The Carrot Problem(atvbt.com)
atvbt.com
The Carrot Problem
https://www.atvbt.com/the-carrot-problem/
311 comments
> if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack to make lots of money, why would I be telling people about it?
Because you understand that the number in your bank account isn't the score of some weird game. Having more money than other people doesn't make you a better person.
If you have enough money to reach your goals - pay your rent, buy food, indulge your hobbies - that's good. If 20 other people also have enough money to reach their goals, that's a world with more happiness in it. That's a better world. So why not tell other people how to make money in the same way you did, and help bring that world about?
Because you understand that the number in your bank account isn't the score of some weird game. Having more money than other people doesn't make you a better person.
If you have enough money to reach your goals - pay your rent, buy food, indulge your hobbies - that's good. If 20 other people also have enough money to reach their goals, that's a world with more happiness in it. That's a better world. So why not tell other people how to make money in the same way you did, and help bring that world about?
>So why not tell other people how to make money in the same way you did, and help bring that world about?
I think this does happen quite frequently. It's just that the knowledge gets passed through networks, so the most successful people help those who are socially near them (and probably not too different in terms of success and comfort).
This is the whole "insider knowledge" that the article alludes to.
I think this does happen quite frequently. It's just that the knowledge gets passed through networks, so the most successful people help those who are socially near them (and probably not too different in terms of success and comfort).
This is the whole "insider knowledge" that the article alludes to.
This comment is in no way an endorsement of Scott Adams, I generally do not like him. However, he recently posted something on Twitter that has been a brain worm for me.
>"Success is mostly imitation. We study successful people and then try to imitate what worked."
>"Imagine being Black, learning the history of slavery and racism, and being asked to imitate your oppressors to succeed."
And a followup tweet:
>"The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.” Solve that problem and we’ll have better visibility on the systemic racism that is primarily caused by the teachers unions."
>"Success is mostly imitation. We study successful people and then try to imitate what worked."
>"Imagine being Black, learning the history of slavery and racism, and being asked to imitate your oppressors to succeed."
And a followup tweet:
>"The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.” Solve that problem and we’ll have better visibility on the systemic racism that is primarily caused by the teachers unions."
Just a thing I noticed since I don't know Scott Adams etc. — surely being a slave couldn't be considered a success‽
I'm sure I'm missing the meaning here somehow but to me it's quite obvious we may imitate something successful and not imitate something unsuccessful.
I'm sure I'm missing the meaning here somehow but to me it's quite obvious we may imitate something successful and not imitate something unsuccessful.
I think this part clarifies it:
>The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.”
If you are not American it may not be clear. One specific example of a "universal tool for success" being marred in this way is that black kids who are successful academically are sometimes bullied for "acting white." I've intentionally found a left leaning source discussing this phenomenon. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/acting-whi...
>The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.”
If you are not American it may not be clear. One specific example of a "universal tool for success" being marred in this way is that black kids who are successful academically are sometimes bullied for "acting white." I've intentionally found a left leaning source discussing this phenomenon. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/acting-whi...
My darker friends often caught hell from associating with a 'white boy' like me. The racism problem is bad on the other side too and many people discount this, but it may be a bigger problem than the obverse for culture and progress.
Didn’t even Obama face some of this in his campaign because he wasn’t “black enough”? I think SNL even had a running gag about it.
The implied theory in the paraphrased quotes is that Black people are not successful in part because they have learned a framing where success requires acting like a slave owner, or acting white. That is, behaviors that correlate with success are tainted with being the way (oppressive) white people act.
This obviously can't be true for African Africans. Even including former colonies.
The quote is talking about emulating the white oppressors, who oppressed people to gain wealth and power.
The last tweet is a little confusing. Teacher's unions? Really?
1. No evidence at all that teacher unions help students. Test scores have gone down drastically all over the country for the last 30 years or so.
2. The teacher unions are against school vouchers, which almost completely eliminates competition in the districts that need it most. A large majority of black families are in favor of school vouchers.
2. The teacher unions are against school vouchers, which almost completely eliminates competition in the districts that need it most. A large majority of black families are in favor of school vouchers.
I used to watch Adams' podcast. It would require a lot of context to fully make sense. Suffice to say he thinks teacher's unions are a big component of the problem here and imo the primary value of his comment here could be conveyed if you remove the tail end of that Tweet which puts it on the teacher's unions.
I’m not sure context helps him with his other outbursts.
“Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people,” the 65-year-old author exclaimed. “Just get the (expletive) away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/23/dilberts-scott-adams-...
“The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.”
https://ew.com/article/2011/03/30/dilbert-scott-adams-femini...
Trump is like the founding fathers and Jesus.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dilbert-creator-on-how-trump-i...
There is a bit of coverage in the wiki. He writes a good cartoon but he is radioactive in his views.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams
“Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people,” the 65-year-old author exclaimed. “Just get the (expletive) away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/23/dilberts-scott-adams-...
“The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.”
https://ew.com/article/2011/03/30/dilbert-scott-adams-femini...
Trump is like the founding fathers and Jesus.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dilbert-creator-on-how-trump-i...
There is a bit of coverage in the wiki. He writes a good cartoon but he is radioactive in his views.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams
The thing to understand about Scott Adams is that if he says something that sounds outrageous, he's probably trolling you. He'll in fact describe how to do this in order to generate publicity, or as a mechanism to expose hypocrisy or bad logic. But when he's in the middle of it he'll commit to the bit.
Basically, someone says X, which is crazy, because if X then logically Y would be true and Y is not only wrong but offensive. So he'll publicly assert Y and get people to argue with him, but the only real way to show that Y is wrong is to admit that X is wrong, which was the point.
And then the people arguing with him don't want to do that. They want to be offended by Y without admitting that X is wrong. So he has a bunch of fun with them because they've foreclosed themselves at the outset from winning the debate on the merits.
Basically, someone says X, which is crazy, because if X then logically Y would be true and Y is not only wrong but offensive. So he'll publicly assert Y and get people to argue with him, but the only real way to show that Y is wrong is to admit that X is wrong, which was the point.
And then the people arguing with him don't want to do that. They want to be offended by Y without admitting that X is wrong. So he has a bunch of fun with them because they've foreclosed themselves at the outset from winning the debate on the merits.
The thing to understand about this argument is that it is unfalsifiable nonsense. Anything he says that is wrong is him joking, you just can’t tell because he pretends so well! No, dude. He is wrong a lot and like a 5yo, when he realizes he cannot actually defend or explain something he did he falls back on “it was just a joke!”
Of course he's wrong a lot. The point isn't that Y is right, it's that X and Y are both wrong but you can't admit to that if you're a hypocrite.
And the "anything he says that is wrong is him joking" is the idea, because it works both ways. If someone says something which is actually wrong, you can make a convincing argument for why if you're willing to be logically consistent yourself.
But there are also things which are politically offensive yet true, and having a reputation for this kind of trolling is what allows someone to say those things out loud. Because then you make the same claim: "Maybe I'm trolling you, if I am just provide the counterargument."
Which you can't do if the counterargument requires you to admit that X is wrong and you refuse to do that, but you also can't do if there is no counterargument because Y is true.
It doesn't matter whether "is he trolling this time" is falsifiable. What matters is if you can disprove his claim. If you can, go for it. If not, what does that say?
And the "anything he says that is wrong is him joking" is the idea, because it works both ways. If someone says something which is actually wrong, you can make a convincing argument for why if you're willing to be logically consistent yourself.
But there are also things which are politically offensive yet true, and having a reputation for this kind of trolling is what allows someone to say those things out loud. Because then you make the same claim: "Maybe I'm trolling you, if I am just provide the counterargument."
Which you can't do if the counterargument requires you to admit that X is wrong and you refuse to do that, but you also can't do if there is no counterargument because Y is true.
It doesn't matter whether "is he trolling this time" is falsifiable. What matters is if you can disprove his claim. If you can, go for it. If not, what does that say?
No, it’s not just that he is wrong a lot. It’s that when he is wrong he (and his fans) refuse to actually admit that he is making false claims and poor arguments, and pretends “I was joking!” is some kind of clever escape, and not a sign that nothing he says is worth engaging with. I don’t bother to disprove it when a five year old says “you stink” either, because they also couldn’t care less about the truth and logic of their statement.
Maybe but "get the hell away from Black people" isn't a "claim"; it's explicit rich white boomer racism.
Adams was looking at a poll that said 47% of black people disagreed with the statement "It’s okay to be white.". If that poll was reliable then that would be a profoundly concerning statistic and evidence of some pretty strong racism on the part of the community surveyed.
The level of "rich white boomer racism" (which is a bit racially charged in itself, but sure we can go with that) really hinges on how credible he found the poll. It was Rassmussen and also a pollster stirring up trouble so realistically he should have just dismissed it as a likely lie by not-reporting-the-real-context of the question being asked (I personally suspect dodgy framing). Adams should have picked up on that since it is his area, but the argument would have been reasonable if he was silly enough to believe the poll.
The level of "rich white boomer racism" (which is a bit racially charged in itself, but sure we can go with that) really hinges on how credible he found the poll. It was Rassmussen and also a pollster stirring up trouble so realistically he should have just dismissed it as a likely lie by not-reporting-the-real-context of the question being asked (I personally suspect dodgy framing). Adams should have picked up on that since it is his area, but the argument would have been reasonable if he was silly enough to believe the poll.
A long time ago I reached the conclusion whoever plays "crazy" or "fool" long and consistently enough is in practice crazy/fool. It makes no difference what the person believes inside their mind, if they always play the fool, they are fools.
Scott Adams has been like this for a long time. Trolling or sincere makes no difference, if he acts like a bigot he is one.
Scott Adams has been like this for a long time. Trolling or sincere makes no difference, if he acts like a bigot he is one.
Wouldn't that make all satirists bigots? Is Stephen Colbert? Carroll O'Connor? It can't be that the only difference is whether someone is successfully trolled.
No, professional satire by definition doesn't count. In interviews they often tell you their real opinions or how they construct their character. I guess if they always stayed in character and never gave any interviews you could make a case...
You're begging the question re: trolling. You don't know they are trolls; you merely believe so. In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion. That's the whole point: if they always act like fools, they are fools.
You're begging the question re: trolling. You don't know they are trolls; you merely believe so. In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion. That's the whole point: if they always act like fools, they are fools.
> In interviews they often tell you their real opinions or how they construct their character.
But that's exactly what Adams does.
> In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion.
Sure there is. If it's of the form "there is a valid argument against this, but it's inconvenient for partisans to make that argument" then it's flamebait.
But that's exactly what Adams does.
> In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion.
Sure there is. If it's of the form "there is a valid argument against this, but it's inconvenient for partisans to make that argument" then it's flamebait.
Terrible people are sometimes capable of saying things worth considering, and it's possible to consider one thing he says without endorsing or accepting other things he's said or even his personal context for the words being considered.
It's difficult to defend a stance like one you're adopting, because of how quick to judge the general public is. They'd never know that someone like Ted Kaczynski actually held a PhD and wrote an interesting essay before committing to his campaign of terror. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski)
It's rather strange that people will choose to wholly dismiss a person based on one thing, without realizing that even "evil" people have more facets than a simple bevel.
Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What benefit could society have gained if someone had heard him out and took some measures to help the environment? Most people won't ask that question, because they have the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.
One of the most illuminating things in my life has been discovering what the "bad" and "evil" side of humanity actually thought, instead of the version that the authorities or victors give us.
There's also this modern tendency to assume that whatever you read, you become. So superstitious.
It's rather strange that people will choose to wholly dismiss a person based on one thing, without realizing that even "evil" people have more facets than a simple bevel.
Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What benefit could society have gained if someone had heard him out and took some measures to help the environment? Most people won't ask that question, because they have the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.
One of the most illuminating things in my life has been discovering what the "bad" and "evil" side of humanity actually thought, instead of the version that the authorities or victors give us.
There's also this modern tendency to assume that whatever you read, you become. So superstitious.
> There's also this modern tendency to assume that whatever you read, you become. So superstitious.
Sure... but there's also a wealth of information out there and filtering out people with known abhorrent views is a decent first pass filter. maybe alex jones or some other neo-nazi dimwit has a few good ideas here and there but why would I subject myself to listening to them(and also enriching them in the process) when I could listen to people that aren't generally awful people?
Sure... but there's also a wealth of information out there and filtering out people with known abhorrent views is a decent first pass filter. maybe alex jones or some other neo-nazi dimwit has a few good ideas here and there but why would I subject myself to listening to them(and also enriching them in the process) when I could listen to people that aren't generally awful people?
I think shallow views is a much better first-pass filter than abhorrent views; a sufficiently in-depth abhorrent view can and likely will have components worth taking from, even if their final conclusion is absurd (or just overreaching).
An acceptable-but-shallow view and an abhorrent-but-shallow view are equally worthless; effectively as much value an upvote.
An acceptable-but-shallow view and an abhorrent-but-shallow view are equally worthless; effectively as much value an upvote.
> Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What benefit could society have gained if someone had heard him out and took some measures to help the environment? Most people won't ask that question, because they have the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.
Well it's not all that interesting question coz he wasn't exactly first or last preaching same thing about the environment, so there is a plenty of other people to listen to that do not happen to be crazy.
But in general I agree that the trend of disregarding someone's entire contribution to everything they contributed based on this or that opinion that is currently regarded as "bad". After all, if you dig far enough (especially in time, kids/teenagers do/think some utterly dumb stuff) you won't find an innocent soul alive...
Well it's not all that interesting question coz he wasn't exactly first or last preaching same thing about the environment, so there is a plenty of other people to listen to that do not happen to be crazy.
But in general I agree that the trend of disregarding someone's entire contribution to everything they contributed based on this or that opinion that is currently regarded as "bad". After all, if you dig far enough (especially in time, kids/teenagers do/think some utterly dumb stuff) you won't find an innocent soul alive...
Reading Ordinary Men changed how I feel about good and evil.
That's so refreshingly naive a view that I'd almost upvote you for it. Unfortunately it's not how the world works and is overall damaging since it lays the foundation to believing all those ads on youtube in which some guru promises to tell you their secret to success if you only sign up ("for free") on their website to watch their video ("for free"). Next thing you know is your aunt lost most of her savings to paying for seminars in which she was promised to learn how to get successful, but it is all a scam and made her poor.
