[HN Gopher] No More "Insight Porn"
___________________________________________________________________
No More "Insight Porn"
Author : jakobgreenfeld
Score : 474 points
Date : 2022-08-08 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jakobgreenfeld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jakobgreenfeld.com)
| BoredPuffin wrote:
| Another piece of "Insight Porn" labelled as "No more insight
| porn", how ironic.
|
| And when do people like the author start labelling any over-
| doing, over-indulging behaviour "porn"?
|
| Should I expect in a few decades time that people binge-watching
| documentary will give birth to "doco-porn"?
|
| Catchy marketing at its worst.
|
| On the topic though, beneath whatever words he put on top it's an
| age-old idea that until you start doing something hands-on, it'll
| be hard to tell what you already know and what you don't.
|
| The advice giving and taking is not a new concept, and data-
| driven is not going to change it. If one doesn't like handling
| slimy things, no matter how good a piece of cooking advice is -
| it's not going to help. Imagine capturing meat can be slimy in
| datasets.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It is indeed quite ironic. This article would have landed much
| better had it not tried to make a better version of the insight
| porn that it criticises so much. Just listing the problematic
| content would have been better.
| BoredPuffin wrote:
| If the content doesn't change, the title is not going to
| help.
|
| >Just listing the problematic content would have been better.
|
| Just Like you said.
|
| This, afterall, is not an informative piece of writing; but
| rather more akin to clickbait.
|
| Looking at OPs username and assuming he isn't taking the
| piss, he should be happy to have generated enough traffic by
| now.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| I got super lucky. I started a company and didn't really have any
| meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of
| the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former
| manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30
| seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did,
| and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me
| about double what a FAANG swe would make.
|
| My advice: get lucky.
|
| My insight porn version: 10 easy steps I used to get $500K ARR
| and how you can do it too
| startupdiscuss wrote:
| Note: you had to be kind and nice enough for the former boss to
| care enough to:
|
| - ask you to email
|
| - read it and understand what you do
|
| - follow up and spend the company's money
|
| edit: simplicity
| [deleted]
| soulofmischief wrote:
| One of my friends went to space and had her life radically
| changed last year, and the opportunity entirely arose from
| the fact that she is one of the kindest and nicest people you
| will ever meet, and if you were tasked with filling the seat
| on that rocket, she'd be on the top of your list.
|
| She got "lucky" in the sense that narrowly surviving bone
| cancer as a kid gave her a compelling story, but it's
| everything she did after getting cancer, and her conviction
| to follow her dreams, which led to the opportunity.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I saw the netflix documentary about that mission and Hayley
| was basically the main character.
| pbalau wrote:
| And the "get lucky" transforms in "build a network"
| aaron695 wrote:
| nthypes wrote:
| this is only true if the "unlucky" payout is not that big, so
| you can increase your "luck surface" without worrying about the
| effects for "unlucky" results, otherwise increase your "lucky
| surface" could increase your downside of "unluckyness"
| amelius wrote:
| Question: did you get the idea for your startup while doing
| your internship?
|
| Perhaps the advice is: do more internships :)
| bombcar wrote:
| "Get lucky" is _always_ the key - however, you can increase
| your "luck surface" by doing certain things (for example, you
| couldn't have gotten lucky if you hadn't started the company,
| nor if you hadn't bothered to talk to people).
| nthypes wrote:
| this is only true if the "unlucky" payout is not that big, so
| you can increase your "luck surface" without worrying about
| the effects for "unlucky" results, otherwise increase your
| "lucky surface" could increase your downside of "unluckyness"
| eloff wrote:
| Technology startups are naturally kind of like this. They
| have limited downside and unlimited upside.
|
| However, in my life that limited downside has cost me a lot
| of money in opportunity costs over twenty years. I might be
| retired had I been able to work for money with the same
| energy and time I applied to my startup projects. But
| reality isn't quite like that, I would have been so unhappy
| doing that, it wouldn't have been sustainable (I tried
| working that hard for money for two years and it was
| horrible!) Those startup projects were so fulfilling and I
| learned so much on the journey. Even though I haven't found
| success yet, I haven't given up and the journey itself has
| been incredibly rewarding.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Solidarity, friend. Keep doing what makes you happy, keep
| learning every day, keep trying new things, keep meeting
| new people, and you're giving yourself the best odds you
| can get.
| danaris wrote:
| > you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain
| things
|
| ....and your chances of being _able_ to do those things
| (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are
| increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be born
| wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.
| Swizec wrote:
| > ....and your chances of being able to do those things
| (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are
| increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be
| born wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.
|
| While this is true, it also isn't helpful. Play the cards
| you have, not the cards you wish you had.
|
| You always gotta start _somewhere_. Might as well start
| with what you've got and go from there.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| >"While this is true, it also isn't helpful. Play the
| cards you have, not the cards you wish you had."
|
| certainly not, if you have bad cards it's better to bluff
| - What is there to lose?
|
| btw the best book on the subject is unscripted from MJ
| DeMarco.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > if you have bad cards it's better to bluff
|
| That's playing the cards you have.
| melenaboija wrote:
| I think it is helpful. Along with the cards analogy I
| would say the first step is knowing what cards you have.
|
| As an example, being upper-middle class probably gives
| you an advantage on networking, either family, school old
| mates, ex colleagues, ... Which I think is quite
| important when starting a business.
|
| So realizing you don't have that since the beginning will
| help.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| You do have to start somewhere. It's also important to
| know which goals are realistic relative to what position
| you're in.
|
| If you're poor, do you go for the moonshot, or do you go
| for being middle class and then adjust your expectations
| once you're comfortable that you've achieved your initial
| goals? Going from nothing to something is more impressive
| than going from something to... more something.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| It might not be helpful to the individual, but it
| provides a useful guideline for society - everyone is
| capable of doing great stuff, as long as the means for
| doing so are provided.
|
| I'd bet my life on this - if every homeless person was
| given a place to live, recovery from addiction (if
| needed), mental health counceling, education and a job, a
| significant percentage of them would become productive
| members of society.
| Swizec wrote:
| > a significant percentage of them would become
| productive members of society
|
| The average homeless experience lasts about 2 years. So
| yes, you are right.
|
| https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/How_Many.html
| paskozdilar wrote:
| I'd argue the same point even if we took only chronically
| homeless into consideration instead of an average
| homeless.
| jjj123 wrote:
| You're right it's not helpful towards the goal of
| becoming an entrepreneur or whatever, but I disagree that
| it's not helpful at the macro level.
|
| We should all have this basic understanding of how our
| society works, and how our plutocrats got to be in the
| position they are in. We're fed myths that they all
| started from the bottom and worked hard enough and smart
| enough to get where they are, and you can do it too! And
| if you can't, you're just not as smart or hard working as
| they are. These myths serve the people in power by
| preserving the status quo. I believe it is helpful to
| remind people that we should change the status quo
| instead of adopting a "grindset" to get yours within it.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| > We're fed myths that they all started from the bottom
| and worked hard enough and smart enough to get where they
| are, and you can do it too!
|
| i know this may be rhetoric but i've never heard someone
| say that. a lot of folks in power say "I got lucky but
| also worked hard"
|
| it's counter productive to claim the elite is this super
| disconnected group of people. because they are not and it
| weakens the case for reform.
|
| let's be honest many successful people work hard, yet
| most unsuccessful people don't.
|
| there's a number of lazy _successful_ people
|
| there's also a bunch unsuccessful hard working people
|
| nuance is better than hyperbole
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| The elite are a super disconnected group of people. My
| understanding is that their children don't even have the
| same capacity for empathy as children from other classes.
| Money literally changes how humans think, such that
| humans with significant wealth have a different
| psychology. There is of course nuance but let's not
| pretend like moneyed people, new or old, are normal.
| jdmoreira wrote:
| > My understanding is that their children don't even have
| the same capacity for empathy as children from other
| classes
|
| I don't know. It seems like you are dehumanizing rich
| kids which I don't really think it's a great idea. Sure,
| entitlement is a thing but it's not like rich kids don't
| have their own struggles
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I never said anything you are disagreeing with.
| TuringTest wrote:
| > let's be honest many successful people work hard >
| there's also a bunch unsuccessful hard working people
|
| The key point is that the number of unsuccessful hard
| working people is humongously larger than successful hard
| working people, so working hard does not really correlate
| with having success, no matter what the survivor bias
| tell them.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| probably philosophical difference
|
| "so you're saying there's a chance!?"
|
| is good enough for me, plus when i work hard i feel
| better even when it doesn't pay off.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Right. It's the same reason why people buy lottery
| tickets.
| Banana699 wrote:
| I find remarks like GP useful, to put into perspective
| just how mind-boggingly unfair life is. This is a
| different frame of thinking ("headspace") than a self-
| improvement seeker is in, which explains the downvotes
| and the "boo"ing.
|
| Imagine a civil engineer walks into the office and asks a
| colleague about the plans for the new housing project,
| and the colleague replies that the concept of a "house"
| is a rich and socially constructed idea that both
| reflects and influnces the social zeitgeist in subtle
| ways and is intimately tied to notions of community and
| private property. They are not wrong, and the civil
| engineer would probably learn new things if they let the
| colleague finish instead of laughing them off or firing
| them, it's just that there is this implicit shared
| context in the workplace, that "house" is not a subtle
| idea and our job is to plan and build them not talk about
| their history or philosophy, that the colleague is
| violating or ignoring.
|
| This is a useful analogy to understand why a remark like
| GP's, very useful and very true and would drive you into
| despairing madness and perhaps the brink of suicide if
| you think about it honestly and deeply, is not welcome in
| a thread like this. There is an implicit context in the
| comment section (formed haphazardly in a distributed non-
| explicit way, unlike that of the analogy) that you have a
| bunch of latent opportunities that you can take for
| granted and build off them to new frontiers, and that
| those opportunities are more or less a "critical mass",
| you can make them into whatever outcome you want given a
| fair amount of work. This is non-trivial for a huge
| portion of humans, and yet the self-help context always
| assumes it without proof, and any pushback is interpreted
| as doomer nay-saying or unhelpful pedantry.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I don't know why this is getting downvoted. Yes,
| inequality exists and it sucks, but you still need to
| make the best out of what you have.
|
| Also, a lot of people seem to far overestimate the work
| and risk involved. This doesn't help really poor people,
| obviously, but the amount of people with sufficient
| money, backing and time that complained they'd start a
| company if they "only also had $20 million backing from
| their parents" is staggering.
| bombcar wrote:
| People don't want to admit it involves _hard work_ and
| _luck_ - they 'd rather think that Bill Gates got to
| where he is because of his parents (even though there are
| thousands/millions with similar parents and backgrounds
| who didn't get even close).
|
| Because one line of thought leads to: "I couldn't do
| anything, the game was rigged from the start" and the
| other leads to "I didn't do as much as I could have
| done."
| danaris wrote:
| But the true answer lies between the two.
|
| The game _is_ rigged. But that merely makes it less
| likely that someone who 's on the wrong side can succeed,
| not impossible. You _do_ have to do as much as you can,
| with what you 're given, regardless of what it is.
|
| The _real_ key, though, is that this tells us what we, as
| a society, need to _change_. If we _genuinely_ value
| entrepreneurship and innovation, we need to create a
| universal safety net that lets people take risks, try
| things, _and fail_ , again and again, without ending up
| destitute, because we _know_ that is what leads to
| eventually creating a successful business.
| bumby wrote:
| Isn't this what limited liability corporations help
| ensure?
|
| People need a way to limit downsides, not have zero
| downside.
|
| It's like giving a student a service chance at a test to
| help ensure they learn the material. But giving them
| unlimited attempts with no risk doesn't create the same
| environment.
| Swizec wrote:
| > People don't want to admit it involves hard work and
| luck
|
| My favorite realization from actually playing cards. We
| used to play a lot of rummy on vacations as a family.
| Like _a lot_.
