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No More “Insight Porn”

jakobgreenfeld.com

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Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#231

Post by ghaff »

antonymy wrote: post #159

I've never tried to give advice to people in my life since my career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and lucky breaks. I know that luck factors into a lot of people's experiences, but in my case luck is the foundation of everything I have accomplished outside of school. I've built on top of this foundation, to be sure, but it's like saying fishing is all about waiting for the fish to jump in your boat.

>my career is mostly founded on a series of coincidences and lucky breaks

I think you'll find that's true of a lot of people. Yes, there are people who graduate from a mid-tier school in engineering, go to some large company, work their way up the career ladder, maybe switch to one of two other big companies over time doing more or less the same thing, are reasonable happy and healthy in their personal life, etc. But a lot of people have much more circuitous routes that include barely navigating some difficult situations.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#232

Post by TuringTest »

throwaway98797 wrote: post #125
jjj123 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right it’s not helpful towards the goal of becoming an entrepreneur or whatever, but I disagree that it’s not helpful at the macro level. We should all have this basic understanding of how our society works, and how our plutocrats got to be in the position they are in. We’re fed myths that they all started from the bottom and worked hard enough and smart enough to get where they are, and you can do it too! And…

> We’re fed myths that they all started from the bottom and worked hard enough and smart enough to get where they are, and you can do it too! i know this may be rhetoric but i’ve never heard someone say that. a lot of folks in power say “I got lucky but also worked hard” it’s counter productive to claim the elite is this super disconnected group of people. because they are not and it weakens the case for reform. let’…

> let’s be honest many successful people work hard > there’s also a bunch unsuccessful hard working people

The key point is that the number of unsuccessful hard working people is humongously larger than successful hard working people, so working hard does not really correlate with having success, no matter what the survivor bias tell them.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#233

Post by mcguire »

Swizec wrote: post #207
vangelis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now imagine each bad play had a cost and you had a budget before too many knocked you out of the game

now imagine doing nothing had a cost and you decided to sit there and pout because others have better cards

This is really not a helpful reply.

To make rummy a good metaphor for this discussion, you need to modify the normal $1/point rummy gambling rules; say making gin gives you $1000 bonus from the house or something. (There's a resemblance to quiddich here, I think.) Anyway, now you have the two extreme strategies: knock if you can, which gets you a few dollars each time, or try exclusively for gin, which usually costs you money on each hand but sometimes pays off. If you're skint, the gin strategy won't work since you can't stay in the game long enough. If you're flush, the knock strategy is uninteresting because a few dollars doesn't make a difference.

Now make that bonus $10,000,000,000 and you're making some unicorns, Harry!

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#234

Post by TuringTest »

Swizec wrote: post #207
vangelis wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now imagine each bad play had a cost and you had a budget before too many knocked you out of the game

now imagine doing nothing had a cost and you decided to sit there and pout because others have better cards

Now imagine you only have budget for a single round before being eliminated and some of your opponents have money to keep playing indefinitely. That would be the most accurate metaphor

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#235

Post by trwhite »

planarhobbit wrote: post #91
tomhoward wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the OP's criticism and yours is that it starts from the assumption that PG has set out to "sell" the reader faux-actionable insights. What he's really doing is answering the question "how can I come up with startup ideas?", which has always been asked of him and the other YC partners frequently. And his answer is: you shouldn't try to come up with startup ideas; that's not how it works. Instead you s…

This is why I don’t get the recent pg hate that’s been happening on HN. He’s always done this, but now people are saying he’s out of touch because he’s rich/white/old. Majority of things he’s blogged are no-nonsense observations.