OP would presume they covered that in their last OR branch:
> or I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model crash and burn
In other words, they wouldn't be able to reach their long term goals because one of the 20 other people are going to eat their lunch. (And all will in fact attempt to monopolize their lunch.)
> or I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model crash and burn
In other words, they wouldn't be able to reach their long term goals because one of the 20 other people are going to eat their lunch. (And all will in fact attempt to monopolize their lunch.)
Oops, I didn’t realize you had made this comment, which is better than mine:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37103107
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37103107
I'm not sure I'd go this far. Think of the advice that PG gives, which is along the lines of: make something people want, get it in front of those people, and work very hard.
This is very useful advice to someone who has never heard it (though the last one is very obvious), and it doesn't really take away anything from PG to say it loudly. He is especially unlikely to care if people use his advice to get rich, since he is himself already very very rich. But even someone who was not rich wouldn't really care unless there is a good likelihood that he is giving his competitors a leg up by sharing this advice.
And for someone like PG, there's a net benefit to giving this advice because (1) it will lead to more people who are willing to work hard becoming successful (which will lead to useful products/services being available in the world — including to PG), and it helps to build PG's brand.
The thing you do have to worry about is when there's a potential conflict between (1) what they did to become successful and (2) what they want people to think they did to become successful. That's what this article is about. People want you to think they got ripped by lifting a ton — not by using steroids.
This is very useful advice to someone who has never heard it (though the last one is very obvious), and it doesn't really take away anything from PG to say it loudly. He is especially unlikely to care if people use his advice to get rich, since he is himself already very very rich. But even someone who was not rich wouldn't really care unless there is a good likelihood that he is giving his competitors a leg up by sharing this advice.
And for someone like PG, there's a net benefit to giving this advice because (1) it will lead to more people who are willing to work hard becoming successful (which will lead to useful products/services being available in the world — including to PG), and it helps to build PG's brand.
The thing you do have to worry about is when there's a potential conflict between (1) what they did to become successful and (2) what they want people to think they did to become successful. That's what this article is about. People want you to think they got ripped by lifting a ton — not by using steroids.
Well I did it when I had a very successful SAAS 20 years ago that still exists. I ended up with multiple competitors who stole my business model completely, right down to the micro payment system I devised. I had a fantastic run, became friends with several of my competitors, and eventually sold my business to one of those competitors. I never hid anything about how the business was run. I just delivered on the fundamentals and wasn’t greedy.
I never sold a course or a book or charged for any advice.
The funny thing is, although I mentor people for free they often don’t call after the initial conversation because they think I’m somehow trying to get money out of it.
So I guess you’re right?
I never sold a course or a book or charged for any advice.
The funny thing is, although I mentor people for free they often don’t call after the initial conversation because they think I’m somehow trying to get money out of it.
So I guess you’re right?
> Because if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack to make lots of money, why would I be telling people about it?
People like explaining things to other people. They like sharing knowledge, they like having other people pay attention to and listen to the knowledge they share. I am pretty convinced that it's an evolutionary adaptation that we feel a compulsion to explain and share interesting things we've learned.
Your logic probably overcomes this built-in tendency for sharing things when the alpha is very directly tied to one's success. So, for example, a hedge fund manager isn't sharing their trading strategies.
But if an executive is explaining how OKRs worked for them, or an engineer is saying typescript was a big help, our first instinct shouldn't be to assume it's a psyop. Those things are not the singular competitive advantage of a company, success is usually the aggregate result of many different things.
People like explaining things to other people. They like sharing knowledge, they like having other people pay attention to and listen to the knowledge they share. I am pretty convinced that it's an evolutionary adaptation that we feel a compulsion to explain and share interesting things we've learned.
Your logic probably overcomes this built-in tendency for sharing things when the alpha is very directly tied to one's success. So, for example, a hedge fund manager isn't sharing their trading strategies.
But if an executive is explaining how OKRs worked for them, or an engineer is saying typescript was a big help, our first instinct shouldn't be to assume it's a psyop. Those things are not the singular competitive advantage of a company, success is usually the aggregate result of many different things.
In general this is true of influencer type garbage and "get rich" stuff. It's junk food for the fearful/hopeful/greedy mind.
However, there are entire industries that don't exist without a growing capable workforce. It's not like software programming would have been much higher paid, if we could have just kept it a secret longer. You need a certain number of skilled people to fill out all the positions and get large projects done. It's not like it's easy, or doesn't require training, but since it produces value everyone can win, because of the productivity of others.
Another example of this right now is building/contracting work. It's a skill that takes time to develop and you can't just do it from watching a video or reading a book, but it pays well. Right now a lot of older folks got out of the game so there's real demand and wages are high. If that demand doesn't get filled... it will be replaced with more automation. It's a case where, if there aren't enough workers economics will adjust to require fewer workers, perhaps dramatically so.
However, there are entire industries that don't exist without a growing capable workforce. It's not like software programming would have been much higher paid, if we could have just kept it a secret longer. You need a certain number of skilled people to fill out all the positions and get large projects done. It's not like it's easy, or doesn't require training, but since it produces value everyone can win, because of the productivity of others.
Another example of this right now is building/contracting work. It's a skill that takes time to develop and you can't just do it from watching a video or reading a book, but it pays well. Right now a lot of older folks got out of the game so there's real demand and wages are high. If that demand doesn't get filled... it will be replaced with more automation. It's a case where, if there aren't enough workers economics will adjust to require fewer workers, perhaps dramatically so.
> It's a case where, if there aren't enough workers economics will adjust to require fewer workers, perhaps dramatically so.
Isn't that desirable? That machines do jobs that they can actually do, then humans can do fun things in life?
Isn't that desirable? That machines do jobs that they can actually do, then humans can do fun things in life?
Another reason that they disclose strategies might be that it makes them feel good about themselves. -- Whoah you have such I pretty girlfriend! How did you accomplish this? -- Well i went to those and those places, worked out at the gym and behaved like a cool guy in this and that way. (he feels good talking about it)
Even if it is true, who says it would work for someone else, maybe the real reason for success in this case is just being pretty or rich.
The problem is not so much carrot stories, the root of the carrot problem is that some people look up to other people's accomplishments and want it too. It is easy then to see/follow/come up with patterns that have nothing to do with it.
Even if it is true, who says it would work for someone else, maybe the real reason for success in this case is just being pretty or rich.
The problem is not so much carrot stories, the root of the carrot problem is that some people look up to other people's accomplishments and want it too. It is easy then to see/follow/come up with patterns that have nothing to do with it.
Loose lips sink ships, right?
Yeah, this is why hedge funds keep secrets, and sell side analysis isn't very trustworthy in the investment world. If their info was so good, they would act on it instead of publishing it.*
* some people act on it, then publish it in order to push prices in their favor.
Yeah, this is why hedge funds keep secrets, and sell side analysis isn't very trustworthy in the investment world. If their info was so good, they would act on it instead of publishing it.*
* some people act on it, then publish it in order to push prices in their favor.
It's even worse in the case of hedge funds (well, arbitrage in general), because any given strategy has a maximum amount of profit it could make before the market loses that specific inefficiency. Or at least, that's the theory.
It's basically like finding a gold mine and telling everyone to come over and take what they want from it.
It's basically like finding a gold mine and telling everyone to come over and take what they want from it.
This is exactly why I don't understand the strategy behind sites like https://www.quiverquant.com/
My optimistic theory is that it might be a form of social activism to enact change, as opposed to a plain carrot problem.
My optimistic theory is that it might be a form of social activism to enact change, as opposed to a plain carrot problem.
No, they have a premium paid subscription. They're doing it to make money.
Some do this to diversify. Not only are they getting the income from the single trick, but now they are getting it from courses, ad revenue, consultancy, and whatever else they can use the leverage on.
IMO that’s a smarter play than having zero income if the trick runs it’s course.
IMO that’s a smarter play than having zero income if the trick runs it’s course.
If you're a billionaire, it's hard to imagine a book about you making a difference in your fortune. It's also a waste of time for a billionaire to be a consultant. There's no leverage.
Billionaires are basically a different species.
I don’t think anything about them can be used to judge whether a thing is true for everyone else.
I don’t think anything about them can be used to judge whether a thing is true for everyone else.
Or the boost to my ego of being admired for being so smart is larger than the boost to my ego of being even richer.
Reminds me of the constant hum around Renaissance Technologies. Everybody brings up that rumour about them using satellite data and other exotic stuff, but there's no way that is the difference between winning and losing.
Exception: you’ve exited and have nothing to lose by sharing
> have nothing to lose by sharing
Not necessarily true if "every successful business got there by doing something ugly".
Not necessarily true if "every successful business got there by doing something ugly".
Beware the, "I'm already a bitcoin billionaire so I'll share my secret to success". Either they're lying about the Lambos, or they suddenly got less greedy. One of those is more likely.
Or their actual secret to success is "Buy a bunch of bitcoin when it cost less than a dollar.", and any subsequent success is a artifact of that non-replicable starting point.
Or, in rare cases where someone gets to billion dollars and says "okay it is enough": The opportunity is no longer there and world changed enough for advice to be near-useless.
Unless they charge for the advice in which case it would be obvious, maybe they just know that keeping more people buying it is required for it to keep value
By that token, we should be suspicious of you for telling us how to avoid bad strategies for making money :)
Indeed, we should. Yet the best way to maintain a successful strategy (which isn't widely known) is to keep it quiet. So either the secret got out and they're trying to hold back the flood by claiming it doesn't work, or honestly have been burned and are hoping to gain some reputational advantage by warning others.
I think that's only when you actually cheated/lied/used loopholes to get where you are.
I'm not losing my senior engineer job because I tell some soon-to-be junior engineers how to be good at the job. Neither will say an established artist or maker; they already have their brand.
I'm not losing my senior engineer job because I tell some soon-to-be junior engineers how to be good at the job. Neither will say an established artist or maker; they already have their brand.
"Success" could include a type of "business model" but other positive-sum games, too.
The possibilities you mention are definitely worth keeping in mind. However, they are not an exhaustive list; there are positive scenarios that are better than "trying to squeeze a few more dollars by telling the tale".
The hard part is recognizing them in the midst of a lot of chaff.
The hard part is recognizing them in the midst of a lot of chaff.
What a cynical take. For your own sake, I'd recommend looking for more positives in others.
Also, everyone who I have worked with which outlined their success path were never anyone to be trusted as their path will never be 100% yours, and thus, they will always pick theirs over supporting yours...
especially if they work in sales, HR, product, BOFH :-)
especially if they work in sales, HR, product, BOFH :-)
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There are deliberate carrot problems, where the successful person deliberately misleads their audience as to the source of their success, and non-deliberate ones, where the successful people themselves doesn't understand why they are successful so tell
people the narratives that make them feel the best about themselves. You see this often when someone with prodigious genetic ability doesn't want to admit to others or themselves that their success was determined before they were born, and not due to hard work or some immeasurable character trait.
I think it’s not that people with prodigious abilities don’t want to attribute that to their success so much as mentioning that as a factor comes across as very narcissistic and unlikeable (even if it’s true) unless you are literally an Einstein/Von Neumann type. For example, even Terry Tao has enough humility to self censor himself not to attribute his success to being a far-outlier-genius.
In fact I’d bet a lot more people think to themselves that they are only successful because they are a genius than there are geniuses. Because it’s even more likely that coming from a highly rich or well connected family is truly the key factor in their success, and people would would much rather attribute success to talent or intelligence than daddy.
It is definitely true though that prodigious talent isn’t by itself sufficient to be successful. Also, intelligence helping you is kind of a given - it’d be like an NBA player saying “being 6’8” really helps”. There are a lot of really tall people not in the NBA and a lot of prodigiously talented people who aren’t conventionally “successful” either.
In fact I’d bet a lot more people think to themselves that they are only successful because they are a genius than there are geniuses. Because it’s even more likely that coming from a highly rich or well connected family is truly the key factor in their success, and people would would much rather attribute success to talent or intelligence than daddy.
It is definitely true though that prodigious talent isn’t by itself sufficient to be successful. Also, intelligence helping you is kind of a given - it’d be like an NBA player saying “being 6’8” really helps”. There are a lot of really tall people not in the NBA and a lot of prodigiously talented people who aren’t conventionally “successful” either.
> ...people would would much rather attribute success to talent or intelligence than daddy.
Where does one get intelligence from? Your intelligence is inherited from your parents (just like any other physical characteristic), so if your biological parents have an extensive influence on your upbringing, it's completely possible that both nature and nurture, almost your entire existence, all your qualities, can be reasonably attributed to the family into which you were born.
Where does one get intelligence from? Your intelligence is inherited from your parents (just like any other physical characteristic), so if your biological parents have an extensive influence on your upbringing, it's completely possible that both nature and nurture, almost your entire existence, all your qualities, can be reasonably attributed to the family into which you were born.
> You see this often when someone with prodigious genetic ability doesn't want to admit to others or themselves that their success was determined before they were born
I don't think many people asked Yao Ming if being 7'6" helped with his basketball career, or Michael Phelps if his human flipper feet helped win a medal or two. But they have spoken at length about how they trained for their careers, and sane people can understand that being a genetic freak doesn't make you a world class anything. It predisposes you to success if you seek it - and both those people spent an enormous amount of their youth working to get there.
The point is that success is not determined before you're born, and reasonable people understand that there's such a thing as variance in human anatomy.
I don't think many people asked Yao Ming if being 7'6" helped with his basketball career, or Michael Phelps if his human flipper feet helped win a medal or two. But they have spoken at length about how they trained for their careers, and sane people can understand that being a genetic freak doesn't make you a world class anything. It predisposes you to success if you seek it - and both those people spent an enormous amount of their youth working to get there.
The point is that success is not determined before you're born, and reasonable people understand that there's such a thing as variance in human anatomy.
Success in the NBA and most Olympic sports is probably ruled out before you are born. For those for which it is not ruled out, they are a vanishingly small subset: good genes, born in stable country, family wealthy enough to afford training from a young age, parents who support/force the training. (I met an Olympic windsurfing candidate; he was tall, fit, relatively financially independent, born to a community near big lakes with friends enjoying the sport, and obsessed with the sport.)