|
| I kept losing. Hard. Absolutely destroyed. If only I
| could get _this one card_ to complete my hand, I'd win
| every time. But it just wouldn't come! I had terrible
| luck. Someone else always ended up winning before I got
| the one card I needed to make the high score and beat
| everyone else into submission. It was infuriating.
|
| After a while I changed tactics. No waiting. Make a play
| on every play. Something, anything, with whatever cards
| you've got. Find a way to make the card you just picked
| up work.
|
| Suddenly I was winning almost every game. Everyone
| complained how much it sucks to play cards with me. How
| does this kid always get exactly the perfect card!?
|
| Now I'm banned from playing cards with family. Last time
| I played rummy was with my girlfriend's family over
| Christmas a few years ago. They banned me immediately.
| Cards never come up again in conversation lol.
|
| It really isn't about the cards. They're just the
| ingredient.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is _really_ visible in bridge; the hands are all
| random but how you play them is entirely skill.
|
| Anyone can win with a perfect hand; the skill comes in
| dealing with the imperfect hands. True in life, too.
|
| Bridge is nice that you can compensate for skill somewhat
| by handicapping, _and_ the less-skilled players can still
| get a great hand and win sometimes. I always say "bridge
| is a fun game to lose" - and that's a really important
| part of a game you want to play.
| mcguire wrote:
| Bridge is a weird game in that the actual play of the
| hand is almost unimportant. You can lose the game by
| playing the hand badly, but you can only win consistently
| in the bidding.
|
| Which is why abstract and complicated bidding systems
| dominate the game, which gives it that lovely, steep
| initial learning curve.
| PeterisP wrote:
| There's an interesting genre of card games (President
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_%28card_game%29
| probably being a good representative) which are literally
| rigged in a way that makes the previous winner easier to
| win the next time and harder for the previous loser to
| succeed.
|
| There is still quite some mobility, but it effectively
| makes for different optimal tactics within the same game
| as your unfair start position determines whether it's
| best to risk things or not, what score is achievable
| depending on your position, etc and IMHO it has quite
| some parallels with real life decision making.
| vangelis wrote:
| now imagine each bad play had a cost and you had a budget
| before too many knocked you out of the game
| Swizec wrote:
| now imagine doing nothing had a cost and you decided to
| sit there and pout because others have better cards
| mcguire wrote:
| This is really not a helpful reply.
|
| To make rummy a good metaphor for this discussion, you
| need to modify the normal $1/point rummy gambling rules;
| say making gin gives you $1000 bonus from the house or
| something. (There's a resemblance to quiddich here, I
| think.) Anyway, now you have the two extreme strategies:
| knock if you can, which gets you a few dollars each time,
| or try exclusively for gin, which usually costs you money
| on each hand but sometimes pays off. If you're skint, the
| gin strategy won't work since you can't stay in the game
| long enough. If you're flush, the knock strategy is
| uninteresting because a few dollars doesn't make a
| difference.
|
| Now make that bonus $10,000,000,000 and you're making
| some unicorns, Harry!
| TuringTest wrote:
| Now imagine you only have budget for a single round
| before being eliminated and some of your opponents have
| money to keep playing indefinitely. That would be the
| most accurate metaphor
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| In theory, hypothetically, it could be helpful in
| identifying when you don't have the proper situation to
| make success sufficiently likely -- perhaps you want to
| find another path where your situation is more
| advantageous. OR to identify what you, unique to your
| circumstances, might need to do to be in circumstances to
| maximize your luck, that other people woudln't -- like,
| in this case, cultivate a relational network of wealthy
| people that others might have out of the box. Or find a
| founder partner with a different balance of
| advantages/disadvantages, maybe you need a partner with
| those networks you don't have, while you bring other
| things to the table.
|
| I'm reluctant to talk about this case specifically
| because it is so... fraught. People get mad, in both
| directions.
|
| But in theory, there is no reason identifying the
| challenges in your starting situation that others might
| not have _wouldn 't_ be helpful. Isn't all information
| helpful?
| Swizec wrote:
| Identifying challenges to overcome is extremely helpful.
| Necessary even!
|
| Giving up before you even start just because it's harder
| for you than someone else, that part doesn't help.
|
| The thing here can be anything. Losing weight, running a
| marathon, starting a business, climbing out of poverty
| into the middle class. You can't get there unless you
| start.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Giving up before you even start just because it's
| harder for you than someone else, that part doesn't help.
|
| Doesn't help with what? In _general_ , when you have your
| choice of direction, choosing a direction that plays to
| your strength instead of a direction where you are
| starting out handicapped compared to competitors can
| certainly help with your chance of success.
|
| If we ignore the specifics about it being about the
| background you were born into, I think we'd all agree
| taht there are some people who exist who because of
| personal charecteristics or even personality are ill-
| suited to be startup founders, and have a poor chance of
| success, and maybe shoudln't do it, right?
|
| It's just when we don't ignore that we are talking about
| social position specifically, in America we want to
| believe this can't be true because of your _social
| position_ , we want to believe everyone has an equal
| chance regardless of social position. This is an ideology
| though, not based on observation. An ideology that says
| you have to pretend it doens't matter, not _even_
| identify the challenges to overcome.
|
| So if you know you're going to have a harder time being
| successful than others, and that of course most startups
| fail anyway, and maybe you want to try it anyway after
| evaluating the risk and what will happen to you if you
| fail, but _maybe_ you say actually, no, I don 't want to
| do the thing that is already very risky and I have an
| additional handicap for... maybe instead of being a
| founder I'm going to look for someone else's startup to
| join, or maybe I'm going to try to work at a FAANG
| instead -- when you say it "doesn't help", what do you
| mean -- it doesn't help who do what? And who would it
| help to do what if you were to insist upon doing it even
| though it will be harder for you than someone else?
| Swizec wrote:
| I think you're conflating 2 different things.
|
| You mention adjusting tactics and strategies, even goals,
| based on circumstances. This is what "playing the cards
| you have" _is_. You do what you can with what you've got.
|
| Giving up before you start doesn't help because it's a
| shut down. You don't even get to the part of assessing
| viability and weighing risk.
|
| The point is that if you want a change on whatever
| dimension you choose to care about, _you_ have to _do_
| something. What that something is depends on the cards
| you have. How far it can take you again depends on
| circumstances.
|
| And it's fine to not want to do things. Or see the costs
| and decide that kind of life is not for you. But at least
| you took the time to evaluate.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Giving up before you start doesn't help because it's a
| shut down. You don't even get to the part of assessing
| viability and weighing risk.
|
| Now you're adding "before you start", who said that until
| you did? Ok, what if instead you've gotten to the part of
| assessing viability and weighing risk and then decided
| not to go down that path, of, say, founding a startup.
|
| > What that something is depends on the cards you have.
| How far it can take you again depends on circumstances.
|
| Right, perhaps depending on circumstances that something
| is not founding a startup.
|
| I don't totally understand what we're disagreeing about.
| Or what you mean when you say "it doesn't help" -- help
| who do what?
|
| I would say deciding your circumstances make it harder
| for you than others to found a startup, thus it would
| make more sense to join someone else's startup or look
| for a job at a FAANG or something instead -- could at
| least conceivably "help". Help you find a path that works
| better for you to find success. I'm not sure what you
| mean by your repetition that it "doesn't help", as, like,
| a logical a priori.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > While this is true, it also isn't helpful.
|
| It isn't _quite_ helpful. The second half of the advice
| should be to tell working class people to do whatever
| they can to get near rich /upper-middle class people, to
| flatter them, befriend them, attend their parties, and
| sleep with them.
|
| The more rich people around you, the luckier you get.
| Some rich manchild somewhere is waiting for you to be
| "the brains" behind something.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| who wants to be "the brains" behind something which is
| not of his own?
|
| Only your own cause and goal can generate the willpower
| and stamina necessary to ultimately create something
| great.
|
| As Nietzsche said: "He who cannot obey himself will be
| commanded. That is the nature of living things."
| mcguire wrote:
| " _who wants to be "the brains" behind something which is
| not of his own?_"
|
| Them as don't want to live in cardboard boxes but don't
| have some part of the resources necessary to "create
| something great"?
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| I will respond with another citation of the same author:
| "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
|
| The brains who you use to achieve someone else's goal
| instead of using it to become what you truly are is
| somewhat wasted. don't you think?
| agentwiggles wrote:
| I'm annoyed by how true this comment has been for me.
| Lots of my success in life has been more about knowing
| the right people than about knowing the right things.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| > ....and your chances of being able to do those things
| (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are
| increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be
| born wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.
|
| That's some good insight porn right there!
| TuringTest wrote:
| > That's some good insight porn right there!
|
| ...and yet, all poor people know it by heart (unless they
| were born into a rich family that has just fallen from
| grace), , because it's totally true.
|
| For more good insight: wealthy families know a lot more
| about how to make money when you have some money. Poor
| families know a lot more about avoiding the risk of being
| totally broke from an unlucky event, because they know
| they'd be totally unable to recover from it (not having
| the safety net of education and wealthy contacts that the
| upper-middle class have even when they go broke).
| LouisSayers wrote:
| Somewhat true except for the fact that education isn't
| fixed. It's a variable that changes.
|
| You might start with little wealth and accumulate
| education on your journey. Therefore in the early years
| when you lose wealth it's difficult to accumulate more,
| but over time it can become easier as you are more
| educated and experienced.
|
| Having little wealth when young also allows you to live
| on very little - when combined with an education you can
| use this very nicely to say bootstrap a product.
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| Someone once seriously proposed making the final
| determining decision for who gets into Harvard be based
| on...a random drawing. (From an oversized pool of qualified
| applicants.)
|
| The idea was students wouldn't go through the rest of their
| life thinking they'd prevailed in a meritocracy, and had
| earned and deserved every bit of their future success.
| They'd always have to acknowledge: some of it was pure
| luck.
| ska wrote:
| This is an old idea.
|
| If you believe the pool of qualified candidates is much
| bigger than the student body for a school like this
| (pretty easily supportable, imo) then this is also
| obviously a good idea - _if_ the primary purpose of the
| school is to provide a great education to any qualified
| individuals who exist.
|
| I don't think any reading of the history of the ivy's and
| similar schools can really support the latter.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| I imagined something totally different when you mentioned
| "a random drawing".
|
| Perhaps they could submit 3 drawings, one of which would
| be randomly chosen.
|
| All drawings would be displayed in a gallery, with a
| critic deciding which they like and which they dislike. A
| scribe would trail the critic with a notepad, writing
| down their critiques and informing the applicants why
| their drawing was declined or accepted.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It essentially already is a random drawing... at those
| acceptance rates, you're getting admitted or rejected
| because the orchestra needed a flute player, or because
| the admissions officer was feeling gassy after lunch.
| Having admissions winnow down the applications to say 3x
| the class size and doing the rest by lottery just makes
| the luck factor explicit.
| leoc wrote:
| It's an _excellent_ idea which has been proposed more
| than once, including by me. ;)
| vkou wrote:
| It's an excellent idea for people who want to go to
| Harvard, and maybe even society at large, but a terrible
| idea for people who _have_ gone to Harvard. And for
| Harvard.
|
| And Harvard cares about the latter a lot more than it
| does about the former.
| [deleted]
| etothepii wrote:
| It has the additional added benefits:
|
| - accepts that the admission team is not infallible.
|
| - allows for the drawing pool to be more representative
| of some target demographic if one believes that the
| selection panel has inherent bias.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| > Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.
| TuringTest wrote:
| And success is being lucky repeatedly, so you can't really
| plan for it; only be disqualified if you're below the
| minimum entry point of preparedness.
|
| Anyone telling you that they worked hard to achieve their
| current success is falling to the survivor bias fallacy.
| [deleted]
| borroka wrote:
| There is another layer here, which is how much you increase
| the "luck surface" by doing certain things. Is it 10%, so you
| move from 1% probability to have "success" to 1.1%? Or 50%
| from 30 to 45%?
|
| Increasing the luck surface sounds smart and insightful and I
| have been guilty to use the term quite nonchalantly myself,
| but without quantification and direction of the luck-surface
| actions, it means very little.
