[HN Gopher] Where's the evidence that grit predicts success?
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Where's the evidence that grit predicts success?
Author : dnetesn
Score : 114 points
Date : 2021-04-16 11:29 UTC (1 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| m0llusk wrote:
| It seems like the attempt to gather compelling evidence ends up
| skipping over foundational elements. After all, if someone quits
| consistently then progress is likely to be difficult. The idea of
| grit potentially also connects with two other potentially
| interesting related ideas:
|
| First there is Victor Frankl's observation that those who were
| expected to survive in the concentration camps were the people
| who were young adults, healthy, well fed, smart, and quick.
| However, these people often reacted very badly to sudden change,
| chaos, and the lack of obvious opportunities and would end up
| dead in a week or two as much from hopelessness as privation.
| Meanwhile people who were skinny, weak, sick, and wounded often
| survived one trauma after another because they had something they
| were determined to live for--often family, sometimes cherished
| places or work. Something they longed to return to could keep
| them going.
|
| Second there is the actually rather robustly documented
| phenomenon of John Henryism in which people suffering from
| discrimination or lack of opportunity find success by expending
| tremendous effort only to fall victim to illness early in life as
| the tolls from their exertions accumulate. This is a good example
| of how the grit to success story could have a serious downside
| that should be considered even if the success side might actually
| be realistically and meaningfully obtainable.
| ed405 wrote:
| Finally someone has written a really excellent article about
| this.
|
| Many scientists already know that 'grit' is over-hyped and over-
| sold. Now there's a really well-articulated piece explaining it.
|
| Stay away from one size-fits all 'solutions' to very complex
| problems. Same goes for 'growth' vs. 'fixed mindset' btw.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > Finally someone has written a really excellent article about
| this.
|
| No, it's not an excellent article.
|
| The author is promoting his book, and also suggesting
| government social programs are somehow a replacement for
| personal responsbility - ie. coddling snowflakes.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Are you aware of similar critiques of growth/fixed mindset?
| It's very popular in my kid's school, but I've heard other
| parents say that the pedagogical strategies that are ostensibly
| based on it (not stratifying kids based on ability level) are
| bunk. I'm interested in knowing more about the pros/cons.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I would argue that Carol Dweck argues that if you believe and
| are motivated, you can achieve. The criticism is that while
| motivation and belief i.e. grit is important -- it is only
| half the story. Countless studies have proven what really
| drives academic success -- financially well off parents who
| emphasize education and provide time/money/resources to help
| their children succeed.
|
| "What the team found was there is a correlation between
| someone having more of a growth mindset and doing well
| academically. However, the correlation is small and the
| findings do not support claims that growth mindset
| interventions have profound effects on academic achievement."
| [1]
|
| "The attempted replication of Dweck's work that is about to
| be published concerned the 1998 study on praise and part of
| the 2007 study. Bates and his student Yue Li conducted a
| series of studies in a group of more than 600 Chinese
| students. Their results were mixed but mostly found no
| effect." [2]
|
| [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/growth-mindset-education-
| psy... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-
| arises-ove...
| FabiansMustDie wrote:
| Angela Duckworth is but one evangelist, among many others. It's
| its own phenomenon: academicans (see: people whose self-worth is
| predicated on the popularity of their ideas) preaching their new
| gospel -- itself just a spin-off of some old, not-that-
| enlightening observations. But! If you sell it with enough
| passion and vigor and conviction, it sure does rile the masses
| into believing.
|
| > "My lab has found that this measure beats the pants off I.Q.,
| SAT scores, physical fitness and a bazillion other measures to
| help us know in advance which individuals will be successful in
| some situations,"
|
| Need more be said? Science is itself a self-perpetuating
| industry. Statistics and findings can be massaged into whatever
| you want to see -- that's simply abusing our propensity to
| recognize patterns, to its utmost extreme.
|
| More new, novel, monkey-go-ape patterns to fuss about. More books
| to sell. More speeches to give. More money to make.
|
| Here's a hot-take, that won't drive unneeded publicity and
| revenue towards another idea salesman: the more you persevere --
| i.e the more grit you have -- the more chances you get to
| succeed.
|
| Please please, there's no need to write a PhD dissertation a la
| "A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature."[0]
|
| Absolutely absurd.
|
| [0] Crede, M., Tynan, M.C., & Harms, P.D. Much ado about grit: A
| meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of
| Personality and Social Psychology 113, 492-511 (2017).
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| Until there's data, there's no evidence the TV remote turns on
| the TV.
|
| Until there's data, there's no evidence that hot grills burn my
| hand if I place it on one.
|
| This is the sort of crap that tries to apply the scientific
| method like a hammer and seeing nothing but nails.
|
| The absence of data for a plausible relationship doesn't make
| it impossible, it makes it currently unknown either way. This
| nuance in the explanations of the limits of current knowledge
| is often lost on black&white thinking, overly-rational
| individuals who give the impression something is impossible or
| unlikely because it is currently unknown.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Now seems to be a good point to mention the lack of double-
| blind testing that has been performed on parachutes.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684649/
| ourmandave wrote:
| _The absence of data for a plausible relationship doesn 't
| make it impossible, it makes it currently unknown either
| way._
|
| But life is so much easier when you don't have to do IS NULL
| checks.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Both, grit and success are illdefined.
| arcanon wrote:
| It is necessary, but not sufficient.
| microtherion wrote:
| Grit may not predict success, but _insufficient_ grit might still
| sometimes play a role in career challenges.
|
| There seems to be a whole subgenre of HN posts along the lines of
| "I decided college was a waste of time for someone as uniquely
| gifted as me, so I self studied and have never had a problem
| getting hired for my next contract. Now I want to work at a
| FAANG, but they ask me to code a breadth first search. Why is the
| hiring process so broken?"