Success financially (depending on what threshold you use) is largely ruled out by birth for most everyone ever born. Exceptions occur, and some places and time periods may have afforded the opportunity to more people, yet always a sliver.
So technically success isn't entirely determined before you're born. But for most it is at least off the table, unless the threshold is very low or they are exceptionally lucky and driven.
Success financially (depending on what threshold you use) is largely ruled out by birth for most everyone ever born. Exceptions occur, and some places and time periods may have afforded the opportunity to more people, yet always a sliver.
So technically success isn't entirely determined before you're born. But for most it is at least off the table, unless the threshold is very low or they are exceptionally lucky and driven.
Being a genetic freak isn't sufficient but is necessary to be world class
I think there's a lot of truth to the quote "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard".
For top .0001% success in some fields (most sports, for example), you need genetic qualities AND hard work.
For top .0001% success in some fields (most sports, for example), you need genetic qualities AND hard work.
While the carrot problem is real, it alone doesn't explain the shittiness of rich people's advice on becoming rich. So much opportunity is either created or destroyed by external circumstances that we don't perceive, let alone control. Since we all subconsciously write our own creation myths, it's not easy to discover and attribute forces that we aren't aware of when looking back on our life paths. The perennial bullshit self-explanation is hard work. How hard they work is one thing that they can control, and they know they worked hard, so they assume it had more of an effect than it did... and in turn, others that worked less hard didn't succeed. For example, they might assume that their uncle was willing to set up that meeting with their first big client because they worked hard enough to be worthy of it, rather than realizing that others who worked as hard or harder lacked a connected uncle.
Very few business success stories credit luck with being a root cause.
But in real life luck (or "chance" , if you prefer) plays a part, sometimes a significant part.
It was lucky that John and Paul went to school together. It was lucky they got on together and became good friends. Thanks to that luck ee got the Beatles.
Of course it (usually) takes -more- than just luck, but dig deep enough and its there.
But in real life luck (or "chance" , if you prefer) plays a part, sometimes a significant part.
It was lucky that John and Paul went to school together. It was lucky they got on together and became good friends. Thanks to that luck ee got the Beatles.
Of course it (usually) takes -more- than just luck, but dig deep enough and its there.
> But in real life luck (or "chance" , if you prefer) plays a part, sometimes a significant part.
This reminds me of a story I heard nearly 20 years ago. (Told by a UCLA staff member.)
In the early 2000's, a UCLA professor invited a successful entrepreneur to give a guest lecture on one of their business courses. During the lecture he was asked what made him the success and the fortune - and the answer was distilled to less than seven words: "Get lucky. Then stack the deck." He went on to explain that the best way to maintain a competitive edge was to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to try to follow his steps or to circumvent his position. But first you had to get lucky enough to afford it.
He was not invited again. Too honest and demoralising for the students.
This reminds me of a story I heard nearly 20 years ago. (Told by a UCLA staff member.)
In the early 2000's, a UCLA professor invited a successful entrepreneur to give a guest lecture on one of their business courses. During the lecture he was asked what made him the success and the fortune - and the answer was distilled to less than seven words: "Get lucky. Then stack the deck." He went on to explain that the best way to maintain a competitive edge was to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to try to follow his steps or to circumvent his position. But first you had to get lucky enough to afford it.
He was not invited again. Too honest and demoralising for the students.
The Dean of UVA business school was heard saying “Don’t compete unless you have an unfair advantage.”
That's hilarious and absolutely true. I think he omitted a few shadier things too.
Maybe the professor didn't like the "sabotage competition" part. I know I didn't.
I do believe luck/chance is the most important ingredient.
I do believe luck/chance is the most important ingredient.
It may not be sabotage necessarily. I’ve talked to MIT professors and they said one of the things they do at Sloan is emphasize gaining and holding a monopoly. Patents, trade secrets, etc. It’s the ‘moat’ that Warren Buffet and value investors look for in investments. If you do the work figuring out supports, methods, regulatory compliance, you’re not under any obligation to provide that information to anyone else. That could be construed as ‘stacking the deck’. I had a coworker that ran a firearms training company on the side and he had to let go one of his administrators because he was talking with his competition and casually telling them what sort of insurance they carried, what small business programs they had applied for, unexpected regulations they found that they had to comply with. All these things are publicly available but took a lot of time to research and money on lawyers etc. No point in helping your completion start on first or second base.
The tricky side of that is how to distinguish between luck and opportunity. Loads of people might be friends at school with someone with a great complementary talent, or have a connected uncle, or happen to start a business in a sector that about to really take off. They may even think about the opportunity and how to take advantage of it, but for whatever reason they don’t.
So there are multiple factors. Some initial lucky opportunity, the insight to spot it, the willingness to take a risk on it, and hard work to see it through.
So there are multiple factors. Some initial lucky opportunity, the insight to spot it, the willingness to take a risk on it, and hard work to see it through.
Frequency and quality of opportunity is also a luck factor.
Someone doesn’t listen to How I Built This. One of Guy’s questions at the end of each interview is what percentage of their success was luck and pretty much all of them from Michael Dell to Drew Houston and everyone in between put luck at a far greater percentage than any other attribute.
Being the right person in the right place at the right time can’t be taught.
Yet, IMO, that’s the primary factor to being wildly successful.
Knowing that you’re the right person in the right place at the right time ranks second.
Taking advantage of the opportunity presented as the right person in the right place at the right time is third.
Personality is fourth.
Skill is somewhere below that.
Ultimately, luck always sets the maxima.
Though, this only applies if you’re measuring success by the amount of excess you can accumulate.
You can live an incredibly fulfilling and happy life without any of the above if you set your own criteria for success to fall within the constraints of your particular circumstance.
Yet, IMO, that’s the primary factor to being wildly successful.
Knowing that you’re the right person in the right place at the right time ranks second.
Taking advantage of the opportunity presented as the right person in the right place at the right time is third.
Personality is fourth.
Skill is somewhere below that.
Ultimately, luck always sets the maxima.
Though, this only applies if you’re measuring success by the amount of excess you can accumulate.
You can live an incredibly fulfilling and happy life without any of the above if you set your own criteria for success to fall within the constraints of your particular circumstance.
I recommend reading a biography of the Beatles. Don't overlook the many years they spent playing dive bars day and night, honing their skills as a band.
Brian Epstein, a nobody, recognized opportunity when he met the Beatles.
Brian Epstein, a nobody, recognized opportunity when he met the Beatles.
The Beatles kind of sucked at the beginning of their career. That they became as good as they did was a shot in the dark— not the ability to divide which ones would become great. The are so many incredibly talented musicians in the world— if anybody could consistently choose the winners, record company finances would be way different. Of the bands that get signed to record labels, the percentage that become the "it" acts is microscopic.
People always say this about the Beatles but it’s fucking ridiculous. I’m a musician and have spent a lot of my life around musicians including very very famous ones and including ones who are very famous now but were not when I met them.
I’ve also met hundreds of musicians who practice and try for years and are basically the same at the end as when they start.
The difference between being OK and quite good indeed can be bridged with practice.
The difference between being a quite good and polished songwriter and being Paul McCartney involves being fucking born Paul McCartney.
Also “they sucked at the beginning bf their career?” What in the the fuck are you talking about? They had a hit with Love Me Do when their ages ranged from 20-23 years old. That’s not fast enough for you?
Paul Simon had his first hit single as a teenager. Robert Plant was 19 when he recorded Zeppelin I.
No amount of practice alone is going to to get you to that level of talent.
Anyone implying otherwise 1) is trying to sell you books and 2) has spent zero actual time as a musician and around musicians and songwriters.
I’ve also met hundreds of musicians who practice and try for years and are basically the same at the end as when they start.
The difference between being OK and quite good indeed can be bridged with practice.
The difference between being a quite good and polished songwriter and being Paul McCartney involves being fucking born Paul McCartney.
Also “they sucked at the beginning bf their career?” What in the the fuck are you talking about? They had a hit with Love Me Do when their ages ranged from 20-23 years old. That’s not fast enough for you?
Paul Simon had his first hit single as a teenager. Robert Plant was 19 when he recorded Zeppelin I.
No amount of practice alone is going to to get you to that level of talent.
Anyone implying otherwise 1) is trying to sell you books and 2) has spent zero actual time as a musician and around musicians and songwriters.
Check out the live recordings before they got signed.
> The are so many incredibly talented musicians in the world
If there are so many, then they aren't incredible.
It takes a lot more than talent to be successful in music. More than musical talent, too. One has to also be able to create catchy tunes, play them, fit in with your band, pick the right look for the band, the right name, packaging, etc. etc. etc. I recommend reading up on what Brian Epstein did for them.
The songs of the Beatles (and Michael Jackson) are consistently better than the songs of their contemporaries.
> the percentage that become the "it" acts is microscopic
Are the 99% simply not that good? I enjoy music from all kinds of bands, but the quantity and consistent high quality of the Beatles' and Jackson's work are standouts.
If there are so many, then they aren't incredible.
It takes a lot more than talent to be successful in music. More than musical talent, too. One has to also be able to create catchy tunes, play them, fit in with your band, pick the right look for the band, the right name, packaging, etc. etc. etc. I recommend reading up on what Brian Epstein did for them.
The songs of the Beatles (and Michael Jackson) are consistently better than the songs of their contemporaries.
> the percentage that become the "it" acts is microscopic
Are the 99% simply not that good? I enjoy music from all kinds of bands, but the quantity and consistent high quality of the Beatles' and Jackson's work are standouts.
No. The music industry in the US has never been a meritocracy. There are tons of artists who record labels deem worthy enough to sign but they never promote. A whole lot of it comes down to luck.
It seems like a lot of your viewpoint is based on am assumed consistency that doesn't exist.
It seems like a lot of your viewpoint is based on am assumed consistency that doesn't exist.
Not a meritocracy? Whitney Houston bowled them over, and the music label knew they'd struck gold in signing her.
I don't think the music industry is run by fools.
I don't think the music industry is run by fools.
It's not about working hard. It's about working smart.
> So much opportunity is either created or destroyed by external circumstances that we don't perceive, let alone control
However, doing nothing guarantees failure. Some aspects of working smart:
1. doing the prep work so when opportunity does come your way, you are capable of taking advantage
2. placing yourself in a situation where opportunity can find you
3. learning to recognize opportunity (it often comes disguised as hard work)
4. be willing to take risks
> So much opportunity is either created or destroyed by external circumstances that we don't perceive, let alone control
However, doing nothing guarantees failure. Some aspects of working smart:
1. doing the prep work so when opportunity does come your way, you are capable of taking advantage
2. placing yourself in a situation where opportunity can find you
3. learning to recognize opportunity (it often comes disguised as hard work)
4. be willing to take risks
(apologies for the small tangential rant; it's a topic I care about :)
I have seen this view towards luck a few times — some variant of "make your own luck" or "put yourself in situations where you're more likely to be lucky", and similar.
I don't object to it by itself, but there's a subtlety that is often missed: it only applies to yourself, not other people. Or perhaps more accurately: it only applies to your choice of action, not evaluating others' results.
The reason I have misgivings is because I have seen it used as a cudgel; someone fails, and a person with this mindset is more prone to rationalize it, saying "oh, they didn't try hard enough" or "it was their own fault, they should be smarter about it."
No.
No matter how hard a person tries, they can still fail, and it may not be their fault at all. At least when it's your own self, you have more information to know if you could have done better. When it's directed at others, it's extremely dicey to make those judgements.
Someone more in tune with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune might be more inclined to actually help that person, rather than blaming them for things outside of their control.
It's tricky, because the "try harder next time" whip is useful, to be sure, but it also can be an enemy of empathy.
I have seen this view towards luck a few times — some variant of "make your own luck" or "put yourself in situations where you're more likely to be lucky", and similar.
I don't object to it by itself, but there's a subtlety that is often missed: it only applies to yourself, not other people. Or perhaps more accurately: it only applies to your choice of action, not evaluating others' results.
The reason I have misgivings is because I have seen it used as a cudgel; someone fails, and a person with this mindset is more prone to rationalize it, saying "oh, they didn't try hard enough" or "it was their own fault, they should be smarter about it."
No.
No matter how hard a person tries, they can still fail, and it may not be their fault at all. At least when it's your own self, you have more information to know if you could have done better. When it's directed at others, it's extremely dicey to make those judgements.
Someone more in tune with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune might be more inclined to actually help that person, rather than blaming them for things outside of their control.
It's tricky, because the "try harder next time" whip is useful, to be sure, but it also can be an enemy of empathy.
> they can still fail
Of course. I never wrote otherwise.
Many successful people I know failed multiple times.
> "it was their own fault, they should be smarter about it."
The successful people I know who failed multiple times and eventually succeeded all blamed themselves for the failures, with "I should have been smarter about it".
The great thing about taking responsibility for one's failures is it is empowering - it means you can succeed by learning why one failed and doing it better next time.
You could consider it like airliners. Crashes are not attributed to "bad luck". The cause is always searched for, and once found, it gets fixed. Over time, this has resulted in incredibly safe airliners.
Do you really expect to successfully ride a bike the first time you swing your leg over the seat? Nope. You fall off, get back on, fall off, get back on, fall off, get back on, hey! I'm riding!
Of course. I never wrote otherwise.
Many successful people I know failed multiple times.
> "it was their own fault, they should be smarter about it."
The successful people I know who failed multiple times and eventually succeeded all blamed themselves for the failures, with "I should have been smarter about it".
The great thing about taking responsibility for one's failures is it is empowering - it means you can succeed by learning why one failed and doing it better next time.
You could consider it like airliners. Crashes are not attributed to "bad luck". The cause is always searched for, and once found, it gets fixed. Over time, this has resulted in incredibly safe airliners.
Do you really expect to successfully ride a bike the first time you swing your leg over the seat? Nope. You fall off, get back on, fall off, get back on, fall off, get back on, hey! I'm riding!
I learnt to ride with extra wheels attached to the side of the bicycle, and as a result, I almost never fell during that learning process.
Translating the analogy back, what you describe is the entrepreneurial fail-until-you-win method. The alternative method of progression is that of apprenticeship or gradual promotion, which in my country is associated with traditionally middle-class professions like finance, medicine and law. In such a conventional career, success is almost guaranteed, as the number of people entering the profession is very close to the number retiring out of it, and the assumption is that, because the endeavour has always been profitable, it will be for you too.