|
| In the specific case discussed, apart from the "building a
| company" part which is admirable but kinda to be taken for
| granted when selling services, it sounds like walking
| increased his luck surface. Had he taken a Uber or gone to a
| different store, maybe the company won't be here (guessing).
| I continue to call it luck.
| falcor84 wrote:
| The book "Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a
| Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire" is a
| wonderful example of how what seemed to be a lucky break for
| Peter Thiel was actually a product of extensive preparation
| for an opportunity to take revenge on Gawker.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| "Why successful founders never get their groceries delivered"
| gundmc wrote:
| This is perfect.
| sangnoir wrote:
| ...followed up a few years later with "I was wrong in my
| previous article and didn't go far enough. Read my part 2:
| Why successful founders should _deliver_ groceries ". You
| may get your chance to pitch a famous VC partner while you
| instacart/doordash.
| chowells wrote:
| No one ever talks about the opportunity cost of building up a
| "luck surface". What is the expected value of doing so? What
| do you have to sacrifice to do so? Is there any evidence the
| EV is positive, or is this just another selection bias?
| nickff wrote:
| Well, one extreme example is buying lottery tickets; it's
| the best way to expose yourself to the potential upside of
| winning the lottery, yet the expected value is quite
| negative.
|
| That example is quite bracing, but I think it points out
| that there are many ways to build this 'luck surface', and
| the expected values of each are probably very different,
| and likely situational.
| ghaff wrote:
| >there are many ways to build this 'luck surface', and
| the expected values of each are probably very different,
| and likely situational.
|
| I agree. Something as straightforward as being known as
| someone who does good work, putting yourself out there
| somewhat (writing, speaking, etc.), basically developing
| a network of people who you know at least professionally
| is certainly a way a lot of people develop at least
| something of a "luck surface." It may well not produce
| the big win but it can certainly lead to "lucky"
| opportunities.
|
| Of course, there are other options that are more like
| gambles that may have negative EV but if you don't play
| big you probably won't win big.
| scarmig wrote:
| All the talk about building a great "luck surface" is
| just an attempt to deny luck: something might seem like
| luck, but it's really part of an intentional strategy to
| maximize potential value!
|
| For any given "luck surface" strategy, you can find far
| more people who haven't achieved massive success using it
| than those who have. Some strategies are probably better
| than others, but those are not foreseeable in advance.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| It's luck because you have no direct control over it - it
| happens by unpredictable circumstances.
|
| Think of networking, and imagine every person you meet
| and build a rapport with as non-parametric distribution
| that you're randomly sampling from over time (future
| interactions). You have no clue if each sample is going
| to yield positive results, but you can increase your
| chance of a positive outcome overall by increasing the
| number of distributions (people) you're sampling from
| (maintaining relationships).
|
| So much of it ends up by random chance, what else could
| it be but luck?
| deltree7 wrote:
| Expected value is really a dumb way to evaluate lottery
| tickets. I can't believe even supposedly good
| mathematicians use it.
|
| The next dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets is to
| compare it with other long odds (lightning strikes,
| marrying your favorite actor). If you want to play along,
| the probability of you winning the lottery is
| 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of
| you existing in this universe.
|
| Buying lottery tickets is a simple framework. The upside
| of winning a lottery is significantly higher than the
| downside of losing one (per week or per month). So do it.
|
| The opposite is driving recklessly to save a minute of
| your commute. It has significantly higher downside risks
| than the upside of time savings. So don't do it.
|
| A lot of lottery-bashing people make 10000x worse sub-
| optimal decisions in their life and yet pick trashing a
| lottery ticket to feel superior about their decision
| making ability.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Buying a single $1 lottery ticket is fine. But I see
| people in gas stations etc. who look like they are
| spending a very large fraction of their disposable income
| on lottery tickets. People asking for "$60 of X" when
| they look like they make $50K a year or less. That's
| fucking insane and if they make 10000x worse decisions in
| their life it must be like putting their fingers in the
| electrical socket.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Yeah, I'll defend buying one lottery ticket, even a few
| per week, but more than that and you very quickly cross
| the line between "Fun Fantasy" and "Math Tax"
| yellowapple wrote:
| > the probability of you winning the lottery is
| 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of
| you existing in this universe.
|
| Is it, though? This claim ultimately hinges on the
| probability of life occurring in the universe, and that's
| pretty hard to assess given our lack of encounters with
| extraterrestrial life.
|
| Once life is established and subject to evolutionary
| processes, I hypothesize that _intelligent_ life is -
| barring some mass extinction event preventing it - just
| about inevitable; evolution will select for greater and
| greater intelligence until the local lifeforms achieve
| sapience (and possibly beyond even that, i.e. levels of
| intelligence we mere apes are incapable of
| comprehending).
| wizofaus wrote:
| There's basically nothing I'm totally sure of, but I do
| know the probability of my existing in this universe is
| 1.
| cwp wrote:
| No. That's like flipping a coin and then saying the
| probability of getting heads is 1. The fact that
| something happened is not proof that it was guaranteed to
| happen.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Re-read what the GP claimed. Given the initial conditions
| of the universe, the probability it might eventually lead
| to my own existence may well be infinitessimal, but in
| the context of the probability of me winning the lottery
| (for example), my existence is already a given.
| cwp wrote:
| No, what he was saying was that the probability of you
| winning the lottery is quite high compared to the
| probability of you existing in the first place. His point
| was that mathematicians sometimes try to contextualize
| these very low probability scenarios so that lay-people
| don't collapse them all into a single "basically
| impossible" bucket. They're not wrong, but it's not a
| useful way to think about whether buying a lottery ticket
| is a good idea.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I'll quote: "the probability of you winning the lottery
| is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of
| you existing in this universe". That statement is
| categorically wrong. If you're going to consider the
| probability of my ever coming to existence in the first
| place, you need to count it as part of the probability of
| winning the lottery too. If it had said "the probability
| of anybody winning" I would've cut it some slack (though
| the probability that a universe might develop with
| sentient beings capable of inventing lotteries is still a
| prerequisite in both cases).
| Miserlou57 wrote:
| I had an argument with my boss about this. He is a
| business owner and pretty successful one, and he calls
| the lottery a poverty tax, or a stupidity tax. If it were
| a game you play in Vegas, then he'd be right.
|
| It's my opinion that just buying one ticket, for say $2,
| essentially is a trivial and inconsequential amount of
| money that exposes you to incredible upside. Imagine if
| the ticket only cost a penny. At that point it's
| practically free, but free exposure to life changing
| wealth. I don't know if that counts as zero to 1
| according to Peter Thiel, but it's basically zero to
| something, for essentially nothing
| Afton wrote:
| Bashing on lottery tickets due to EV also really feels
| like it's really missing the point. Lottery tickets are a
| mechanism for enjoying a fantasy. Sure you could
| technically just pretend that you won $10^9, but there is
| a hard cliff from >0% to 0%. I buy lottery tickets (very
| very occasionally, but who cares!) because it helps me
| enjoy a fantasy about being radically independently
| wealthy.
|
| There's no reason to hate on people for doing something
| that they enjoy, regardless of what the expected value
| is. For god's sake, I _juggle_! As a hobby! Can you
| imagine the expected return on _THAT_?
| Uehreka wrote:
| Any time you spend trying and failing to quantify the EV of
| luck surface area is time you could be spending building
| your luck surface area.
| rograndom wrote:
| Not just getting lucky, but being ready to get lucky. If they
| didn't have the company or the product already, bumping into
| the former manager wouldn't be enough. And I think I've just
| given the type of advice TFA is railing about :)
| manmal wrote:
| Well it's true, you can't win the lottery without buying
| the ticket. Only that way you don't know what prize you're
| playing for.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| While most would call it luck, most self-help "insight porn"
| from the 1800s would say it is "fortunate" because you are in
| control of influencing it with your previous actions.
|
| If a complete stranger became your big customer from the same
| scenario, that would be luck.
| rjtavares wrote:
| Can we stop pretending theses things aren't luck?
|
| Sure, there's merit involved - but that's a necessary
| condition, not a sufficient one. There's a million competent
| people having basically the same drive and capability. The
| thing that makes a difference is luck. Period.
|
| Please note: this doesn't mean that succesful people don't
| deserve the success - most times they do. It's just that
| there are many more people, equally deserving, that didn't
| have the same success. Let's treat those people better.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| The word fortunate includes an aspect of luck.
|
| Successful people are successful because they put
| themselves out into the world to expand their fortune. They
| seize common opportunities and make them great. Those
| opportunities come back around like the original comment.
|
| The whole idea of "building one's fortune" or having a
| "fortune be told" instills in the idea that your actions
| are what influences your chance of being lucky in a
| positive light(never negative).
| theonething wrote:
| What if your actions are also a byproduct of luck?
|
| E.g. if one is born retarded or with another mental
| disability, that prevents them from the actions that
| increase the chances of luck occurrence. A less extreme
| example is a person born with dysthymia who possesses
| less of the mental energy required to put themselves out
| there to expand their fortune and become successful.
|
| Conversely, if one is lucky enough to be born with high
| innate intelligence and drive, coupled with a good
| upbringing and role models, they will more likely engage
| in actions that bring about luck and success.
|
| One might argue that in many cases, people are not
| beholden to their genetics/circumstances and can rise
| above them. A dysthymic person can put forth the effort
| to get the help they need. I might argue that even this
| is a byproduct of luck in that the person was lucky
| enough to not have an incurable form of depression and
| also was lucky to have access to the resources to
| overcome it.
| saalweachter wrote:
| If "luck" is a dirty word in the startup world, I would at
| least like acknowledgement that the pathways to success are
| frequently _not replicable_.
|
| Sure, nothing is certain, but some career paths are much
| more replicable than others. Maybe not everyone can work at
| a FAANGAMMATRON, there's a certain amount of luck, but "get
| a big tech job, work it for twenty-thirty-forty years" is
| still a _fairly replicable_ path to moderate wealth.
|
| You can look at the types of actions people took to get a
| big tech job (probably either "attend a prestigious
| university, apply straight to big tech" or "attend a decent
| state university, work any job in between for experience,
| apply to big tech") and there's probably a double-digit
| percent chance of you being able to replicate it.
|
| You take any of the paths founders took to a successful
| company, it's almost impossible you'd achieve the same
| outcome trying to replicate it.
| rjtavares wrote:
| > You can look at the types of actions people took to get
| a big tech job (...) and there's probably a double-digit
| percent chance of you being able to replicate it.
|
| You think more than 700 million people can get a big tech
| job?
| saalweachter wrote:
| ... X0% of the people who can replicate the path, can
| replicate the results, is the guess I'm pulling out of my
| ass. Not X0% of the global population.
| rjtavares wrote:
| So who can replicate the path? The lucky ones?
| holoduke wrote:
| It's always easy to say it's luck. But I don't think it is. You
| created opportunity. And that's the key thing. Create
| opportunities. As many as possible. I did something similar.
| Started with a dollar a day. Ended up with several thousands a
| day. The only thing I consider luck is the fact that a grew up
| in a stable family in a rich country where I got faced with
| computers at a very early age. I received enough time to
| explore my desires. Never felt any pressure or whatsoever. But
| the businesses I created where my own work.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| There's an irony that people don't even recognise that they
| are already relatively more wealthy than much of the world
| when talking about "rich people".
|
| We do create our own luck to a certain degree and for anyone
| born in a first world country we have so many opportunities
| all around us - many simply choose poorly.
| ineedasername wrote:
| So what you're saying is that I should _Always Be Grocery
| Shopping_? Because you never know who you'll meet there.
|
| No, don't worry about taking the time to reply & say that of
| course that's what you mean. I'm already halfway through
| dictating a blogpost on my way to the grocery store right now.
| Thank you, I never would have seen it as the rich business
| networking venue it clearly is without your insight.
| 79C5 wrote:
| idk if you're joking, but urbanist writer James Kunstler
| points out that grocery stores are the only place in the
| suburbs where you can actually have a spontaneous interaction
| with your neighbors. Maybe ymmv but in the suburb where I
| live, there are no sidewalks and like 1-to-3 people walk by
| per day.