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| Here we go again: looking for "success" cargo-cult signals, now
| with more "science!" to demand "evidence" from every
| unscientific/ambiguous/difficult-to-measure area and facet of
| life and reality, rather than improving fundamentals for
| increasing chances in something that has a good deal of
| probability involved. Felix Dennis wrote about this for a good
| chapter or so in his book with the ironic name: "How to Get
| Rich." I would consider the words of a billionaire to carry
| slightly-more weight than those of self-help gurus or thin,
| soundbite blog posts.
|
| Effort / "working-hard" has no value unless it is effectively
| directed at something.
| Viker wrote:
| That is like listening to advice from Elon Musk, good advice
| but he always forgets that all the advice is worthless, if your
| father doesn't have a precious gem mine in Africa .... Bottom
| line will always be:
|
| "Being born rich, is the only guarantee to succes. Everything
| else is pure luck."
|
| You are either born rich, or lucky enough to hit the lottery.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > "Being born rich, is the only guarantee to succes.
| Everything else is pure luck."
|
| Well, luck is an important part.
|
| But some people managed to inherit fantastic wealth and be
| unsuccessful (even in keeping wealth!) anyway.
|
| And to become rich you need luck, but it is not a pure luck!
|
| You need both.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| This emerald mine story is commonly quoted by Elon Musk's
| detractors but it is misinformation and has been explicitly
| labeled a myth by journalists who investigated it
| (https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-
| elon-f...). In terms of hard evidence, it's not even clear
| that his father actually owned a mine, or what qualifies as a
| "mine", or what its output was, or what his father's income
| was from this mine. Most mines are small operations that
| amount to digging on a bit of land, with varying degrees of
| profit (or unprofitability), and not some massive corporate
| operation digging out those giant town-sized holes in the
| planet.
|
| Musk, his brother, and mother left South Africa and moved to
| Canada, fleeing his allegedly abusive father. Elon held
| various odd jobs early on
| (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-
| when-...). He also worked his way through college and ended
| up with lots of student debt
| (https://marketrealist.com/p/elon-musk-emerald-mine/). That
| doesn't match your narrative that he was born into riches and
| was successful only because of that.
|
| I also know plenty of people who weren't born rich and became
| successful via hard work and talent. It is pretty evident
| that their life priorities, work ethic, and other qualities
| are very different from the average person. To reduce their
| lifelong efforts and sacrifices to luck is really just a
| completely false narrative used by people today to undermine
| the idea of a meritocracy, since that's necessary to
| ethically justify large redistributive policies, by labeling
| someone's fortune as "unearned". It's the same reason why
| Musk's detractors repeatedly reach for this emerald mine
| story without a shred of evidence.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| You are mistaken. Errol absolutely played a pivotal role in
| Elon's initial success:
|
| https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/origin-stories/elon-musk
|
| > Since Musk and Kimbal weren't going to get any funding
| with a mere proof-of-concept, they had to build out the
| company using their own capital, and there wasn't much of
| it. When Zip2 launched, Musk only had $2,000 in the bank.
| Kimbal had a bit more, having recently sold his share in a
| College Pro Painters franchise, but most of their startup
| costs were covered by their father, Errol Musk, who gave
| them $28,000 to get going.
|
| Elon's "rebuttal" around this point is highly deceptive.
| Yes, his life with his mom was hard at times. But his dad
| _did_ in actual fact have a half share in a Zambian emerald
| mine for 6 years. He was wealthy before that however, due
| to his engineering company.
|
| So the truth is essentially "both." Did Elon struggle and
| have to show some grit at times? Yes. Did he get access to
| initial capital that many people wouldn't? Yes.
| doggodaddo78 wrote:
| Absolutely conflating apples and oranges. Elon seems to have
| been luckier by being part of the PayPal Mafia, similar, in a
| sense, to the w00w00 group. He may have absolutely no idea
| how or why he got where he did by the choices, beliefs, and
| circumstances he encountered. Felix Dennis OTOH was a wise,
| old hippie who had an appreciation for honest introspection.
| Viker wrote:
| Compeletley agree.
|
| Elon was lucky to be born in a rich family. Made his first
| 100k before 18.
|
| Felix was lucky to be born in time to ride that hippie
| wave.
|
| Just like some people were lucky to throw money on bitcoin
| in 2010~2015.
|
| Still more should be a credited to chanse and luck.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Felix was lucky to be born in time to ride that hippie
| wave.
|
| "In 1969, Dennis wrote a world exclusive for OZ, the
| first ever review of Led Zeppelin's debut album." - talk
| about right place, right time. From there, he gets
| promoted to co-editor, gets hugely famous through a court
| case, which lets him start his own publishing company,
| and the rest is history.
|
| (I'd say there was a lot of luck involved but he also
| seems to have reasonably good judgement and foresight to
| take advantage of it.)
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Dennis didn't get rich off the _Oz_ trial. In fact, he
| was pretty penniless for a good two years after the
| trial, and he did not have the kind of fame that he could
| capitalize on (the judge in the trial had infamously
| called him a dim-witted young man). What started his road
| to vast riches was noticing that Bruce Lee films were
| popular, and starting a new magazine called _Kung Fu
| Monthly_ that, even though it was a pretty primitive rag,
| managed to cash in on the fad.
| FabiansMustDie wrote:
| Felix Dennis was "on the dole" (welfare) and wasn't born into
| riches -- unlike Elon.
|
| Read the book. It's available on LibGen, and is absolutely
| worth coming back again to -- if you want to be rich.
| rdedev wrote:
| This is one datapoint. Not indicative of any route to
| success or making money
| dstick wrote:
| I fully agree, but the parent mentions an important word:
| probability. Combined with your luck, and kept going by grit,
| you most surely have a recipe for success.
|
| If everyone has 0.01% chance to become a millionaire (chance
| - that might not happen, or someone does not aspire to be).
| Then simple probability tells us that a person with grit that
| does not quit at the first attempt but tries 20 times, has a
| 0.2% chance.
|
| "I'm a great believer in luck. I find that the harder I work,
| the more I have of it." is a relevant quote :)
| hooande wrote:
| the point is that the child of a billionaire starts off
| with a 100% chance of being a millionaire. the rest of us
| can try for 50x or 100x longer than avg but the odds of
| getting to that level are still miniscule. and if that's
| the case it makes the whole endeavor seem rather arbitrary
| WalterBright wrote:
| It is not minuscule. For middle class people, the route
| to millionaire status is very doable. Live below your
| means, and regularly invest the difference.
|
| For poor people, the route is to learn a valuable skill,
| move into the middle class, then apply the above.
| lordnacho wrote:
| That just moves the goal posts by a level, doesn't it?
| What's the chance you have a low stress upbringing that
| allows you to work towards such goals? Parents who are
| supportive and believe in that middle class dream,
| teachers who don't give up on you when you misbehave,
| enough comfort to not have to focus on immediate
| concerns?
| WalterBright wrote:
| You can blame your parents and teachers up until age 18,
| then it's on you.
| lordnacho wrote:
| That's one of those statements that's useful as an
| attitude, not so useful as an explanation.
