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Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

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Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#211

Post by tlogan »

sbilstein wrote: post #49
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…

Yep.... Bootstrapping is for fools. Virtually no founders out there are pouring their personal savings into their company. The issues with bootstrapping: 1) No one to tell you to give up except your own survival instinct. 2) You've already told yourself to ignore that survival instinct because of the success stories you've heard. 3) Even if your idea is fantastic, there is another group of folks out there who have ra…

Yes - if you can raise money then do it. Why not? But do not gave up if you cannot.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#212

Post by ganbatekudasai »

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…

I sleep a lot. A lot. Sleeping more than 12 hours is no problem for me. Unsurprisingly, I'm also rather hypothymiac (it runs in the family). I consider myself very successful, and others do as well.

More importantly, I also never felt that my large amount of sleep was working against me in that. Almost the opposite actually, as I can "sleep off" depression, minor sicknesses, general bad mood etc.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#213

Post by after_care »

> Optimizing predictions for sounding good as stories, when nature optimizes for no such thing, creates a bias that Nick Bostrom has termed good-story bias. [0]

If you do not think you suffer from this bias I suggest you review the bias blind spot, or the failure to believe you are biased. [1]

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/good-story-bias [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#214

Post by marcosdumay »

petecooper wrote: post #10
lpapez wrote: post #7

Prime example: if you go to any article about "OKR methodology" you will find the authors stating that it was OKRs that made Google what it is. If your manager sees such an article, you will be switching to OKRs instantly.

>OKRs Today I learned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR

Looks like the basic procedure for planning. You decide what you want and break it down into more measurable pieces. My only problem with it is why the hell isn't this called "planning", instead of opaque jargon? Is there an ecosystem of consulting firms selling it?

Besides how often plans lead to the planned outcome?

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#215

Post by gnicholas »

sbilstein wrote: post #49
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…

Yep.... Bootstrapping is for fools. Virtually no founders out there are pouring their personal savings into their company. The issues with bootstrapping: 1) No one to tell you to give up except your own survival instinct. 2) You've already told yourself to ignore that survival instinct because of the success stories you've heard. 3) Even if your idea is fantastic, there is another group of folks out there who have ra…

> Bootstrapping is fools. Virtually no founders out there are pouring their personal savings into their company

This conflates people who haven't raised external funding and people who actively put money into a startup. It is possible to bootstrap a startup without plowing money into the business.

It's true that bootstrapped founders are plowing time into their business, but this is true of funded founders as well. VC money may pay a handsome salary, but taking it often means that you have to vest shares that you would otherwise own outright.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#216

Post by pdimitar »

shmageggy wrote: post #136
jonplackett wrote: post #51

I had a dumb idea about this a while ago - to do a massive completion for coin flipping. Get thousands of entries. Each ‘match’ just involves the two people flipping coins to decide the winner. You make a documentary about it where you ask everyone about their tactics and strategy. Someone has to win all their matches. They will have developed some ‘tactics’ that they probably strongly believe in. Of course we know i…

It's actually even worse than that though in real life, since (to continue the analogy) winning the first few rounds makes it easier to win subsequent rounds.

Depends on the circumstances in the real-life game you're playing but I hear you.

From what I've seen, if you win the first N rounds (N=1..20) then you gain critical mass and it becomes harder and harder to fail.

So yeah, what you say is based in solid reality in my experience as well.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#217

Post by pdimitar »

WalterBright wrote: post #192
nottorp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mom didn't open these doors. I did. I'm pretty sure that your success story will be missing some facts too if you write it. Perhaps just because you don't consider them important. My one significant career enhancing event happened because I knew the right person. Not a parent, just another programmer friend who brought me into a job, but still.

The point is, position yourself so luck can find you. A might not find you, but B would, or C would or D would. Stay in your basement playing video games, and you won't have any luck.

"Increasing your luck surface area". There was one such article some months ago and I liked the premise.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#218

Post by hirvi74 »

caddemon wrote: post #166
vimy wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Successful people often need less sleep than what’s considered the norm. 5 hours for them is 8 hours for most people. Same with stress, stress tolerance is above the norm. They’ve won the genetic lottery. Not every successful person has these traits of course. But enough to see a pattern.

Sure, biologically needing less sleep is certainly an advantage. But in the context of this thread it is a bad example. There are some things common among successful people that are feasible to do and would increase odds of success. The reason "sleep less" is dangerous is because it is feasible to do, but it is not going to be helpful for the majority of people. If you are someone that functions best on 7 hours a nig…

The time in which one sleeps is not the only variable that matters. I rather have 5 hours of restful, deep sleep than 8 hours of tossing, turning, and waking up every couple of hours. Plus, there are other variables like how close to sleep was your last meal/snack, what time you go to sleep and wake up at, caffeine intake, etc..

Can some people function better on less sleep? Sure, but I would need to see more data on this topic before I believe it is as widespread as I anecdotally hear it.

Are these people that need less sleep actually performing better, or they do they merely believe that because they are inhibited by their lack of sleep? I am pretty sure there have been studies observing this effect. One "thinks" they are performing better, but reality begs to differ.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#219

Post by simplestats »

caddemon wrote: post #170
bennysomething wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It doesn't surprise me that there can be a lot of movement among the lower to upper middle class brackets. I suspect where the unfairness is really apparent is the bottom 20% or so. What are expected adulthood earnings for kids that grow up below the poverty line?

Once you restrict your stats to those that stay in school and don't do drugs, I'd think it is hard to correct for other causes. Like the presence of involved parents.

Re: Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

#220

Post by hirvi74 »

bennysomething wrote: post #151
slim109ya wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 arg…

Wasn't his very affluent private high school one of the first schools in the nation to have a computer at the time? Again, this kind points back to something another post said about how one's success (in terms of monetary achievement) is strongly correlated to one's parental success. I mean, his mother held a high position in IBM at the time, and his father was a very successful lawyer while living in Seattle, Washington (a then, current affluent area of the US).

I'm not saying he wasn't some genius, or wasn't driven, or wasn't better than most in some way.

I just notice the part about Gates growing up in the ghettos of Baltimore or growing up in a trailer park in the deep, rural South, working multiple jobs while in high school just to survive, etc. is missing for him success story. Same goes for Musk, Jobs, etc.. Wealth doesn't guarantee success, but...

Wealth => greater % of better opportunities => greater % chance of being successful.

Luck plays a large role -- lucky to be intelligent, lucky to be rich, lucky to be in good health, lucky to be born in the right place, etc.. People hate to admit it because it takes away from their egocentric identities, but if Gates grew up in a poor rice farming village in Vietnam at the same time he grew up, we wouldn't be talking about him right now.

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