| aparks517 wrote:
| "Get lucky" is solid advice, but you've also got to give luck
| something to work with. I think your overnight success started
| a long time ago, at least as far back as when you showed your
| manager you weren't a bozo.
| lupire wrote:
| vidarh wrote:
| My first company got its investment because one of my co-
| founders talked about it to a random stranger at a bar, who
| turned out to have money burning in his pocket.
|
| I second your advice to get lucky.
|
| Most of my 27 year career has followed as a domino from that.
| Once we'd paid back his investment and exited (for a pittance;
| the ISP marked we'd entered had become impossible for a small
| player), his lawyer happened to get a question from another
| client if he knew any software developers locally. That job led
| me to meet someone who left to start a company, and I followed.
| There I met one of the co-founders of my next startup. That
| startup hired a lawyer who later went on to hire me for one of
| his startups. The co-founder of that startup hired me for my
| current job.
|
| There have been interludes that did not follow so directly, and
| there are certainly things I've done to help things along, but
| there are also many more examples of luck involved along the
| way too. I'm sure I could have gotten a lot less lucky and
| still done ok, or been more lucky and done better, but overall
| I've come out of a lot of things disproportionately well.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| The initial part has a large element of luck, but to be fair
| it was also because your co-founder was busy networking in
| public spaces.
|
| And most of the events after that sound like the fruits of
| being skilled, agreeable and available.
|
| Luck played a part, but don't sell yourself short. :)
| mrtksn wrote:
| > My advice: get lucky.
|
| That's actually great and actionable advice. The more draws you
| have the better chances you get to luck out.
|
| The actionable part is the draw participation and you
| participate with your each interaction multiplied with your
| relevancy surface.
|
| Do you know who did not luck out with your former manager?
| Those who did not had a company that does the things you do and
| those who might have had but did not interact with your ex
| manager.
|
| IMHO lucking out is a very straightforward strategy and is
| relevant not only in business but in romantic relationships or
| friendships or any other partnerships.
|
| Just don't expect to luck out on your first try and multiple
| participations is much easier than trying to design the luck on
| first try.
| [deleted]
| dominotw wrote:
| >Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I
| passed by my former manager when I was an intern.
|
| Not sure if 100% luck because I usually switch to the sidewalk
| other side of the road when i spot someone i know coming down
| the sidewalk that i know :D
| aaws11 wrote:
| how about "make your own luck"? so that way you don't have to
| fear the uncertainty of luck!?
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Solid advice, yeah get lucky. No shortcuts.
| fouric wrote:
| I really like this idea!
|
| You can find it in all sorts of places. Here's one in video
| games: there are a lot of League of Legends videos by a channel
| called "Skill Capped" that each claim to have "one neat rule" or
| "5 mistakes to watch out for" to help you get better at the game.
| The only problem? The "one rule" is something like "don't do this
| thing unless you know that there's an 80% chance that it'll work"
| - and that's the hard part, that the video does nothing to help
| with.
|
| I think that this is another flavor of "insight porn" where the
| video portrays itself as boiling down something hard into a
| simple insight - yet that insight is tautological, not useful,
| and/or skips the hard part.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's actually actionable - _don 't do this thing_.
|
| The key is that you'll see the pros doing it because they can
| recognize the 80% areas, but if you can't, you shouldn't even
| try to do it, because you're likely putting yourself at a
| disadvantage.
|
| Part of the problem is not all games can be broken down into
| certain definitive chunks you can work on directly (turn-based
| ones often _do_ have these).
| saltmeister wrote:
| madrox wrote:
| There is very little advice that's good, but if you make a living
| producing content, you gotta get your quota up. The algorithm
| prioritizes new content. People want something to read every day
| over coffee, even if there's nothing new to read that's good.
| czernobog wrote:
| This is really interesting. I like the blog, I don't want to
| subscribe for emails but I would like and RSS but I don't see it
| closedloop129 wrote:
| >When I'm consuming non-fiction content, I try to write down
| specific experiments I can try that put the things I "learned"
| into practice.
|
| Could you turn this into a social network where people cooperate
| to do these experiments? It could be used to figure out which
| ideas are helpful and it could be used to help people when they
| are stuck implementing an idea.
| hammock wrote:
| We could get the government to fund the experiments with
| research dollars, and build institutions around the country
| where people run these experiments with young people eager to
| learn and apply science and get experience with such things.
| Then the results could be published first in science journals
| for the other institutions, and then the best ones written up
| in popular book form for the masses to consume.
|
| Wait a minute...
| closedloop129 wrote:
| Exactly. However, the incentives are different. Academics do
| not necessarily care about the same questions. They are also
| not personally affected but just research a topic.
|
| With a social network, people with problems can come up with
| their own answers. They already do, in existing networks. I
| think, organizing a social network by research question could
| be an improvement on the status quo.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Out of the 3 "Insight Porn" examples linked in the article, I
| think the Paul Graham essay seems out of place. I know I know,
| this is hacker news. Yet another person sticking up for pg. But I
| just don't think this essay (or others) is really trying to boil
| some dream/goal into steps. In fact, in the "How to get startup
| ideas" referenced in this post, pg says:
|
| "So if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an idea,
| how do you choose between ideas? The truth is disappointing but
| interesting: if you're the right sort of person, you have the
| right sort of hunches. If you're at the leading edge of a field
| that's changing fast, when you have a hunch that something is
| worth doing, you're more likely to be right."
|
| To me, he is doing the opposite of insight porn. Basically saying
| this might not even be for you. He doesn't even suggest that you
| go become an expert in something. Rather, he just throws his
| hands up. He tries to spare you from the disappointment of
| hearing this by calling it "interesting". That contrasts _a lot_
| with what most of the insight porn is trying to convince you of.
| They rarely try to disappoint you and mostly just hype/pump you
| up.
| vharuck wrote:
| >"if you're the right sort of person, you have the right sort
| of hunches"
|
| To me, this sounds like a line from a multi-level marketing
| pitch. It sounds like they're saying "This may not apply to
| you," but a lot of people will hear "There are chosen people
| (and you're probably one of them)."
|
| It reminds me of the Calvinism sect of Christianity. They
| believed in predestination for salvation: God has always known
| who be a good person and deserve salvation. So there was no
| point in trying to be virtuous, because the outcome was set
| before you were born. Still, Calvinists often adopted public
| shows of virtue, like meticulous gardens, to convince others
| they were part of the "to be saved" group.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| > So there was no point in trying to be virtuous, because the
| outcome was set before you were born.
|
| Yeah, but just because Omega already either put the money in
| the box or didn't doesn't mean you should act like it doesn't
| matter. God is omnicient, and sees whether you'll get into
| heaven, but curiously enough at the end of the line we see
| it's the people who did virtuous deeds which wound up there.
| As you can't see the stamp on your soul, you might as well
| act like your actions will decide it, since the outcome of
| your choices is what God looked at when He stamped you in the
| first place.
|
| It's a fairly pointless objection seeing as I doubt either of
| us are Calvinists, but their take on Predestination annoyed
| me when I learned about it, especially since they acted
| virtuously anyway (or pretend virtuously, whatever)!
| theonething wrote:
| I see PG's quote as true, but hard to swallow.
|
| The truth is you do have to be the right kind of person to be
| successful (in this context, successful at startups). A
| person born with severe retardation or another mental
| incapacity is not the right kind of person to be successful
| at startups.
|
| The right kind of person has the genetic makeup, personality
| type, upbringing and/or access to resources to become
| successful. Not everyone has this and that's okay. And also,
| you (usually) don't know if you're the right kind of person
| until you try. So if you want to, try and keep trying until
| you don't want to anymore.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Yeah, but there's always someone who will misinterpret you.
| You can try to mitigate it, but at some point you have to
| stop worrying about it and just be honest. Whatever the
| article's other merits, I don't think that's a good critique.
| flatline wrote:
| > If you're at the leading edge of a field that's changing
| fast, when you have a hunch that something is worth doing,
| you're more likely to be right.
|
| Right there he suggests you become an expert. An expert who is
| at the crest of the wave in some field is more likely to see
| over it and get a glimpse of what's next. I think he is spot
| on. It's no guarantee but it's probably as close as you can
| get.
| lumost wrote:
| Consider how ineffective this advice is then. What decisions
| can you make? You could take this to mean that you should
| follow your gut, or not. Does it share anything useful for
| formulating a decision? And why is this approach better than
| the alternatives?
| startupdiscuss wrote:
| The point is, this was not meant to be advice! This was anti-
| advice.
|
| You can't use the criterion: if it is insightful it has to be
| actionable on an insight that says "I have no actions for
| you".
|
| The difference is, it is not trying to trick you.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's just empty self aggrandizement. "Be the right sort of
| person and you'll have the right hunches" is transparent
| nonsense.
| ProblemFactory wrote:
| It's not empty, it's just way, way! too politely phrased.
| It's not advice on how to find ideas or how to become
| that person, but advice on who is ready to give founding
| a startup a try.
|
| During my career I did freelance mobile app and web
| development for about 10 years.
|
| In that time I came across many people who wanted to
| found a tech startup because "that's where the money is"
| and being a tech startup founder being a status symbol.
| Some enthusiastic youngsters, but mostly people who had a
| successful non-tech small business. And they were _not_
| the right sort of person and did _not_ have the right
| hunches, they didn 't use what they learned from their
| non-tech business, but instead sat down over a beer with
| friends to brainstorm "social-local-viral" app ideas.
|
| The advice instead should be that if you are struggling
| to come up with startup ideas, you probably aren't the
| right sort of person _at this time_. You should do
| something entirely different for a while until you find a
| product that just has to exist.
|
| Unfortunately, they had never read HN or PG, nor could I
| do more than politely refuse their business.
| tomhoward wrote:
| It's not nonsense, it's an obviously-tautological
| statement, made with the full awareness that it's not
| helpful advice, but used to explain the point. It's one
| sentence out of a long essay. Later in the essay he
| provides recipes for coming up with startup ideas, even
| though he warns that that approach is suboptimal. What
| more could be asked of him?
| tomhoward wrote:
| The problem with the OP's criticism and yours is that it
| starts from the assumption that PG has set out to "sell" the
| reader faux-actionable insights.
|
| What he's really doing is answering the question "how can I
| come up with startup ideas?", which has always been asked of
| him and the other YC partners frequently.
|
| And his answer is: you shouldn't try to come up with startup
| ideas; that's not how it works. Instead you should just
| notice if/when they appear before you.
|
| He's clearly not claiming to be doing what the author is
| accusing him of trying to do. He's just explaining something
| he'd noticed after (at that time) 7 years of funding/advising
| some of the most successful startups.
|
| (That said, later in the essay he goes on to offer actionable
| recipes for formulating startup ideas anyway).
|
| In answer to your question: you can take his advice, or not,
| to stop trying to confect startup ideas, and instead just pay
| attention to the opportunities you notice from your own
| experience.
| planarhobbit wrote:
| This is why I don't get the recent pg hate that's been
| happening on HN. He's always done this, but now people are
| saying he's out of touch because he's rich/white/old.
| Majority of things he's blogged are no-nonsense
| observations.
| trwhite wrote:
| I think one has to take his writing of late with a pinch
| of salt because he writes things that only a rich, white
| and old guy could write. But the earlier stuff is still
| great. Hackers & Painters is still a wonderful book.
| pwinnski wrote:
| The link was specifically labeled with a line from the essay:
| "Live in the future, then build what's missing." PG goes on to
| say that's how "many if not most of the biggest startups got
| started," which sounds more descriptive than proscriptive,
| since the proscription seems like nonsense.
| [deleted]
| redler wrote:
| It's the "some of us just have midichlorians" insight.
| 015a wrote:
| I think it does belong; ultimately, knowing if one has the
| "right sort of hunches" is only possible in hindsight, there's
| as much luck as anything else involved in what PG/VCs/founders
| do, and they in-no-uncertain-terms admit this through their
| their entire model of investment; throwing money at 100
| companies praying that one 1000x's.