|
| I'm sure people can think of ways your parents influence
| you after the age of majority.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The point is you have a choice, and you're old enough to
| know if following your parents' advice is a good idea or
| not. At 18 it's time to grow up and take responsibility
| for your life.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Have you never someone who thought they had to please
| their parents well into adulthood?
|
| On one hand, yes, on paper you are free when you are 18.
|
| On the other hand, you can't be free without some sort of
| confidence that you'll be ok if you don't do what your
| parents say. And if your parents are the domineering
| kind, they'll have made good use of your first 18 years
| to keep you in their orbit.
|
| Real life is complicated, not everyone has clarity,
| especially at that age.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's their _choice_ , not their destiny.
|
| Young people reject their parents all the time. A
| pervasive issue in parenting is the kids refuse to listen
| to the parents. Movies about it are quite popular - see
| "Dirty Dancing", "Saturday Night Fever", on and on and
| on.
|
| I'm not buying the lack of agency of young people. It's
| just another excuse for _choosing_ the easy way.
|
| If you are not where you want to be in life, have you
| done anything _today_ to move towards that goal? If you
| 've done nothing, then choose better. It's your life, not
| mine. Complaining about not being a billionaire's son is
| a waste of your life.
|
| If you're in the US, of sound mind and body, and over 18,
| there's never been a time in history with more
| opportunity for you. If you refuse to see it, nobody can
| help you. But just think about all those migrants with
| nothing walking thousands of miles with the hope of
| getting into the US.
|
| What do they know that you don't?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| You can't rationally compare the life chances of someone
| whose parents are billionaires - with access to that
| network, and the best schooling, and discussions about
| investing over dinner - with someone born in a shack
| without a book in the house.
|
| An incredibly tiny number of people will be able to do
| well from a near-zero start. And most will do it by being
| aggressively self-serving narcissists.
|
| Everyone else is going to have a much tougher time.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Migrants who walk a thousand miles to get into the US
| come with nothing, yet they on average do rather well
| here.
|
| > without a book in the house
|
| Everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket with access
| to millions of free books.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > Everybody has a supercomputer in their pocket with
| access to millions of free books.
|
| And which ones should you read?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| That's for the person to figure out. If they're hard
| working, they'll sacrifice [some leisure activity] to
| research which books to read.
| lordnacho wrote:
| A reasonable attitude, but one that you would only arrive
| at if you were fortunate enough to pick the right books
| to begin with. Or the right teachers.
| WalterBright wrote:
| "Siri, which free books should I read?"
| anoncake wrote:
| Who you are depends on your upbringing, so no, it's never
| on you.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > it's never on you
|
| People are not robots.
|
| For example, you chose to type your message. The computer
| did not drag your hapless body over to the computer and
| force you to type it in.
| anoncake wrote:
| Yes, they pretty much are. Extremely complicated,
| organic, robots. But that is not the point. Your choices
| depend on your personality and abilities, which in turn
| depend on your upbringing and experiences.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I think you're getting close to arguing that there is no
| free will and that everything in the universe is
| therefore luck or randomness. Perhaps one way to look at
| it is that even if humans philosophically are robots, the
| ones who sacrifice more (via hard work) deserve
| different, better outcomes.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If I followed you around for a day, I could point out all
| the choices you _chose_ to make and could have _chosen_
| to do differently.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/21/luck-hard-work/ is
| an interesting delve into the origins of that phrase (and
| an amusing circular reference back to here.)
| wilsonfiifi wrote:
| I think what you're missing is that to be successful you need
| someone to invest in you and your ideas. Whether it's your
| parents or a VC that point still remains true. However you
| still need to put in the work. So advice from Musk is still
| valuable in a way. Not all his advice though lol. You need to
| pick and choose what's relevant or applicable to your
| situation and that i think requires wisdom and discernment.
|
| Now as to the question of what success is...
| lucianbr wrote:
| If you need to pick and choose wisely what advice to
| follow, then the advice is useless. Might as well pick and
| choose wisely what to do, directly.
| undefined1 wrote:
| > if your father doesn't have a precious gem mine in Africa
|
| "This is a pretty awful lie," Elon tweeted. "I left South
| Africa by myself when I was 17 with just a backpack &
| suitcase of books. Worked on my Mom's cousin's farm in
| Saskatchewan & a lumber mill in Vancouver. Went to Queens
| Univ with scholarship & debt, then same to UPenn/Wharton &
| Stanford."
|
| In a follow-up tweet, Elon said his father "didn't own an
| emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up
| ~$100k in student debt."
|
| His mother Maye responded on Twitter in December 2019 in
| defense of Elon.
|
| "To add to the truth, we went to Boston Chicken in
| Philadelphia for Thanksgiving because we couldn't afford a
| turkey. And we spent three weeks making our rent-controlled
| apartment livable in Toronto," Maye tweeted.
|
| https://moguldom.com/278102/fact-check-did-elon-musk-
| inherit...
| bckr wrote:
| Interesting, I had never seen his denial of the emerald
| mine story or the student debt thing. I wonder what the
| truth is.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Elon is being very deceptive with that "rebuttal."
|
| Here's two articles on his father and how he got his
| fortune: https://www.businessinsider.co.za/how-elon-
| musks-family-came... and
| https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-sells-the-
| family...
|
| > "We were very wealthy," says Errol. "We had so much
| money at times we couldn't even close our safe."
|
| Elon is cherry picking some true details to paint a
| misleading picture. I'm sure he did work in that lumber
| mill, and living with his mom at times of his life might
| have been a financial struggle. But the basic point, that
| he started out in business with family financial
| resources that the overwhelming majority of humans will
| never have, remains true.
|
| If you pay close attention, Elon does this form of
| deception by selection quite often. It's one of the
| things that switched me from cheering him on for tesla,
| spacex, to now more critical and guarded.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >rather than improving fundamentals for increasing chances in
| something that has a good deal of probability involved
|
| In order to do that you have to figure out which 'something has
| a good deal of probability involved' in the first place and
| that is what those pesky demands for evidence attempt to figure
| out.
| papito wrote:
| Getting born in a wealthy, stable country, preferably into a
| well-off family, helps a ton.
| xondono wrote:
| And how will you tell which of those unmentioned "fundamentals"
| are the most effective?
|
| Because my answer is with the scientific method, which you
| apparently don't want to use here.
|
| Being difficult to measure is no excuse, measuring proton-
| proton collisions is very hard, but we are quite good at it
| anyway..
