311–320 of 575 posts
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I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m), but I think you then need a big injection of luck to take you from wealthy to ultra wealthy.
> I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m) Statistically, no.
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You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success. So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.
> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
It's obviously more complex than this, but I think it's more useful to think of it as a product. You don't need a high value in any of them to succeed, but a tiny value in even one means you need an astronomical value somewhere else.
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> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m), but I think you then need a big injection of luck to take you from wealthy to ultra wealthy.
Lots of very intelligent and talented people out there. But when you have the good fortune of coming up with a great idea (Facebook in the mid 00's) you have to use your talent to relentlessly implement it.
This is what separates the plebs from the ultra wealthy. Intelligence + talent + idea + implementation = success
I look forward to reading the book, but I’m not anti-Zuck. Individuals can change the world. Groups with ideology can change the world. This is why many of us are here at HN- for the discussion of ideas and for idealism. Few want to be supreme jerks that ruin things on a massive scale. Zuck, if you’re reading this- thanks for being part of the thing that allowed me to continue communication with my friends when they…
And yes your beloved communication medium helped the Burmese commit genocide...
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You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success. So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.
> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
I got "marble rich" because I knew who the good players were and when one came a long I put my foot over my marble. Once you knew the trick it was impossible not to win on average and be a few marbles better off every day. Even a slight positive over a few weeks turns into a lot.
At a certain point I stopped finding this desirable and felt a bit guilty about it - the marbles were of no use to me really and it was enough to know that I had the trick of succeeding.
I wonder if this is roughly how people get wealthy in real life other than that they don't think "enough".
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I think there are some similar remarks on Bill Gates in another good memoir by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen [1]. Even on his school days, Gates was so sure he will not have a competition on Math, since he was the best at math at his school. When he went to Harvard, (which I somehow remember as Princeton(!) as pointed out by a commenter) and saw people better than him, he changed to applied math from Pure math. (Re…
"Oh well, I'm not going to be Andres Segovia, so I guess I will never pick up a guitar." I think that attitude comes from people who are deeply unhappy. They need therapy.
I was blown away at the time by what was possible and that, even though he was very old at the time and had to be led out onstage by the arm, needed help getting seated, and had the guitar placed in his lap, what he could still play was so far advanced of anyone in my class who were all in attendance.
The temptation (and I have felt this many times since then after hearing various guitarists) could have been "I should just quit now because I'll never be that good." But I'm glad I didn't succumb to that and decided that "I'd rather not sound like anyone else" and still feeling pleasure and accomplishment from playing on my own terms.
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You've won the lottery, but you don't want to acknowledge that you won the lottery. You want to feel they you deserve your position through hard work and talent. You're living in a society where people are credulous, to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success. So what will happen? Everyone you hire ends up patting you on the back, telling you what a great guy you are.
> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
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> to some degree they believe that hard work and talent are related to success Does anyone actually believe that hard work and talent are either zero or negatively correlated to success? I don't think the correlation is 1.0, but I firmly believe that it's positive for both.
I do. 108 Billion humans have ever lived on planet earth. 8 billion-ish currently. Most of them live lives that in no way reflected on their hard work and talent, but rather their circumstances, starting with where and when they were born but encompassing a million different contingencies outside the control of their hard work or talent. So do you think you have talent and hard work greater than 99% of those many bil…
You’re arguing that there are other factors that also influence outcomes (and that those other factors are stronger forces).
I agree with that point, but that’s not a refutation to the notion that the coefficients on talent and hard work are positive, nor a convincing argument that success is unrelated to those two factors.
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For £1M/year after tax, I'd tell Zuck anything he wants to hear from 9 to 5, excluding weekends, bank holidays and 28 days of annual leave. We all have a price really.
You could make more than that without compromising yourself. Aim higher.
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Huh. I remember being miles ahead of my peers in computer science in high school. When getting to college and finding people most definitely better than I was, I was incredibly excited to finally find such people, not scared away.
in my experience, people who grow up as the biggest fish in a small pond (whether concerning just fields they care about, or in general) are always 99% of the time, one of these two when they end up a middling fish in the big pond: like you, happy to find peers and inspiring exemplars to collaborate with and learn from, or those who hate that they are not the best anymore. the former group probably leads the healthie…