|
| Just as how its easy to criticize ideas because criticism is
| cheap, its also easy to pick out if a business will probably
| fail; but singling out success is near-impossible. If you asked
| me if playing video games all day was a good way to get the
| brain-surgeon-rocket-engineering job of your dreams, I'd say it
| probably isn't; but the right way is far more elusive.
|
| In other words, its high level, not useful, and once you get
| into the specifics his message falls apart. I also think: VCs
| are generally quick to trivialize the impact the rising
| economic tide of the '10s had on all investments, not the least
| of all in the novelty of software-related venture investments,
| and many people will be found without pants over the next
| decade. Which I only say to add that this is a common theme
| with insight porn; trivializing luck & privilege.
| mcguire wrote:
| The unfortunate truth of PG's claim is that: Odds are you are
| not the right sort of person. You're not at the leading edge.
| The field isn't so much changing as spinning in place. Sorry.
|
| But he carefully doesn't say that, and the majority of most of
| his essays are designed to inspire the belief that you _are_
| the right sort of person, etc.
| feet wrote:
| To me that sounds like "you need insight into a field to have
| good hunches"
| antonymy wrote:
| I've never tried to give advice to people in my life since my
| career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and lucky
| breaks. I know that luck factors into a lot of people's
| experiences, but in my case luck is the foundation of everything
| I have accomplished outside of school. I've built on top of this
| foundation, to be sure, but it's like saying fishing is all about
| waiting for the fish to jump in your boat.
| ghaff wrote:
| >my career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and
| lucky breaks
|
| I think you'll find that's true of a lot of people. Yes, there
| are people who graduate from a mid-tier school in engineering,
| go to some large company, work their way up the career ladder,
| maybe switch to one of two other big companies over time doing
| more or less the same thing, are reasonable happy and healthy
| in their personal life, etc. But a lot of people have much more
| circuitous routes that include barely navigating some difficult
| situations.
| 015a wrote:
| W.r.t the "imagine your day is 6 hours long, then you could fit 3
| days in one" 'advice'.
|
| I haven't read the original article, and won't, but I'm imagining
| what they mean by that is 6*3=18 (+6 hours of sleep = 24).
|
| I have two jobs right now; primary gig + ~10hr/week contracting,
| both tech. I'm actually a big fan of this model of thinking,
| though not as extreme; I'll elaborate:
|
| Classify 3 days a week as "hell days"; 9a-6p job1 + 7p-9p job2.
| Tweak the numbers as you will for your own situation, but
| critically, for every hell day there's a heaven day: Monday
| you're working 12 hours, but Tuesday you're only working 6 hours,
| and alternate.
|
| I've found this model to work well, even when it was only applied
| to a salaried 40-hour-per-week job; Mon is 6h, Tue is 10h, etc.
| If you've got the right gig that can support something like this
| (many remote SE roles can). It averages out to the same
| (sometimes more) hours per week, you can plan for more fluidity
| (e.g. i'm going out drinking with friends thursday evening, so
| lets front-load some hell days early in the week so we get a
| heaven day friday), and it tends to really vibe well with
| engineering workloads (hell days are great for deep focus,
| centralize as many meetings as possible on heaven days, whatever
| works for you, etc).
|
| And sure, I'm being a little vague in how to attain this for
| yourself, if its something you'd even want; the sin of Insight
| Porn. It really comes down to "find a job that allows you to do
| it", and boom, Luck has entered the chat (with some mitigating
| "Skill" in being in a desirable field, knowing the right
| questions to ask in an interview, etc).
|
| All that considered, I still like the advice. If I want to spend
| my free time with loved ones; its so much more valuable &
| meaningful, to me, to spend an entire afternoon and evening every
| other day, or even only once/twice a week, than just an evening
| some/most evenings. Everything is better without interruption;
| work & play; and classifying your days as "WORK/play" versus
| "PLAY/work" rather than trying to evenly split every day, has
| just been better for me. YMMV.*
|
| Of course; extending this idea to "3 work days per day, that's 15
| work days per week" or "6 hours of sleep per night" is crazy and
| no one should live like that.
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| I read a story where the main protagonist ran a business who did
| nothing but provide solutions to people. They would come in, pay
| a fee, and he would dispense a solution to their problem that
| would make things better if only the advice was followed.
|
| I thought it delightful. A problem I have that I can simply ask
| for a solution and get it? That would be great.
|
| The reason these bad actors exist is that they recognize the
| same: people struggle and just wish someone would offer real
| advice. If everyone wishes to dig for gold, sell shovels right?
| Well if everyone is dealing with failure, feelings of inadequacy,
| and a desire to change why not sell them the hope that if you do
| these simple things everything will be better.
|
| It is a desirable thing, even for me who should know better.
| lupire wrote:
| bombcar wrote:
| Another part is nobody wants the _real_ advice, because it 's
| often hard.
|
| See how many diet books are sold, and see how few people
| actually successfully lose weight, even though the advice boils
| down to "stop eating so much".
| groby_b wrote:
| It... really doesn't.
|
| Maybe that's what makes real advice so hard - too many people
| making glib blanket statements on the Internet. _Actual_
| advice always targets individuals, and it 's never a single
| thing that it boils down to.
| boomskats wrote:
| I, too, am a huge fan of Nathan for You [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_for_You
| apetresc wrote:
| You perceive Nathan's ideas on the show as "a solution to
| their problem that would make things better if only the
| advice was followed"? We must be watching different shows :)
| suction wrote:
| Best comedy on TV. Basically anything Fielder has touched so
| far, was gold. Or maybe it's because his brand of comedy
| really works for me, personally.
| wnolens wrote:
| The latter. I can barely watch him. I'll admit he's
| incredibly original and I really appreciate a skit or two.
| But he borders on sociopathic, and his latest movie is a
| great encapsulation of that.
| suction wrote:
| The only reason these bad actors exist is because there are a
| lot of marks for their con. We wonder why there are so many
| alleged Nigerian princes with money logistics problems on the
| internet - this is the same thing, just in less obvious
| fashion.
|
| A fool and his money are soon parted. The real question a
| society should ask itself is to what extent it should protect
| its fools from their own gullibleness and inevitable bad
| decisions.
|
| If a business owner goes bankrupt because he believed the
| "insight peddlers" and their easy solutions, then according to
| capitalist theory, it's OK he'll be replaced by someone who is
| better at business.
|
| The same also happens in the political realm. How much time and
| effort should a society spend on educating its fools, for
| example that their belief that the president shitposts on 4chan
| under the guise of "Q" to tell his followers about his secret
| plans, is based on nothing but lies and gullibleness?
|
| Should we take our collective eyes off the ball of actual
| issues at hand and deal with our fools' every concern? Or
| should we just accept that we can't save every voter or every
| business man and just let the "market" do its thing? It's not
| black and white like that, because of course a society
| shouldn't be do-or-die about anything, but when the extent of
| foolery starts to threaten the fundament that allows it to
| exist, there's a limit.
| collaborative wrote:
| Schools should harden students against idiot-traps. Perhaps a
| class of "History of scams" would be appropriate
| superasn wrote:
| The corollary being that people who are not peddling insight porn
| are often dismissed and have much much harder time to get their
| content shared.
|
| I mean on one hand there is this guy with an incredibly feel good
| story about how all you have to do is just fill the gaps between
| the problem and solution and get rich. Then on the other hand
| there is this guy giving advice that looks like a steep uphill
| climb from your comfort zone where you to measure every single
| unique issue in your product and call customers 10 times a day to
| understand what's not working and why they're leaving, etc.
|
| Most people will pick A since it makes em feel good and such
| wisdom like "if your why is big enough the how takes care of
| itself "
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Life is always changing. What advice you read about today may not
| stick nor apply to you right now, but it may in the future.
| Things don't change, we do.
|
| > Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked
| for the key to their success come up with some framework or
| playbook that they, in fact, never used themselves.
|
| This comment feels like a rant with no justification. I know many
| highly accomplished people who will tell you what they did to
| achieve the promotion, land the deal, or deliver the project. Are
| they fleeting generalizations in a self-help book? Not usually.
| But there are visions, systems, and frameworks they have
| developed over the years, simply summed up as their personal
| philosophy.
|
| Insights can be profound to one and dumb to another. Does it make
| insights a bad thing? Absolutely not. Some people are ready for
| them, some people are not. Some people 10x their life with a
| simple idea like a vision board. Some never try it because they
| think it's dumb. I'm of the opinion that unless you try
| everything at least twice, you can't know if it works for you or
| not.
| felipelalli wrote:
| Put the word "porn" on the title and get trillion upvotes.
| minihat wrote:
| I think the invitation to subscribe to the author's newsletter at
| the bottom of the page is ironic.
|
| Love the label "insight-porn" though. Concisely captures the
| nauseous feeling of ingesting your 100th self help book.
| abecedarius wrote:
| The term was coined, afaik, by Sarah Perry in this blog post:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180104183908/http://theviewfro...
|
| Words will evolve, but I wanna say she was going for something
| higher level than self-help.
| contextfree wrote:
| yeah, was going to post that what he describes doesn't fit my
| idea of "insight porn" as it originated from the
| postratsphere. I might classify both his topic and his post
| itself as "hustleporn"
| keyle wrote:
| I laughed at that too.
|
| It feels like his blog is the revenge porn of hindsight porn!
|
| I did enjoy the article though. A lot of commonsense but no
| real actionable takeouts though... wait a minute...
| anthropodie wrote:
| When there's is so much to consume one does wander do we really
| need this much to survive or to be a better self?
|
| I mean people have been living on this planet for 1000s of
| years without access to as much info as today.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| We also have such limited time/attention/energy.
|
| If you take the time a lot of people spend consuming content,
| like insight porn / productivity porn etc and instead spent
| that time doing more and reflecting more, you'd still likely
| be in a better place than the consumer
| jjulius wrote:
| It would be one thing if it was just something like, "Hey,
| subscribe to my blog if you wanna!", but it's actually:
|
| >PS: Looking for More?
|
| >If you'd like to get more honest strategies and proven
| frameworks for winning in life and business, then simply join
| my free newsletter here.
|
| ... which yeah, sounds like, "Sign up for some insight porn!".
| greenie_beans wrote:
| it's a shame that our society causes us to optimize our time
| spent to make the most amount of money. we need to do the
| opposite of this:
| https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
| anonu wrote:
| Nice meta blog post. Some great insights on insights.
| yamrzou wrote:
| My guess is that a big chunk of the "insight porn" and self-help
| landscape would fade away if it was subject to a data driven
| evaluation. Given a piece of advice or a self-help book, how many
| people did actually change their behaviour after reading it? And
| did the change persist long-term? Unfortunately, such data is not
| available.
| Torwald wrote:
| Tony Robbins says in one of his audios (can't remember which,
| otherwise I would link), that 80% of the books he sold are just
| collecting dust, because people just buy them in order to pat
| themselves on the back for having done something for their
| personal development.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Ironically said in a self-help audio course itself.
|
| I feel like a lot of that content seems to mention similar,
| either in a slight moment of self-awareness that their
| content will likely j just be that or perhaps in a slightly
| deluded way to try and suggest that this course / book is
| somehow different.
|
| Content creators make a lot of money and have nice careers
| selling all this stuff, even streamers, how many of them
| would actually spend hours watching someone else's stream a
| day? Most of them wouldn't go near that stuff, but they
| happily stream for hours a day have thousands of people watch
| them and consume the content then cash that check.
|
| It's a great life for the creator, not so much the consumer.
|
| The same is with productivity YouTubers or self help authors,
| it's a create business to be in, but really your just selling
| out the other person.
|
| It was not lost on me, when a popular self development
| podcast host, a few years ago talked about how they set up
| there twitter and social accounts to post via a third party
| app, because they absolutely must not see the timeline or
| engage in it in any way. These people are happy to use to
| tools out there to profit and capture other peoples
| attention, but guard there own so tightly because they know
| how important it is. That is likely a better lesson than
| anything they where actually 'tweeting' about.