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| That's the kind of article that makes me:
|
| 1) Set up my own pile of anecdotes (and the importance of luck,
| grit, natural ability, etc. in people I know)
|
| 2) Attempt to build a model.
|
| 3) Think about Stanislav Andreski's book 'Social Sciences as
| Sorcery'.
|
| 4) Go back to my coffee and think about something useful.
| [deleted]
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Problem is that you can't just look at one out of 10s-100s of
| combination of things you need to get to success.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Grit is hard to measure in quantifiable terms so I have my doubts
| about the methodology of the studies referenced here that are
| making claims about it. But that doesn't mean it isn't a good
| _differentiator_ for relative success. That is, it may not be a
| perfect predictor of success in itself, but it is a contributor.
| And relative to someone with all other factors held equal, the
| person with more grit will be more successful. That's not really
| controversial or in need of "evidence", as it is self-evident.
| Jack000 wrote:
| School is an "ideal" learning environment - in that to do well
| all you need to do is digest the information as presented. This
| requires some baseline cognitive ability and the conciensiousness
| to actually absorb all the information required of you. In this
| context you probably don't need a lot of perseverance.
|
| On the other hand most challenging fields are adverse learning
| environments - where the objective may be open-ended, feedback is
| few and misleading, and information on the state of the world is
| mostly inferred. To succeed in this type of environment you
| probably need a lot more intrinsic drive and tolerance for
| failure.
| derriz wrote:
| School is also an adverse learning environment. Your definition
| of succeeding at school is too narrow - digesting information
| isn't enough to be a success at school. For example, you need
| to balance social/peer success with academic success which can
| be tricky. Teachers' behaviors and expectations differ greatly
| so you need to quickly develop models of their motivations. You
| also need to optimize/direct your efforts - there is only a
| finite number of hours in the day and attempting to "win" at
| school by simply digesting facts can only work for a tiny
| minority. In fact, when I think of my peers in school who I
| would considered to have "succeeded" the most in that
| environment, none did do solely by being able to digest facts -
| most were only slightly better than average academically but
| succeeded in other ways.
| bumbada wrote:
| There is a nominalization here, very typical of US people:
| Talking about success like it is one thing, and the same thing
| for everybody.
|
| The fact is that there are as many different definitions of
| success as different people in the world.
|
| For some people success is being free to travel the world without
| constraints or having lots of friends or having sex with lots of
| people. For others is raising a healthy family and spending lots
| of time with them. For other people is having power over others,
| other people want to have a second or third house. Other people
| want to have more money that they could spend. Or being famous.
| Other people want to get something significant that merits a
| Nobel Price.
|
| There is this delusion that you could have it all, you could make
| yourself rich without working or risking anything, have all the
| time on the world, travel and be famous.
|
| There is no such a thing. I have met elite sport people that are
| the best in the world, rich and famous, but they really hate
| being famous. They have very little time or freedom, and if they
| want to travel anywhere, specially in South America, Asia or
| Africa everybody knows they are rich and they can be kidnapped or
| blackmailed at any time. They can not trust the people around
| them, unless is family or old friends(or people as rich as them).
|
| I have met very rich business people that don't have free time at
| all. The money they earn, the wife or children waste. Children
| getting addictions like drugs or alcohol because their parents
| send them to internship and demand from them only work and more
| hard work.
|
| I have met travelers that have traveled dozens of countries, but
| were incapable of raising a family and always short of money
| because they stop working as soon as they have enough for
| discovering a new place.
|
| For me personally success is learning, traveling the world and
| having free time. I sacrificed money in order to get what I
| wanted.
|
| I got what I wanted, but had to sacrifice other things for it.
| Over time I got back most of the things I sacrificed, like money,
| probably thanks to the people I met along the way, but I did lose
| it first.
|
| If success is only "economical success", most people from the US
| are way richer than 90% of the people in the world. They have non
| economic wealth like rule of law and legal security that in
| countries like China, most of Africa or in some countries in
| South America does not exist.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| The article is largely talking about academic success (with one
| or two exceptions) which imo is much easier to normalize across
| countries.
|
| The context to this article is that "grit" is used as one of
| the characteristics that charter schools and other educational
| programs in the US try to maximize in low performing areas. If
| "grit" can't be measured, or if it's just another way of
| describing another attribute (e.g., contentiousness, which is
| the article uses - or persistence, which is what you find in
| many academic articles), then there isn't much of a point of
| trying to maximize it in academic contexts.
|
| All of this assumes that school performance is something that
| educators want to increase. This may not necessarily be true in
| every country and in every context, but it should be true in
| most of them (and certainly in the US, where a lot of local
| governments are funding programs using these concepts).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| slver wrote:
| Most variables of life have a peak usefulness in some amount and
| then it falls off on both sides.
|
| This means applying more "grit" is useful in life, until some
| point where more grit becomes less useful.
|
| To make things more complicated, the amount of grit also depends
| on and interacts with all other variables of life.
|
| So not only the optimal amount of grit varies constantly, but you
| also get a fractal of local maxima and minima along the way.
| Basically your "how much grit I need for optimal performance"
| graph looks like the outline of a mountain.
|
| So given that situation, discussing whether "grit predicts
| success" is kind of silly, isn't it. If life was this simple, we
| wouldn't evolve these big brains to account for everything at
| once and constantly balance and rebalance the equation in attempt
| to find equilibrium.
|
| EDIT: Maybe we need to run a survey and find out the mean grit we
| have as a society, and then mandate, say 1% more grit and measure
| global outcomes. So please draw on this line how much grit you
| have between 0 and 100. The graph is log, because actual grit
| varies between 0 and +Infinity.
| xondono wrote:
| > because actual grit varies between 0 and +Infinity.
|
| The article itself mentions that we measure it in a scale from
| 1 to 5.
|
| Also, that's a whole lot of assertions you got there, and most
| of them look very wrong. IQ (to quote the most obvious) is
| pretty much always good to have, and the more the better.
| slver wrote:
| Yeah I'd say "1 to 5" is a "log, discretized scale". :-)
|
| Anyway, I don't mean all my assertions to be correct, the
| scale was tongue in cheek for example. I hope to promote
| interesting debate.
|
| IQ, BTW, is a fundamentally flawed characteristic. It exists
| in public consciousness as some universal measure of
| intelligence. It isn't. Intelligence is multidimensional, not
| a line. And second, the tests are culturally specific, and
| somewhat arbitrary in retrospect. Buuut, anyway, that's a
| debate for another time :)
| xondono wrote:
| However flawed our current measurement systems of IQ are,
| IQ is a monotonic predictor (i.e. its correlation with
| several measures of success is strongest with lineal
| functions that with functions with local minima). That is
| to say, better results on any IQ tests are good news.
| mattmanser wrote:
| Where's the evidence that most variables of life have a peak
| usefulness in some amount and then it falls off on both sides?
