[HN Gopher] Success stories are just propaganda (2017)
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Success stories are just propaganda (2017)
Author : paulpauper
Score : 126 points
Date : 2022-07-15 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.martinweigel.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.martinweigel.org)
| fictionfuture wrote:
| There is a worthwhile premise behind the title of this article.
| Success stories are generally fluff designed to rewrite history
| and control a desired narrative.
|
| Most the real reasons for success are taboo, boring and too
| technical to talk about, e.g. "we got massive SEO traffic through
| user-generated content and 10x'd traffic in 2 months"..
| f17 wrote:
| Or, "I'm fully self-made. All I had was an introduction to the
| CEO of Sequoia by my father who happens to be a Senator and a
| small zero-interest loan, barely a million dollars."
| codalan wrote:
| The struggle is real
| AQuantized wrote:
| Funny that your example sounds like a stereotypical self-
| congratulatory Hacker News article
| smartplaya2001 wrote:
| Can you go a little more into success being taboo? This is
| quite interesting but I am not sure if we are thinking the same
| thing.
| davesque wrote:
| Maybe the moral of the story is to never allow yourself to wallow
| in self doubt because you don't measure up to any given success
| story. On the other hand, _do_ allow yourself to use an inspiring
| success story to spur you into action when the time is right.
|
| Maybe this is just moving the goal posts. After all, it seems to
| imply that there is some unknown mechanism at play that guides a
| person into a moment of opportunity. The question then becomes,
| "What is the nature of that process?" As far as that goes, I'm
| sympathetic to the idea that a lot of it just comes down to dumb
| luck. However, to me that's more a reason to just take a deep
| breath once in a while and quit freaking out than to throw up my
| hands and declare, "It's all fate and I have no control!"
|
| To put it another way, you can still take some general wisdom
| from advice about success (as opposed to failure). Just don't
| take it too seriously. Use it to give yourself a little mental
| space once in while but otherwise try not to burn too many
| calories pondering it.
| csours wrote:
| I've read about many many failures. Every failure is instructive.
| But avoiding failure is not the same as success.
|
| I agree that when someone is telling you a success story, they
| usually have an agenda, and that someone else's path to success
| won't be your path.
|
| Look for contingent advice - advice that matches your scenario
| and tells you when it does and does not apply.
| bjourne wrote:
| For some evidence proving Martin Weigel right, see the BBC show
| Dragon's Den. Fix rich, self-righteous turds who think they are
| self-made billionaires bet on business ideas entrepreneurs pitch
| them. They never bet on the winners and frequently bet on losers.
| Literally millions of people could do the job better than them
| but where not lucky enough to get right. The best product ever
| pitched on the show was the Tangle Teezer which those business
| geniuses unanimously trashed:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2O0SvrlFKA
| paulpauper wrote:
| Survivorship bias seems to play a huge role in VC too. A handful
| of individuals and firms got mega-rich with Facebook and then
| later with Uber, and now they are held up as these huge geniuses.
| However, this is more luck than skill, because all oof their
| later investments have done much worse, so excluding Facebook and
| Uber, they are not so skilled. Now these same geniuses are hyping
| crypto , which has been a total disaster for half of 2021 and all
| 2022. Same for Softbank, which had a big winner with Ali Baba,
| but pretty much failed massively with later bets. Successes have
| many mothers, failure is an orphan, as it's said.
| jollybean wrote:
| I believe the logic of VC investing is misplaced here.
|
| That their subsequent investments did worse than FB is not
| evidence of anything at all really.
|
| In particular, almost all VC fund returns are weighted towards
| a few big winners, some ok winners, a bunch of zombies and a
| lot of failures.
|
| There is a 'FB' in every successful VC fund.
|
| Most VC just didn't just magically appear as VCs and then
| magically/luckily invest in FB. It was a long path for most of
| those funds and individuals.
|
| There is luck involved, surely, which is why funds have a lot
| of companies in their portfolio.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > There is a 'FB' in every successful VC fund.
|
| Tautologically. There isn't a facebook in any failing VC
| fund. So it's really unnecessary to talk about VC strategies
| at all if you're going to define a successful strategy as
| having once invested in some whale early and ignore all of
| the other failures, it's sufficient to just ask for a list of
| the investors in things that did well and declare them
| shrewd.