Ideally, the profession as a whole gradually improves under this system, but no individual member of it has to engage in any more than an average level of risk to be personally successful.
Translating the analogy back, what you describe is the entrepreneurial fail-until-you-win method. The alternative method of progression is that of apprenticeship or gradual promotion, which in my country is associated with traditionally middle-class professions like finance, medicine and law. In such a conventional career, success is almost guaranteed, as the number of people entering the profession is very close to the number retiring out of it, and the assumption is that, because the endeavour has always been profitable, it will be for you too.
Ideally, the profession as a whole gradually improves under this system, but no individual member of it has to engage in any more than an average level of risk to be personally successful.
Yeah, well, such safe avenues don't lead to making a billion.
And unsafe avenues aren't an option for the majority of people in the US.
Not buying that. America is not a nation of poor people.
Well, how about you actually look?
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-a...
60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-a...
60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Living paycheck-to-paycheck is quite often a lifestyle choice showing more lack of planning and of financial skills than poverty.
Said someone who has never grown up in poverty. rolls eyes
Been in both situations; grew up impoverished, now doing well.
Living paycheck to paycheck is never a lifestyle choice; there are choices that come out of that because even poor people don’t want to feel poor, but given the option, not a single one in most cases would prefer to be paycheck to paycheck.
Been in both situations; grew up impoverished, now doing well.
Living paycheck to paycheck is never a lifestyle choice; there are choices that come out of that because even poor people don’t want to feel poor, but given the option, not a single one in most cases would prefer to be paycheck to paycheck.
I grew up under the utter misery of communism. Even my illiterate grandmother working the earth knew to always have a valuable or two put aside to bribe the party representatives in case one of us got sick or in trouble.
Feel free to actually show some empirical evidence to support your assumptions.
Most of "poor people" in USA would be considered above average in other countries and continents.
Context matters. If they moved to those other countries and continents, which have lower costs of living, they’d be fine. But: moving costs money and time they don’t have (since they’ve gotta work 3 jobs to put food on the table), those other countries and continents have even less opportunity to build a business, and so on.
It doesn’t really matter that you think “poor people” aren’t really that poor. They are, and risk is much harder to stomach when it means becoming actually homeless. Denying that is sticking your head in the sand.
It doesn’t really matter that you think “poor people” aren’t really that poor. They are, and risk is much harder to stomach when it means becoming actually homeless. Denying that is sticking your head in the sand.
So they're financially secure enough for risky speculative investment?
This assumes one can afford multiple failures. Being born rich buys you a lot of swings of the bat. Otherwise you can't swing big, and opportunities to connect will be fewer--if any.
Rich kids can afford 'responsibility' because they have money to pay for their mistakes. Poor kids don't.
Best way to be prepared for success? Be born to a rich and well connected family.
Rich kids can afford 'responsibility' because they have money to pay for their mistakes. Poor kids don't.
Best way to be prepared for success? Be born to a rich and well connected family.
I know several very successful entrepreneurs and I know quite a few people with rich parents. I don't see much of a correlation.
In my perception many of the rich kids lack the drive to work as hard as you need to, to become a successful entrepreneur, instead opting for a safer route. Granted, if you are from a really poor background and live in the US without much of a social safety net, I could see how that could hamper your prospects, but that's hardly a problem where I'm from.
In my perception many of the rich kids lack the drive to work as hard as you need to, to become a successful entrepreneur, instead opting for a safer route. Granted, if you are from a really poor background and live in the US without much of a social safety net, I could see how that could hamper your prospects, but that's hardly a problem where I'm from.
Most people are lazy, rich kids already don't have to work. So if they happen to be driven enough to try they can take on many more risks and start more businesses.
If you're surrounded by entrepreneurs (such as SV) it's not a representative sample. Even being born "middle class" is a narrow slice of humanity today, much less everyone ever born.
If you're surrounded by entrepreneurs (such as SV) it's not a representative sample. Even being born "middle class" is a narrow slice of humanity today, much less everyone ever born.
As of 2019, to be in the financial top 10%, you needed a HOUSEHOLD income of just over 155k. I think that many around here are so utterly out-of-touch with the lives of most people in the US that they can't even reason about the blocks they have to advancement.
Basically none of the rich people I know came from more than middle class parents. A couple came to America with nothing but a suitcase.
Depends on your circle. So probably not a representative sample. If you live in SoCal there's probably some clustering of survivorship bias.
Of all the people rich today -- or ever -- how many started middle or lower class?
How many came to America with nothing and died, barely survived, went to jail, got deported, peaked at lower middle class, etc.?
If I know a lot of plane crash survivors I still would not recommend getting on an unsafe plane. (I actually only know one crash survivor and would not get on a small plane unless it's a life or death emergency.)
Of all the people rich today -- or ever -- how many started middle or lower class?
How many came to America with nothing and died, barely survived, went to jail, got deported, peaked at lower middle class, etc.?
If I know a lot of plane crash survivors I still would not recommend getting on an unsafe plane. (I actually only know one crash survivor and would not get on a small plane unless it's a life or death emergency.)
This seems like something that’s changed in recent decades, as would be predicted of course. Most of the older rich people I know were not from upper class homes. Younger rich people (born after 1990) seem to come predominantly from upper middle class and higher. Anecdotal but I’d wager roughly consistent with national trends.
Nearly 100% of the rich people I know had family money. Living expenses now take up a very different amount of people's income than they did before. The skills you need to get a leg up now are very different than they used to be, even in recent history. Anecdata is useless.
How did their parents get rich? Was it because the grandparents was rich?
I think in many cases when you trace it back, it comes down to ... luck (:
Which is funny, since now the descendants of some lucky people get the opportunity to take lots of chances and say "look how hard work pays off — I made my own luck!"
Though that's a pretty simplistic take; I feel like hard work really does pay off, broadly speaking, but also luck plays a (much) bigger role than most give it credit.
Which is funny, since now the descendants of some lucky people get the opportunity to take lots of chances and say "look how hard work pays off — I made my own luck!"
Though that's a pretty simplistic take; I feel like hard work really does pay off, broadly speaking, but also luck plays a (much) bigger role than most give it credit.
Luck will never find the person living in his mom's basement playing video games and griping about inequity.
Given the number of possible alternative realities they could have been born into it, I'd strongly suggest luck has already found such people.
It's even possible had they not been born into such an easy existence they might have ultimately done better for themselves ("possible", not likely).
That you cite this as the alternative shows the limits of your perspective.
I think you miss the point. I believe the point is if you don't try then luck won't help you. Or in other words you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket.
I think you missed my point. All of the trying in the world isn't going to replace the luck that's required for most people to succeed-- be it being born white and in a middle-class or better household in a middle-class-or-better town, not being sidled with familial or health obligations, or even being born with a cognitive profile that has workplace utility. Being comfortable enough to live with a parent and be lazy is already a privilege that a giant chunk of the US population doesn't have. Nobody is arguing that people born into opportune circumstances can succeed without doing anything. They just have the opportunity to make that effort turn into significant results when many others don't.
Tickets are expensive, most people cannot afford more than one. Many are born into debt they have little hope of escaping, much less buying tickets.
Those born wealthy can often buy so many tickets it's virtually guaranteed they'll stumble into something that works, at least once.
No one is saying people don't have to at least lift a finger to try. Just that birth luck affords so many other opportunities that the advice of outliers and the born comfortable isn't transferable.
Those born wealthy can often buy so many tickets it's virtually guaranteed they'll stumble into something that works, at least once.
No one is saying people don't have to at least lift a finger to try. Just that birth luck affords so many other opportunities that the advice of outliers and the born comfortable isn't transferable.
I was pointing out the circular logic in these explanations. Saying someone is rich because their parents were rich (ad-infinitum) is like saying someone is lucky because they are lucky. It is not a useful explanation because you can't use this to do anything. In fact if you use this explanation to decide public policy, like say socialism, then the converse is also true, you make everybody poor, then their descendants will be poor. But obviously in our history on average, we've all been getting richer in the long run.
"Entrepreneurs come from families with money"
https://fortune.com/2015/07/17/entrepreneurs-family-money/
https://fortune.com/2015/07/17/entrepreneurs-family-money/
> they can still fail
>> Of course. I never wrote otherwise.
I did not mean to imply that you did (:
You touched on a general topic, and I was speaking to that, more than your specific words.
> successful people ... blamed themselves for the failures
I'm sure that's true. But I'm trying to draw a thin, wiggly line between awareness of room for improvement (usually more on a rational level), and blame/judgement (usually more on an emotional level). The former is great, the latter not so much.
I'd wager that there are also a whole lot of un-successful people who blamed themselves for their failures, even if they could do no better. People who hate themselves. People who are unhappy. My commentary is more directed at those people and those who would care about them, than the ones you mention.
> taking responsibility ... you can succeed by learning
This definitely straddles the wiggly line (: One one side is "taking responsibility," and on the other is "it's your fault."
Certainly one should internalize the lesson. But hopefully not the shame/blame. Perhaps neither you nor your successful acquaintences suffer from this affliction, but in my experience many do.
I realize that some people are lazy and looking for excuses to escape responsibility, so perhaps you see my viewpoint as somehow enabling or encouraging that bad behavior. I just want to point out that there are downsides in the other direction too, if taken to puritanical extremes. And I daresay the "being lazy is bad" side of the argument gets a whole lot more headspace in our culture than the "it's okay, there's nothing wrong with you" side. Hence my attempt to bring some balance.
> You could consider it like airliners ...
> ride a bike the first time ...
The thing about airlines is that they operate in a very carefully crafted environment. Planes stay away from each other, are generally aware of each other (notwithstanding that friggin' biplane without a radio that cut me off on downwind... grr), have high maintenance standards, etc. etc. Real life can be much more dense/messy/fast-moving/full of unknowns, I find. You do not always get the luxury of knowing the variables involved.
But the problem with both of your examples is that they assume you can learn and try again. And that's not always the case.
What if you're a passenger on one of those airliners that crashes? What should you have done better, personally?
Born in a poor country? Sorry, no re-try.
Born with a damaged brain or body? Sorry, no re-try.
Have abusive parents? Maybe a few can pull themselves out (probably mostly by luck or the help of others), but it will have lifelong effects.
You get the idea. And those examples are extreme; there are myriad other "softer" struggles people have, with varying levels of control. Depression comes to mind.
So, in conclusion, my whole long-winded reply is just trying to say: sometimes people (like you) express the "you have nobody to blame but yourself" attitude, with good intentions, directed at the sort of enabled people you were talking about, but it gets applied to other people, with heart-wrenching effects.
>> Of course. I never wrote otherwise.
I did not mean to imply that you did (:
You touched on a general topic, and I was speaking to that, more than your specific words.
> successful people ... blamed themselves for the failures
I'm sure that's true. But I'm trying to draw a thin, wiggly line between awareness of room for improvement (usually more on a rational level), and blame/judgement (usually more on an emotional level). The former is great, the latter not so much.
I'd wager that there are also a whole lot of un-successful people who blamed themselves for their failures, even if they could do no better. People who hate themselves. People who are unhappy. My commentary is more directed at those people and those who would care about them, than the ones you mention.
> taking responsibility ... you can succeed by learning
This definitely straddles the wiggly line (: One one side is "taking responsibility," and on the other is "it's your fault."
Certainly one should internalize the lesson. But hopefully not the shame/blame. Perhaps neither you nor your successful acquaintences suffer from this affliction, but in my experience many do.
I realize that some people are lazy and looking for excuses to escape responsibility, so perhaps you see my viewpoint as somehow enabling or encouraging that bad behavior. I just want to point out that there are downsides in the other direction too, if taken to puritanical extremes. And I daresay the "being lazy is bad" side of the argument gets a whole lot more headspace in our culture than the "it's okay, there's nothing wrong with you" side. Hence my attempt to bring some balance.
> You could consider it like airliners ...
> ride a bike the first time ...
The thing about airlines is that they operate in a very carefully crafted environment. Planes stay away from each other, are generally aware of each other (notwithstanding that friggin' biplane without a radio that cut me off on downwind... grr), have high maintenance standards, etc. etc. Real life can be much more dense/messy/fast-moving/full of unknowns, I find. You do not always get the luxury of knowing the variables involved.
But the problem with both of your examples is that they assume you can learn and try again. And that's not always the case.
What if you're a passenger on one of those airliners that crashes? What should you have done better, personally?
Born in a poor country? Sorry, no re-try.
Born with a damaged brain or body? Sorry, no re-try.
Have abusive parents? Maybe a few can pull themselves out (probably mostly by luck or the help of others), but it will have lifelong effects.
You get the idea. And those examples are extreme; there are myriad other "softer" struggles people have, with varying levels of control. Depression comes to mind.
So, in conclusion, my whole long-winded reply is just trying to say: sometimes people (like you) express the "you have nobody to blame but yourself" attitude, with good intentions, directed at the sort of enabled people you were talking about, but it gets applied to other people, with heart-wrenching effects.
> The thing about airlines is that they operate in a very carefully crafted environment.
They do now, as the consequence of many crashes.
> And that's not always the case
I liken this as "humans have two legs" and the riposte is "not all humans have two legs". Notice the requirement to insert a missing word, "all". I hope you'll forgive me, because I am rather testy about this sort of waste of time. If I mean "always" or "all" or "100%" I would use those qualifiers. Those qualifiers exist for a reason.
> Born with a damaged brain or body?
Oh criminy. I shouldn't have to add that if you're mentally deranged none of this applies. In fact, I believe I even wrote somewhere here "of sound mind and body" because I know somebody would pipe up with "not everybody likes ice cream".
They do now, as the consequence of many crashes.
> And that's not always the case
I liken this as "humans have two legs" and the riposte is "not all humans have two legs". Notice the requirement to insert a missing word, "all". I hope you'll forgive me, because I am rather testy about this sort of waste of time. If I mean "always" or "all" or "100%" I would use those qualifiers. Those qualifiers exist for a reason.
> Born with a damaged brain or body?
Oh criminy. I shouldn't have to add that if you're mentally deranged none of this applies. In fact, I believe I even wrote somewhere here "of sound mind and body" because I know somebody would pipe up with "not everybody likes ice cream".
