history of gradually discarding the assumption that it's all about us.

...The idea that we're the center of things is difficult to discard.

...So if you want to discover things that have been overlooked till now, one really good place to look is in our blind spot: in our natural, naive belief that it's all about us. And expect to encounter ferocious opposition if you do.

In relation to my PhD research, I actually think that the reason people haven't been able to understand information is because of this kind of thing, more specifically taking certain elements of their perception for granted.

This has to do with what I wrote the other day about people not being able to understand information because they are looking for a declarative understanding of it rather than a fully imperative one. A fully imperative one forces you to fully take your perception out of the picture.