| yomkippur wrote:
| But why is it that some VC are clearly better at this dice
| rolling? ex. Sequoia
|
| Again and again they seem to be able to discover these home
| runs or is it that they are able to use their vast network of
| influence to manufacture success?
|
| It all reminds me of poker. High stacks
| dictate/influence/restricts other participants with less
| stacks.
| jollybean wrote:
| ?
|
| Because it's not 'dice rolling'.
|
| And yes, they will use their network to create good
| outcomes, that's fine.
| azemetre wrote:
| It could be evidence that the idea of VCs may not be a
| reliable way of investing.
|
| Nassim Taleb stated that in 2009, within an 18 month window,
| banking industry lost all the profits it ever made since the
| beginning of banking as an industry.
|
| Such a catastrophic event isn't out of the question for VC
| either.
| [deleted]
| dandelany wrote:
| This. I always get annoyed when entrepreneurs eg. on Shark Tank
| say things like "I quit my job, took out two mortgages on my
| home, maxed out my credit cards and spent my kids' college fund
| on the business. And look at us now, we're making millions of
| dollars a year! Don't give up when failure looks inevitable!"
|
| Probably most of the people who follow this advice to the
| letter end up financially ruined, they just don't get a public
| platform to talk about it...
| gerdesj wrote:
| Quite. I think Shark Tank is what we call Dragon's Den in the
| UK (bunch of civilians pitch to zillionares for cash and
| mentoring in return for a stake in the business - all on TV).
|
| You see some absolute horrors that inevitably will lead to
| bankruptcy. However you also see some clever folk getting a
| well deserved leg up.
|
| But I think we agree that for everyone that seems to
| effortlessly do the American Dream thing, there are 1000s or
| 100,000s that don't. Then there's the likes of me that have
| run a rather boring small business for 22 years turning over
| around PS1.2M pa but not exactly setting the world on fire! I
| can sleep at night and have nearly no debt, so that's nice.
| hvs wrote:
| Maybe it's just me getting older, but running a successful
| small business that pays the bills and supports my family
| into retirement is what I would consider the paradigm of
| success for my life. Congrats on your business.
| nostromo wrote:
| I just want to point out that you're living the American
| Dream. I think you may misunderstand the term as it's
| generally used.
|
| The phrase isn't about becoming a billionaire. It's rooted
| in the American frontier period, inspired by Protestant
| values, and is much more aligned with living a happy upper-
| middle-class life: owning land, a home, enough resources to
| have a family, and having meaning work.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I wouldn't even say upper-middle-class. Descended from
| Irish orphans, jewish refugees, Pennsylvania Dutch coal
| miners (so the classic Amish Jewish Redhead, without red
| hair). A relatively safe work environment, owning a home,
| feeding their family, not having your government try to
| exterminate you. That was their American dream. You know,
| the little things.
| [deleted]
| abraxas wrote:
| Moreover, just with the sheer count of VCs, stock investors and
| other sorts that play with their (or more often other people's)
| money to try and earn outsized profits, it is inevitable that a
| small sliver of them will be wildly successful. It's a
| statistical certainty. It's like having a million people toss
| coins all day and then hail as geniuses those who got twenty
| heads in a row.
|
| There is an excellent book by Nassim Taleb that expands on this
| theme titled "Fooled By Randomness".
| _ttg wrote:
| Related classic - How I won the lottery by Darius Kazemi
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw
| stomczyk09 wrote:
| Success is something that tends to be propogated when being
| communicated to the masses, but success is such a general word.
| Success isn't a one size fits all. It can be as simple as passing
| a test in school, graduating said school, paying off your
| mortgage/debt.
|
| Success comes in all shapes and sizes.
| [deleted]
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| The airplane bullets story actually shows how success stories can
| be valuable. If you take them in aggregate and look at what's not
| there, there are some common themes:
|
| - No one ever says they gave up
|
| - No one ever says they wasted time on petty distractions
|
| - No one ever says they saw a great opportunity and passed on it
|
| etc.
