Live data from Hacker News

Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

pdfs.semanticscholar.org

41–50 of 160 posts

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#41

Hypothesis: the "people who get stuff done" are a subset of a larger group with the same personality and talents, but without as much luck. Those other people are known by unprintable names, because they have no great successes to make people ignore the fact that they're jerks.

Examples of luck:

- Being born into a good family.

- Winning the lottery.

Luck: Something you cannot affect yourself. If luck is your only game, prepare to be disappointed. Also: 70 percent of lottery winners, end up broke just a few years later.

Question: Is having good luck actually bad luck? Or does it trigger bad behaviours that rich people don't have? ... I think this well and truly debunks any notion that luck's got anything to do with it.

In fact I think the opposite. I think luck's got nothing to to with it, and that the only way you will keep your wealth, is to learn how to 1. increase it fast, and 2. how to hold on to it.

As a matter of fact, most people live from hand to mouth. They aren't even able to hold on to the little wealth they create. And thus so many of them think they're slaves, when they are in fact free to do as they like.

Thing is, most people are terribly afraid of the freedom, and – as the example with the lottery winners prove – most can't handle large sums of money anyway.

If you want an example of a guy who really learned about money before he got rich, look up Elon Musk. One of the reasons he dared to risk everything, was because he learned to live on much less than normal people would ever accept. He knows his bare minimum.

Do you?

With that security securely at the bottom, he could risk the venture that starting a new company from scratch is. In any case, luck's got nothing to do with it.

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#42

Hypothesis: the "people who get stuff done" are a subset of a larger group with the same personality and talents, but without as much luck. Those other people are known by unprintable names, because they have no great successes to make people ignore the fact that they're jerks.

Stop using luck as an excuse for your failures and other people's failures. https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog/issues/38

To outright dismiss the possibility of chance affecting people's lives for a cute one-liner is pretty silly.

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#43
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using luck as an excuse for your failures and other people's failures. https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog/issues/38

To outright dismiss the possibility of chance affecting people's lives for a cute one-liner is pretty silly.

[deleted]

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#44
post #41

Hypothesis: the "people who get stuff done" are a subset of a larger group with the same personality and talents, but without as much luck. Those other people are known by unprintable names, because they have no great successes to make people ignore the fact that they're jerks.

Examples of luck: - Being born into a good family. - Winning the lottery. Luck: Something you cannot affect yourself. If luck is your only game, prepare to be disappointed. Also: 70 percent of lottery winners, end up broke just a few years later. Question: Is having good luck actually bad luck? Or does it trigger bad behaviours that rich people don't have? ... I think this well and truly debunks any notion that luck'…

That’s a rather simplistic notion of luck. The success or failure of any new business is largely up to luck, simply due to the number of unknowns: market demand, marketing strategy, economic conditions, access to resources, access to talent. It is also not a fact that if you build a perfect, shining example of the thing you had in mind that it’s automatically successful.

And people aren’t ‘terribly afraid of freedom’, what does that even mean?

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#45
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to spullara's Beck link, the "construal level theory" seemed to ring true to what you were describing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construal_level_theory

I recently heard that the same brain regions are involved in processing temporal and spatial distances.

In my own anecdotal experience, this appears quite reasonable; oftentimes, especially in childhood, stretches of time as short as 1 week into the future would "feel" (i.e. encompass the same emotions/sensations) as knowing how far away my relatives in Canada were from me. The perception of time seriously befuddled my brain for years -- no matter that it still does to this day!

If you happen to recall the outlets you read this at, I would be interested in learning more. Hopefully the article would have links to papers as well... perhaps including fMRI scans? Truly fascinating stuff.

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#46
post #11

By what measure do the people studied ‘get stuff done’? By virtue of being a founder? Is this an attempt to shed light on productivity or a backhanded way to compliment the Silicon Valley crowd? Generally you get things done by being dedicated and having the ability to deliver, rather than having a distorted vision of reality.

All the people I know who are extremely productive (moms of 7, doctors, athletes) share exactly zero of that SV narcissist list. This is really low-quality content with a nonsensical title.

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#47
post #41

Hypothesis: the "people who get stuff done" are a subset of a larger group with the same personality and talents, but without as much luck. Those other people are known by unprintable names, because they have no great successes to make people ignore the fact that they're jerks.

Examples of luck: - Being born into a good family. - Winning the lottery. Luck: Something you cannot affect yourself. If luck is your only game, prepare to be disappointed. Also: 70 percent of lottery winners, end up broke just a few years later. Question: Is having good luck actually bad luck? Or does it trigger bad behaviours that rich people don't have? ... I think this well and truly debunks any notion that luck'…

Did you just make up that lottery stat?

Hard to take musk as a good example. Plenty of people lived on less making the biggest bets they could, and have nothing to show for it. Just consider if he had been born in another country or timeframe.

This is not to claim rich people don't deserve their riches. In large, that is a statement many of us fine meaningless. Rather, spare us the nonsensical justifications that require near deification of people that have acquired lots of money. Respect does not have to equal devotion.

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#48
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using luck as an excuse for your failures and other people's failures. https://github.com/SSYGEN/blog/issues/38

To outright dismiss the possibility of chance affecting people's lives for a cute one-liner is pretty silly.

To summarize, the link says that luck is real but you are better off thinking that it isn't real since that will affect your behavior in a more positive way.

Still not sure I agree in this case (you can think luck is real bit still behave optimally) but it could be a helpful way to think in other scenarios.

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#49
post #7

Yes, I think there are at least five. So this is a list of at least five, but not the five I think. Several of them feel like variations of the same theme: I know I'm right, so I can disregard evidence|opinion|counter-argument because .. an axiom of the system is I know I'm right. If I had a sixth, it would be the tendency to latch onto a mantra. "think different" doesn't really mean very much, but boy, successful pe…

> "think different" doesn't really mean very much

Well, you don't create something new if you don't think different in some way. The "different" part is really generic, but that's the point, it people could say something specific here, it wouldn't be different.

Re: Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf]

#50

Hypothesis: the "people who get stuff done" are a subset of a larger group with the same personality and talents, but without as much luck. Those other people are known by unprintable names, because they have no great successes to make people ignore the fact that they're jerks.

Possibly true but doesn't affect the outcome. If you can do some things to increase the likelihood of success with low cost, the fact that success is dominated by things you can't change doesn't matter. There are no guarantees, only actions that mildly bias one outcome over another.

Except, does it bias the outcome at all? If you do a meta study of a thousand different medications that work, you’d discover the single most common ingredients are starch or cellulose. Clearly it’s worth taking either or both to stay healthy! Of course this ignores the fact that they’re just filler, the active ingredients are the tiny fraction of the total recipe that are actually pharmacologically active.

The presence of a trait doesn’t imply that it’s in any way an active ingredient, even a very little active. Post hoc analysis is bullshit.

Post reply on HN