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Stress (both mental and physical).
|
| for mental stress:
|
| from https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-mindful-
| self-exp... :
|
| "People with a history of some lifetime adversity reported
| better mental health and well-being outcomes than not only
| people with a high history of adversity, but also than people
| with no history of adversity." (Seery et al., 2010, p. 1025)
| mellosouls wrote:
| Evolution I would imagine.
|
| If a variable is useless it will mostly disappear; dominate
| for a time if particularly beneficial.
|
| Others ("most") would then follow a statistical distribution
| of some type.
|
| It seems a reasonable claim for a believable rule of thumb.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Its a reasonable rule, but we are still evolving and have a
| vestigal tail, we have genetic diseases, we have
| psycopaths, etc.
| slver wrote:
| Maybe we need psychopaths :P ?
| klyrs wrote:
| I can see why people wouldn't like this comment, but
| maybe contemplate what it would take to rid the world of
| psychopaths. There is no known cure for a lack of
| empathy. Do the ends justify the means, and would anybody
| but a psychopath desire such a cleansing?
| slver wrote:
| People don't like it because medical terminology tends to
| morph in the public dictionary as a caricature of the
| original meaning. A psychopath doesn't mean an evil
| person with delusions who committed significant crimes.
|
| We have some evidence psychopaths handle large scale
| organizations better, because empathy has evolved for
| close relationships with small number of people. Doesn't
| mean they're cruel, rather they think differently about
| it.
|
| Also psychopathy is both dynamic (can change during the
| course of a lifetime) and a spectrum (non-binary). In
| general if we'll be open and non-discriminating towards
| our racial and so on features, we need to also allow for
| various thinking models, and address problems only
| directly when they occur.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "psychopaths handle large scale organizations better"
|
| I would argue that this just proves how messed up are our
| large scale organisations
| klyrs wrote:
| Indeed, the word "psychopath" itself has fallen out of
| favor for the reasons you've listed
| slver wrote:
| I can't think of anything where have more to infinity is
| always better. At some point your need is satiated and starts
| becoming a detriment.
|
| You're welcome to bring examples, but I've found often those
| examples don't consider the counter-forces as you increase
| the "goodness" in one direction, you increase the "badness"
| for another factor.
|
| Case in point team size. Bigger team, better, faster,
| stronger. But the combinatorial explosion of communications
| (everyone talks to everyone) in the team actually renders big
| teams inoperable.
|
| So the solution is to elect a leader/representative, and then
| form a team of teams only of those representatives.
|
| You solved the combinatorial explosion of communications, but
| you added indirection (teams talk to each other through the
| broken phone of their leaders).
|
| And so on and so on. You never can identify a single thing
| you can do forever "more" of, and get just benefits.
|
| It's like a spring. There's a balance in the middle. The more
| you stretch, the harder it gets. The more you push, the
| harder it gets. The trick is finding the middle.
| sokoloff wrote:
| General intelligence, excellent judgment, rapport building,
| and attractiveness all seem like candidates where extremes
| don't inevitably bring badness.
| mycologos wrote:
| I dunno, being an extremely attractive woman in a male-
| dominated field seems like it would be a huge hassle.
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| General intelligence - if you are too intelligent you
| might become arrogant and have difficulties putting
| yourself in other people's shoes.
|
| Attractiveness - you might focus so much in your
| appearance that other parts of your life get left behind.
| Think on the Hollywood stars that end up with a crappy
| life somehow. I've also seen women that are too
| attractive being chased by aggressive men, which becomes
| very inconvenient for them.
|
| Good judgement and rapport building are qualities that
| usually require avoiding the extremes, so I don't think
| it applies here.
| bckr wrote:
| Beat me to it!
| bckr wrote:
| Good point.
|
| Counterpoint: these are measurements that can be
| factorized into dimensions in which you can go too far.
| In fact, you can't actually keep going to infinity in
| these measurements because you will hit roadblocks in the
| underlying factors.
|
| General intelligence and excellent judgment will contain
| neuroticism. Too much of that and you get analysis
| paralysis.
|
| General intelligence and rapport building contain
| empathy. Too much of that and you become weighed down by
| feeling everyone else's feelings.
|
| Attractiveness might help you in general but there are
| issues like jealousy or not being taken seriously by
| technical people, so it's still a trade off.
| slver wrote:
| High intelligence is not strongly correlated with
| success, in fact it's unfortunately correlated with
| things like increased chance of depression and suicide.
| Very high intelligence often comes as a result of some
| other deficiency in that person's life, for example
| they're socially withdrawn, highly reflective, and prefer
| to be alone with a book.
|
| Attractiveness makes people think higher of you, and your
| intelligence. But excessive attractiveness causes people
| to think you're superficial and focused on your beauty,
| rather than your intelligence. They may also objectify
| you, or be intimidated by you.
|
| Every coin has two sides. Every coin.
|
| As for categories like "excellent judgment" etc. these
| only can be identified post-factum from the results. I.e.
| it's a circular definition to say "this successful person
| making judgments correlates with his ability to make
| successful judgments". So I'm not sure that gives is a
| clue what to do, or what to be to get there. "Just make
| excellent judgments, damn it!" :-)
| sokoloff wrote:
| I frequently hear claims that high intelligence is not
| correlated strongly positively with success, though that
| seems to be disputed by longitudinal studies like SMPY.
|
| https://today.duke.edu/2016/06/whenlightningstrikestwice
| lupire wrote:
| People say that extremely high intelligence is less
| correlated with _happiness_ then less extreme high
| intelligence, not (the topic of your linked article)
| "the potential to make great contributions to society in
| adulthood"
| leetcrew wrote:
| at the very least, it's a strong null hypothesis due to
| opportunity costs.
| hirundo wrote:
| > This means applying more "grit" is useful in life, until some
| point where more grit becomes less useful.
|
| "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit.
| There's no point in being a damn fool about it." -- W. C.
| Fields
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It would only be silly if most people were somewhere near the
| optima already, which I doubt. Most people are probably lacking
| that trait, with very few on the right hand side of that peak.
|
| If we're talking about what you can control: point yourself in
| the right direction then work your ass off. It's possible to
| succeed while lacking one of these two properties, but it
| becomes much less likely.
| domano wrote:
| Hmm, shying away from hard problems sometimes hurts you,
| sometimes it saves you. It all depends on context. I have had
| great success being really lazy and selective where to actually
| invest my time and had better results than people who would just
| work their ass off always.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Working smart trumps working hard at the wrong things.
| [deleted]
| asimjalis wrote:
| Can we turn the question around and ask the opposite? Does lack
| of grit predict failure?
| bckr wrote:
| That depends on your definition of failure, and is confused by
| factors like inheriting wealth... I know at least one world
| leader who doesn't have any grit at all...
