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Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

benkuhn.net

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Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#11

Post by BigHatLogan »

lmm wrote: post #8

Meh. Maybe not so many people should be trying to be outliers. Maybe society would be better off if we stepped back from the always-on, up-or-out culture and accepted that most people are average and (rightly!) value consistency more than upside. (Is it unfair to immediately wonder if the article was written by someone with an upper-class upbringing, who's always had access to a safety net that most people don't?)

I hope this doesn't come off as hostile, but you're on a forum that is hosted by the most renowned startup incubator. This is basically a bastion for the "always-on, up-or-out culture" you're weary of. It's completely acceptable to be weary of it, but I find this comment as odd as going to an NBA forum and expressing exasperation over NBA talk.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#13

Post by ZephyrBlu »

lmm wrote: post #8

Meh. Maybe not so many people should be trying to be outliers. Maybe society would be better off if we stepped back from the always-on, up-or-out culture and accepted that most people are average and (rightly!) value consistency more than upside. (Is it unfair to immediately wonder if the article was written by someone with an upper-class upbringing, who's always had access to a safety net that most people don't?)

This is written about career/job, but it applies to a whole bunch of different things like relationships, friendships, where you live, etc.

I highly recommend Ben's post dedicated to outliers where he explores this a bit more: https://www.benkuhn.net/outliers/.

> Maybe society would be better off if we stepped back from the always-on, up-or-out culture and accepted that most people are average and (rightly!) value consistency more than upside

Based on how I'm interpreting this you have it backwards. I don't think outlier results with high upside generally benefit from being "always-on" or "up-or-out culture" because that is too far on the exploit side of things to ever find outliers!

My belief is that more slack and time to explore are more likely to produce outliers.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#14

Post by ZephyrBlu »

BigHatLogan wrote: post #5
rektide wrote: post #2

Reasoning based on fear has taken over far too great a mindshare. We continually convince ourselves of our rightness righteousness and betterness by down-putting the hopeful, the ambitious, the would-tries. There's a new church of doubt in our fellow man & willing against the try. This post sets a nice positive message I long to hear, about trying, trying hard, about swinging for great.

Nicely said. While I do think being realistic about things is overall good, I'm not a fan of the pessimism / cynicism that I see in startup culture. Anytime somebody says, "Here is how I did X", it's immediately flooded with "survivorship bias", "born rich", and all the other tired responses. While those may be true, pointing them out on their own is boring. Like Paul Graham has said in the past: Is this the most int…

From what I've read, usually the criticism boils down to, "you had an unfair advantage which I don't have". Which makes a lot of sense since that is what startups are built on.

However, it also means that saying things like "take a risk, do the work, put yourself out there" does not make sense for most people because they lack an unfair advantage.

"Here is how I did X" stories are almost always useless for 99% of people because they gloss over unfair advantages like e.g. went to Stanford/Harvard/other, have VC connections, worked at X company, etc. Most people cannot replicate the initial state of these startup stories, let alone the end result.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#15

Post by Satam »

To distill: popularity of an idea != quality of thought. Just because many people believe something, doesn't mean it's likely to happen. In fact, it doesn't even mean the people believe their idea is very probable (e.g. VCs betting on startups knowing that most of them will fail).

In turn, it can be useful to adjust the very one-sided public estimates based your own nuanced reasoning. This could change the status-quo probability from 99% to, say, 60%.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#16

Post by BigHatLogan »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #14
BigHatLogan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicely said. While I do think being realistic about things is overall good, I'm not a fan of the pessimism / cynicism that I see in startup culture. Anytime somebody says, "Here is how I did X", it's immediately flooded with "survivorship bias", "born rich", and all the other tired responses. While those may be true, pointing them out on their own is boring. Like Paul Graham has said in the past: Is this the most int…

From what I've read, usually the criticism boils down to, "you had an unfair advantage which I don't have". Which makes a lot of sense since that is what startups are built on. However, it also means that saying things like "take a risk, do the work, put yourself out there" does not make sense for most people because they lack an unfair advantage. "Here is how I did X" stories are almost always useless for 99% of peo…