I think I am talking past you in some way; sorry about that.
I am not trying to play word games or pull "gotchas" on your phrasing. I think I have a straightforward underlying message; I hope you can hear it through my imprecise miasma of words.
Maybe you already heard it, but are only replying to the remaining small tidbits you object to; I'm unsure.
In truth, I have a similar frustration, where I feel the fragmentary quotations of mine you reply to do not give justice to the larger context in which they were written. But I don't hold it against you; I know that struggle.
Anyway, one more attempt:
You presented some simple advice ("It's not about working hard. It's about working smart."), and as mentioned I don't disagree with it per se.
But in my life, I have seen that advice used "for evil", if you will. (I do not mean to imply that you intend it that way, of course).
And in particular, I do find that people giving and following that advice are often either willfully or ignorantly (more often the latter) blind to the downsides that can go along with it — vis-a-vis empathy towards others, for instance. Of course, I do not mean to imply that you are blind to it. I don't know you.
So, I hoped to give some voice to that other perspective, is all. I find it to be under-represented, in discussions like these. Hugely so.
----
Re: humans having two legs: I truly am not sure if you are messing with me, or if I really failed to deliver my idea so totally. I swear I don't mind if it's the former, though I feel it is the latter (: Help me improve my communications protocol?
I thought our sequence went something like this:
you: work hard and learn from your mistakes
me: agreed. but also, beware of assigning blame for misfortune
you: here are some examples of how learning from mistakes is useful/empowering [airliners, bikes]
me: yes, and here are some examples of misfortune that's not blame-worthy [unlucky birth, etc.]
you: my examples were not meant to be all-encompassing [humans have two legs]
me: ???
Actually, writing it out maybe makes it more clear. Perhaps you feel I was disagreeing with your initial advice, and trying to counter it somehow. But rather, I am trying to add something to it; draw a bigger circle around everything on the Venn diagram, so to speak. Not cross yours out.
I am not trying to play word games or pull "gotchas" on your phrasing. I think I have a straightforward underlying message; I hope you can hear it through my imprecise miasma of words.
Maybe you already heard it, but are only replying to the remaining small tidbits you object to; I'm unsure.
In truth, I have a similar frustration, where I feel the fragmentary quotations of mine you reply to do not give justice to the larger context in which they were written. But I don't hold it against you; I know that struggle.
Anyway, one more attempt:
You presented some simple advice ("It's not about working hard. It's about working smart."), and as mentioned I don't disagree with it per se.
But in my life, I have seen that advice used "for evil", if you will. (I do not mean to imply that you intend it that way, of course).
And in particular, I do find that people giving and following that advice are often either willfully or ignorantly (more often the latter) blind to the downsides that can go along with it — vis-a-vis empathy towards others, for instance. Of course, I do not mean to imply that you are blind to it. I don't know you.
So, I hoped to give some voice to that other perspective, is all. I find it to be under-represented, in discussions like these. Hugely so.
----
Re: humans having two legs: I truly am not sure if you are messing with me, or if I really failed to deliver my idea so totally. I swear I don't mind if it's the former, though I feel it is the latter (: Help me improve my communications protocol?
I thought our sequence went something like this:
you: work hard and learn from your mistakes
me: agreed. but also, beware of assigning blame for misfortune
you: here are some examples of how learning from mistakes is useful/empowering [airliners, bikes]
me: yes, and here are some examples of misfortune that's not blame-worthy [unlucky birth, etc.]
you: my examples were not meant to be all-encompassing [humans have two legs]
me: ???
Actually, writing it out maybe makes it more clear. Perhaps you feel I was disagreeing with your initial advice, and trying to counter it somehow. But rather, I am trying to add something to it; draw a bigger circle around everything on the Venn diagram, so to speak. Not cross yours out.
You have no idea how much you have going for you that you didn't have to work for.
I do not have any advantages the vast bulk of Americans do not also have.
"Are Greg and Emily More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal"
5000 job applications with evenly weighted resumes randomly paired with names more commonly given to white children and names more commonly given to Black children. The "White" applicants were FIFTY PERCENT more likely to get a callback.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
Here's one from Georgetown that follows performance disparity and wealth, with marked differences appearing in kindergarten.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231198317...
Here's an article from the fed discussing a study that shows the average white family has just under 5x more assets than your average Black family, and crucially, that intergenerational wealth doesn't play a big role in that:
https://www.bostonfed.org/news-and-events/news/2023/03/bosto....
There is so much more empirical proof that the US simply is not a meritocracy. You must be deliberately shielding yourself from it or astonishingly naive to think otherwise.
5000 job applications with evenly weighted resumes randomly paired with names more commonly given to white children and names more commonly given to Black children. The "White" applicants were FIFTY PERCENT more likely to get a callback.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
Here's one from Georgetown that follows performance disparity and wealth, with marked differences appearing in kindergarten.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231198317...
Here's an article from the fed discussing a study that shows the average white family has just under 5x more assets than your average Black family, and crucially, that intergenerational wealth doesn't play a big role in that:
https://www.bostonfed.org/news-and-events/news/2023/03/bosto....
There is so much more empirical proof that the US simply is not a meritocracy. You must be deliberately shielding yourself from it or astonishingly naive to think otherwise.
The business I started in the 1980s was mail order and nobody knew my name, color, background, religion, sex, etc.
Today, with the internet, nobody needs to know anything about you for you to run a successful business.
You seem to require that I must be born wealthy. I was born on an Air Force base and spent many years living in base housing. If you're from a military family, you know that ain't wealthy and ain't the path to wealth.
My father grew up in the Depression, and his father apologized profusely to him for asking for a portion of the money my father made collecting scrap so he could buy food. My mother lost everything (and I mean everything) in WW2.
I've posted before about wealthy friends who came to America with a suitcase.
The idea you must be born into wealth in order to be successful in America is simply false. I know too many wealthy people (including Blacks and women) who demonstrate otherwise.
Here's a recipe to move from poverty to the middle class:
1. don't do drugs
2. don't do crimes
3. stay in school
4. learn what the school provides
5. get a loan for college
6. go to college, pick a major that pays well, learn the material rather than cheat
It's a pretty good default strategy. It doesn't take any miracles or unusual effort.
> astonishingly naive to think otherwise
Maybe you should tell that to the millions of poor people attempting to get into the US.
Today, with the internet, nobody needs to know anything about you for you to run a successful business.
You seem to require that I must be born wealthy. I was born on an Air Force base and spent many years living in base housing. If you're from a military family, you know that ain't wealthy and ain't the path to wealth.
My father grew up in the Depression, and his father apologized profusely to him for asking for a portion of the money my father made collecting scrap so he could buy food. My mother lost everything (and I mean everything) in WW2.
I've posted before about wealthy friends who came to America with a suitcase.
The idea you must be born into wealth in order to be successful in America is simply false. I know too many wealthy people (including Blacks and women) who demonstrate otherwise.
Here's a recipe to move from poverty to the middle class:
1. don't do drugs
2. don't do crimes
3. stay in school
4. learn what the school provides
5. get a loan for college
6. go to college, pick a major that pays well, learn the material rather than cheat
It's a pretty good default strategy. It doesn't take any miracles or unusual effort.
> astonishingly naive to think otherwise
Maybe you should tell that to the millions of poor people attempting to get into the US.
A big caveat is #4 should read "be willing and able to take risks". If you're not living in country with a social safety net or have the resources to self-support failure, risk taking is simply not an option.
Not just #4, all of them
It's much easier to do prep work when you have a social safety net to keep you clothed, housed and fed while you're prepping.
It's much easier to place yourself in a situation where the opportunity can find you if you know that if opportunity doesn't find you, you'll be ok.
It's much easier to take a gamble that a bunch of hard work will lead to a fantastic opportunity if the cost of it not leading to an opportunity is very low.
It's much easier to do prep work when you have a social safety net to keep you clothed, housed and fed while you're prepping.
It's much easier to place yourself in a situation where the opportunity can find you if you know that if opportunity doesn't find you, you'll be ok.
It's much easier to take a gamble that a bunch of hard work will lead to a fantastic opportunity if the cost of it not leading to an opportunity is very low.
I've missed at least 4 opportunities to become a billionaire. I bet a lot of readers here can say the same.
What percentage of readers here would you estimate have missed a chance of becoming a billionaire?
Probably nearly all of them over 30 of sound mind and body, that live in America, avoided the lure of alcohol, drugs, and crime, got themselves educated in a useful skill, and avoided the tar pits of victimhood and grievances.
By what avenue?! Inventing a unicorn business and developing the connections to sell it to the people who matter? Buying the right lottery ticket?
Buying the right lottery ticket is the closest chance to this being accurate. If you look at the percentages in social strata and honestly evaluate the logistical and cultural paths most people would have to access billionaire-level opportunity, it's apparent that American meritocracy at the upper echelons is a fucking joke.
> By what avenue?!
Leveraging everything you had and bought MSFT when it went public. Or AMZN. Or Bitcoin. Or Apple. As the value of the stock increased, buy more on margin.
Of course, this is risky. Note I mentioned a willingness to take risks.
Leveraging everything you had and bought MSFT when it went public. Or AMZN. Or Bitcoin. Or Apple. As the value of the stock increased, buy more on margin.
Of course, this is risky. Note I mentioned a willingness to take risks.
Look at the median incomes throughout the us, then look at the living expenses, and honestly consider whether speculative investing would be even remotely feasible, or even a morally defensible financial strategy with other people relying on you? Not being put into a position where other people rely on you— elderly parents, relative's children, etc— is pretty lucky in most socio-economic sections in our country.
11.6% of Americans are below the poverty line, not 50%.
You can start an investment program for $100 at robinhood.com.
You can start an investment program for $100 at robinhood.com.
Do you know how absurdly low the federal poverty level is compared to actual living expenses, anywhere? Do you honestly think $ > FPL = able to speculatively invest? Lots of basic needs assistance programs start tapering once you hit 133% of the regionally-adjusted federal poverty level and many don't disqualify until you until you hit multiples... And we still have a lot of food insecurity, housing insecurity, and lack of access to medical care among people who don't qualify.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-a...
58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Throwing money into some Robinhood investment when you're living paycheck to paycheck, especially if you're responsible for other people, as many people in lower socio-economic brackets are, is completely irresponsible.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-a...
58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Throwing money into some Robinhood investment when you're living paycheck to paycheck, especially if you're responsible for other people, as many people in lower socio-economic brackets are, is completely irresponsible.
> 58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck
That's one of the most misleading statistics ever. Lots and lots of people live paycheck to paycheck because they see money they spend money. I know people who live in McMansions with new cars, spiffy threads, and expensive furniture who spend every dime. Every time they get a raise, they ramp up the spending. When I worked at Boeing, payday was every other Thursday. People would leave the building and run to their cars. This is because they'd already spent the money and needed to get the paycheck deposited ASAP.
They're not poor people. What they are are fiscally irresponsible.
A corollary is the percentage of people with less than $500 in the bank. Well, I have less than $500 in the bank. It's not because I'm poor, it's because I put every dime to work for me in investments.
BTW, what do you think of those millions of people dressing up like Barbie and going to see Taylor Swift concerts, spending a thousand bucks and more on travel, tickets, costumes, etc.? Me, it shows Americans are not mired in poverty.
That's one of the most misleading statistics ever. Lots and lots of people live paycheck to paycheck because they see money they spend money. I know people who live in McMansions with new cars, spiffy threads, and expensive furniture who spend every dime. Every time they get a raise, they ramp up the spending. When I worked at Boeing, payday was every other Thursday. People would leave the building and run to their cars. This is because they'd already spent the money and needed to get the paycheck deposited ASAP.
They're not poor people. What they are are fiscally irresponsible.
A corollary is the percentage of people with less than $500 in the bank. Well, I have less than $500 in the bank. It's not because I'm poor, it's because I put every dime to work for me in investments.
BTW, what do you think of those millions of people dressing up like Barbie and going to see Taylor Swift concerts, spending a thousand bucks and more on travel, tickets, costumes, etc.? Me, it shows Americans are not mired in poverty.
With only $100 you're basically going to have to win the lottery: get the right symbol (most won't be) at an ideal buy time, and sell at an ideal selling point. Be sure not to go bankrupt or homeless while buying those tickets and waiting for that perfect timing.
LOL. Every investment program starts with a first step. AMZN opened at $35 a share. Buying 3 shares would be worth what, today? North of $100,000. Not bad, eh?
Are you suggesting that if 100 times as many people bought those stocks at the right time, we'd have 100 times as many billionaires? What exactly would be generating all that extra wealth?
There are a fixed number of shares. If A buys 100 shares, there are 100 shares fewer available for others to buy.
Until a corporation dilutes the shares by issuing more.
Until a corporation dilutes the shares by issuing more.
Yes, that was kind of my point. I'm not really seeing how many more people could have possibly become mega-rich just by having bought more of the shares that happened to make the few people that actually did mega-rich, which seemed to be what you were suggesting - apologies if I misinterpreted.
"willingness to take risks" and betting the farm on a tech stock _continuosly_ over 20+ years are two very different things
I happen to know a person who did exactly that, and became very wealthy.
Making lots of money is usually proportional to how much risk you're willing to take.
Making lots of money is usually proportional to how much risk you're willing to take.
How many more did the same, but only managed to yield spectacular failure? Such lottery wins are not repeatable, and relying on them is horrible advice.
I pointed out upthread the willingness to take risk. Nothing is guaranteed. But you can tilt the odds very much in your favor.
BTW, AMZN had far, far better odds than any lottery.
BTW, AMZN had far, far better odds than any lottery.
"I know a guy" is a useless measure of whether or not something is feasible for most people. There's a lot of useful data out there about this stuff.
I don't name names for privacy reasons, not because I'm making things up.
The Seattle Times reported in the 1990s that there were over 10,000 Microsoft millionaires living in the Seattle area, excluding housing. And that was when a million dollars was real money.
Ten thousand.
There's probably a similar figure for Amazon employees.
The Seattle Times reported in the 1990s that there were over 10,000 Microsoft millionaires living in the Seattle area, excluding housing. And that was when a million dollars was real money.
Ten thousand.
There's probably a similar figure for Amazon employees.