| wnolens wrote:
| Maybe that says something about the quality of his words. He
| is a kingpin of insight porn.
| mmaunder wrote:
| "Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked
| for the key to their success come up with some framework or
| playbook that they, in fact, never used themselves."
|
| And they rarely share the messy awkward embarrassing reality of
| their journey.
| diehunde wrote:
| This is why I'm not a big fan of "Things that any [insert
| career] should know" or "things I wish I'd known" type of
| articles. The path to mastering something is always unique,
| messy, and unstructured. It's impossible to replicate your
| journey by telling someone to read X, read Y, and do Z. All of
| that needs to be internalized as part of a slow journey that
| can't be accelerated too much. Your brain needs to learn how to
| filter noise, find patterns and get used to thinking a certain
| way. You might lose a year learning something that became
| obsolete; guess what? You still learned tons from that. We
| don't need to babysit junior people too much. They can find
| their way into becoming great SWE just like any great SWE who
| complains they learned something too late in their careers or
| that nobody told them something before did.
| anon25783 wrote:
| A crackhead never says "I have no money, I guess I'm not smoking
| any crack today". Instead, they will go to an abandoned building
| and strip all the copper wiring out of it. Don't let a crackhead
| out-hustle you today.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Truly inspiring.
| pwinnski wrote:
| This would be horrible advice if it were not completely
| useless. As it is, it's only disgusting.
|
| I don't find it inspirational, and there is nothing actionable.
| hamiltonians wrote:
| another piece useless insight porn is to say 'no' to anyone or
| anything you dont want to do
| mkl95 wrote:
| Actual insight can be tough to hear. No one wants to be told they
| would be doing better if they had worked their ass at some
| innovative company early in their career instead of taking an
| office job with a lower ceiling. Learning they can pull off some
| "life hack" to become rich will give them a much needed dopamine
| boost.
| swayvil wrote:
| >Many people that truly accomplished amazing things, when asked
| for the key to their success come up with some framework or
| playbook ... It's just that people love to say things that make
| them look good.
|
| Or they really are trying to package their trick in a way that's
| universally useful, but failing.
|
| Because that's hard. Because people differ widely in the way they
| see and think. It's SO much easier to assume that they don't. But
| they do. One size does not fit all.
|
| A truly sciency approach might be the missing link. Firmly
| establish a common context and such. But that might be tedious
| and off-putting.
| notacoward wrote:
| > Or they really are trying to package their trick in a way
| that's universally useful, but failing.
|
| ...or their "trick" was really 100% incidental to their
| success, which sprang from causes they'd rather not reflect
| upon.
| swayvil wrote:
| Oh, and he's got a newsletter. It's beside the point but
| seriously lol.
| mft_ wrote:
| I'm totally with the author - what he calls 'insight porn', I
| think of as 'grind porn' - as underneath the 'insights', I
| believe what the genre is really selling is the paradigm that
| _you 're not achieving enough, and you need to work harder, and
| because there are only so many hours in the day, you need to work
| smarter too, and to do that you need our insights to help you be
| much more efficient._
|
| So I'd take it a step further - not just avoid insight-/grind-
| porn, and _grind-adjacent-porn_ too.
|
| By this, I mean the equally large industry around life
| optimisation - and consider it adjacent because _of course you
| need to optimise your health, wellbeing, sleep, weight, muscle
| volume, whatever, to be a fully productive human and achieve the
| heights that are expected of you_.
|
| Take (possibly) the Daddy of the all: Tim Ferriss' blog/podcast.
| I believe it's basically well-meaning, but holy hell if you
| wanted to learn from and apply the life optimisations of all of
| his guests, you'd almost need to make it a full-time activity. (I
| guess that's why some of them --Peter Attia, for example-- are
| really appearing on the podcast to advertise their business,
| which [if you're rich enough] will take most of the hard work out
| of figuring everything for yourself.) And of course, don't get me
| started on trying to follow any of the advice while living in the
| Europe, without easy access to many of the items recommended.
|
| And some of this slips out of the recrational space into the
| professional, too. A while back, I became aware of a
| professional/life coaching business[0] which was more holistic
| than the usual behaviourally-focussed professional coaches I'd
| experienced. Lots of well-meaning advice... until it hit me:
| maybe if I need to employ all of the little lifestyle marginal
| gains --green tea, optimised sleep, optimised diet, exercise--
| just to cope with my f*cking job, the toxic demands of job itself
| is the problem?
|
| Is it possible we've gone too far towards accepting and adapting
| to the grind... and maybe it's time to wind it back a little?
|
| [0] https://tignum.com/
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I think what's really being sold is "simplicity"
|
| > It's so, so simple.
|
| Complexity is overwhelming us all. Who doesn't want simplicity?
| Simplicity is to thinking what convenience is to labour. All
| you must do is reject all that baggage of education, moral
| struggle and "overthinking" things, and embrace the banal.
|
| Behind many "Epiphanies", IMHO, is a message to "Let us do your
| thinking for you".
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| I've followed Tim for a good amount of years and the thing that
| hit me the most was when he talked about using tools for his
| socials to make sure he never saw the time line.
|
| It made me think, he is happy to use the tool for his own gain,
| but opening acknowledges that it's bad for him, of course, most
| people in his situation would be the same, but it made me
| think, how all of that is mostly for his gain, not what a lot
| of the content consumers assume, for there gain. It's really
| just entertainment disguised as something more, might as well
| just watch Netflix.
|
| Also it's abundantly clear that a lot of these creators don't
| listen to other podcasts etc, why is that? Being a creator and
| having a big following is a decent and fun life, but it's
| completely separate to being a consumer and all these consumers
| following this content wanting to learn to be more like the
| person that is creating the content, when the irony is, the
| biggest step they could take to doing that, is stop consuming
| it all.
| piaste wrote:
| > using tools for his socials to make sure he never saw the
| time line
|
| I don't use socials, so I need some help understanding this
| sentence, please.
|
| What does it mean to "[not] see the timeline" and why is it
| important?
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Basically, the timeline was just another word used for the
| feed.
|
| He didn't want to see the feed that everyone was posting
| because he knows it just saps your attention / can be
| toxic, but he wanted the ability to post on other people's
| feeds so they would see the content he wanted to promote.
| strken wrote:
| It's genuinely useful to know that making $X a year is the same
| as Y clients paying $(X / Y / 52) a week, if you've never thought
| about a business in concrete terms before.
|
| Obviously this is old and repetitive if you're a working software
| engineer who's been reading HN for years and has seen a ton of
| motivational LinkedIn bullshit, but it's the kind of thing a
| career councillor might go over to make running a business seem
| approachable. Equally obviously it would be much better advice if
| it came with a real-world example of a forecasting spreadsheet
| and a link to your government's "how to start a business"
| website. That doesn't make it bad advice.
|
| The example thread from Naval is the same. Second tweet is
| basically "conspicuous consumption wastes money, buy appreciating
| assets instead," but couched in pornographic insight. One of the
| later tweets is "pick business partners...with integrity." _They
| 're both good bits of advice._ Just because you already know a
| piece of advice, and just because it's given by a charismatic
| writer over far too many individual tweets, doesn't make it bad
| advice.
| juve1996 wrote:
| > One of the later tweets is "pick business partners...with
| integrity." They're both good bits of advice.
|
| Really? This is good advice? Is "don't work with a known thief"
| also good advice? Most people know this already. They make it
| seem like it's this grand knowledge. it's not. It's worthless
| advice dressed up to sound good.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Everybody forgets the basics from time to time and needs to
| be reminded.
|
| There are people that are surprised when the partner who
| cheated with them in their previous relationship also cheats
| on them in the current.
| juve1996 wrote:
| I don't know if I buy that.
|
| > There are people that are surprised when the partner who
| cheated with them in their previous relationship also
| cheats on them in the current.
|
| Is it that these people don't know the risk, or they
| willingly choose to take the risk, because of some
| potential reward, such as having a partner? I say that is
| more likely. A lot of people know things are bad decisions
| and do them anyway - often because of hopes.
| strken wrote:
| One of my (distant and now deceased) family members got
| ripped off by a business partner who fled the country, who he
| knew was slimy but decided to trust for some reason. Yes, it
| would have been good advice for him.
|
| It's not grand knowledge unveiled by the Secret Brotherhood
| of Hidden Twitter Masters, it's just...normal good advice.
| You _shouldn 't_ go into business with crooks. People do it
| all the time, and it often ends poorly for them. "Eat your
| vegetables" and "take your car in for a service when it makes
| weird noises" are also good bits of advice, for the right
| audience.
| juve1996 wrote:
| > who he knew was slimy but decided to trust for some
| reason. Yes, it would have been good advice for him.
|
| He knew he was slimy, and did so anyway. This advice would
| not then help.
|
| > You shouldn't go into business with crooks. People do it
| all the time, and it often ends poorly for them.
|
| The problem isn't that they don't know they shouldn't do
| business with crooks. Most of them do. Just like many know
| that murder is wrong and yet people still kill.
|
| Eating vegetables is almost directly actionable. So is
| taking your car in for service. But this is far from the
| "don't do business with crooks." Which is generic,
| unhelpful advice. And many crooks have made it rich and
| made others rich too. Is the advice even always true? Many
| a person got rich off of corruption.
| pwinnski wrote:
| I often don't know whether my potential business partner has
| integrity, in which case this advice wouldn't help me.
|
| If I do know, then this advice is so obvious as to be
| meaningless. Unless I'm an idiot, in which case, again, this
| advice wouldn't help me.
|
| There is some merit in the very inexperienced learning
| different ways to think about revenue. "You can choose to
| target one or two big contracts _or_ many smaller contracts,
| and those have the same result " is useful advice, not that
| either one is necessarily easier than the other.
|
| But "don't choose a business partner who's crooked" seems
| tautological and empty.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Gotta hand it to The Secret (2006) for kick starting near two
| decades of bull shit "Insight Porn". I know a few people who got
| sucked into that universe and continue to read & share this kind
| of media today.
| whilestanding wrote:
| The foundational ideas of the secret was found in think and
| grow rich, an old book.
| pwinnski wrote:
| A book (and author) referenced in this very piece!
| nottorp wrote:
| > When I'm consuming non-fiction content.
|
| So non-fiction content is not worth _reading_. And doesn 't
| qualify as a book either.
| sagaro wrote:
| Pretty much all of Linkedin is insights porn and self patting.
| EmilyHughes wrote:
| Why does everything have to be some kind "porn" nowadays. Does
| anybody seriously think this is funny?
| CannisterFlux wrote:
| I agree, I really don't like the turn of phrase. It's kinda
| gross.
| tartoran wrote:
| Like all things vulgar, they catch on. I dislike it too but it
| somehow fits the bill just like the original meaning of the
| word: we're seeking something and instead we get
| pseudosomething that leaves us unfullfilled and almost worse
| off
| altdataseller wrote:
| Because it fits the meaning of what he is trying to convey.
| Porn, is immediate gratification that makes you feel good at
| the moment, but doesn't really satisfy the deeper needs you
| might have.
| dymk wrote:
| Porn is sexy things for sexual gratification.
|
| There, I said it. It's not a pretty mountain top sunset. It's
| not kittens playing. It's not useless self-help articles.
