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No More “Insight Porn”

jakobgreenfeld.com

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Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#241

Post by cwp »

wizofaus wrote: post #239
deltree7 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expected value is really a dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets. I can't believe even supposedly good mathematicians use it. The next dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets is to compare it with other long odds (lightning strikes, marrying your favorite actor). If you want to play along, the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe. B…

There's basically nothing I'm totally sure of, but I do know the probability of my existing in this universe is 1.

No. That's like flipping a coin and then saying the probability of getting heads is 1. The fact that something happened is not proof that it was guaranteed to happen.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#242

Post by ProblemFactory »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #73
startupdiscuss wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, this was not meant to be advice! This was anti-advice. You can't use the criterion: if it is insightful it has to be actionable on an insight that says "I have no actions for you". The difference is, it is not trying to trick you.

It's just empty self aggrandizement. "Be the right sort of person and you'll have the right hunches" is transparent nonsense.

It's not empty, it's just way, way! too politely phrased. It's not advice on how to find ideas or how to become that person, but advice on who is ready to give founding a startup a try.

During my career I did freelance mobile app and web development for about 10 years.

In that time I came across many people who wanted to found a tech startup because "that's where the money is" and being a tech startup founder being a status symbol. Some enthusiastic youngsters, but mostly people who had a successful non-tech small business. And they were not the right sort of person and did not have the right hunches, they didn't use what they learned from their non-tech business, but instead sat down over a beer with friends to brainstorm "social-local-viral" app ideas.

The advice instead should be that if you are struggling to come up with startup ideas, you probably aren't the right sort of person at this time. You should do something entirely different for a while until you find a product that just has to exist.

Unfortunately, they had never read HN or PG, nor could I do more than politely refuse their business.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#243

Post by [deleted] »

bombcar wrote: post #39
MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #28

I got super lucky. I started a company and didn’t really have any meaningful traction. I was about to shut it down. Walking out of the grocery store one night after work, I passed by my former manager when I was an intern. We got to talk for about 30 seconds, mentioned my company, she asked me to email her. I did, and that very quickly led to my first big customer which makes me about double what a FAANG swe would ma…

"Get lucky" is always the key - however, you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things (for example, you couldn't have gotten lucky if you hadn't started the company, nor if you hadn't bothered to talk to people).

[deleted]

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#244

Post by tomnipotent »

scarmig wrote: post #227
nickff wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one extreme example is buying lottery tickets; it's the best way to expose yourself to the potential upside of winning the lottery, yet the expected value is quite negative. That example is quite bracing, but I think it points out that there are many ways to build this 'luck surface', and the expected values of each are probably very different, and likely situational.

All the talk about building a great "luck surface" is just an attempt to deny luck: something might seem like luck, but it's really part of an intentional strategy to maximize potential value! For any given "luck surface" strategy, you can find far more people who haven't achieved massive success using it than those who have. Some strategies are probably better than others, but those are not foreseeable in advance.

It's luck because you have no direct control over it - it happens by unpredictable circumstances.

Think of networking, and imagine every person you meet and build a rapport with as non-parametric distribution that you're randomly sampling from over time (future interactions). You have no clue if each sample is going to yield positive results, but you can increase your chance of a positive outcome overall by increasing the number of distributions (people) you're sampling from (maintaining relationships).

So much of it ends up by random chance, what else could it be but luck?

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#245

Post by SkyPuncher »

ycombinete wrote: post #2

Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis . Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in p…

> This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies.

I read a lot of business books that could be categorized as "self-help". I tend to continuously read them because

1. I'm aware how difficult behavior change

2. It's valuable to have more than 1 perspective.

3. Few things have had an outsized impact on my career. I do not know what those are until weeks/months/years after reading a book.

For me, I'm not looking to read a single book to emulate it fully. I'm looking to read 4 or 5 books, shape my overall perspective, then have 2 to 4 things stick very, very deeply. Lastly, I can always come back to a specific book when I loosely remember it being applicable.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#246

Post by omghilarious »

bheadmaster wrote: post #141
ycombinete wrote: post #2

Jonathan Haidt speaks about something similar in The Happiness Hypothesis . Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. This is why self-help book readers tend to keep reading self-help books. 4 weeks after finishing one they need another hit of epiphanies. Even the lamest examples listed in the OP article can probably give someone a boost in p…

> Epiphanies can only take you so far, before their novelty wears off and they lose the power to change your behaviour. Funny, I've experienced the same thing with philosophy. In my teens, I've had this existential crisis where the world just didn't make sense to me. Eventually I have discovered philosophy and started reading it, and for a while the world made sense to me. However, every epiphany I've had about the w…

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Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#247

Post by wizofaus »

cwp wrote: post #241
wizofaus wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's basically nothing I'm totally sure of, but I do know the probability of my existing in this universe is 1.

No. That's like flipping a coin and then saying the probability of getting heads is 1. The fact that something happened is not proof that it was guaranteed to happen.

Re-read what the GP claimed. Given the initial conditions of the universe, the probability it might eventually lead to my own existence may well be infinitessimal, but in the context of the probability of me winning the lottery (for example), my existence is already a given.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#248

Post by throwaway98797 »

TuringTest wrote: post #232
throwaway98797 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’re fed myths that they all started from the bottom and worked hard enough and smart enough to get where they are, and you can do it too! i know this may be rhetoric but i’ve never heard someone say that. a lot of folks in power say “I got lucky but also worked hard” it’s counter productive to claim the elite is this super disconnected group of people. because they are not and it weakens the case for reform. let’…

> let’s be honest many successful people work hard > there’s also a bunch unsuccessful hard working people The key point is that the number of unsuccessful hard working people is humongously larger than successful hard working people, so working hard does not really correlate with having success, no matter what the survivor bias tell them.

probably philosophical difference

“so you’re saying there’s a chance!?”

is good enough for me, plus when i work hard i feel better even when it doesn’t pay off.

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#249

Post by Afton »

deltree7 wrote: post #237
nickff wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one extreme example is buying lottery tickets; it's the best way to expose yourself to the potential upside of winning the lottery, yet the expected value is quite negative. That example is quite bracing, but I think it points out that there are many ways to build this 'luck surface', and the expected values of each are probably very different, and likely situational.

Expected value is really a dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets. I can't believe even supposedly good mathematicians use it. The next dumb way to evaluate lottery tickets is to compare it with other long odds (lightning strikes, marrying your favorite actor). If you want to play along, the probability of you winning the lottery is 10000000000000x more favorable than the probability of you existing in this universe. B…

Bashing on lottery tickets due to EV also really feels like it's really missing the point. Lottery tickets are a mechanism for enjoying a fantasy. Sure you could technically just pretend that you won $10^9, but there is a hard cliff from >0% to 0%. I buy lottery tickets (very very occasionally, but who cares!) because it helps me enjoy a fantasy about being radically independently wealthy.

There's no reason to hate on people for doing something that they enjoy, regardless of what the expected value is. For god's sake, I juggle! As a hobby! Can you imagine the expected return on THAT?

Re: No More “Insight Porn”

#250

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #198
leoc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an excellent idea which has been proposed more than once, including by me. ;)

It's an excellent idea for people who want to go to Harvard, and maybe even society at large, but a terrible idea for people who have gone to Harvard. And for Harvard. And Harvard cares about the latter a lot more than it does about the former.

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