Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reasons not to become famous

tim.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 428 posts

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#111

Post by oarsinsync »

kd5bjo wrote: post #94
mattmanser wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because stock market crashes never happen?

If memory serves, The largest single-day drop was around 25% and the biggest total was around 90%. That leaves 10% to live off of: if you have 10x what’s necessary for the rest of your life invested you can absorb those losses.

To have 10x what's necessary, you need to be able to survive on 1% returns (I'm trying to be generous there). So if you can live on $30,000, you need to have "only" $3MM invested.

You should also not be investing more than 25% of your assets into a single asset class, so you need to have $6-12MM of assets (range depending on considerations) in the first place.

I think having even $3MM is a reasonably called 'rich', but others may disagree.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#112

Post by perseusprime11 »

Becoming famous requires a lot of good luck and not just hard work. You have to be the right person at the right time kind of thing. I feel extreme good luck invites bad luck because of the negative energy surrounding the famous person. This has very interesting side affects on how famous people look at risk and make their decisions. But thinking of famous personalities like Gandhi, MLK, Kobe, MJ, Bruce Lee, I wonder what would have happened if they were not famous. Would their destinies be any different?

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#113

Post by marcinzm »

balfirevic wrote: post #37
speedgoose wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why trying to become rich? Once you have enough money to have a great quality of life without stress, having more money isn't improving much your happiness. Sometimes it makes it worse. However trying to become rich can be very difficult, tiresome, and disappointing.

> Once you have enough money to have a great quality of life without stress, having more money isn't improving much your happiness. If you mean without having to continue working, that is indeed what many would consider being rich.

That depends on your personality and the job. Although, as I've noticed, seeking money as the number one goal tends to lead to jobs which cause more stress and a lower quality of life. For example, I could make more money at top tech company but then I'd have bureaucracy and a vacation policy (I took 6 weeks last year) to deal with.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#114

Post by kd5bjo »

oarsinsync wrote: post #111
kd5bjo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If memory serves, The largest single-day drop was around 25% and the biggest total was around 90%. That leaves 10% to live off of: if you have 10x what’s necessary for the rest of your life invested you can absorb those losses.

To have 10x what's necessary, you need to be able to survive on 1% returns (I'm trying to be generous there). So if you can live on $30,000, you need to have "only" $3MM invested. You should also not be investing more than 25% of your assets into a single asset class, so you need to have $6-12MM of assets (range depending on considerations) in the first place. I think having even $3MM is a reasonably called 'rich', b…

Oh; you certainly have to be rich to pull this off. But the context was “a few millions in an index fund,” which is what your analysis came up with.

Also, if you’re going to posit funds in other asset classes, you should also include the worst-case returns of those funds in the analysis.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#115

Post by Insanity »

richthegeek wrote: post #18
speedgoose wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why trying to become rich? Once you have enough money to have a great quality of life without stress, having more money isn't improving much your happiness. Sometimes it makes it worse. However trying to become rich can be very difficult, tiresome, and disappointing.

"have enough money to have a great quality of life without stress" is how many people define "rich".

Even though I know what you mean - stress can be caused for many things that are not money though. Love (or lack thereof), loneliness, illness,..

But yeah, living without money-related stress is how I'd define it. That doesn't even have to be a lot of money :)

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#116

Post by johnr2 »

speedgoose wrote: post #103
varjag wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can lose a job, and it can play out pretty bad. That's a persistent background dread in most people lives.

You have unemployment and more than enough time to find a new job. And let's say you don't find one, the state will still give you enough money for you to survive. Maybe you will have to reduce your lifestyle and be unhappy for some time but there is no need to seek to be rich just to prevent an unlikely future.

> You have unemployment and more than enough time to find a new job. And let's say you don't find one, the state will still give you enough money for you to survive.

Quite a few commenters on this forum live in parts of the world where that is not the case. It's certainly not the case for the majority of the world's population.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#117

Post by dman »

ikeboy wrote: post #102
woofie11 wrote: post #36

Law suits. The big one missing is law suits. That's a higher level of fame than this blogger has hit. That includes: 1) Nuts and idiots. For example, people who genuinely believe what you're doing is out to get them. 2) Jackals and vultures. People want what you've built, and see the legal system as a good way of extorting you to get it. I hit this level of fame, and quickly backed down from anything which might give…

My understanding is even without fame, if you get anywhere interesting in the business world you'll need to get comfortable with litigation. Every wealthy person is entangled in it, even people you've never heard of that "only" have 50 million.

This is an eye opener, I didnt realize it was that bad.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#118

Post by christiansakai »

econcon wrote: post #109
christiansakai wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I started doing Karate since 5 years ago. Before that I was not chubby but not fit either. I have cheek fat and my arms, chest and belly have some fat as well. I started doing Karate and my weight went down quick and I notice my face gets leaner and now I have a defined jaw line. I’m not sure maybe just my genetics but maybe you got your jawline from losing weight. 3 years ago met a girl online, dated her and she…

>I started doing Karate and my weight went down quick and I notice my face gets leaner and now I have a defined jaw line. I’m not sure maybe just my genetics but maybe you got your jawline from losing weight. I was skinny and atheletic type with super low body fat then I didn't have visible square jaw. After that I started eating lot more and training hard, so I did gain some muscle (early newbie gains) but gained fa…

I see. So do you think steroids contribute to it? It is amazing how hormones can actually change your physical appearance drastically even after someone is past beyond their growth phase.

You mentioned chewing gum. I saw these videos about mewing but don’t actually believe that would work.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#119

Post by afpx »

Regarding the stalking ...

Reminds me of a recent "Hidden Brain" episode - about "Secret Friends" - people of whom others believe to be friends but aren't. The show implied it's fairly easy for the Human Brain to develop a belief those whom are seen or heard often are friends, even if not known personally.

Tim mentions feeling that he is a tribal leader of millions of people. And, he definitely has the attention of those people. People who trust him. And, from an anthropological (and perhaps biological) perspective, I wonder if people stalk him because they really believe him to be their tribal leader Maybe those people really do look at him like he's a friend.

I know our Westernized cultures cherish individuality and independence, but I also wonder if people who decide to enter (and stay within) the limelight have a Human responsibility to be a leader and friend. I know, that's a crazy thought.

Re: Reasons not to become famous

#120

Post by coffeefirst »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #14

Hypothesis: On twitter, when your follower count exceeds the number you're following, you become a little nutty. I've noticed this odd trend where if people gain a lot of twitter followers, then often their views become reinforced to the point that outsiders look at their tweets and wonder what happened to make them express such ideas. But there's bias here: for tweets like these to be noticed, they need to be seen.…

Alternately, everyone has dumb thoughts from time to time, and the bigger and more tempting your megaphone, the more you risk shouting it out before having the chance to wake up 3 days later thinking "wow, that's completely insane."

This is also one of the reasons I abhor twitter. Everything is RIGHT NOW. Really, nobody should send a message to 1000+ people without sleeping on it or getting a second opinion.

Post reply on HN