| notahacker wrote:
| That says more about the framing of success stories than
| anything else. When your third company sells for seven figures,
| you get to say your first and second were learning experiences
| rather than things you had to give up because they weren't
| going to succeed. When you're a unicorn, you get to build side
| projects or embark upon codebase rewrites involving more people
| than most companies ever hire, and people will praise both your
| desire to explore new ideas decisiveness when you fire them and
| shut them down rather than dismissing it as a petty distraction
| (and something you gave up on). And the most successful
| startups get to say all the many investment and acquisition
| offers and commercial deals they passed on _weren 't_ great
| opportunities, and have reason to even believe it.
|
| If we're doing airplane bullet stories, it's like trying to
| figure out how to fix airframes by looking at the aircraft that
| didn't get hit at all...
| f17 wrote:
| _No one ever says they saw a great opportunity and passed on
| it_
|
| I had the opportunity to buy Bitcoin in 2010 and didn't. I was
| simultaneously correct (about the moral value and nature of the
| thing) and utterly, utterly wrong (about what it would do
| between then and zero, and thus from a personal financial
| standpoint).
|
| I had too much faith in humanity to invest in Bitcoin. Whoops.
| Turned out degenerate nihilism was the winning bet.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| IIRC Churchill said about the US, hoping for entry into WWII:
| 'They always do the right thing, after exhausting all other
| possibilities.'
| codalan wrote:
| I don't always indulge in toxic positivity, but when I do, I
| LinkedIn.
|
| /s
| avg_dev wrote:
| Single most inane social media feed out there.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Couldn't agree more
| billllll wrote:
| Attributing most success to luck also doesn't seem to be very
| productive. What's the end goal?
|
| If your end goal is to put down the success of others and make
| yourself feel better for not achieving the same level of success,
| then I guess this article is great for that.
|
| However, if your end goal is to maybe one day be as successful or
| more so, then IMO this article isn't that useful. I strongly
| believe in the saying that "experience is a poor teacher," and in
| that case it's worth seeking out the successful experiences of
| others even if it's not an exact template we can follow.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| People often confuse necessary vs complete criteria for success.
|
| The classic example is being smart, getting educated call office
| and working hard.
|
| They won't guarantee success but it certainly improves your
| personal chances versus doing the exact opposite.
| nasir wrote:
| Tonight I went for a walk with the 15 yo son of my neighbour who
| said he wants to start his own company and have 1 million by the
| time he turns 18. I asked him, what do you have in mind? He said,
| I want to build a company that is cash positive and then reinvest
| its profit in itself and grows.
|
| I told him this really does not mean anything. You need to have
| concrete steps toward this goal which is only 3 years away.
|
| I think those who really wants to achieve the so-called "success"
| will just go figure it out rather than constantly reading those
| success story. Yeah perhaps at the very beginning of the journey
| you get inspired by reading a few of those.
|
| But the rest is basically taking concrete steps and trying stuff
| out until it sticks. And the best way to do that is to go figure
| out HOW those people in the success story did it.
|
| At least at the end he was happy with the answer.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| (Without knowing the person at all), I would have asked,
| 'why?'. Lots of _kids these days_ seem to be just following
| these paths blindly. A million dollars can be a means to
| something; it 's not a goal.
|
| 'kids these days' - maybe this was always true, but it seems
| like they are trapped in a cycle of trauma, thinking life is a
| struggle to survive.
| robotnikman wrote:
| It doesn't help that kids now are bombarded by rich
| influencers all the time on social media.
| metadat wrote:
| This pattern of the get-rich-quick mentality is alarmingly
| pervasive among youngsters today.
|
| Even more common are kids who plan to get rich being a famous
| TikTokker, IGer, of YouTuber.
|
| Since there's not much I can do about it, I'm just curious to
| see how this shakes out over time.
| neura wrote:
| There have been many people trying to get rich quick in
| previous generations, as well. If it's growing over time,
| faster than the "work hard and rise to the top" or other
| segments of the population, it may be because "working hard"
| in the same kinds of jobs (level of skill, amount of effort
| required, etc) people were doing 50 years ago is much less
| likely to get you to the same level of independence and
| wealth that it would have 50 years ago.
|
| I think this entire discussion is more about opportunities
| and the common debate is between older generations that think
| young people have the same opportunities now that they had
| when they were young VS young people now believing they do
| not have those opportunities. I mean, is this not the basis
| for the entire "OK, boomer" response/meme?
|
| When looking at specific success stories, I think the people
| talking about luck being opportunity have the right of it.