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The carrot problem in TFA describes when there is an incentive to lie - what you're describing is something else entirely. It's not usually in the interest of someone with wealth to lie about how they got there.
There's a big difference between being wrong/full of shit and outright lying because to tell the truth would harm your ability to make money. The former is just being an idiot, the latter is being a market manipulator/con /artist/grifter/etc.
There's a big difference between being wrong/full of shit and outright lying because to tell the truth would harm your ability to make money. The former is just being an idiot, the latter is being a market manipulator/con /artist/grifter/etc.
> when there is an incentive to lie ...
The one I see constantly is people selling courses on how to make money. They talk about how they made money as a consultant and decided out of the kindness of their hearts to teach others.
What's clear is that the money the majority of them made wasn't from "doing the thing" but rather from the course that they're teaching.
Then someone takes the course and copies + puts their own spin on it. Rinse and repeat.
The one I see constantly is people selling courses on how to make money. They talk about how they made money as a consultant and decided out of the kindness of their hearts to teach others.
What's clear is that the money the majority of them made wasn't from "doing the thing" but rather from the course that they're teaching.
Then someone takes the course and copies + puts their own spin on it. Rinse and repeat.
This is why I love the Bo Burnham answer to this question: Give up
https://youtu.be/q-JgG0ECp2U
https://youtu.be/q-JgG0ECp2U
This! Timing, opportunity and location matter (wealthy parents are a good start too). Pick your choice of billionaire and look at their beginning. You can rarely see something truly jaw dropping.
Steve Jobs? Check a picture of the house he grew up in.
If you think a white kid growing up in that house in SV had comparable opportunity to most people in the US, your understanding of most people's circumstances is not even in the ballpark with reality.
$billionaire Oprah grew up on welfare.
Paul Jobs was born and raised in Wisconsin, not SV. He never graduated from high school.
Paul Jobs was born and raised in Wisconsin, not SV. He never graduated from high school.
Exceptions don't disprove the rule, only that it's not an absolute. Check the houses all billionaires grew up in. Most will be mansions.
Did Gates/Bezos/Ballmer/Allen/Musk/Page/Brin grow up in mansions?
"Mansions" is hard to quantify; whether a given house was a mansion will be subjective, and doesn't correlate super well with the amount of financial support they gave their child. But if you want to really dig into the details:
> Gates
His father was a high powered lawyer in Seattle; his mother was a member on a number of corporate and philanthropic boards, including one that gave her direct access to the Chairman of IBM at the precise moment that Microsoft was attempting to sell software to IBM.
> Bezos
His parents loaned him a quarter million dollars to start Amazon in the mid 90s.
> Ballmer
His father was a "manager" at Ford, which could mean a wide range of things; he grew up in a very wealthy area.
> Allen
He seems to have come from genuinely middle class roots - his parents were a librarian and an elementary school teacher.
> Musk
This one is pretty complicated; his father owned an emerald mine and seems to have been quite wealthy, though Elon disputes his father's claim that he invested money in Elon's first company.
> Page
Both parents were academics in computer science.
> Brin
Both parents were academics, immigrating from the USSR to the US - his father ended up teaching math at the University of Maryland, his mother doing research at NASA.
So that's two (Gates and Bezos) where their parents were significantly wealthy and influential in useful ways; two where it's unclear how much they got real benefit from their parents' wealth, but they certainly didn't grow up poor (Ballmer and Musk); two where the parents weren't rich but academically involved (Page and Brin); and one where they were genuinely just middle class folks (Allen).
> Gates
His father was a high powered lawyer in Seattle; his mother was a member on a number of corporate and philanthropic boards, including one that gave her direct access to the Chairman of IBM at the precise moment that Microsoft was attempting to sell software to IBM.
> Bezos
His parents loaned him a quarter million dollars to start Amazon in the mid 90s.
> Ballmer
His father was a "manager" at Ford, which could mean a wide range of things; he grew up in a very wealthy area.
> Allen
He seems to have come from genuinely middle class roots - his parents were a librarian and an elementary school teacher.
> Musk
This one is pretty complicated; his father owned an emerald mine and seems to have been quite wealthy, though Elon disputes his father's claim that he invested money in Elon's first company.
> Page
Both parents were academics in computer science.
> Brin
Both parents were academics, immigrating from the USSR to the US - his father ended up teaching math at the University of Maryland, his mother doing research at NASA.
So that's two (Gates and Bezos) where their parents were significantly wealthy and influential in useful ways; two where it's unclear how much they got real benefit from their parents' wealth, but they certainly didn't grow up poor (Ballmer and Musk); two where the parents weren't rich but academically involved (Page and Brin); and one where they were genuinely just middle class folks (Allen).
Allen met Gates at the private school they both attended - surely being able to attend such a school classifies as "benefiting from parents' wealth"?
I've got a friend who's sometimes used as an example of breaking out of impoverished surroundings. They note that he grew up in public housing in the burned out South Bronx Regan famously toured on TV, and after graduating Harvard Summa Cum Laude, went on to become a successful and well-known frontrunner in his field. He's smart as hell, a great guy, and add hard of a worker as any. So was his father, a construction worker who played an instrumental part in mentoring his son. That's the ideal, right?
He gets irritated as hell when people use him as a token success story because he knows none of it would have happened if he— among many others just like him— didn't win the lottery at an elite prep school close enough for him to logistically manage attending despite no family resources. The hard work, character, and intelligence were the base line that would likely have meant modest incremental gains— like his smart, capable, hardworking father made— without winning that hat draw. The connections he made in prep school— not even at Harvard— got him where he is in his career. When you're living on the edge of financial solubility, you just don't get the opportunity to invest in the future because 100% or more of your output goes into funding your present, and there are a hell of a lot more smart people out there than lottery spots in elite prep schools. The difficulties that his childhood friends faced progressing through public high school in that environment sink a lot of people with a lot of potential-- the graduation rate of his local high school is currently 26%, and how many of them do you think attend Harvard, where 46% of white students were admitted with the help of legacy status, proficiency in almost exclusively white sports not available in public schools like fencing, squash, and crew, or being the child of faculty? If you think people who get that start in life have equal opportunity to make something of themselves, you're delusional.
He gets irritated as hell when people use him as a token success story because he knows none of it would have happened if he— among many others just like him— didn't win the lottery at an elite prep school close enough for him to logistically manage attending despite no family resources. The hard work, character, and intelligence were the base line that would likely have meant modest incremental gains— like his smart, capable, hardworking father made— without winning that hat draw. The connections he made in prep school— not even at Harvard— got him where he is in his career. When you're living on the edge of financial solubility, you just don't get the opportunity to invest in the future because 100% or more of your output goes into funding your present, and there are a hell of a lot more smart people out there than lottery spots in elite prep schools. The difficulties that his childhood friends faced progressing through public high school in that environment sink a lot of people with a lot of potential-- the graduation rate of his local high school is currently 26%, and how many of them do you think attend Harvard, where 46% of white students were admitted with the help of legacy status, proficiency in almost exclusively white sports not available in public schools like fencing, squash, and crew, or being the child of faculty? If you think people who get that start in life have equal opportunity to make something of themselves, you're delusional.
I gather Musk did. But I'd agree the argument that the easiest way to become a billionaire, at least in the tech industry, is to be born to exceptionally rich parents probably doesn't hold water. Still, I don't think any of them grew up dirt poor either.
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Oprah grew up on welfare.
Sounds like a good argument for socialism then :)
Oprah's the kind of person who would succeed regardless.
Regardless of whether her parents were even able to feed properly her as a child?
I'd actually be quite curious about her own views on the degree to which government-provided assistance made it possible for her to get where she is today, though she seems to have avoided voicing them publicly.
I'd actually be quite curious about her own views on the degree to which government-provided assistance made it possible for her to get where she is today, though she seems to have avoided voicing them publicly.
> Regardless of whether her parents were even able to feed properly her as a child?
We have the school lunch program for that.
But I enjoy everyone needing to keep moving the goal posts. In what other country can a Black woman on welfare become a billionaire?
We have the school lunch program for that.
But I enjoy everyone needing to keep moving the goal posts. In what other country can a Black woman on welfare become a billionaire?
What goalposts are you talking about? At any rate, plenty of other countries have their own rags-to-riches stories (India being the first to come to mind). I don't think such isolated/exceptional cases tell us much about what sorts of economic systems produce the best overall results, and to link back to the original post, many of them probably have their own "carrot stories" behind them too.
Oh and the school lunch program is still socialism, btw!
Oh and the school lunch program is still socialism, btw!
Yes/No/Yes/No/Yes/No/No
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These people need to believe they’re exceptional and therefore deserve it. In reality they (sometimes) worked very hard in order to have a chance to be lucky.
In other words: you can't make luck, but you need to lay the foundations for it.
Yeah. You need to work hard for a chance to roll the dice.
Totally agree. A good buddy of mine worked really hard for this. Because of all this he was able to get some major funding for his startup and has been majorly successful. And it helps his uncle too because he can reap the rewards of such a big seed round.
It's a loaded dice called loaded parents, you can roll and rerolled until you are lucky. It's still hard work, but if you can continue to play even the talentless are to strike gold.
>*on becoming rich. So much opportunity is either created or destroyed by external circumstances that we don't perceive, let alone control.*
Holy F!
this is in words the problem that I have had for over a decade as a consultant ;
I was a consultant who was not aware of the leverage against me by consultancies for whom I executed billion $ projects and they just squirted me out after they got their fill.
I cant articulate a clear picture in words at the moment - but your comment snippet really triggered the way my emotions are to those I worked for in the past and how robbed I feel. (I have my own self fulfillment - I am just recognizing how much I was truly being taken advantage of...
Holy F!
this is in words the problem that I have had for over a decade as a consultant ;
I was a consultant who was not aware of the leverage against me by consultancies for whom I executed billion $ projects and they just squirted me out after they got their fill.
I cant articulate a clear picture in words at the moment - but your comment snippet really triggered the way my emotions are to those I worked for in the past and how robbed I feel. (I have my own self fulfillment - I am just recognizing how much I was truly being taken advantage of...
I think this is a good mental model to employ, but also has the potential to poison positivity.
Hard work and perseverance can (and IME often does) lead to success. There's this attractive narrative that any outlier success is entirely built from seedy/unethical/immoral/corrupt acts. This narrative helps to justify and excuse mediocrity. Instead, we should be asking the hard questions which may encourage harder/smarter work and perseverance.
Hard work and perseverance can (and IME often does) lead to success. There's this attractive narrative that any outlier success is entirely built from seedy/unethical/immoral/corrupt acts. This narrative helps to justify and excuse mediocrity. Instead, we should be asking the hard questions which may encourage harder/smarter work and perseverance.
It depends on the type of success you are after.
Doing well and creating great stuff can be due to hard work but raising to certain positions of power definitely requires gaming the system in ways that can be seen as anti ethical or at least counter to the alleged ethos of the company, group, etc.
People in different hierarchies end up optimizing for their careers and detract from any Analysis that will conclude otherwise, putting themselves in positions where they have always someone to deflect to and focus on personal branding over real results because, in the end, it's what allow them to also have real results some times.
It's an "end justifies the means" and "it's the name of the game".
It becomes more and more buteocratic, political and networkey the higher you climb/interact.
Those will be very interested in talking abour merit ( pretending others are "mediocre") and fairness while playing under different rules
Doing well and creating great stuff can be due to hard work but raising to certain positions of power definitely requires gaming the system in ways that can be seen as anti ethical or at least counter to the alleged ethos of the company, group, etc.
People in different hierarchies end up optimizing for their careers and detract from any Analysis that will conclude otherwise, putting themselves in positions where they have always someone to deflect to and focus on personal branding over real results because, in the end, it's what allow them to also have real results some times.
It's an "end justifies the means" and "it's the name of the game".
It becomes more and more buteocratic, political and networkey the higher you climb/interact.
Those will be very interested in talking abour merit ( pretending others are "mediocre") and fairness while playing under different rules
I agree with you - not all success can be achieved only through hard work.
I feel that our (societal) culture is all about bringing down those who achieve success by vilifying them for specific actions. My purpose of my post was purely to shed light that carrot problems are not as common as one may think and that they are only part of the story.
Said another way, the article is right that what is said about success and how it was achieved is often a marketing oriented autobiography. That doesn't necessarily mean that the lies and embellishments conceal insidious actions.
I feel that our (societal) culture is all about bringing down those who achieve success by vilifying them for specific actions. My purpose of my post was purely to shed light that carrot problems are not as common as one may think and that they are only part of the story.
Said another way, the article is right that what is said about success and how it was achieved is often a marketing oriented autobiography. That doesn't necessarily mean that the lies and embellishments conceal insidious actions.
I would say that hard work and perseverance are always necessary at some point but not always sufficient for success.
I find that people place too much emphasis on "hard" work and not the "right" work. Personally, I know too many people who have worked their butts off... on the wrong problems.
It's quite simple to continue sweating on the same path, if not easy. But it feels like people prefer difficulty to complexity.
Of course, even working hard on the right problems carries no guarantee. Yet, life isn't about guarantees, but about rigging the dice in your favor.
It's quite simple to continue sweating on the same path, if not easy. But it feels like people prefer difficulty to complexity.
Of course, even working hard on the right problems carries no guarantee. Yet, life isn't about guarantees, but about rigging the dice in your favor.
It's pretty much "if your success depends on luck you still have to show up and start rolling the dice"
If hard work and perseverance are your North Star, I kinda assume listening to VCs and famous people's success stories won't bring you much in the first place.
I don’t think you can ever really learn from what a person says helped them do X. You have to look at the person themselves and try to figure out what about them made X happen - people have too much of a blind spot comparing themselves to the world outside their bubble, or understanding how other people perceive them. They lack the perspective to really know what about them is different
For example most successful founders and CEOs in my experience may say taking meeting notes or setting a high bar helps. But really what helped is that they had personality traits leading to these behaviors which are what truly drove the benefits - they are meticulous and detail oriented so they want to use writing to nail down ideas, they set high standards for themselves and others so they do whatever it takes to avoid a bad hire or lazy decision. It would be considered impolite for the CEO to say that about themselves, and maybe they don’t even notice how much of an outlier they are in those traits, so instead you get told the effect rather than the cause of their success. Someone without those traits trying to ape out the processes won’t be able to realize the benefits.