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| In theory you should be able to condition on inherited wealth
| as well to remove that as a confounding factor (yeah this is
| a bit causally inspired), so I'd be curious if that's been
| done here.
| jka wrote:
| This could be inspected in two directions:
|
| - Does grit predict success? (forwards)
|
| - Do successful people project grit? (backwards)
|
| Although it's always somewhat context-sensitive, with both
| figures you could learn how much signal to derive from the
| latter.
|
| If we learned that grit wasn't necessarily an indicator of
| success, then it'd arguably be a bit callous of successful people
| to project grit, given that plenty of other people go through
| hard times without being able to achieve similar outcomes.
| xondono wrote:
| The problem is that forwards takes a lot of time (which is bad
| if you intend to make your career on it) and backwards suffers
| from survivor bias.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Most of the 'how to succeed' advice is a mix of survivorship bias
| with 'necessary but not sufficient' traits. (You can apply a lot
| of grit at a fast food restaurant and never become a
| thousandaire.)
|
| Turns out that having both grit and a large family nest egg too
| reduce the consequences of failure go a long way together. But
| maybe they're rare to have together: the safety net reduces the
| need for grit.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Most of the 'how to succeed' advice is a mix of survivorship
| bias with 'necessary but not sufficient' traits._
|
| Plus a lot of rich-person-worship (1) and self-glorification
| (2).
|
| (1) The press version: "Econ Tusk is rich, and he got there by
| working 22 hours a day, exercizing for 1 1/2hour, and taking a
| single 30 minute power nap. The secret of his success? Endless
| grit. It doesn't have anything to do with striking it rich by
| building a payment app as a regular nerd (that might just as
| well have gotten nowhere), and then diverting his efforts into
| media-friendly geek-wet-dream VC instruments that are perfect
| as opportunities of government contracts and subsidies".
|
| (2) The interview/autobiography version: "How did I made it? I
| gave it all I've got, risked everything, and worked hard every
| day. Sure, it only 2 two years before we were bought and I made
| 100s of millions, working was mostly maginal helping our first
| employees in building the MVP, business meetings, bossing
| people around, and having the 'vision', the risk was minimal
| because I had an MBA and/or CS skills I could use to get a job
| anytime, and everything was paid by VCs anyway, but it was all
| grit I tell you".
| glogla wrote:
| Econ Tusk was a child of rich plantantion slav... I mean
| Fouth Rafrican Bapartheid farmers long before any payment
| apps.
| stronk2 wrote:
| I'm sorry, did you have a stroke while writing this? Or is
| this the same kind of attempt at humor as writing
| "Micro$oft"?
|
| The people on this website always talk about how this isn't
| Reddit. You're right, it's actually pretentious Reddit.
| throw0101a wrote:
| See also 'prosperity gospel':
|
| > _Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the
| prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel, the gospel
| of success, or seed faith)[A] is a religious belief among
| some Protestant Christians that financial blessing and
| physical well-being are always the will of God for them, and
| that faith, positive speech, and donations to religious
| causes will increase one 's material wealth.[1]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
|
| * https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/1/15951874/prosperity
| -...
|
| Dave Ramsey, who's not shy about his faith, doesn't go that
| far:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUJjUxyIwbA
|
| Bishop Barron from the Catholic perspective:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ip4Jx92F94
| danielam wrote:
| > Plus a lot of rich-person-worship (1) and self-
| glorification (2).
|
| I could not resist (Chesterton's "The Fallacy of
| Success")[0].
|
| [0] https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/the-fallacy-of-success
| zippy5 wrote:
| I somewhat agree that a gritty person shouldn't keep a fast
| food job, but some of the Uber drivers I meet are incredibly
| gritty. They work incredibly long hours and grind on multiple
| apps. They have well thought out strategies for how to make as
| much as they can per hour and have plans for how they will
| invest their money.
|
| I admire the heck out of em but I can see most people don't
| want that life. I have no doubt that kind of work ethic could
| be wasted in the wrong environment but a successful person
| should have both grit and the ability to find an environment
| where they can use it to get ahead.
|
| I'd even argue that corporate America as whole rarely rewards
| grit with a couple exceptions.
| Balgair wrote:
| > and the ability to find an environment where they can use
| it to get ahead
|
| Reminds me of this quote:
|
| "Free enterprise needs elbow room"
|
| -Poul Anderson
| zappo2938 wrote:
| The road to success: either "be the first, be the best, or
| cheat." I was on the transom of a mega yacht at Atlantis on
| Paradise Island and a tourist walking along the dock asked me
| how he can get one for himself. I shrugged, I wouldn't know, I
| only worked on it and said "work hard, I guess." He said that
| he works in IT, works his butt off, and does ok but will never
| have that type of wealth. But my assertion isn't quite the
| truth. It is more simple than my first statement. "Buy low and
| sell high." It helps coming from wealth however most of the
| Americans who own yachts are self made often coming from middle
| class or lower families. They started the process of buying low
| and selling high in the 60s and 70s. Most of the people I've
| met who own a yacht share a characteristic, they are passionate
| about making the deal. It is almost like they aren't passionate
| about making money but rather getting something below its
| market value and selling it above its market value.
| lumost wrote:
| Grit + a large nest egg can effectively buy success in many
| markets.
|
| If a millionaire decides that they will run a successful
| restaurant come hell or high water then that is what will
| happen as they're now spending double the typical startup cost
| of a new restaurant they can be quite bad at it and still be
| successful.
| papito wrote:
| As the Chinese say: "Luck is a combination of opportunity and
| hard work".
|
| You can work hard, yes, but you also need to walk into an
| opportunity to exploit your hard work, for ultimate success.
|
| Developing skills to see a better opportunity matters. Some
| people just grind away at it without thinking, and some pause and
| re-evaluate. Think more, work less. Don't be a dumb work ant.
|
| In programming, I found that when I was younger, I did that a
| lot. I kept coding and rewriting. Now that I am older, I think
| for days before I start something, and it usually results in less
| starting from scratch. I try to play things out, visualize, etc.
| The code does not just work the first time because I am "lucky".