| Sure, there might be some plan old luck involved and there's
| surely a large amount of persistence and effort involved, but
| it does seem rare to hear about what created the opportunity
| for the success.
|
| Everybody talking about survivorship bias are really talking
| about how the success story, as told by people involved in
| the success, are rarely looking to download their involvement
| and talk about the opportunities they had, but instead want
| to show how their involvement and the things they did are the
| key to the success.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I mean, it kind of makes sense. These kids aren't stupid.
| They see that most of the upward mobility ladders have been
| pulled up by the last generation to climb them, and there's
| not much left besides gambling on meme stocks, OnlyFans, and
| trying to become a popular streamer.
|
| They look at their Millennial parents generation and say "Why
| would I want to study hard, go to college, and work my ass
| off? That's what you did and you have six figures of debt and
| work at Starbucks!" We were suckers and believed in class
| mobility. I think the next generation of kids are more
| observant and cynical and have figured out the deck is
| stacked against them.
| eo3x0 wrote:
| There's a lot of negativity towards capitalism here in this
| thread which is hard for me to understand when the average
| Hacker News user is upper middle class chatting away on
| social media in the middle of a work day. It seems like
| capitalism has done exactly a great job in lifting people
| out of poverty and continues to do so.
|
| A lot of the negativity simply comes from being detached
| from real problems, in my opinion.
| rightbyte wrote:
| A study in bourgeois identity crisis. "Anti-work anti-
| Caren" sentiment. Some Reddit meme I believe.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Or maybe we don't want to pull the ladder up after us and
| a lot of us came from poverty too and remember it and
| have empathy with those still there?
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Being able to use social media during the work day
| doesn't make housing or health care any more affordable.
| Don't those count as real problems?
| f17 wrote:
| You, shall we say, "had a learning experience" if it's 2022 and
| your son still believes in capitalism.
|
| Maybe it's too late for us old farts, but the generation coming
| up needs to overthrow the corporate system--and they need to
| start while they're young and have the energy, and the best of
| us oldsters will be around to help them, so there's no time
| like the present--if they want to have a future. There is none
| in the current socioeconomic system, not for real humans (as
| opposed to ultrawealthy ghouls).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Corporations as structures aren't going away.
|
| Over the centuries, they spread from England to the rest of
| the world because they play an important role quite well:
| they allow people to pool their resources for a common
| project while protecting their non-invested personal assets
| from potential bankruptcy.
|
| People want to do business. People want themselves and their
| families to be protected from utter financial ruin if their
| project fails and ends in bankruptcy. People want to maintain
| some kind of continuity in businesses even if an important
| individual dies or becomes incapacitated.
|
| Legal personae - corporations - are the solution to this set
| of requirements, whose functionality has been tested by
| centuries. They will outlast us for this reason alone.
| jollybean wrote:
| Your neighbour's son is likely going to be quite successful at
| least on some level, and he may even get to his $1M.
|
| "It doesn't mean anything" - the opposite, it means a lot, it's
| 'a (personal) goal' - which is how people focus and motivate
| themselves.
|
| "the rest is basically taking concrete steps and trying stuff
| out until it sticks." - well kind of. Yes, you have to 'take
| steps' at some point, but 'what steps?' to 'what end?' etc.
| etc..
|
| I think it's probably slightly more beneficial to have people
| focused on growing the pie, and having a nice way to captures
| surpluses, as opposed to just "I want to make money" but just
| having the later is a formidable goal.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Of course people want to ascribe agency to success, and
| necessarily failure. The flip side of luck is fate.
|
| Just look at the success of ideas like predestination and
| physical determinism vs. free will in the "marketplace of ideas".
| Many people _really_ don 't like it when you strip them of
| agency, no matter how flimsy the story told to fill the void.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| The analogy to the world war 2 bomber story is applicable _only_
| if you accept the core premise of the article: that most of it
| boils down to luck.
|
| If the successes of the successful really are the result of their
| decisions, planning, approach, or other action on their behalf,
| then where the bullet holes wound up on an airplane isn't
| analogous.
|
| I personally do think that luck has a lot to do with it, but it's
| not sheer luck, it's recognizing opportunity and capitalizing.
| Yes, the iPhone wouldn't exist if it weren't for the DoD building
| GPS. But the DoD building GPS didn't make the iPhone either.
