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

Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

asc.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 265 posts

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#151

Post by bennysomething »

slim109ya wrote: post #105
WalterBright wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the simple act of trying will improve your odds of success. Some basic strategies: 1. stay in school 2. don't do drugs 3. don't do crimes If you want to be a pro basketball player, your odds will improve if you practice playing basketball. Want to be a guitar god? Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot , for many many years, before breaking…

Many guitar gods use drugs, Walt Disney and Bill Gates did not stay in school, and people like Mike Tyson and Kevin Mitnick were successful after comitting crimes. There's just too many variables in life that make success more about luck than following general guidelines.

The bill gates example always gets rolled out for some reason, he's an outlier. For most people, if they are at a good university, doing something they are good at, then graduating is probably a good idea. Bill gates made a calculated decision, Paul Allen persuaded him that they were about to miss out on the micro computer revolution. If you look at what bill gates accomplished as an under grad, there is a strong argument that he wasn't going to gain anything from staying on (Google the pancake problem bill gates). One of his professors remarked to a colleague that some kid bill is probably the smartest person he has ever met.

In short defining bill gates as a college drop out is a ridiculously narrow view. I'm guessing most people who drop out aren't on a path to success.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#152

Post by Frost1x »

cheeko1234 wrote: post #104
lampe3 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't start with all these productivity systems... I tried them all. Keeping a second brain for me was just waste of time and being busy with writing stuff down. A quick google search was most often faster. Journaling after a full journal did not give me anything in return. Just a journal full of crap. Planing my whole week in a calendar when to do what... Good luck with a child doing that. Specially if you don't hav…

Healthy competition is the best motivator. Challenging each other does work but both parties have to give a shit. Another great motivator is being told you will never be able to do something, which gives fuel to the motivation in the form of spite.

Competition is only healthy if a reasonable baseline of safety nets exist for those who lose the competition. We don't have those safety nets most of the time and it leads indirectly to harmful consequences for those involved, making it far from healthy.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#153

Post by paulryanrogers »

mrkramer wrote: post #131

Do fail stories cause false beliefs about failure/success?

My personal theory is that story telling is an ancient meme that may predate modern humans. By telling failure and success stories we learn from the experiences of others, sometimes even when exaggerated or largely fictional. On the whole it makes some tribes better equipped to survive.

Even the movie Croods has the father telling failure stories each night to warn the kids. At least until meeting the more 'successful' boy.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#154

Post by [deleted] »

going_ham wrote: post #28

Nobody writes it, but it's okay to have average job, with average life and average family as long as you can enjoy your life! Why burden yourself with idea of success and setting expectations. At this point I am sure life doesn't give anything unless you look for it. And even if you seek, there is no guarantee. So I think it's waste of energy. My experience so far. I am really glad that I learned how stability is nec…

[deleted]

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#155

Post by bennysomething »

bitwize wrote: post #89
WalterBright wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the simple act of trying will improve your odds of success. Some basic strategies: 1. stay in school 2. don't do drugs 3. don't do crimes If you want to be a pro basketball player, your odds will improve if you practice playing basketball. Want to be a guitar god? Get a guitar and start practicing. Every guitar god I've heard of have one thing in common - they played a lot , for many many years, before breaking…

> Some basic strategies: > 1. stay in school > 2. don't do drugs > 3. don't do crimes You forgot: 4. be born to rich parents That probably has a greater influence on chances of success than most others.

Except that 80 percent of American millionaires are first generation affluent. Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Am...

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#156

Post by PeterisP »

inter_netuser wrote: post #77
lampe3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain a little bit more? What odds? What part of that successful people do? What do you mean by loser?

>What part of that successful people do? 1. they are rarely stupid 2. they often sleep a lot less 3. they more often than not are hyperthymiacs (related to #2). 4. they produce unlimited amounts of self-generated morale (related to #3). 5. they are stress tolerant (related to #4) 6. they are healthier in general (related to all of the above) I don't know very many successful people with numerous chronic health condit…

There are many very successful people with chronic mental health conditions that at times impair their cognition to the point of debility. Like, re-read your comment with Simone Biles in mind, who is arguably the most successful gymnast ever but did spend extensive time constantly sleeping while depressed and demotivated and broken down. Quoting her, "At one point I slept so much because, for me, it was the closest thing to death without harming myself. It was an escape from all of my thoughts, from the world, from what I was dealing with."

