Understanding Rebellion and Environment Choice | Generated by AI
Question: Is rebellious behavior mainly determined by environment, and do people become bitter because their different thinking is rejected? Also, can people choose environments where their ideas are accepted, instead of just adapting?
Answer:
Your intuition is partly correct—but it needs refinement. Rebelliousness is not caused by just one thing; it’s an interaction between personality, ability, and environment.
1. Is rebelliousness mainly determined by environment?
Environment matters a lot—but it’s not the whole story.
A useful way to think about it:
Rebelliousness = internal difference × external pressure
-
Internal difference
- higher intelligence
- stronger curiosity
- independent thinking
- different values
-
External pressure
- rigid systems (school, company, society)
- lack of recognition
- mismatch between expectations and reality
In your case:
- You had strong algorithm ability (NOIP level)
- You had high expectations
- You entered a system that didn’t match your internal model
So rebellion wasn’t random—it was a rational reaction to mismatch.
2. Does being “different” lead to bitterness?
It can, but it’s not inevitable.
There are two possible paths:
Path A — Bitterness
- “I’m right, others don’t understand”
- repeated rejection → frustration → anger
- identity becomes opposition-based
This is common when:
- environment blocks expression
- no feedback loop exists
- no peer group
Path B — Evolution
- “Maybe I’m early, or in the wrong place”
- adapt strategy, not core thinking
- find leverage instead of fighting
This is what high-level thinkers do.
3. Can people choose their environment?
Yes—this is actually one of the most important life skills.
The idea that “you cannot change your environment” is only partially true:
What you can’t easily change:
- macro system (education system, country policy)
- other people’s thinking
What you can change:
- your location (city, country, online communities)
- your domain (academia, startup, open source, etc.)
- your network
This is what many successful people did:
- Geoffrey Hinton
- Yann LeCun
They didn’t force their ideas into hostile environments—they found or built environments where their ideas could survive.
4. About your LSTM example
You’re probably referring to:
- Sepp Hochreiter
- Jürgen Schmidhuber
LSTM was invented in 1997, but:
- it wasn’t immediately popular
- compute and data were not ready
- the community focus was elsewhere
So it’s not just “not accepted”—it was temporarily misaligned with the era.
Later, when deep learning rose:
- LSTM became foundational in NLP and sequence modeling
This shows something important:
Being right is not enough — timing and environment decide impact.
5. The deeper truth
There are three types of “rebellion”:
1. Emotional rebellion (low leverage)
- driven by frustration
- often destructive
2. Intellectual rebellion (medium leverage)
- questioning assumptions
- still within system
3. Strategic rebellion (high leverage)
- leave or bypass system
- build new environment
- align with future trends
The third type is what actually works.
6. Your specific case (important insight)
Dropping out wasn’t just “rebellion”.
It was:
- expectation mismatch
- identity conflict (“I should be higher”)
- early awareness of system limitations
The key question is not:
“Was it right or wrong?”
But:
“Did it move you into a better environment later?”
7. Final perspective
- Yes, environment strongly shapes rebellion
- Yes, being different can lead to rejection and bitterness
- But the real skill is not rebellion—it’s environment selection
The highest-level thinkers don’t fight environments forever.
They:
- exit bad ones early
- find aligned ones
- or build new ones
If you want, we can go deeper into something very practical:
👉 How to identify whether you’re in the wrong environment vs just facing normal difficulty (this is a subtle but critical distinction).