| Apple made the iPhone, while other competitors tried to make
| something like it. It was the _decisions_ that led to the iPhone
| that can teach us about it 's success.
|
| Every set of decisions occurs within an environment. The
| parameters of that environment can be called "luck" if you want,
| and success within that environment can be ascribed to the
| environment itself by way of the word "luck." But looking at it
| that way tells you less about success than the success stories.
| After you armor the engines and you get more planes making it
| home, you don't call that luck, you call that good decision
| making. And you ascribe the success to the decisions, you don't
| dismiss them as survivorship bias.
| crotho wrote:
| the_af wrote:
| I don't think the article is arguing that it's just luck, just
| that luck plays a huge role.
|
| But also, and more importantly, the article seems to be arguing
| that these success stories are mostly unhelpful. If you do all
| that Steve Jobs did, it's likely you won't be even remotely
| successful as he was. "Stay hungry, stay foolish" is
| inspirational -- I like the quote -- but also mostly
| meaningless. Like "follow your passion", "work hard", etc. Yes,
| we all already _know_ this, and it mostly won 't help us become
| the next Steve Jobs.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I'd agree that these pop, self help seminar success stories
| are unhelpful, but for different reasons (although they are
| mentioned in the article): people with these stories rarely
| mention the not so pretty parts of the story unless those
| parts serve to "teach a lesson" in line with the narrative in
| the story, and that successful people tend to ascribe success
| disproportionately to themselves in a manner very akin to
| superstition. Most of what they're telling you were the keys
| to their success will be unhelpful, nevertheless, examining
| their success with your own mind and not with their words can
| show you a great deal about what works and what doesn't.
| icambron wrote:
| I'll add that it propagates the other way too: only those
| who've positioned themselves to take advantage of changes in
| the environment can get lucky. Taking the iPhone example: have
| you built a team of engineers, designers, and manufacturing
| experts able to create and launch an iPhone when it becomes
| possible? One company did. This is what VC types call "creating
| your own luck". Being prepared to seize new opportunities
| doesn't make them happen, but they happen often enough that
| being prepared for them has a positive expected value.
|
| How do you, personally, prep for luck? By cultivating valuable
| skills, minimizing overhead and commitments, earning the
| respect of a lot people, having a well-calibrated risk
| tolerance, and so on. You are trying to turn luck from a
| necessary but insufficient condition to a necessary and
| _sufficient_ one.
| goatcode wrote:
| I'd agree; you can't boil it down to just luck or just hard
| work. I think it a correct notion that fortune favors the
| prepared, and neither luck nor hard work on its own suffices.
|
| If you look more closely, I believe that hard work, luck,
| nepotism and sociopathy all become apparent factors in
| successful business, with their levels being able to be
| exchanged to some degree (with some having a greater amount of
| variability, depending on variation of the others).
|
| In the end: you are right; a bar of gold can fall onto a dead
| body, but he's no better for it.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Luck alone _is_ sufficient. As a simple example: if you 've
| been born into the Gates or Zuckerberg family you will have
| as many tries as you need until you succeed.
|
| And if you've been born in some parts of Africa you're almost
| certainly going to be SOL
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Ancient Yiddish humor:
|
| Old man, dying, calls out to God, "Why couldn't I at least win
| the lottery?"
|
| And God says, "Why couldn't you at least buy a ticket?"
|
| People complain because there isn't a formula for success and the
| propaganda stories promise one, but don't deliver. It's not their
| fault that they don't deliver, because no one can. It's your
| fault for even thinking there _was_ a formula. And it 's their
| fault for encouraging you to think that.
| paulpauper wrote:
| A lot of it is that people want to be told what they want to
| hear.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This idea ("almost everything is luck") is not exactly rare. But
| the author has a giant blind spot when he cites the story of
| Abraham Wald while ignoring a glaring case of similar gap in his
| own argument.
|
| _There are tons of people who had all the luck in the world and
| they didn 't achieve much at all._
|
| Just look at his long list of all the lucky circumstances that
| Steve Jobs had to encounter ("he was born in the USA", "GPS was
| funded", "all the necessary technologies necessary to create an
| iPhone already existed").
|
| True, but Steve Jobs wasn't the only one who had this kind of
| luck. Most of these conditions are wide enough that, in their
| intersection, there were at least several million other
| individuals whose activity _didn 't_ result in anything
| remarkable.