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| I suspect we use 'porn' as a shorthand for 'hypernormal
| stimuli' and I suspect we have so much of it because humans
| have fewer evolved defenses against manipulation by hypernormal
| stimuli on the internet.
| suction wrote:
| Does everything nowadays? I think the analogy to porn at least
| here is fitting. The idea porn as a word to mean "of no
| substance, for easy consummation, from morally questionable
| sources, to make a quick buck off desperate people" quite
| accurately describes all these "insight gurus", which to me are
| grifters.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's not what it means. Look at subreddits like
| /r/historyporn or /r/earthporn. These do not mean porn in any
| kind of derogatory sense. It literally means nothing more
| specific than "lots of content that people like". It really
| does not carry a derogatory connotation, or at least it is
| most widely used in positive ways
| acuozzo wrote:
| > It literally means nothing more specific than "lots of
| content that people like".
|
| I think it's a bit more than that, something like: "lots of
| content that people like and will waste a ton of time
| consuming for little hits of dopamine".
| zozbot234 wrote:
| motohagiography wrote:
| Sure, there's a lot of crappy insight out there, and there are
| also styles of writing designed to take your time. It's like
| Proust with product placement.
|
| But when you look at psychology as a tool to dissolve artifacts
| of our internal logic that are causing suffering, using a
| neutralizing theory that temporarily dissolves meaning, the
| usefulness of some cliches and deepities becomes more apparent.
| These aren't positive instructions, they're a way to provoke a
| mind out of a kind of writers block or negative feedback loop
| about its idea of self.
|
| An insight that reframes your perception of something can unlock
| what felt like a double bind or an inescapable situation. "I
| can't feel some joy because I am a this or that," is an example
| belief that an insight can unblock by reframing someones
| perspective to question the premises of that belief. Showing that
| your negative self beliefs are inconsistent enough for you to
| question them can be enough to relieve the suffering they cause,
| just long enough to do something about them. It's a precision
| tool.
|
| It's relevant to look at the quality of insight and beliefs we're
| having delivered by some carefully orchestrated psychological
| techniques, but this one felt bit like witnessing the birth of a
| new thought terminating cliche.
| saxelsen wrote:
| This is a perfect post on what I hate (and can't seem to quit) on
| my Twitter feed.
|
| If you follow anyone in the startup space, the profiles and
| recommendations they generate will fill up your entire feed with
| useless, like-farming threads on "how to be successful in 3 easy
| steps".
|
| The part about it being extra dangerous because you feel
| productive even though you didn't do anything, is so true. It's
| like a new form of addictive, useless SoMe content for people
| over 25.
| nicbou wrote:
| Some types of insight is still valuable, and tends to stick
| longer:
|
| * "Your perception of [practice] is wrong". Networking isn't
| sales or marketing, it's helping each other and building things
| together without sending invoices.
|
| * "You value the wrong things". You are paid to create value, not
| write code. Negotiation skills pay more than technical skills
| [1][2]
|
| * "The world doesn't work that way". A lot of the content you
| read is sponsored [3]
|
| * "You're doing something unpleasant". Don't ask to ask [4]
|
| [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-
| pr...
|
| [2] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
|
| [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
|
| [4] https://dontasktoask.com/
| matwood wrote:
| > You are paid to create value, not write code.
|
| When I was in college in the late 90s I was fortunate enough to
| figure this out through experience.
|
| First, there was a real fear all programming jobs were going to
| be outsourced. So I decided I needed programming + something
| else (in this case business).
|
| Second, as a sophomore I got a job at a small custom software
| shop in town (it was the late 90s - if you had a pulse you get
| a 'programming' job). Our clients didn't care about the code,
| the language it was written in or anything else technical. They
| only cared about what it did, and if it solved their problem.
| It also connected 'solve customer problem' to 'getting paid' in
| a very direct way.
| [deleted]
| feintruled wrote:
| His six hour day thing reminds me of a wheeze a manager tried in
| my old company when it was coming up to crunch time. He sent an
| 'inspirational' email where he said that if we all were to simply
| work an extra few hours after work each day, then four hours on
| each of Saturday and Sunday, then - voila - we would magically
| find ourselves with the equivalent of an 8-day week. I don't
| think many took him up on this.
|
| Though to be fair to him, it was very specific and actionable
| advice!
| koonsolo wrote:
| This resembles a meeting I had in the past. The manager said we
| all had to work a little harder because the company was doing
| bad. He suggested to stay an extra hour every day.
|
| He then concluded with "Oh yeah, and Li is going to take over
| my tasks for the next 2 weeks, because I'll be on holiday".
|
| No kidding!
| 202206241203 wrote:
| "Are you guys working?
|
| Yes, sir, Mr. Simpson.
|
| Could you, um, work any harder than this?"
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8miwsWtzRw
| upupandup wrote:
| The biggest insight porn is indiehackers
| nailer wrote:
| You can be a billionaire in only 3 years by following this simple
| advice: every day, before you go to bed, save one million US
| dollars.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| This gives me a whole new perspective on the multiple "insight
| porn" articles on HN's front page right now.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in _The Happiness
| Hypothesis_. Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their
| novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your
| behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep
| reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need
| another hit of epiphanies.
|
| Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably
| give someone a boost in productivity for a while, as long as that
| epiphanic rush lasts.
|
| I've felt this in myself over the years. I'd hit a low point and
| try to hoist myself out of it, with some sombre new ethical code
| for creating a work ethic; some new note taking system; or
| epiphany gleaned from Shakespeare or Nietzsche.
|
| You can see it in the Jordan Peterson clips that haunt my YouTube
| shorts.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Yeah epiphanies don't actually do any work for themselves.
| paskozdilar wrote:
| > Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty
| wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour.
|
| Funny, I've experienced the same thing with philosophy.
|
| In my teens, I've had this existential crisis where the world
| just didn't make sense to me. Eventually I have discovered
| philosophy and started reading it, and for a while the world
| made sense to me. However, every epiphany I've had about the
| world only kept my enthusiasm up for a while - after some time
| I'd still know all the things I learned, but they just wouldn't
| seem as important as before.
|
| The world made sense... But I just didn't like the way it made
| sense. That's when I realized that the problem is _me_ , not
| the world, and that the problem cannot be solved by pure
| knowledge - there is an animal inside me which doesn't give a
| rat's ass about all my theories of why and how, and requires a
| different approach.
| omghilarious wrote:
| philipodonnell wrote:
| "Epiphanic rush" is such a accurate but bittersweet term for
| this. It must be so ingrained in human psychology from the days
| of shamans, prophets and sages.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Pretty sure "shamans, prophets and sages" are effects, not
| causes, of that particular piece of psychology.
| jackling wrote:
| "days of shamans, prophets and sages"
|
| Are these really examples of what is described? The
| spiritualism gained from those entities persist to this day.
| Wars were fought and people continue to live by what those
| entities taught. Sounds different from the short lived rush
| that is being discussed.
| [deleted]
| ipython wrote:
| Damn. Now I need to read that book next...
| WA wrote:
| Just consume new epiphanies until you die and you lived a very
| happy life.
| BoredPuffin wrote:
| I didn't read/listen to Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis, but
| from what you described, he sounded spot on.
|
| But can I also say that as long as it works, there's nothing
| wrong with it?
|
| Some people wind down by jogging, playing video games, watching
| action movies etc; yours happened to be reading self-help book.
|
| The problem is when one overdoes it, regardless of the
| activities they've chosen.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-
| help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit
| of epiphanies.
|
| I read a lot of business books that could be categorized as
| "self-help". I tend to continuously read them because
|
| 1. I'm aware how difficult behavior change
|
| 2. It's valuable to have more than 1 perspective.
|
| 3. Few things have had an outsized impact on my career. I do
| not know what those are until weeks/months/years after reading
| a book.
|
| For me, I'm not looking to read a single book to emulate it
| fully. I'm looking to read 4 or 5 books, shape my overall
| perspective, then have 2 to 4 things stick very, very deeply.
| Lastly, I can always come back to a specific book when I
| loosely remember it being applicable.
| recyclelater wrote:
| Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that
| you can't rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on
| discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get
| anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is
| discipline equals freedom.
| layer8 wrote:
| That sounds like insight porn. How do you build discipline if
| you're undisciplined? How do you decide what to be
| disciplined about?
| ip26 wrote:
| He suggests through practice. You start with something
| small but easy that you don't want to do, and make a
| _habit_ of doing it anyway. His favorite small first step
| seems to be getting up early.
| [deleted]
| anotheruser092 wrote:
| > "How do you build discipline if you're undisciplined?"
|
| Willink's answer is "Just do it." Very charitably, he
| suggests you should do things you ought to, even if they
| are painful and you don't want to do it. This actually has
| some backing in cognitive-behavioral therapy by starting
| with action first before motivation.
|
| Uncharitably, it's not nuanced if there are deeper reasons
| why you should actually consider to not work on something
| you've planned to do (though it's hard to say when this
| should happen).
|
| > "How do you decide what to be disciplined about?"
|
| Willink talked about how his first motivation was to be
| very good at his assigned tasks while in the navy. Then, if
| I remember correctly, he said his mission after retiring
| was to provide for his family and to help others with his
| content. For others, he said to focus on physical health;
| emotional stability; spending money wisely; spending time
| efficiently; taking care of family and friends; and doing
| great at your (presumable) current job. This is actually a
| very good starting point.
|
| My major criticism of his past work is that he seems to
| assume that leaders/managers work in good faith and won't
| exploit your hard work. In my experience and several
| reports by others, following his advice can lead to getting
| severely overworked for little-to-no reward by managers
| acting in bad faith.
|
| He also hasn't acknowledged (as far as I can tell) the
| importance of managing office politics in advancement in
| many workplaces. He said that outworking someone is the
| best way to counter someone trying to make you look bad in
| the workplace, which in my view is insufficient - you also
| need to talk to your manager about it in a tactful way.
| Lastly, his current content seems to be increasingly
| monetized, and he's had more podcast guests who are
| politicians, when he used to be apolitical.
| layer8 wrote:
| You need to have discipline in the first place to "just
| do it" consistently. For those who lack enough
| motivation, which is the situation the advice is supposed
| to address, I don't see how it helps. If they were able
| to "do it" consistently despite lacking consistent
| motivation, they wouldn't have a problem in the first
| place.
|
| I guess that for some people, being told "there's no way
| around just doing the things even when you're not
| motivated" by itself creates sufficient motivation long-
| term to do the things even when they are not otherwise
| motivated. But for those for which that doesn't happen,
| there isn't much actionable advice.
| recyclelater wrote:
| Plenty of actionable advice. Start small, build habits,
| work your way up. Jordan Peterson (love him or hate him)
| talks about making your bed and cleaning your room. Then
| build off this and tackle something a little bigger.
| Small personal goal that takes a year or more of regular
| practice (language, physical fitness, writing, anything
| you highly value). If you can't manage to build a habit
| of this, then maybe being disciplined and getting the
| benefits of it won't work for you. Nothing wrong with
| that.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's already better. :)
|
| I was calling out the GP that the mere insight that
| discipline is usually necessary because you can't rely on
| being consistently motivated fits the pattern of an
| insight that doesn't by itself makes it easier to solve
| the problem. The insight can _explain_ lack of success
| (inconsistent motivation combined with lack of
| discipline), but it doesn't tell you how one might
| engender a lasting change. Also, the difference between
| discipline and consistent motivation is arguably small,
| because you _somehow_ have to consistently motivate
| yourself to build up and maintain a discipline.
| anotheruser092 wrote:
| From your framing, it sounds like the advice is to start
| with a person who lacks motivation, and then tell them to
| be disciplined, and it's sufficient for lasting change.
| In this framing, the advice is absurd.
|
| But it's far more interesting to consider how the one
| phrase relates to the rest of Willink's perspective. For
| example, he argues that that you can frame discipline and
| hard work as a method to be physically healthier; care
| for your family better; or help you earn more income or
| career capital.
|
| The phrase is an introduction to the rest of his
| arguments, and it isn't quite as interesting to debate
| its merits in isolation.
| recyclelater wrote:
| Thanks for providing a more nuanced reply here and in
| other spots.
| anotheruser092 wrote:
| > "You need to have discipline in the first place to
| "just do it" consistently. [...] If they were able to "do
| it" consistently despite lacking consistent motivation,
| they wouldn't have a problem in the first place."
|
| From Willink's perspective (interpreted charitably),
| there are many situations where it's useful to "just do
| it." For example, say you want to do a task, but you want
| to get comfortable first because you're anxious. You can
| watch a funny video or browse the internet to calm down,
| read a motivational blog post, and do various chores to
| 'get in the mood.' Then hours pass by, and you still
| haven't started the task.
