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No More “Insight Porn”

jakobgreenfeld.com

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Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#131

Post by nthypes »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

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 ma…

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"

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#132

Post by ReptileMan »

juve1996 wrote: post #82
strken wrote: post #52

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 busines…

> 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.

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.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#133

Post by thenerdhead »

ianbutler wrote: post #120
alecbz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not even "discipline", but what is "nature". So… not what Jocko is talking about?

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.

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.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#134

Post by eloff »

nthypes wrote: post #129
bombcar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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).

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"

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.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#135

Post by anon25783 »

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.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#136

Post by layer8 »

anotheruser092 wrote: post #109
layer8 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like insight porn. How do you build discipline if you’re undisciplined? How do you decide what to be disciplined about?

> "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…

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.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#137

Post by [deleted] »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

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 ma…

[deleted]

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#138

Post by paskozdilar »

Swizec wrote: post #126
paskozdilar wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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

I'd argue the same point even if we took only chronically homeless into consideration instead of an average homeless.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#139

Post by contextfree »

abecedarius wrote: post #84
minihat wrote: post #7

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.

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.

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"

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#140

Post by bombcar »

Swizec wrote: post #124
bombcar wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> 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…

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.

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