|
| At which moment we are back to square one. Was Jobs' life story a
| propaganda? Perhaps, but if you want to recast it as an end
| product of several instances of luck, you need to explain all the
| duds too.
|
| An interesting example is Elon Musk. Whenever Musk is discussed
| on Reddit or on HN, there is a glut of forists who explain that
| someone born into this kind of wealth and privilege simply _had_
| to be wildly successful.
|
| But Musk's own brother Kimbal, who grew up in the very same
| family and environment, is barely known.
| noasaservice wrote:
| _Capitalist propaganda_
| avindroth wrote:
| Is it so hard to imagine that some people get genuinely inspired
| by stories of other people's successes?
|
| Yes, some success stories are propaganda. But many others are
| genuinely inspiring (and have something to teach us). For what
| it's worth, I think this extreme take is more propaganda than
| most success stories.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Is it so hard to imagine that some people get genuinely
| inspired by stories of other people's successes?
|
| It's impossible not to imagine. That's the purpose of
| propaganda, to move people.
| paulpauper wrote:
| For something to be teachable it must be reproducible to some
| degree. Because the number of failures is hidden, it's
| impossible to know what actually works or not. You're only
| seeing the numerator and not the denominator too. That's why
| survivorship bias is so important.
| Lammy wrote:
| > I think this extreme take is more propaganda than most
| success stories.
|
| Success stories are not propaganda in the sense that they are
| false stories you would be convinced to believe. They're
| propaganda in the sense that hearing them influences you to
| believe in the economic system itself and then spread
| (propagate) those stories to others.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Doesn't this kind of imply that the other economic system are
| either full of failures or at the very least don't have that
| many success stories?
| hammock wrote:
| >some people get genuinely inspired by stories
|
| Isn't that the explicit purpose of propaganda? Why do people
| get so hung up on delegitimizing the outcome of anything stuck
| with the label "propaganda"?
| [deleted]
| em-bee wrote:
| because propaganda implies a nefarious agenda.
|
| propaganda by popular definition is not legitimate
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| So anything inspirational is propaganda? Where do you draw
| the line? This is clearly an incomplete definition of
| propaganda...
| jollybean wrote:
| Whether they are 'inspiring' or not is one thing, whether they
| are legit or not is another.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Just knowing that something is possible is a huge motivator and
| a motivated person is much more likely to succeed.
|
| In sports, it's common theme to think that something is
| impossible until someone does it and the previously impossible
| achievement becomes the new standart as more and more people
| start doing it.
| f17 wrote:
| Success stories in capitalism are usually heavily censored to
| hide the trail of wrecked careers, shady dealings, and
| invisible nepotism that occurred along the way.
|
| If you want to know the truth about a company, ask its least
| popular member... or, better yet, someone who was fired.
| sircastor wrote:
| When I was interviewing most recently I always included a
| question along the lines of "what do you hate here?" And
| while I didn't ever hear about firings, I did often hear
| about issues that regular workers saw in their company. It
| was enlightening.
| caseyross wrote:
| Success stories would have been mostly accurate in prehistoric
| times. In a tribe of a few dozen people, it's quite imaginable
| that one person might be able to "disrupt" the status quo through
| singlehanded grit, determination, or heroism.
|
| But these kind of narratives are a poor fit for the complexity of
| our modern world. Even without considering the issue of
| deliberate propaganda, it simply isn't possible in practice for a
| modern citizen to wrap their mind around all relevant factors
| that led to success or failure.
| manholio wrote:
| While I agree with the sentiment, I think this text is pushing it
| a bit to far. There exist mathematic, cultural, psychological and
| anthropological truths that can help one navigate towards success
| in the world of humans, it's not all random noise.
|
| For example:
|
| 1. Getting yourself organized and goal oriented, focused on what
| you can control, your behavior and decisions, instead of wasting
| time fantasizing about the lives of great men and the myriad ways
| your environment differs from Silicon Valley in the 70s. For
| example, a simple tool like the "Getting things done" methodology
| helped me to increase my productivity significantly. Some other
| tool might work for you, as long as you can stay on goal and
| deliver.