You can't deny that Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Virginia Woolf, Robin Williams, Marylin Monroe, Chester Bennington, Ernest Hemmingway and many others were successful despite their struggles, and those are just those for whom those internal struggles resulted in something obvious to the public. For physical issues, there's Avicii who got quite successful while touring with many serious health problems. In the field of business we have to remember that for currently active entrepreneurs there are strong incentives to hide any issues (e.g. Elon Musk has years earlier admitted struggles with depression and/or bipolar disorder, but IMHO we won't get reliable information about their extent until after he retires or dies), but there are earlier examples like Ted Turner, founder of CNN; and of course there's the famous case of Aaron Swartz as a cofounder of Reddit. Here's a study https://www.michaelafreemanmd.com/Research_files/Are%20Entre... showing that entrepreneurs have a higher rate of mental health conditions than the general public.

So I believe that your argument is based on false expectations.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#157

Post by vinay427 »

treyfitty wrote: post #96
inter_netuser wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What part of that successful people do? 1. they are rarely stupid 2. they often sleep a lot less 3. they more often than not are hyperthymiacs (related to #2). 4. they produce unlimited amounts of self-generated morale (related to #3). 5. they are stress tolerant (related to #4) 6. they are healthier in general (related to all of the above) I don't know very many successful people with numerous chronic health condit…

This is the dumbest thing I read in a while. It doesn’t account for survivor bias. How many people met all those criteria and failed? It could be that for every million with those characteristics, only 1 succeeded.

If you look at the GP comment they replied to (quote below), it‘s fairly clear that they didn’t mean this to be a recipe that will make you successful, but simply commonalities that may make success more likely.

> Doing what successful people do increases your odds of success.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#158

Post by Rd6n6 »

jmrm wrote: post #95
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #3

Absolutely, I've had friends with limited business or tech background pump hard-earned savings into crazy tech startup ideas, precisely because they've read too many of these success stories. I've been guilty of not trying to talk sense to some of them, so much so that there's one particular marriage break-up related to a stupid tech start up blowing a couples life savings that still haunts me. And for the record, he…

The first two ideas are pretty cool, but you cannot start charging people money. You need to use the ol' reliable "deploying an app with ads that can be removed after paying some money", at least at start.

That isn’t exactly reliable. You still need to get massive traction

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#159

Post by buran77 »

inter_netuser wrote: post #110
Arisaka1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleeping less doesn't mean much if you're born in a remote village in Africa or China where clean water is a luxury, in a toxic family where not being beaten up and having a stable psyche is a requirement if you want to act out your potential at school. You don't choose whether you're depressed or not. It's absurd to me that in 2022 you're saying that learning that successful people are not depressed is an actionable…

Surprise, you don't get to choose anything at all on that list.

You didn't mention what might be the most important things successful people have to get them there: a good support network of other successful people, and a good safety net to catch them if they fail (sometimes the same network). I think you can scratch away everything on that list and the network (family, friends, colleagues, etc.) could still help you be successful.

It's like a game where some people get a copy with infinite save/load and helper bots, while others get the raw version where their subscription ends after the first failure. So if I told you "being a successful gamer is about having the patience to load again and again until you manage to hit your target" you'd think I'm crazy, your copy already deactivated after the first missed shot.

The starting conditions are so varied that choosing to define successful people just by looking at the person and nothing else is more of a personality cult exercise than an objectively useful one [0]. And it's no surprise, most successful people love to make that success only about themselves.

[0] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/373065/the-pencilswo...

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#160

Post by erwincoumans »

going_ham wrote: post #28

Nobody writes it, but it's okay to have average job, with average life and average family as long as you can enjoy your life! Why burden yourself with idea of success and setting expectations. At this point I am sure life doesn't give anything unless you look for it. And even if you seek, there is no guarantee. So I think it's waste of energy. My experience so far. I am really glad that I learned how stability is nec…

Thanks, I learned something (record and replay programs in GDB! )
Post reply on HN