I totally agree, but this is less true for people who are already on this forum, who are presumably interested in startups (since this is a forum owned by Y Combinator of all organizations). If this was being posted routinely on the NYTimes Food and Recipes page, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. But that sort of content is, I assume, what people visit this website for. Imagine going to a weightlifting forum and decrying people for sharing their fitness routines, saying that not all people can afford gym memberships, have limbs to lift with, etc. It would be silly.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#17

Post by ZephyrBlu »

BigHatLogan wrote: post #16
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, usually the criticism boils down to, "you had an unfair advantage which I don't have". Which makes a lot of sense since that is what startups are built on. However, it also means that saying things like "take a risk, do the work, put yourself out there" does not make sense for most people because they lack an unfair advantage. "Here is how I did X" stories are almost always useless for 99% of peo…

I totally agree, but this is less true for people who are already on this forum, who are presumably interested in startups (since this is a forum owned by Y Combinator of all organizations). If this was being posted routinely on the NYTimes Food and Recipes page, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. But that sort of content is, I assume, what people visit this website for. Imagine going to a weightlifting forum and…

The difference is that the unfair advantages a lot of people who start successful startups have are not easily attainable.

There is no comparison here with a gym membership or having limbs. Both of those are many orders of magnitudes easier than say, getting accepted into Harvard or passing an interview loop at Facebook.

I read very few startup stories that I can actually relate to.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#18

Post by renewiltord »

BigHatLogan wrote: post #5
rektide wrote: post #2

Reasoning based on fear has taken over far too great a mindshare. We continually convince ourselves of our rightness righteousness and betterness by down-putting the hopeful, the ambitious, the would-tries. There's a new church of doubt in our fellow man & willing against the try. This post sets a nice positive message I long to hear, about trying, trying hard, about swinging for great.

Nicely said. While I do think being realistic about things is overall good, I'm not a fan of the pessimism / cynicism that I see in startup culture. Anytime somebody says, "Here is how I did X", it's immediately flooded with "survivorship bias", "born rich", and all the other tired responses. While those may be true, pointing them out on their own is boring. Like Paul Graham has said in the past: Is this the most int…

Why teach otherwise? It is a strong signal to click the [-] next to that comment thread. Strong ignore signal is as good as strong read signal. It's only weak signal that is problematic.

It's sort of like all those Amazon reviews that used to say "In exchange for an honest and unbiased review, I received the product". Before Amazon auto-removed them, they were a strong negative quality signal.

I would prefer if we preserve high comment SNR by encouraging people to use standard comms patterns so that my automatic comment bucketing will allow me to skip non-useful comments, e.g. correlation is not causation, survivorship bias, etc.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#19

Post by BigHatLogan »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #17
BigHatLogan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree, but this is less true for people who are already on this forum, who are presumably interested in startups (since this is a forum owned by Y Combinator of all organizations). If this was being posted routinely on the NYTimes Food and Recipes page, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. But that sort of content is, I assume, what people visit this website for. Imagine going to a weightlifting forum and…

The difference is that the unfair advantages a lot of people who start successful startups have are not easily attainable. There is no comparison here with a gym membership or having limbs. Both of those are many orders of magnitudes easier than say, getting accepted into Harvard or passing an interview loop at Facebook. I read very few startup stories that I can actually relate to.

That's fair--I appreciate that. I was being a little flippant with my examples, you're correct.

Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence

#20

Post by BigHatLogan »

renewiltord wrote: post #18
BigHatLogan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicely said. While I do think being realistic about things is overall good, I'm not a fan of the pessimism / cynicism that I see in startup culture. Anytime somebody says, "Here is how I did X", it's immediately flooded with "survivorship bias", "born rich", and all the other tired responses. While those may be true, pointing them out on their own is boring. Like Paul Graham has said in the past: Is this the most int…

Why teach otherwise? It is a strong signal to click the [-] next to that comment thread. Strong ignore signal is as good as strong read signal. It's only weak signal that is problematic. It's sort of like all those Amazon reviews that used to say "In exchange for an honest and unbiased review, I received the product". Before Amazon auto-removed them, they were a strong negative quality signal. I would prefer if we pr…

Haha good point--the "correlation is not causation" is another one that annoys me.
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