Similarly I think to a degree the whole “be connected or privileged from birth” is meant to be taken implicitly rather than ignored altogether, sometimes. Nobody wants to launch into a discussion about social class or inequality in some PR puff piece that’s like “oh mr startup ceo why are you so rich and successful”. Like in tennis nobody is going to say the secret to success is to have tiger parents and access to facilities and training from a young age that 99% of people can’t afford. When people say “leverage your connections” they’re kind of saying Joe Average without connections is out of the game until they build those connections, but politely.
For example most successful founders and CEOs in my experience may say taking meeting notes or setting a high bar helps. But really what helped is that they had personality traits leading to these behaviors which are what truly drove the benefits - they are meticulous and detail oriented so they want to use writing to nail down ideas, they set high standards for themselves and others so they do whatever it takes to avoid a bad hire or lazy decision. It would be considered impolite for the CEO to say that about themselves, and maybe they don’t even notice how much of an outlier they are in those traits, so instead you get told the effect rather than the cause of their success. Someone without those traits trying to ape out the processes won’t be able to realize the benefits.
Similarly I think to a degree the whole “be connected or privileged from birth” is meant to be taken implicitly rather than ignored altogether, sometimes. Nobody wants to launch into a discussion about social class or inequality in some PR puff piece that’s like “oh mr startup ceo why are you so rich and successful”. Like in tennis nobody is going to say the secret to success is to have tiger parents and access to facilities and training from a young age that 99% of people can’t afford. When people say “leverage your connections” they’re kind of saying Joe Average without connections is out of the game until they build those connections, but politely.
This is one reason the field of behavioral economics is important to society: there are things that an individual or company would never publicly admit to doing — but which they're fine to admitting under NDA, to be used as a datapoint in an anonymized dataset used in academic research.
So, while no individual company will tell you that everyone's using dark patterns or hiring their friends, behavioral economists can put forth evidence-backed arguments that this is the case — and so save you the trouble of bothering to chase the Carrot.
So, while no individual company will tell you that everyone's using dark patterns or hiring their friends, behavioral economists can put forth evidence-backed arguments that this is the case — and so save you the trouble of bothering to chase the Carrot.
There is a great quote I read here about how your life changes once you are read into valuable info that no one else has. It was Daniel Ellsberg giving advice to Henry Kissinger when he first got his security clearances:
>You will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364718
>You will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364718
See also Bruce Schneier's essay on the same subject, discussed just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37091989
This is a great way to describe all those "buy my book to learn how to make money online!" scams. The real way to make the money is to trick people into buying the books/courses/doodads, but you can't actually _say_ that. (Or if you do, you have to do so in such a way that you're pretending you're letting the buyer become part of the "inside club", so they don't feel tricked, they feel like they can start tricking people now, too. Very classic con strategy.)
There’s an offshoot of this where they don’t know why anything worked, so they ascribe success to the things they hope worked.
Viz. the screenwriter William Goldman’s “Nobody knows anything” from his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-11-ca-807-st... https://variety.com/2018/film/opinion/william-goldman-dies-a...
I was thinking the same. Luck also plays a huge part in this area, but will the highly paid managers admit this or even know about it
no - they'll say it's down to <insert absolutlty anything they can make up>
no - they'll say it's down to <insert absolutlty anything they can make up>
They admit luck plays a huge part - but only bad luck destroying their perfect plans.
So a bit like big corporations making tons of money through monopolies, regulatory capture and corporate welfare, but then having to pretend their success was down to 'the market'
Yes but there is also the inverse carrot problem. E.g. if the pilots have radar, they are more liable to rely on it and neglect other aspects of flying. Similarly in business, it is simply harder for folks who grew up rich to develop the level of grit that comes natural to the less privileged.
I may sound like a rich apologist, but please believe me when I say it is harder to spend 10 hrs a day cranking on a risky startup if you know you can be clubbing with daddy's money
I may sound like a rich apologist, but please believe me when I say it is harder to spend 10 hrs a day cranking on a risky startup if you know you can be clubbing with daddy's money
>For this reason, Carrot Problems greatly increase the value fo being an "insider".
>There's some fields where it really might be true that you can learn everything you need to know by reading books at the public library. But anytime people are succeeding for reasons they won't admit in public, it's hard to get a grasp on the situation unless you have private back-channels.
I feel this is a natural response when you're in a low-trust low-signal-to-noise-ratio environment. You have to keep things close to the chest and limit access, or else you'll spend all your time sifting through the noise. For example, the best way to reach me is by phone. But it's not enough to know my phone number to successfully reach me; you have to be in my private circle for me to pick up and respond. Everyone else is likely just scammers and telemarketers.
>There's some fields where it really might be true that you can learn everything you need to know by reading books at the public library. But anytime people are succeeding for reasons they won't admit in public, it's hard to get a grasp on the situation unless you have private back-channels.
I feel this is a natural response when you're in a low-trust low-signal-to-noise-ratio environment. You have to keep things close to the chest and limit access, or else you'll spend all your time sifting through the noise. For example, the best way to reach me is by phone. But it's not enough to know my phone number to successfully reach me; you have to be in my private circle for me to pick up and respond. Everyone else is likely just scammers and telemarketers.
It's also often the case that a lot of the hands-on day-to-day practical things are simply not very prestigious and can't be published in a way that they will appear in the "public library" or academic journals. It's not even necessarily that people want to withhold that knowledge to reduce competition, but simply the effort of writing it all up properly is not worth it. The same time could be spent working on something that results in a prestigious publication. Of course sometimes people will altruistically draft up such things in blog posts. But then again, anything people write passes through their own internal filter of "will this make me look good?" so ultimately, you can only see the real tips by closely working with and watching with successful people.
For example many of these people may work ridiculous hours and sacrifice on their personal relations. Now try posting that on Twitter and you'll be crucified that you are encouraging unhealthy culture and you are a bad person for posting this. So most people don't bother.
For example many of these people may work ridiculous hours and sacrifice on their personal relations. Now try posting that on Twitter and you'll be crucified that you are encouraging unhealthy culture and you are a bad person for posting this. So most people don't bother.
Here's another carrot problem:
You see people all around you appearing to be cooler and more popular by proclaiming there's no point in working hard because the whole system is rigged. Not working and riding to the top of HN on your cynicism sure is tempting if you can justify it. But you don't know whether the people who claim that are actually secretly successful and just trying to win points by appealing to popular discontent. And you won't find out whether studying and working could have made you successful, because now you feel it's not worth trying.
Even in the slacker 90s where we were all convinced we'd never earn as much as our parents, the self-pitying cynicism wasn't this rampant.
You see people all around you appearing to be cooler and more popular by proclaiming there's no point in working hard because the whole system is rigged. Not working and riding to the top of HN on your cynicism sure is tempting if you can justify it. But you don't know whether the people who claim that are actually secretly successful and just trying to win points by appealing to popular discontent. And you won't find out whether studying and working could have made you successful, because now you feel it's not worth trying.
Even in the slacker 90s where we were all convinced we'd never earn as much as our parents, the self-pitying cynicism wasn't this rampant.
For example it is cool to be anti-capitalist - and many people knocking capitalism are just signaling for status: https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/ugh-capitalism (probably HN off-topic because politicised.)
> Various companies make a lot of money by implementing "dark patterns", such as getting customers onto subscriptions and then making it hard for them to cancel. They can't admit that this is why their revenue went up, so they make a bunch of claims about how their success comes out of [various beneficent strategies], but anyone who tries to replicate the success by using those lovely strategies is liable to go broke.
This bullet point makes me wonder if there are situations where newcomers end up beating the original company because consumers are willing to pay an enormous premium just to avoid the dark patterns.
Carrot solutions? :)
This bullet point makes me wonder if there are situations where newcomers end up beating the original company because consumers are willing to pay an enormous premium just to avoid the dark patterns.
Carrot solutions? :)
Indeed there are. I pay high premium to alternatives, which has monthly cancel options.
Some of these cost me > ~35-40% long-term, but it reassuring that, if I am suddenly in misfortune or tight spots, I could rapidly rid myself of some luxuries in a blink. :)
Some of these cost me > ~35-40% long-term, but it reassuring that, if I am suddenly in misfortune or tight spots, I could rapidly rid myself of some luxuries in a blink. :)
Reaction...
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nobody_ever_went_broke_undere...
And plausibly "nobody ever made money by overestimating the intelligence..."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nobody_ever_went_broke_undere...
And plausibly "nobody ever made money by overestimating the intelligence..."
Or you are liable to go broke thinking your site can make money with only the "lovely strategies" without the "dark patterns".
I had to deal with that (digital) six sigma crap because Jack Welch had not yet left a giant crater in the ground and so people thought he was a wizard.
He helped bring us the mass layoff and made tons of money dumping PCBs into the river. Apparently wells there are still toxic without treatment.
He helped bring us the mass layoff and made tons of money dumping PCBs into the river. Apparently wells there are still toxic without treatment.
You are demonstrating the inverse-carrot-problem: six-sigma was not invented by Welch and he was only one of many that talked about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma
Damn. My mom told me carrots would improve my eyesight when I was little and I've lived with this my whole life. This article ruined my sense of accomplishment after eating carrots but I loved it.
How interesting - I remember being told this as a child too! Now I know its origin. Where are your parents from? My family is British, but I am curious to know whether the British propaganda had any impact on German culture too, and also whether it was exploiting a pre-existing belief that consuming carrots improved vision.
My mother is American. Her parents met during ww2 in Brazil, where my grandfather was stationed. So maybe it was a lie that permeated those involved with the war at the time. I accused her of spreading fake news this morning after reading this and she couldn’t recall where she had heard it.
I just asked my wife, who is from Hong Kong, if she had heard this as a child and she said she had not. Her grandparents were really young during the war and Brits and Cantonese were pretty segregated until after ww2, so it might make sense that this didn’t reach her family.
I just asked my wife, who is from Hong Kong, if she had heard this as a child and she said she had not. Her grandparents were really young during the war and Brits and Cantonese were pretty segregated until after ww2, so it might make sense that this didn’t reach her family.
As a German, I can at least say that the propaganda worked here, as intended :)
Good lies have some basis in truth. Vitamin A deficiency will damage eyesight, and carrots have a lot of vitamin A so they'll prevent deficiency. So your mom wasn't totally off.
Another possible term for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
Another wiki describing the term:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Parallel_Construction
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Parallel_Construction
And another related concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
One entity provides advice, a different one applies it.
Cargo cult: The advice is applied incorrectly.
Carrot problem: The advice is provided incorrectly.
How to distinguish the two, without understanding the details? Looking at what worked doesn't help. Checking the motivation for providing the advice is asymmetric. Any other ideas?
Cargo cult: The advice is applied incorrectly.
Carrot problem: The advice is provided incorrectly.
How to distinguish the two, without understanding the details? Looking at what worked doesn't help. Checking the motivation for providing the advice is asymmetric. Any other ideas?
That is something different. There is no deceit or hidden information (well not necessarily). Where as a carrot problem needs there to be deceit and hidden information.
Yes there is, that's the whole point actually
“Sandbagging” fits better.
Carrots can improve your eyesight https://www.drlatter.com/blog/do-carrots-actually-improve-yo...
I'm really glad to have a word for this now.
It makes me wonder how many carrot problems I've fallen for myself, or have been intending to fall for )not realizing they are carrot problems) and haven't got around to yet.
Also how many other ideas I would like to have a word for.
It makes me wonder how many carrot problems I've fallen for myself, or have been intending to fall for )not realizing they are carrot problems) and haven't got around to yet.
Also how many other ideas I would like to have a word for.
Secret to success: Rich parents and luck
Another secret to success: Have enough luck to make up for not having rich parents.
Another secret to success: Have enough luck to make up for not having rich parents.
I like to believe consisently making good decisions is also part of success, but I'm not that successful yet.
Also, if "luck" is factors outside of your control, having rich parents would count as luck. :)
Also, if "luck" is factors outside of your control, having rich parents would count as luck. :)
I'd believe the thing about the carrots was about marketing for carrots before tricking the Germans.
It's not like such things haven't been done. In the states there are plenty of scams (marketing) to convince us to eat more grains, or drink milk, or consume more {product}. Don't see why it wouldn't be the same anywhere else.
We had a whole cartoon character dedicated to convincing people to eat spinach, which we were wrong about being particularly beneficial as well. These kinds of things, even when well intentioned, have secondary, harmful effects, that far outweigh their purported benefits.
It's not like such things haven't been done. In the states there are plenty of scams (marketing) to convince us to eat more grains, or drink milk, or consume more {product}. Don't see why it wouldn't be the same anywhere else.
We had a whole cartoon character dedicated to convincing people to eat spinach, which we were wrong about being particularly beneficial as well. These kinds of things, even when well intentioned, have secondary, harmful effects, that far outweigh their purported benefits.
Spinach is delicious though, so if you can eat it, I would also suggest you do. It is especially nice when mixed in with wet dishes like pasta or boiled rice.
The formula for success is not a sum of factors, it's a multiplication of factors.
Yes, you need luck to be > 0. But you better have hard work also > 0, or you won't have any success anyway.
No, the sales and marketing guys are not parasites leeching off your hard work because you're the one wrinting the code. It's not S + C, it's S * C.
No, it doesn't matter how good and productive you are, if you don't know how to search for jobs, pass interviews, etc, you won't have a job.
And not wanting to work hard because "you need luck anyway" is not a winning strategy.
Yes, you need luck to be > 0. But you better have hard work also > 0, or you won't have any success anyway.
No, the sales and marketing guys are not parasites leeching off your hard work because you're the one wrinting the code. It's not S + C, it's S * C.
No, it doesn't matter how good and productive you are, if you don't know how to search for jobs, pass interviews, etc, you won't have a job.
And not wanting to work hard because "you need luck anyway" is not a winning strategy.
A very successful friend of mine once said...
There are two secrets to being successful:
1. Don't explain the secret to your success.
There are two secrets to being successful:
1. Don't explain the secret to your success.
Business advantages only exist with some degree of information asymmetry. People only want to share this over when either they are not playing the game or the market incentivizes open sharing (e.g. patent systems for innovation).