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Grit sounds like conscientiousness repackaged and branded in pop
| science fashion.
|
| There's a big psychometrics literature on conscientiousness.
| Start there.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > There's a big psychometrics literature on conscientiousness.
| Start there
|
| I've spent some time diving into the OCEAN model and its factor
| analysis. Do you have any recommendations for references, books
| or papers, that offer a good introduction to the subject
| assuming statistical fluency?
| jariel wrote:
| 'Conscientiousness' and 'Grit' I think are different
| attributes.
|
| Conscientious people are like your 'nice Grandparents': they
| are consistent, orderly, pay their bills, are pleasant,
| predictable, file their taxes, recycle, don't steal.
|
| Gritty people are those who mount the psychological effort
| necessary to take on a challenging problem, and have the
| wherewithal to keep going when things get rough.
|
| To me the bit of confusion might arise between: 'Grit' and
| 'stubbornness' i.e. continue down an actually bad path and
| 'Grit' and 'Lack of Self Awareness' i.e. people utterly
| underestimating their ability, or the complexity of a domain.
| 'Fake it tell you make it' is actually a helpful characteristic
| in some areas, but in others it's not.
|
| I do believe that 'grit' and 'conscientiousness' are both
| positive attributes in people who start companies, but that
| 'conscientiousness' is probably a more important attributes in
| most of the employees.
|
| From the article: "Conscientiousness was twice as useful at
| predicting success as grit was." I have no doubt it's a better
| predictor for general life outcomes and especially academic
| outcomes. Doing a degree is mostly a grind.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Grit sounds like a strict subset of conscientiousness.
|
| I find it indistinguishable to the industriousness aspect of
| conscientiousness (and unrelated to the orderliness aspect).
|
| I wonder if they can point to any concrete differences
| between grit and conscientiousness-industriousness in terms
| of definition?
| jariel wrote:
| I've literally just explained the difference to you.
|
| From Google:
|
| "Grit is the perseverance and passion to achieve long-term
| goals. Sometimes you will hear grit referred to as mental
| toughness."
|
| "Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being
| careful, or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to
| do a task well, and to take obligations to others
| seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and
| organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly."
|
| They are not the same thing, though obviously the
| characteristics overlap.
|
| People in creative disciplines can have 'high grit' but
| often very low conscientiousness and be successful.
|
| As someone exposed a little bit to the music industry, I'm
| amazed by the level of determination people have in the
| face of rejection, and and at the same time, a lot of
| careless, inconsistent and risky behaviours in their life.
| Hard drug use, unstable relationships etc. - those are all
| 'low conscientious' things. But grit off the scale.
|
| Tons of people are 'highly conscientious' and have little
| grit. Your bus driver, 12 year vet, never missed work?
| Probably highly conscientious, and likely low on grit. In
| fact, most working class people doing thoughtful and
| diligent, consistent work, but who have no greater goals or
| ambitions and avoid risk are probably low in grit.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| You explained the difference between the broad google
| definitions but that doesn't change my point that grit
| seems to be a strict subset of the actual definition
| conscientiousness which includes not only orderliness
| (which we both agree is unrelated to grit) but other
| things like achievement striving and industriousness
| (which appear to me to be the same thing as grit).
|
| You could have an artist that's low in orderliness but
| high in industriousness or high in achievement striving.
| Does grit add anything novel beyond these existing facets
| of conscientiousness?
| e12e wrote:
| I had to look that up - I think the psycolical term differs
| quite a lot from the dictionary definition - but I certainly
| see some similarity between "grit" and something like:
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/conscientiousness
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Grit is just the statistics of trying over and over.
|
| It's a truism that can't be refuted: trying something multiple
| times increases the likelihood by some amount that one will
| succeed (when compared to fewer attempts).
| sudhirj wrote:
| Think I realised a while ago that nothing predicts success.
| That's not to say that success is only luck, it has requirements,
| but not predictors. Hard work, grit, skill, luck, privilege etc
| are all required in combinations that result in a baseline sum,
| but nothing will predict success.
|
| Success is almost by definition a hindsight measure. You can only
| work backwards from it, but never guarantee a forward path into
| it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > I realised a while ago that nothing predicts success ...
| never guarantee a forward path into it
|
| Guarantee, no. Anyone could be hit by a bus tomorrow. But it is
| clear that one can greatly increase their odds of success. For
| example, learning a job skill. Learning how to manage money.
| Living below your means. Associate with successful people
| instead of losers. Ditching the victim mentality.
|
| One can also greatly decrease odds of success by, say, dropping
| out, playing video games all day, hittin' the crack pipe, etc.,
| and adopting the victim mentality.
| jka wrote:
| I think what you're saying is that you and your peers have a
| shared definition of success, and within that, there are
| well-known ways to improve the likelihood of reaching that
| goal.
|
| Certainly having goals (particularly ones that retain a
| healthy, well-rounded lifestyle) can help people avoid
| negative outcomes.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Anyone can use their own definition of success. Then
| develop a plan to get there, and execute the plan.
| hurril wrote:
| I think you're being a little bit weasly here. They do have
| a shared definition of success and you are part of that, as
| am I. The definition does not have to be identical to be
| useful.
| jka wrote:
| That's fair, I think I was being, yep (in order to try to
| pick apart and perhaps critique what are widely agreed as
| successful achievements).
| cpursley wrote:
| Unless you're the son of a US president.
| leetcrew wrote:
| you probably can't become destitute and homeless if you're
| the son of a US president, but you can certainly squander
| your well above average chance of also becoming president.
| gumby wrote:
| Perfect example: few people bother to do anything to make
| this happen, so is it any wonder they don't reap the
| benefit?
| dmpk2k wrote:
| Probabilities. Outliers.
| [deleted]
| jasode wrote:
| _> Think I realised a while ago that nothing _predicts_
| success. _
|
| I understand what you're trying to say but as fyi... you're
| using "predict" in colloquial terms which is very different
| from math statistics where _" predictor variable"_ is a _term-
| of-art_ :
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%22statistics%22+%22predicto...
|
| (a) term-of-art statistics example: the X independent variable
| represents low to high blood alcohol level which is a predictor
| for car crashes (represented by Y). A high blood alcohol of
| 0.20% is a better predictor of drivers causing car crashes than
| the amount of salt eaten in a meal.
