Timing: Why this crisis is our biggest break • Hacker News Board

Re: Timing: Why this crisis is our biggest break

#21

Post by jeggers » Tue, Nov 18, 2008, 12:02 AM UTC

vitaminj wrote: post #8

sharkfish wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. I re-read the article after I read your comment, and I came to a different conclusion: It is very possible we are in one of those gaps in time where if you have put in your 10,000 hours, you can leverage them. You can be one of those lucky ones. His point is, then, how do you know you aren't coming of age during a lucky time, when the old goes out the window? It is quite possible this is that "garage electro…

I think timr's point is that you'll only know AFTER the fact that you're lucky. To try and extrapolate a single (and dubious) data point in history to the present time, and then conclude that this is the right time for 20 year olds to be lucky, is IMHO wildly misplaced optimism. You can't "time" luck... maybe it'll be the elderly who come out of this lucky...

Please re-read my post.

I don't say we are pre-ordained to be lucky.

I do say "...or you can look at this as a new economy. How will it be remade? What do you know now that will be wrong for the future? What will be right?" It is your choice to decide if you are feeling lucky.

I do say that this isn't about 20-year olds. Rather, it is about those whose mindset is not set by the old ways; those who can look at an idea/time differently and take advantage of it.

I do say that I am feeling lucky, and I am ready to look at this in a different way. History will tell if I am lucky, and I will be on the Forbes list in 1000 years.

Re: Timing: Why this crisis is our biggest break

#22

Post by jacobscott » Tue, Nov 18, 2008, 12:34 AM UTC

crabapple wrote: post #11

jacobscott wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a deep question; I think the answer is a mix of economics and philosophy. Depending on how interested you are, consider maybe "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell.

except this book does nothing to address that point because it is as the title says, a history of western philosophy. it is about OTHER philsophers. on the internet you have to be careful about talking up books, someone may actually have read it and call you out

Sorry, I'm meaning to order this from Amazon -- it got a lot of props in an ask.mefi thread. Didn't mean to imply that I had read it. Do you have a better suggestion?

Re: Timing: Why this crisis is our biggest break

#23

Post by jeggers » Tue, Nov 18, 2008, 1:02 AM UTC

fbbwsa wrote: post #19

Sort of a terrible example by the author (Gladwell, I guess), I think with regards to the wealth creation window being limited to those born between 1831 to 1840. don’t see why its surprising at all that 14/75 of the richest people in the country came from a given 9 year time period. Since we don’t know what the distribution looks like, lets grind through this. If we had no a priori reason to suspect that that partic…

Two issues with your calculation: (1) You are considering contiguous 9-year periods across which the 14-person sets can be applied with the 48 years + 25. Because the span of time is recorded history, and with a brief look at the Forbes list, at least 1000 years are covered... or 966 sets of 9-year periods (1000-9-25), rather than 5.

(2) Life expectancy globally across this period of time gives a much wider range.

Overall, your calcs are too narrow to disprove Gladwell's assertion. We'd have to dig more deep into the actual numbers to get the real stats to show how likely/unlikely this is.

Re: Timing: Why this crisis is our biggest break

#24

Post by fbbwsa » Tue, Nov 18, 2008, 3:13 AM UTC

jeggers wrote: post #23

fbbwsa wrote: post #19

Sort of a terrible example by the author (Gladwell, I guess), I think with regards to the wealth creation window being limited to those born between 1831 to 1840. don’t see why its surprising at all that 14/75 of the richest people in the country came from a given 9 year time period. Since we don’t know what the distribution looks like, lets grind through this. If we had no a priori reason to suspect that that partic…

Two issues with your calculation: (1) You are considering contiguous 9-year periods across which the 14-person sets can be applied with the 48 years + 25. Because the span of time is recorded history, and with a brief look at the Forbes list, at least 1000 years are covered... or 966 sets of 9-year periods (1000-9-25), rather than 5. (2) Life expectancy globally across this period of time gives a much wider range. Ov…

you are correct, I skimmed/misread the post. I thought it 75 richest LIVING people (and could not for the life of me figure out why they were using such an old Forbes list...), not in history.

Thats why I was assuming we could assume dead people and those under 25 wouldn't be as relevant and fit all potential candidates to a 50-ish year birth-year block.

Taking any arbitrary 9 year period in a 50 year period and finding that it captured ~20% didn't seem odd to me, which is why I screwed up with my bad argument.

Good catch.