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How to Be Successful

blog.samaltman.com

141–150 of 326 posts

Re: How to Be Successful

#141
post #32

This post embodies everything I dislike about success fluff. I look up to people I admire - Tesla, Nick Drake, Mingus, My highschool Chemistry teacher - they meet maybe 0-3 of the list. Creation of value is such a delicate thing, we should not flatten it that way. As a side effect, if we widen our view of success, there will be more place up in the 99.9%...

I don't know much about Nick Drake, why do you admire him?

Re: How to Be Successful

#142
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason I'm excited about basic income is the amount of human potential it will unleash by freeing more people to take risks. Until then, if you aren't born lucky, you have to claw your way up for awhile before you can take big swings. If you are born in extreme poverty, then this is super difficult :( It is obviously an incredible shame and waste that opportunity is so unevenly distributed. But I've witne…

I'm glad that you noted this in the comments, but I think it'd be helpful to see it in the blog post. Any chance for an edit?

added as a footnote

Re: How to Be Successful

#143

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

> I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless

As opposed to comments like yours which are completely pointless. Yes, not everyone can be in the 99th percentile. But the people who do, didn't just get randomly picked out of a hat. They got there by leveraging as much advice/wisdom as they could get your hands on, and then executing on it. And that's exactly the audience this article is targeting. Completely free of charge.

If you aren't interested in being in the 99th percentile, then don't read articles like these. Why waste your time writing comments that contribute nothing of value whatsoever. It's the equivalent of me walking into a sports bar and yelling at everyone about how pointless sports are.

Re: How to Be Successful

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like you say, these stunted people already exist. They already do everything in their power to minimize their work time, including trying for disability or welfare. UBI won't create more of them, and it won't end the ones we have, but it may add stability to the working poor.

How do you know that UBI won't create more of them? It's a common refrain, like with legalization ("anyone who wants to smoke weed is already doing it"), and I know several people who didn't smoke before it became legal, and are now smoking regularly. It seems reasonable to think that UBI would enable some class of people who would otherwise exert themselves, to no longer bother.

Because there's already social safety nets those people can use. And yes, absolutely, there are probably going to be groups of people who are barely working now that will stop, but given there's already means to not work, I can't see this being a huge group, and really, this is an optimist / pessimist face-off, which is sad, because that's how we probably see the possible outcomes too. The only way we can know if it'll work or not is for someone to try it - which, thankfully, YC is.

Re: How to Be Successful

#145
post #91

It's reading like a recipe for success when really it's simply observation on factors that helped the author have a successful career.

Or factors of which the author thinks that they have helped him.

Re: How to Be Successful

#147

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

Your mentality is the mentality of failure...as in why bother trying because the odds are stacked against you. I see this very common among peers and ultimately...it only leads to failure. So why even bother having this mentality? You are better off having optimism that success can be achieved. In regards to Sam's advice. His advice is correct but people are interpreting it too strictly. Sam's advice is basically the…

While this blog post is much better than most, there is a huge market for "how to be successful, be good at business, etc" and a lot of it is misguided, empty motivational speeches, or hand waviness. There's a lot of survivorship bias and fluff. You can spend a lot of time and money you could otherwise spend on making a better product.

So I don't see the response as the mentality of failure, but more of a warning about the "How to Be Successful" market that's out there. While I agree poor execution is abundant, I think "hard work, contacts and luck leads to success" is spot on. A lot of timing is just luck. If I could perfectly execute a model-T or Amazon.com its doubtful I will be successful because that's yesterday's problem and being first to market has many advantages.

Re: How to Be Successful

#148
post #143

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

> I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless As opposed to comments like yours which are completely pointless. Yes, not everyone can be in the 99th percentile. But the people who do, didn't just get randomly picked out of a hat. They got there by leveraging as much advice/wisdom as they could get your hands on, and then executing on it. And that's exactly the audience this article is targeting. C…

Their comment isn't pointless, it's posted for discussion and ideas.

Re: How to Be Successful

#149
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There definitely is a limited number of millionaires that an economy/population can support. Also, comparing across time is rather deceptive. The north korean military is much more powerfully compared to khan or alexander's armies. The comparison is pointless considering the north korean military isn't traveling back in time to fight the mongols or the greeks. Saying middle class americans are rich compared to romans…

I don't agree, because there certainly are some objective measures of well being, such as access to nutrition, clean drinking water, life expectancy, exposure to violence etc. that hold true across any age in time. Most of these measures have in general increased in the course of humankind. So a homeless man im 2018 is most likely still better off than a homeless man during the Roman empire.

I understand that human society has progressed over time. That's not what I'm disputing. What I'm pointing out is that it's meaningless to compare current situation to the past. A homeless man in 2019 is better off than everyone in the roman empire - including the emperor and the homeless. So what? How does that help the homeless man in 2019. A slave in the 1800s was wealthier than the anyone in the roman empire. So what? People in 2019 or people in the 1800s weren't living in the roman empire. The north koreans in political camps are wealthier than the emperor of roman empire. So I guess that means everything is great? It's such a deceptive and insincere comparison. People live within their time and their "wealth" should be compared within it. And more importantly, wealth should always be viewed within the context of power because ultimately, that's what wealth is.

Re: How to Be Successful

#150

I find these types of articles/blogs to be relatively pointless because the market/economy/country/etc has room for a select few successes. Imagine if Obama wrote "How to Be a Successful Presidential Candidate" and every 2016 candidate read it and adopted it to a tee. We'd still have dozens of failures and only 1 success. If success were really a formula, then we'd all be successful. We can't all get into harvard, we…

You're defining success in non-scalable terms. Sure, not everyone can be millionaire but what if just being "financially solvent" is considered a success? What if maximizing financially solvent people is a definition of success for a society?
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