|
| A better solution is to start with the action causing
| anxiety, expecting the shift in mood to follow the action
| (before trying to change your mood first), which is
| supported by recommendations in cognitive-behavioral
| therapy (CBT). Actions first, mood follows is a good,
| actionable insight supported by CBT counselors.
|
| > "For those who lack enough motivation, which is the
| situation the advice is supposed to address, I don't see
| how it helps."
|
| If you're disciplined despite lacking motivation, you can
| improve your physical health and earn better career
| opportunities, letting you earn more and have more
| freedom. Therefore, by focusing on actions more than
| motivation, you can improve your circumstances. This is a
| charitable interpretation of Willink's perspective.
|
| However, my personal view is moderate. Motivation does
| matter, because it reduces the amount of willpower needed
| for work, and lets you choose the right tasks and goals
| to work toward. Though in any case, action before
| changing your mood is perfectly actionable advice.
| recyclelater wrote:
| I've always viewed his content through the lens of being
| your own boss, so being overworked and taken advantage of
| by an employer might happen, but if you don't have the
| ability to work through things you don't want to do, you
| can rarely succeed on your own. A boss is a great way to
| always have external motivation. That doesn't exist when
| you work for yourself.
|
| Great points by the way. I would also add that Jocko
| Willinck is a master teacher in self promotion. The
| pioneer of "monetize my navy seal career", but I do feel
| it's mostly genuine and valuable content.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Stuff that you value. It is a simple and long term system
| specifically to maintain long term consistency. It just
| isn't easy to do.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| I've found the best way to build discipline is to find
| someone with discipline and have them keep you accountable.
| This could be a mentor of some kind. Granted finding _that_
| may be equally as hard as doing it on your own.
|
| Also you don't necessarily need discipline in the actual
| thing you want to do - you just need to know what it means
| to be disciplined in _something_ and then you can
| extrapolate your behavior in discipline itself to then be
| disciplined in something.
| recyclelater wrote:
| I don't consider that to be insight porn, which is why I
| found it personally valuable. I feel this is a fundamental
| law of getting anything done. There's almost nothing that I
| actually want to do for extended period of times, but I
| want the result from having done that thing a bunch. For
| example, it's really hard to go outside and practice
| archery every day, but I have to do that in order to have
| the result of those skills - a successful archery hunt. How
| do I get the results when I am way past the first month or
| so where motivation is waning? I have to have the
| discipline to work toward my goal, regardless of how I feel
| in the moment.
|
| I found this insight for lack of a better word to be so
| fundamental that I was floored when I read it in jocko's
| kids book. I saw my dad do this, he clearly embodied this
| value and demonstrated it while raising me, but no one ever
| explained it to me.
|
| For a goofy comparison, I would consider "discipline equals
| freedom " to be love making between a happily married
| couple, and blog spam insight porn to be actual porn.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| This is not a new idea. Just a new messenger for the modern
| era. Marcus Aurelius was talking about this thousands of
| years ago.
|
| > At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell
| yourself: "I have to go to work -- as a human being. What do
| I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for
| -- the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this
| what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay
| warm?"
|
| > Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders
| and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the
| world in order, as best they can? And you're not willing to
| do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do
| what your nature demands?
|
| Not even "discipline", but what is "nature".
| rsanek wrote:
| Rough self-talk from Marcus Aurelius in this passage. Not a
| big fan of this kind of approach personally. I've found
| that if I need to do this kind of self-motivation, I should
| be thinking much higher-level for the causes -- why do I
| not want to get out of bed? Perhaps I'm not working on the
| right thing, and need to change careers? Or perhaps I'm not
| dealing with something emotionally that is preventing me
| from doing my best work. In my experience, especially if
| this apathy is persisting over weeks+, it's been something
| much deeper than "oh I'm lazy and I just need to get up"
| pm215 wrote:
| Yeah, MA is very keen on the separation between brain
| (what he calls the "directing mind") and body, to the
| extent that he thinks it's possible for the brain to
| ignore pain because that's the body's problem, and it's
| only something that makes the brain feel bad if the brain
| chooses to feel bad about it. If your philosophical
| framework looks like that then it's not really conducive
| to "fix the things in the outside world that make you
| naturally not feel like getting up", because the axiom is
| "none of that outside world stuff should be able to
| affect my brain unless I want it to". I find his writing
| interesting but this is one of the areas where my
| foundational beliefs and his are miles apart.
| alecbz wrote:
| > Not even "discipline", but what is "nature".
|
| So... not what Jocko is talking about?
| ianbutler wrote:
| Nature in this context would be things you have to get
| done except more of a belief that each person has a
| specific pre defined role. He's still very much talking
| about using discipline to accomplish this role and often
| self admonished for not getting more of his own role
| done.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Yeah, he's mentioning discipline being part of your
| "ethos" which Jocko would have plenty of experience
| living the SEAL ethos:
|
| https://www.nsw.navy.mil/NSW/SEAL-Ethos/
|
| If "the logos" (fate) declared Jocko to be a warrior,
| then it is well within his nature to be disciplined.
| googlryas wrote:
| I think this point about spiders would be more compelling
| if we actually saw that some spiders were lazy and some
| were not, and the lazy ones died and the non lazy ones
| didn't. The fact is that spiders and birds and whatever
| animal just generally doesn't have the desire to "lay in
| bed under the blankets". If nature gave us the desire to do
| so, doesn't that mean it isn't wrong if we're using nature
| as a guide?
| npunt wrote:
| This is a good point if you take the perspective that we
| are independent of our environment. Our desires and needs
| are natural, therefore we should follow them.
|
| However, if you consider that we co-evolved with our
| environment and all of its challenges and constraints,
| then our desires and how much we feel them are simply the
| result of optimizing our survival over hundreds and
| thousands of generations.
|
| E.g. the 'difficulty' of our environment is a 50. We have
| to have a desire of 51+ to survive: a will to live. The
| 'lazy' spiders all had <50 and no longer exist.
|
| Therefore, if we change environments to something much
| easier to live in, then our desires are kind of vestigial
| optimizations that may not provide the kind of guidance
| on the optimal way to survive in the new environment -
| they may take hundreds or thousands of generations to
| unwind. Modern civilization in particular has created
| such a massive shift in challenges and resource
| availability that it's not hard to find examples of this.
|
| E.g. we have a strong desire to rest even when we don't
| need it because we co-evolved in environments where rest
| was scarce (due to need to survive), so when we had the
| opportunity we took it. Same with food: food used to be
| scarce, so we needed a strong desire to get it, but now
| food is abundant and we still have that desire and wind
| up eating too much.
|
| In both circumstances, the environment was the pace-
| setter, but thats now changed, so we need to be our own
| pace-setter.
| pc86 wrote:
| I don't think the GP or Willink himself has ever suggested
| it's a new idea. Stoicism and that military
| Willink/Goggins/etc type of motivation go hand in hand.
| dominotw wrote:
| doesn't discipline require willpower though. I was told
| relying on willpower is bad because you only have limited
| amount of it per day and surely going to fail your when you
| run out of it.
| recyclelater wrote:
| That's like saying you have a limited amount of muscular
| endurance per day. It's true, but it's completely
| trainable. Meaning just like you can go from barely able to
| run a mile to being able to run an ultramarathon, you can
| do the same thing with your willpower. But unlike running a
| marathon, training your willpower will yield real, life
| improving tangible benefits assuming you can correctly
| figure out how to apply it for your benefit. Maybe a poor
| analogy because running an ultramarathon requires lots of
| willpower :)
| kirse wrote:
| _discipline equals freedom_
|
| The problem is it's not even correct. Discipline does not
| equal freedom. Have you ever seen a well-meaning man with all
| his might do the same incorrect thing over and over? Of
| course you have, because we're all that person in some area
| of life.
| anotheruser092 wrote:
| Viewing the phrase in isolation, this response is logically
| correct, but it's more interesting to view this in the
| context of the rest of the author's arguments.
|
| If you're consistent with physical exercise by resisting
| when you feel like skipping a workout, you'll have more
| strength, endurance, and freedom of movement when you
| become much older. And if you're consistent with improving
| at your career skills, you'll have more career
| opportunities in the future. Therefore, even if you may
| seem less free by avoiding unhealthy food or watching too
| much television, you're setting yourself up for more
| opportunities in the long-term.
|
| I personally do agree that you can be disciplined toward
| the wrong goals, though I also think it's more interesting
| to consider Willink's arguments as a whole, instead of
| focusing on a phrase in isolation.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. Though I will say that doesn't mean epiphanies
| aren't valuable long term. A little boost to get you started
| might translate into a huge change in personal circumstances 10
| years after that small boost. Without a couple months with
| Jordan Peterson relaying not just the possibility but the
| nobility of looking people in the eyes, entering the forest at
| the place that looks darkest to you, etc. I would almost
| certainly not be here typing this.
|
| Such basic truths spruced up with a gleaming coating of old
| reverent narrative and ancient godlike significance through
| vigorous sermon is exactly the small boost I required to make
| the most significant and important change I've ever made in my
| life. I know he's quite controversial these days but you cannot
| deny the man has channeled something very powerful (at least as
| the non-explicitely-political material goes, I choose not to
| watch his politics)
| [deleted]
| jackling wrote:
| What always surprised me about Peterson was the fact that so
| many people swear by his videos. There's multiple claims
| about how his videos changed their lives or saved them.
| However, his methodology couldn't keep his own life from
| going awry.
| bambax wrote:
| I'm confused, it seems insight porn is this guy's business. His
| article even ends with this:
|
| > _If you'd like to get more honest strategies and proven
| frameworks for winning in life and business, then simply join my
| free newsletter here._
|
| Is he simply trying to trash the competition?
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Yea, it's kind of his shtick.
| duckmysick wrote:
| I noticed a common pattern in self-help publications:
|
| 1. Claim a common self-help method is ineffective.
|
| 2. Show why it's ineffective.
|
| 3. Present a different self-help method.
|
| Point number 2 is really important. It could be anything: an
| anecdote, some data, a paper. But the strongest signal is _if
| the readers themselves already tried the ineffective solution_.
| If it was effective, there 's no need for them to research
| more. But it wasn't working and there's this person who says
| there's no way it would work. And they are right, so let's hear
| what else do they have to say (or sell).
|
| You've the walking proof something didn't work and there's
| someone who's agreeing with you. You did all the hard work and
| the author is tagging along.
|
| The beauty of it is the original method might be fine, it just
| didn't work out for you for whatever reason. Including if you
| read about it, but didn't try.
| sanggonlee wrote:
| His point is not really abandon all the insight porns - but
| rather pick only those that you can experiment with. And if all
| his advice do provide something actionable, he's living up to
| his words.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This article actually provides a framework for deciding if a
| productivity tool is useful, by running an experiment, or at
| least identifying experiments, on the advice provided to see if
| it works for you.
|
| They clearly highlight as "insight porn" stuff that doesn't
| provide actionable advice.
|
| At the end, they invite you to apply this new "is this useful,
| not useful or not even bad" decision process to their own
| services/products.
| keyle wrote:
| Give an addict a solution drug to his drug problem... you do
| the math.
| NotTameAntelope wrote:
| The "only I can truly help you" pattern is a very common one
| for selling hokum, so yeah I would agree this is probably a way
| to peel readers from other self-help gurus.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Good post. The metaphor is fair.
|
| I remember being annoyed by way to many "insights" and "words of
| advice" that sounded plausible but in environments that were way
| too unattainable for me at the time, hence:
|
| A) Not really plausible at all.
|
| B) Too much self-referential and tautologic.
|
| They pretended too much to be useful good advice but was actually
| just either show-off of success in disguise (false
| modesty/success porn) or tautologic; like "To be a
| multimillionaire just need to spend less than you earn but not
| earn low enough". Huh? Even a pigeon is smart enough to not need
| to hear that.
| fastball wrote:
| Not sure I agree about Naval's thread[1]. There is a lot of
| actionable stuff in there.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936
| zcw100 wrote:
| "It's advice that sounds plausible and breaks down a goal many
| people dream about into actionable steps."
|
| Sounds like scrum.
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