21–30 of 31 posts
Of course, the flip side of the coin is that you don't get to choose your hand. You can only choose how to play it. And accept that no matter what you do, you're still probably going to fail if you pick high-risk options.
I think this is why PG hits so many top posters (including myself) with rankban and slowban. PG gives us the story we want to believe: that highly intelligent people (I'm no PG fan, but the man wrote On Lisp ; he's fucking sharp) succeed in the startup world. The problem, under free exchange of information, is that for each of him, there are 49 equivalently smart, articulate people who had more average outcomes. And…
I think this is why PG hits so many top posters (including myself) with rankban and slowban. PG gives us the story we want to believe: that highly intelligent people (I'm no PG fan, but the man wrote On Lisp ; he's fucking sharp) succeed in the startup world. The problem, under free exchange of information, is that for each of him, there are 49 equivalently smart, articulate people who had more average outcomes. And…
This sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory. I think the thing that you're missing is that success breeds success. PG was able to be successful with YC because there were a few successes from the first batch, which built the reputation. That lead to more applications, which meant more people to choose from. Being smart in the choices is part of it, but there are a LOT of successful businesses that weren't part of Y…
Doesn't this strengthen the argument that luck matters? Consider the careers of hollywood actors. They tend to be jump started by the "big break", rather than being a smooth linear promotion.
But LA is stuffed to the gills with actors who never got that big break. The entire city is notoriously oversupplied with good looking waitstaff.
I think this is why PG hits so many top posters (including myself) with rankban and slowban. PG gives us the story we want to believe: that highly intelligent people (I'm no PG fan, but the man wrote On Lisp ; he's fucking sharp) succeed in the startup world. The problem, under free exchange of information, is that for each of him, there are 49 equivalently smart, articulate people who had more average outcomes. And…
it is in pgs interest to create a worldview that hard work and dedication are the crucial factors that lead to success and downplay the effect luck has. it allows him to invest in startups very cheaply (less than a nice new car), have the founders work themselves almost to death, then cash in if they sell their company. this is because part of what the founders take as investment is their expectations for future retu…
I'm not sure it's necessary. Optimistic bias is well-entrenched in humans.
No way, man. Sure luck plays a role on some level, but I can tell you I spent seven plus years trying to get apps off the ground. And it wasn't until I started putting in the hard work that things began to turn around. Plain and simple. Drop the excuses!
Luck is required to achieve a certain level of mega-success. For example, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs just happened to be at the right point in time for a whole new industry to be born. If they were college-aged today, could they develop a successful business? Absolutely. Would it grow into one of the biggest and most well-known companies in the world? Doubtful. They just happened to be at the right place and at the ri…
And on that note, unless one is superstitious, "luck" is just another way of saying "random or unpredictable variables favorably aligning with your goals". If it's coin-flip-like random, then there's nothing you can do to foresee it or influence it. But in technology and business, many things are not like that. The fact that you cannot predict something usually means you have insufficient information (even for a coin flip, if you knew the exact force vector your thumb imparted on the coin, you can in fact predict the outcome). Or, more likely in the case of startups, the information is already available, but you fail to recognize its significance because it's buried in an avalanche of information.
In other words, luck is earned.
At some point, this probably reduces to quibbling about the exact definition of "luck", but I generally agree with this statement, given the way I view luck.
Personally, I believe - as other have already quoted - that
"luck favors the prepared mind"
and
"luck is when preparation meets opportunity"
I'll go back to a post from a year or two ago, about "how to date a supermodel". The gist was, "if you want to date a supermodel, start by moving to where lots of supermodels live". There ya go... call it "earn that luck" or "luck is when preparation meets opportunity" or "fortune favors the bold" or whatever, the essence is the same to me.
Honestly, this recent "success is luck meme" strikes me as a fabrication concocted by people who don't believe in hard-work, as a way to denigrate the people who have put in the hard-work and gained success, and to provide themselves with a "ready built" excuse for failing.
I feel like there's a crowd out there waiting to go:
"Oh noes, I failed. Oh, no biggie, I just wasn't lucky".
versus the folks who say
"Oh noes, I failed. Shit, well, let me dust myself off, climb back up to my feet, suck my gut in, and try again, and work even harder this time".
Anyway, for the "hard work" crowd, here's a little something inspirational:
I think this is why PG hits so many top posters (including myself) with rankban and slowban. PG gives us the story we want to believe: that highly intelligent people (I'm no PG fan, but the man wrote On Lisp ; he's fucking sharp) succeed in the startup world. The problem, under free exchange of information, is that for each of him, there are 49 equivalently smart, articulate people who had more average outcomes. And…
I googled "slowban" and "rankban" and can only find other comments by you on this or other sites talking about it. I'm just curious how you know these things exist and whether these terms are one's you've come up with yourself for the phenomena, or whether others use those terms.
Slowban i'm not sure, but maybe just rate limiting the comments that they can post?
Ecclesiastes 9:11.
I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11.
One of my favorite Biblical verses. I took the liberty of copying it out: I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all.
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.