|
| (b) colloquial usage: Nothing "predicts" car crashes because my
| uncle Jim drank a whole bottle of vodka and didn't hit anybody
| when driving home -- while a Tesla self-driving car with no
| blood alcohol at all crashed into a tree! Predictions about car
| crashes are bogus.
|
| Different usage of (a) and (b) is example of equivocation
| fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
|
| Another way to look at it: (a) is often about _aggregates and
| groups_ (aka statistics) but (b) is about personal anecdotes or
| obersvations where n=1. This means they will disagree because
| they 're talking about different things.
|
| EDIT reply to : _> Well, it's hardly "colloquial" usage, more
| like conversational, dictionary, typical, etc._
|
| I don't what correction you're trying to make here. The top
| link for
| https://www.google.com/search?q=colloquial&oq=colloquial
|
| ... is : _" (of language) used in ordinary or familiar
| _conversation_; not formal or literary."_
|
| That matches what you said.
|
| _> The comment didn't seem like it was grounded in maths/stats
| terminology._
|
| Yes, and that was actually the _main point_ of my comment. This
| thread 's Nautilus article of "predict" refers to research
| studies which talks talks about statistical predictor variables
| ("grit" being the X axis independent variable). The gp comment
| copies the word "predict" in his own comment but uses it in a
| _non_ -statistical meaning and readers may not be aware of the
| silent switch in usage. (Equivocation.)
|
| E.g. Do SAT test scores "predict" income level? It can be "yes"
| or "no" depending on which meaning of "predict" one is using.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Well, you just presented yet another proof that living
| languages are deeply flawed. :(
| austinjp wrote:
| Well, it's hardly "colloquial" usage, more like
| conversational, dictionary, typical, etc. The comment didn't
| seem like it was grounded in maths/stats terminology.
|
| I read the comment as being about an individual rather than a
| population, which illustrates the problem: predicting
| individual success is (nearly?) impossible even if population
| data is consulted. Probably due to chaotic processes and the
| impossibility of understanding all relevant variables,
| exacerbated by the confusion of correlation with causation
| i.e. post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies.
| talliedthoughts wrote:
| Not only a hindsight measure, but also a very individual
| measure. Society usually defines success as some combination of
| wealth and fame, but everyone can choose another definition of
| success for themselves.
|
| Say someone defines success for themselves as "becoming the
| number 1 basketball player in the world", then gets into the
| top 10 and becomes rich and famous because of it. They might
| internally consider themselves a failure, even though they are
| very successful in the eyes of everyone else.
| [deleted]
| papito wrote:
| _Nothing_ is guaranteed in life. Working towards something just
| tips the scale of luck in your favor.
|
| Luck is still a factor, it's just a matter of minimizing it.
|
| Some people work their asses off starting a company, and it
| never takes off, and some dude who barely knows how to program
| runs into someone at a party and gets hired for a million
| dollars to build a dumb website.
| ksec wrote:
| I agree. Except you cant say that in Jobs Interview. Nor does
| mainstream media wants to acknowledge this.
| pdimitar wrote:
| True. That's why critical thinking that's freed from what's
| popularly believed is such a crucially important skill to
| have.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _Some people work their asses off starting a company, and
| it never takes off, and some dude who barely knows how to
| program runs into someone at a party and gets hired for a
| million dollars to build a dumb website._
|
| This should be written somewhere with huge letters and be the
| final end of that otherwise endless discussion.
|
| People in HN are really baffling to me in how they underplay
| luck and overplay effort all the time. And I've seen what you
| said, on both extremes, like 50 times in my life so far at
| least.
| arvinsim wrote:
| It hurts the ego to admit one's personal success is due to
| luck and not by effort.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Yep, more or less. There's also this phenomena (that I
| have no doubt has a name in Wikipedia but I don't know
| it) that leads to our brain conflating "I made it! I made
| money!" with "I am super good at EVERYTHING!".
|
| I don't why that is. A lot of us know that the ego is our
| brain's top priority but nobody really knows _why_ is
| that the case.
|
| This also leads to rich people producing various
| misguided essays in which they are asserting stuff that's
| way outside their area of expertise -- but since they are
| rich and popular, many people gulp them as a holy gospel
| and repeat them ad infinitum...
|
| Eventually we go full circle and start seeing what is the
| topic of the OP: that there are a lot of widely believed
| adages without them ever being well-supported by any
| evidence.
| [deleted]
| shoto_io wrote:
| Yes, agree. But... :)
|
| It also depends on "step size". So if you define success very
| incrementally you can about it almost scientifically and do
| "test and learn".
|
| On a large scale I agree with you, it's pretty impossible to
| draw a clear line.
| euske wrote:
| > Success is almost by definition a hindsight measure.
|
| The same goes for natural selection. "Survival of the fittest"
| is always defined retrospectively. You'll never know what is
| truly advantageous at the moment. The only possible strategy is
| just to try _anything_.
| gumby wrote:
| This article lays out the evidence: identifying something people
| can (in theory) change about themselves will be popular. If the
| thesis were "people with violet eyes are more successful", well,
| not much you can do about that without (likely dangerous) medical
| intervention. But if you have enough grit you can work on your
| grit.
|
| On the other hand something like "grit" is inspirational to
| people who like that kind of thing ("I'm going to improve my
| grit"), scammers ("Take my course on improving your grit"), and
| the comfortably well off who can use it as an excuse not to worry
| about the less fortunate ("Not my problem if they lack grit. I
| worked on mine and look at the result!").
|
| PS: as with so many cases, the US ignores international ISO
| standards when grading sandpaper grit.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Maximize working in smarter and more scalable ways. Hard work and
| grit is important, but by itself is not enough.
| zhdc1 wrote:
| There are several meta analyses you can find on Google Scholar
| that show a weak to moderate relationship between grit and
| educational success.
|
| The issue appears to be that there are conflicts over what grit
| actually represents in this context and whether Duckworth's scale
| is a good measure (and if she's overselling her findings).
|
| These are very relevant questions, but they're very different
| from grit != success, or that grit doesn't matter.
| fblp wrote:
| I think you can improve grit or conciensiousness practicing "not-
| doing". I have no research to support this, but if i think of
| something i find meditating or slowing down can help when I'm
| facing adversity.
| alea_iacta_est wrote:
| > I have no research to support this
|
| There's a religion built around that concept, it's called
| buddhism and it's been around for 2,500 years.
| beforeolives wrote:
| I think some people here might be reacting to a title that
| confirms their preconceptions and are missing one of the main
| points of the article - that conscientiousness is probably a
| stronger, more well-defined and more reliable predictor of
| success than grit.
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