Paul Graham：The Right Kind of Stubborn, Excerpt 3

If you handed the Collisons an extremely hard problem to solve, they wouldn't become obstinate. If anything they'd become less obstinate. They'd know they had to be open to anything. Similarly, if obstinacy were caused by the situation, the obstinate would stop being obstinate when solving easier problems. But they don't. And if obstinacy isn't caused by the situation, it must come from within. It must be a feature of one's personality. Obstinacy is a reflexive resistance to changing one's ideas. This is not identical with stupidity, but they're closely related. A reflexive resistance to changing one's ideas becomes a sort of induced stupidity as contrary evidence mounts. And obstinacy is a form of not giving up that's easily practiced by the stupid.

Source： https://paulgraham.com/persistence.html
Locator：Essay, additional excerpt 3 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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