|
| 2. Understanding the exponential curve and the power of compound
| interest. Wealth is built by capital accumulation via compound
| interest, you start with just your two hands, reinvest the
| proceeds in growth and watch you empire grow. Once you accumulate
| seed capital, everything becomes easier, money is like a
| superpower and you can direct people around you to work towards
| your vision.
|
| Cultural norms are strongly favoring linear career goals, ex.
| becoming a doctor, so it's very hard, risky and counterintuitive
| to go against your peer group and position yourself on an
| exponential growth path.
|
| 3. Understanding people are political animals, always competing
| for power and resources. This is true for any organization, team,
| project, people will obey power and getting and wielding power is
| a complementary goal to money, one leads to the another. A strong
| way to accrue political capital is to build networks, meet and
| keep good relations with many powerful people that can be useful
| and for which you are useful.
|
| These examples are some very general and powerful concepts that
| are likely to remain true for a long time and that most
| successful people use at least instinctively. They are necessary
| to greatly increase the odds of success, but of course, vastly
| insuficient to guarantee it.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| sumanthvepa wrote:
| I've always felt that a collection of deep analyses about
| entrepreneurial failures would be more valuable than any success
| story. One of the reasons, I find startup school useful is that,
| it seems like the advice is based on observation of failure,
| rather than success alone. I wish more individual (suitably
| anonymised) information could be provided for further research.
| gjvc wrote:
| like brag posters in the bathroom
| skyyler wrote:
| What do you mean by this? It seemed idiomatic but I can't find
| examples of other people using this phrase.
| JoshCole wrote:
| It isn't "just" propaganda. A success story is fundamentally a
| communication that relates to positive expected value. Picking
| examples might make it seem like success stories are just
| propaganda, but you can trick yourself with biased sampling quite
| easily.
|
| Consider a different example of a success story: the
| communication of the presence of food by ants to other ants. A
| fundamental part of their thinking is tied up in the idea of
| communicating these successes. For them, it isn't "just"
| propaganda.
|
| Interestingly - we've had something close to a controlled
| experiment about the viability of not communicating what we think
| success is with humans. There was once a theory that if you
| didn't tell anything to another human they would learn a divine
| language. To test this a child was separated from the general
| population and raised with caregivers who did not speak to them.
| As you might imagine, this did not produce a divine language or
| an especially intelligent child. It produced a feral child.
|
| In actuality, I think you can relate communication of expected
| values back to a solution to a foundational problem and dialectic
| tension in learning problems in complex environments: the explore
| exploit problem. The literature calls these multi-armed bandit
| problems.
|
| Social species, such as ants and humans, use communication about
| expected values to make their search over their reward landscape
| more effective. Actions are conditioned on the outcome signals
| communicated through the environment, creating a kind of lookup
| cache of better than random strategy.
|
| So there is something deeper going on here than "just"
| propaganda.
|
| If I'm right about that, a natural question is to ask "why would
| people conclude it was just propaganda" and I'll skip the obvious
| reason that the phrasing feels wrong and so the author just did
| it to attract attention.
|
| This property of valuable utility information in expected value
| calculations makes sharing success stories high utility. However,
| some people are low utility producers and want to signal being
| high utility for various reasons. So there are going to be some
| success stories that are fabricated. We have a lot of people. So
| we have a lot of people sampling from stories and some of those
| people are going to draw samples of stories where propaganda
| really is the best description.
|
| So you can arrive at this belief without needing to be attention
| seeking and then what happens when you test it? Well, it seems
| right - there really isn't guarantee of success.
|
| Unfortunately, separate to this is the actual viability of
| following advice gleaned from success stories. To see why it can
| help to go back to a simple case, like an ant following the high
| confidence pheromone trail. It may indeed not find food at the
| end of the trail, but that property has a lot to do with the
| environment. It isn't fully a thing about success stories, but a
| property of how hard problems can be. They probably wouldn't be
| better off abandoning the use of pheromone trails.
|
| This becomes more obvious when you start giving great examples of
| success stories. For example, when people comment that
| mathematics was useful and encourage that we teach it, should we
| conclude that the success they derived from it is "just"
| propaganda?
|
| Or how about recasting their own great example of a great success
| story - they relates a success story about how people managed to
| infer something about failure cases. Their argument about why to
| focus on failure actually contains a sub-component of the the
| success story that comes from focusing on failure.
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