I think one has to take his writing of late with a pinch of salt because he writes things that only a rich, white and old guy could write. But the earlier stuff is still great. Hackers & Painters is still a wonderful book.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#236

Post by mcguire »

Silverback_VII wrote: post #196
pessimizer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While this is true, it also isn’t helpful. It isn't quite helpful. The second half of the advice should be to tell working class people to do whatever they can to get near rich/upper-middle class people, to flatter them, befriend them, attend their parties, and sleep with them. The more rich people around you, the luckier you get. Some rich manchild somewhere is waiting for you to be "the brains" behind something.

who wants to be "the brains" behind something which is not of his own? Only your own cause and goal can generate the willpower and stamina necessary to ultimately create something great. As Nietzsche said: "He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living things."

"who wants to be "the brains" behind something which is not of his own?"

Them as don't want to live in cardboard boxes but don't have some part of the resources necessary to "create something great"?

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#237

Post by deltree7 »

nickff wrote: post #215
chowells wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one ever talks about the opportunity cost of building up a "luck surface". What is the expected value of doing so? What do you have to sacrifice to do so? Is there any evidence the EV is positive, or is this just another selection bias?

Well, one extreme example is buying lottery tickets; it's the best way to expose yourself to the potential upside of winning the lottery, yet the expected value is quite negative. That example is quite bracing, but I think it points out that there are many ways to build this 'luck surface', and the expected values of each are probably very different, and likely situational.

Expected value is really a dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets. I can't believe even supposedly good mathematicians use it.

The next dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets is to compare it with other long odds (lightning strikes, marrying your favorite actor). If you want to play along, the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe.

Buying lottery tickets is a simple framework. The upside of winning a lottery is significantly higher than the downside of losing one (per week or per month). So do it.

The opposite is driving recklessly to save a minute of your commute. It has significantly higher downside risks than the upside of time savings. So don't do it.

A lot of lottery-bashing people make 10000x worse sub-optimal decisions in their life and yet pick trashing a lottery ticket to feel superior about their decision making ability.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#238

Post by recyclelater »

dominotw wrote: post #222
recyclelater wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jocko willinck (and many others I am sure) likes to state that you can’t rely on motivation because it comes and goes. Rely on discipline, build habits using discipline if you want to get anything done. A trite but in my opinion helpful statement is discipline equals freedom.

doesn't discipline require willpower though. I was told relying on willpower is bad because you only have limited amount of it per day and surely going to fail your when you run out of it.

That’s like saying you have a limited amount of muscular endurance per day. It’s true, but it’s completely trainable. Meaning just like you can go from barely able to run a mile to being able to run an ultramarathon, you can do the same thing with your willpower. But unlike running a marathon, training your willpower will yield real, life improving tangible benefits assuming you can correctly figure out how to apply it for your benefit. Maybe a poor analogy because running an ultramarathon requires lots of willpower :)

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#239

Post by wizofaus »

deltree7 wrote: post #237
nickff wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one extreme example is buying lottery tickets; it's the best way to expose yourself to the potential upside of winning the lottery, yet the expected value is quite negative. That example is quite bracing, but I think it points out that there are many ways to build this 'luck surface', and the expected values of each are probably very different, and likely situational.

Expected value is really a dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets. I can't believe even supposedly good mathematicians use it. The next dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets is to compare it with other long odds (lightning strikes, marrying your favorite actor). If you want to play along, the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe. B…

There's basically nothing I'm totally sure of, but I do know the probability of my existing in this universe is 1.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#240

Post by mcguire »

enos_feedler wrote: post #4

Out of the 3 "Insight Porn" examples linked in the article, I think the Paul Graham essay seems out of place. I know I know, this is hacker news. Yet another person sticking up for pg. But I just don't think this essay (or others) is really trying to boil some dream/goal into steps. In fact, in the "How to get startup ideas" referenced in this post, pg says: "So if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an i…

The unfortunate truth of PG's claim is that: Odds are you are not the right sort of person. You're not at the leading edge. The field isn't so much changing as spinning in place. Sorry.

But he carefully doesn't say that, and the majority of most of his essays are designed to inspire the belief that you are the right sort of person, etc.

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