Unfortunately for business outcomes or in case of war advantages - it has the exact opposite incentive - sharing this leads to loss of market share, more competition, chances of leaks and enemy knowing about your tactics and investing in R&D.
Unfortunately for business outcomes or in case of war advantages - it has the exact opposite incentive - sharing this leads to loss of market share, more competition, chances of leaks and enemy knowing about your tactics and investing in R&D.
The anabolic steroids thing isn't really elucidated properly.
The problems regarding this, that make it a true carrot problem, are as follows:
1. Enhanced athletes aggressively claiming to be and marketing themselves as natural for explicit monetary incentives.
2. Enhanced athletes claiming to achieve amazing things naturally for obvious incentives and mitigation of disincentives. Generally, the notion that any top athlete isn't "enhanced" is absurd. Anabolic steroids are a huge boost, trust me. Wink wink nudge. You go from being a mere mortal to feeling powerful, and your physical recovery is completely changed. You become wolverine.
Enhanced athletes claiming to be natural because they don't want to get in trouble and telling you to do pyramid supersets isn't really a problem because it's probably going to work (hypertrophy isn't hard, it's easy) and it's pretty obvious they're enhanced. You don't need steroids to get decent results, pretty much everyone has a base capacity for this.
Enhanced athletes explicitly claiming to be natural for monetary incentives can harm people financially and physically, and this is a wildly popular grift.
The problems regarding this, that make it a true carrot problem, are as follows:
1. Enhanced athletes aggressively claiming to be and marketing themselves as natural for explicit monetary incentives.
2. Enhanced athletes claiming to achieve amazing things naturally for obvious incentives and mitigation of disincentives. Generally, the notion that any top athlete isn't "enhanced" is absurd. Anabolic steroids are a huge boost, trust me. Wink wink nudge. You go from being a mere mortal to feeling powerful, and your physical recovery is completely changed. You become wolverine.
Enhanced athletes claiming to be natural because they don't want to get in trouble and telling you to do pyramid supersets isn't really a problem because it's probably going to work (hypertrophy isn't hard, it's easy) and it's pretty obvious they're enhanced. You don't need steroids to get decent results, pretty much everyone has a base capacity for this.
Enhanced athletes explicitly claiming to be natural for monetary incentives can harm people financially and physically, and this is a wildly popular grift.
I like how the author has established “The Carrot Problem” as a novel concept that cannot be explained as “the stuff that happens after people lie”
But it's much more specific than that. I know that it's common in such blogs to introduce useless neologisms and reinvent established concepts, but this seems to warrant it enough.
It's specifically that success often relies on something that its user doesn't want to admit (either to stop competition, as in the war example, or just because the tool is socially unacceptable or wouldn't make them look good), but they also don't want to say "I won't tell you, it's a secret" and instead they make up some other reason that actually doesn't work. This is way more concrete than just "what happens after people lie". Many lies aren't about reasons and recipes for success.
It's specifically that success often relies on something that its user doesn't want to admit (either to stop competition, as in the war example, or just because the tool is socially unacceptable or wouldn't make them look good), but they also don't want to say "I won't tell you, it's a secret" and instead they make up some other reason that actually doesn't work. This is way more concrete than just "what happens after people lie". Many lies aren't about reasons and recipes for success.
Another example: when I realized that most of the commercially successful bands that got played on the radio when I was young, including a few that I liked, were there because of payola, not because their music was better or their work ethic or whatever. They were probably better at sucking up to the gatekeepers who would pay off radio stations (illegally) to play their songs.
This one is super interesting.
If you listen to the Solid Gold Oldies channel on Music Choice, you'll, of course, hear The Beatles, Elvis, Beach Boys and others like them, but you'll also hear LOADS of songs you might recognize from artists you've never seen before!
If you read their Wikipedia entries (well, the artists that have one anyway; many have been memory-holed), while they benefited from payola, not only did their careers not really go anywhere after that one hit or two, but because of how recording contracts were structured back then (one full record, usually several, with a few mandatory Christmas songs and almost none of your creative input), once those records ultimately didn't sell, they were kicked from the record and never recovered.
Not even sucking up was enough to guarantee a decent career in music, even if your song hit the air waves!
(I'm mentioning SGO since payola was big back then. Payola was outlawed years later, but given that iHeartRadio/Clear Channel basically bought out most of the radio stations in the US and control entire playlists, has it _really_ gone away?)
If you listen to the Solid Gold Oldies channel on Music Choice, you'll, of course, hear The Beatles, Elvis, Beach Boys and others like them, but you'll also hear LOADS of songs you might recognize from artists you've never seen before!
If you read their Wikipedia entries (well, the artists that have one anyway; many have been memory-holed), while they benefited from payola, not only did their careers not really go anywhere after that one hit or two, but because of how recording contracts were structured back then (one full record, usually several, with a few mandatory Christmas songs and almost none of your creative input), once those records ultimately didn't sell, they were kicked from the record and never recovered.
Not even sucking up was enough to guarantee a decent career in music, even if your song hit the air waves!
(I'm mentioning SGO since payola was big back then. Payola was outlawed years later, but given that iHeartRadio/Clear Channel basically bought out most of the radio stations in the US and control entire playlists, has it _really_ gone away?)
This is a problem but the fact we know the real reason for the US pilots’ success was not carrots shows we (eventually) got the correct information.
So the question is - how does this happen today? Journalists investigating companies? Analysts giving insight into what is happening behind the scenes? Whistleblowers?
So the question is - how does this happen today? Journalists investigating companies? Analysts giving insight into what is happening behind the scenes? Whistleblowers?
The steroids thing is a great example that shows that “we” don’t know things. Even when the information is out there some don’t have access to it and some don’t believe it. For every pro bodybuilder or shredded Hollywood actor using steroids (many, to put it lightly), there are tons of people following their routines and diets, thinking it will lead to similar results. Not all that much research and critical thinking will show that that’s not going to happen.
This isn’t really an answer to your question, but the bummer is that even someone like the people you listed telling the truth isn’t enough. Shit, tons of people still believe the thing about carrots.
This isn’t really an answer to your question, but the bummer is that even someone like the people you listed telling the truth isn’t enough. Shit, tons of people still believe the thing about carrots.
yes, i thought john cena like body was achievable.
but after working out for 4 years consistently, i can pretty much say its nigh impossible.
if you want to bulk up like that, you need steroids. yes, even john cena like body which doesn't look that huge but its huge & can't be done without steroids.
heck, the liver king used the carrot problem incredibly to his advantage. he told people he got big eating liver. only after he made his $100m empire did he admit to it on andrew schultz podcast.
but after working out for 4 years consistently, i can pretty much say its nigh impossible.
if you want to bulk up like that, you need steroids. yes, even john cena like body which doesn't look that huge but its huge & can't be done without steroids.
heck, the liver king used the carrot problem incredibly to his advantage. he told people he got big eating liver. only after he made his $100m empire did he admit to it on andrew schultz podcast.
insiders knowing about stuff like this.
i have heard you can't get big in hollywood/bollywood if you don't exchange sexual favors. that's why they all protect rapists, sexual assaulters, etc...
there's a reason those who complain about sexual assaults, rape, etc... have their careers finished rather than the opposite.
like epstein's connections are not known bcz they are all in on it. everyone has skeletons in the closet. i mean it wouldn't be hard to get away with murder/rape if someone were rich. sounds like sci-fi but i find it real after hearing those dubai stories.
this is just one example. 3 examples op listed were also terrific.
one such case is recent. someone who is a recent graduate got a job through connections (nepotism?) & makes a lot of salary than others working the same position while doing little to no work. this is a personal experience of someone close.
then there's black hat tactics startups use that they can't admit to. like airbnb using #1 hacker. or someone using leaked databases to find emails. i saw a recent startup that matched twitter accounts with emails when twitter database got leaked. i'm sure that person is telling people some other story on how he got emails.
once you look at it, you'll find a lot of carrot problems in life. the reason why i posted it last night as soon as i found it.
i have heard you can't get big in hollywood/bollywood if you don't exchange sexual favors. that's why they all protect rapists, sexual assaulters, etc...
there's a reason those who complain about sexual assaults, rape, etc... have their careers finished rather than the opposite.
like epstein's connections are not known bcz they are all in on it. everyone has skeletons in the closet. i mean it wouldn't be hard to get away with murder/rape if someone were rich. sounds like sci-fi but i find it real after hearing those dubai stories.
this is just one example. 3 examples op listed were also terrific.
one such case is recent. someone who is a recent graduate got a job through connections (nepotism?) & makes a lot of salary than others working the same position while doing little to no work. this is a personal experience of someone close.
then there's black hat tactics startups use that they can't admit to. like airbnb using #1 hacker. or someone using leaked databases to find emails. i saw a recent startup that matched twitter accounts with emails when twitter database got leaked. i'm sure that person is telling people some other story on how he got emails.
once you look at it, you'll find a lot of carrot problems in life. the reason why i posted it last night as soon as i found it.
As someone who went into a STEM field without any family connections to STEM, I have definitely been stuck eating carrots and not knowing why it didn't work.
Interestingly, the human brain tells itself carrot stories all the time:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-hidden-prospect/...
tldr: patients with split brain hemispheres will reflexively make up explanations for decisions made by the other half of their brains. Fascinating stuff, and makes me wonder how many things I've done that serve my subconscious' ulterior motives.
Interestingly, the human brain tells itself carrot stories all the time:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-hidden-prospect/...
tldr: patients with split brain hemispheres will reflexively make up explanations for decisions made by the other half of their brains. Fascinating stuff, and makes me wonder how many things I've done that serve my subconscious' ulterior motives.
I'd love to hear more about what kinds of carrots you were fed coming in from a non-STEM background. For me, the one I can remember was a family friend recommending I stick to an engineering field (mechanical, electrical, civil, etc.) rather than CS because "there was much more money to be made in those fields". Thankfully I stuck to what I liked, which was coding.
Even if you made less with coding, there's also a life balance question on the trade-off of doing what you like VS pure money quantity.
Long term, you want to enjoy your day to day, in any kind of endeavour and the good can get you through the bad.
I don't dispute the split hemispheres story but I don't think its particularly informative about normal cognitive function. I mean missing the connection between your brains is a pretty extreme situation.
So that’s why YC is orange :)
Hits the bulls eyes. That's why it's important to keep your mind always open and question everything. But how much you can question is also limited by cognitive limits we have as humans. SO the only thing you can actually trust is your own direct experience. I have found many books to be useless just because of this reason.
"security through obscurity" as an insult.
Sorry, but obscurity is a big part of security. Always has been, always will be.
Sorry, but obscurity is a big part of security. Always has been, always will be.
The "Carrot Problem", itself, is operational deception covering for the real tradecraft on offer: OPDEC => https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA293799
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Beutifully written, however, there has been a term for this for a long time : "Shiny Object" as well as "Squirrel!"
Are these different, they seem the same to me if your thinking about them on the same level?
Are these different, they seem the same to me if your thinking about them on the same level?
Well at some point someone was told about onboard radar and it was the truth… people lie and people tell the truth. There are infinite lies and fewer truths. But truths are consistent, and lies are hard to keep consistent.
There are many reasons why people become rich. I'm not talking about the guy who saves his entire life and has a comfortable retirement. I'm talking about the very rich. You have the folks who inherit wealth and there is a lot of that. But the folks who are self made, the guys and gals who went from zero to millions, 99% of it was being at the right place at the right time or knowing someone that helped them along. This applies to youtube stars all the way to successful entrepreneurs who somehow built a 100 million dollar business. Are there outliers, of course, but they are far and few between.
So the point is hard work and determination is about 1% of the equation and luck is the other 99%. Like my brother likes to say, I would much rather be very lucky than very smart.
Just saying......
So the point is hard work and determination is about 1% of the equation and luck is the other 99%. Like my brother likes to say, I would much rather be very lucky than very smart.
Just saying......
1) People want X
2) Tell people a big lie about how to acquire X.
3) Chortle, possibly profit.
2) Tell people a big lie about how to acquire X.
3) Chortle, possibly profit.
I’d be curious to know if there was a spike in the price of carrots after that story came out.
My concise way of paraphrasing this:
“ when what you’re aiming for doesn’t add up directly “
No carrots or distractions involved.
“ when what you’re aiming for doesn’t add up directly “
No carrots or distractions involved.
I think this describes most of what I see on my LinkedIn feed.
The carrot problem is that there are too many rabbits.
or is that an opportunity?...
So, "lying".
A specific and interesting form of lying! The pantheon of lies is rich enough to warrant additional terminology :)
Oh there's a whole lying taxonomy and nomenclature. Be assured of it. But only the members of the inner house are allowed to see it. It is restricted technology.
Two of my favorites are "Affirming the Consequent" and the logically equivalent "Denying the Antecedent". How about you?
Are there other examples that you particularly like?
The fallacy of the undistributed middle is particularly prevalent. However, in practice it is usually hidden in implications rather than explicitly stated. For example:
1. Murder is a crime. 2. We should be tough on murder. 3. Therefore, we should be tough on crime. (Deliberately) Omitted: Jaywalking is a crime. Should we be tough on jaywalking?
1. Murder is a crime. 2. We should be tough on murder. 3. Therefore, we should be tough on crime. (Deliberately) Omitted: Jaywalking is a crime. Should we be tough on jaywalking?
We should legalize jaywalking, since it was an invention of the car industry to deflect attention from how dangerous their products were (and are) and is unnecessary for a functioning society. I realize you're using the example rhetorically, but still ... that is what we should do about jaywalking.
And now we illustrate the 2nd-order of the fallacy of the undistributed middle.
1. Situation X in my mind is jaywalking. 2. We should legalize Situation X. 3. Therefore, we should legalize jaywalking. (Accidentally?) Omitted: Situation Y is jaywalking. Should we legalize Situation Y?
1. Situation X in my mind is jaywalking. 2. We should legalize Situation X. 3. Therefore, we should legalize jaywalking. (Accidentally?) Omitted: Situation Y is jaywalking. Should we legalize Situation Y?
Because if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack to make lots of money, why would I be telling people about it? Either I get competition, or I might get whatever loophole I was abusing closed.
So either I'm lying, or what I'm saying isn't possible to reproduce, or the usefulness of the technique ran out and now I'm just trying to squeeze a few more dollars by telling the tale, or I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model crash and burn.