131–140 of 142 posts
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What is more worth than life?
Your life is as valuable as the freedoms and things you can access. If you are living in Cuba with no money, no freedoms and no prospects; your life is worth very little to nothing. It's a no-brainer to jump on a boat and move somewhere else where your life value can increase.
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Whenever that comment comes up I feel the urge to just post the wiki entry for the Kelly criterion. If you don't have as many resources as your competitors in the market, reduce your bet size!!! Yes, that may mean you cannot challenge Mark Zuckerberg for yacht size just yet, but it will also mean that you can try again if you fail. Match your ambition to your means. Super risky plans with no room for errors make for…
> Match your ambition to your means. "Suck it up" as the ultimate in life advice to those born less lucky lacks a certain something to the more empathetic folks out there.
You will not have the same opportunities. Look closely at the ones you have and don't ignore them for sour grapes.
Anything more than "sucks to be you" requires opportunity or real costs and basically no one is willing to do.
Heck even the cases of tutorship are reserved for the lucky talented ones.
I had to do this when young... I was homeless, rough sleeping. Honestly... it's a terrible piece of advice. Those risking everything have no other choice. If you're reading this person's blog post, if you're on HN... you probably have a choice, and you probably aren't "risking everything". I cannot imagine anyone on here actually choosing to potentially have nothing at all, no network, no funds, no assets, no nothing…
I guess one lesson is that for a lot people what seems like "risking everything" isn't really risking everything at all, you will in fact probably still be fine (and not homeless rough sleeping) even if you "lose". This isn't the way the advice was framed, and I think you are right that it should be -- but the reframed advice can still be good -- I don't know about for startups, I think most startups are BS, and the…
True but I assume the author understands that difference , maybe he is riding a different wave just that both are looking at endless fall to the abyss.
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I guess one lesson is that for a lot people what seems like "risking everything" isn't really risking everything at all, you will in fact probably still be fine (and not homeless rough sleeping) even if you "lose". This isn't the way the advice was framed, and I think you are right that it should be -- but the reframed advice can still be good -- I don't know about for startups, I think most startups are BS, and the…
> Those who actually risk everything, like, their lives (say, refugees in boats) do so because the alternative is existentially intolerable. The comparison to entrepeneurs is just... not actually ok. This is a great summary of the problems with this analogy, thank you. It's always annoyed me when people excuse the bad behavior of landlords and bosses exploiting low-income people with "well, they took a huge financial…
I had to do this when young... I was homeless, rough sleeping. Honestly... it's a terrible piece of advice. Those risking everything have no other choice. If you're reading this person's blog post, if you're on HN... you probably have a choice, and you probably aren't "risking everything". I cannot imagine anyone on here actually choosing to potentially have nothing at all, no network, no funds, no assets, no nothing…
Whenever that comment comes up I feel the urge to just post the wiki entry for the Kelly criterion. If you don't have as many resources as your competitors in the market, reduce your bet size!!! Yes, that may mean you cannot challenge Mark Zuckerberg for yacht size just yet, but it will also mean that you can try again if you fail. Match your ambition to your means. Super risky plans with no room for errors make for…
It’s easy to take this observation in literal terms. Most of the comments point to the danger of “risking everything (financially)” and of course there’s a potential stupidity in that. Reframed as psychologically risking everything is perhaps a more resonant alternative view. What this means is the notion that “you’re all in”, all of you. That your entire being is at risk. Sports perhaps the easiest illustration, whe…
What happens when you lose?
P.S. It's not a risk if you can't lose.
I had to do this when young... I was homeless, rough sleeping. Honestly... it's a terrible piece of advice. Those risking everything have no other choice. If you're reading this person's blog post, if you're on HN... you probably have a choice, and you probably aren't "risking everything". I cannot imagine anyone on here actually choosing to potentially have nothing at all, no network, no funds, no assets, no nothing…
> Middle class kids can afford one throw. *self funded Once you have decent funding, the wealth of your parents shouldn’t impact you very much.
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I'm sure this is referring to the expected value in something like say, a dice throw. If the chances of winning when picking a certain number are 1/6 and the payoff is 6x the investment then the expected returns after a large mount of attempts are known and would be zero. I'm sure this is widely applicable in gambling.
Exactly the right term to use: Expected Value. If we have 1/6 chance of winning and each win gives us 6x, we have an EV of 0. Poker is a great game to learn to understand EV/variance.
I rather suspect it is significantly negative, because most new businesses fail and the venture capital system means gambling with someone else's money.
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The author is obviously from the US where fear of others permeats everything (and requires carry of arms to defend one's home, for instance). They even talked of pirates in the story. While US is not universally like that, there is probably a large proportion that is (citation missing).
I may not know much about how horrible the US is because I've never been, but refugees are regularly endangered in European waters despite help being technically around. In one case I heard of even the Italian coastguard would do nothing until the UN was called and put pressure on them. The refugees had called emergency services and were ignored, without UN intervention they would have died. So yeah, you might want t…
But they are also very fearful of others at the same time. The article talks of refugees encountering 5 other boats which wouldn't help them before the author did.
My (completely unsubstantiated, iow, my gut feel) claim is that they are a bit more fearful of other people being out to get them than people from most European countries. Think of it like 35% of Europeans would help vs 25% of Americans (again, numbers completely fabricated, or pulled out of my behind): a small percentage points difference, but a huge relative difference.
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True negative infinities, even discounted, are still infinite, so not very useful as it makes all trajectories equal (negatively infinite).
I agree the characterization isn't very useful, as you point out - but that's the tricky thing with infinit(ies), isn't it? When discussing human behavior and introducing an infinity concept, the final result is the same for all people in all cases.