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Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

fortune.com

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Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#81

Post by philomath_mn »

treespace8 wrote: post #71

The quote: `I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering’ really hits on the nose for me. My Dad had a successful business after a rough childhood, failing high school. He worked hard and built a successful business. He also really did wish ample doses of pain and suffering on me. And he got his wish. He always thought it was good that I was bullied, that I also failed school, and that everything in life was gen…

Right -- I think there are ways to cultivate resilience in children without inflicting the bad kind of pain and suffering.

Severe disappointment, frustration, and discomfort as the result of their own decisions? Sure.

Actual abuse? Not so much.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#83

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #54
brushfoot wrote: post #10

Reminds me obliquely of what Jack Cowin told an MBA class, as quoted in Rafael Badziag's _The Billion Dollar Secret_: "You guys have a big disadvantage over what I had. When I finished university, I got a job offer of $6,000 a year, and you're going to get a job offer of $150,000. You're going to develop a lifestyle. You're going to join the golf club, you're going to have private school for your kids. You're going t…

This is just the myth they build for themselves though. In reality, you have far more to lose when you start out with nothing because if you fail Daddy's not going to pay for you to go back to school and do your plan B. You have no safety net. Empirically, this bears out as well. Successful entrepreneurs are overwhelmingly from the upper-middle/upper classes.

Yeah, the vast majority of wealthy individuals will insist they "pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps" without realizing the original saying was meant to be satire, while willfully ignoring the hilarious amount of help from family, friends, and, yes, the government as well, they received along the way. They also ignore the biggest factor in success: luck.

This is also why 99% of CEO written self-help books are worker drone manuals --- insisting "you could be like me if you worked real hard too!" helps their bottom-line much more than it helps the person who reads those books.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#84

Post by exe34 »

COGlory wrote: post #26
m3kw9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich hater be hating here. He came from poor to the top and wasn’t passed a silver spoon, so he has enough qualifications to lecture.

It's not rich hating, it's that there's a billion poor people who weren't passed a silver spoon, worked hard, but ultimately failed in the one key element: luck. Rich people never understand that most of their success came from luck. In general, it makes them very unqualified to tell other people how to get rich. And no I'm not saying rich people are too dumb to understand it, I'm saying that they're trying to ration…

> Rich people never understand that most of their success came from luck.

Is it really important if they understand it? Isn't enough for everybody else to know that?

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#85

Post by sanderjd »

detourdog wrote: post #79
wslh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that could be a stretch but Rushmore does not only depict a nerd but one that is creative and iconoclast. Many times we have a bond with a movie for personal reasons that are not shared with the rest. I shared my ranking where there are movies which are classical top and others personal takes. That is the reason to create these (non algorithmic/AI) lists: share and help others to move from the average^average…

No Bottle Rocket? I think that is the best.

It's certainly the most raw and personal, to its benefit, but it's too unpolished to be as great as the others.

I wish he had remade it like a decade ago, after honing his style and technical talents, and with a right-sized budget. I'd still go see it if he did a remake now, but I doubt it would maintain enough of its spark at this point :)

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#86

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

ajross wrote: post #49

Not really relevant to Huang's speech per se, but the article engages in IMHO one of the most infuriatingly wrong misconceptions in education journalism: > [Stanford] is one of the most selective in the United States [...] and the few students who get picked to study there are charged $62,484 in tuition fees for the premium, compared to the average $26,027 per annum cost. But, unfortunately for those saddled with stu…

A lot of "top-10/elite/whatever schools" can reduce or cover the tuition for the vast majority of their students mostly because their endowments are enormous. It's dirt cheap for them and is good PR. All Ivy-league schools can effectively offer free education to their students for generations off of the interest they earn on their endowments alone. It's partly what leads to the crazy inequality in offerings, quality, and funding, between higher-ed schools in the US. Addressing the cost of higher-ed is a worthwhile goal, but in my opinion addressing the crazy inequality between schools is much more worthwhile.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#87

Post by throwtroawat »

Oh man, I saw this stark contrast during the last YC batch.

A friend who supported himself through college on construction jobs, then went through a major surgery (think brain/heart/cancer) left his FAANG job for the startup.

His cofounders? A married couple with prime Bay Area real estate purchased by their family abroad, constantly bragged about Stanford (masters, mind you)and CCP connections.

Long story short, apparently the cofounder couple lied about their visa situation, both to the investors and to their cofounder. (They had a green card when they said otherwise). This was so they could lie about quitting their job at Google, which they never did.

My friend left when he found out, as he was the technical one anyway, and last I heard bootstrapped something with decent revenue.

In any case, the situation reminds me how important it is to fully vet your cofounders. Also, crazy that people can be effectively rewarded for being so scummy.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#88

Post by Brian_K_White »

sanderjd wrote: post #50
dont_dox_me_bro wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wonder what he means by low expectations as a billionaire? I'm guessing it's drastically different than the 70 year olds I know working retail jobs so they don't die from poverty.

My read is that he's just making the same point as the stoics (and I'm sure many others, I'm just most familiar with it from stoicism), to not expect or fall into the trap of feeling entitled to good things. In stoicism, this is the point beneath the oft-caricatured practice of contemplating that death could come at any moment. If you don't expect or feel entitled to even just living from moment to moment, then it's…

It really depends who's saying it to you at the time.

It's true that being able to cope instead of fall apart is a useful power for you.

It's also true that anyone with any form of authority over you would love nothing better than for you to never demand anything.

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#89

Post by xboxnolifes »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #77
treespace8 wrote: post #71

The quote: `I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering’ really hits on the nose for me. My Dad had a successful business after a rough childhood, failing high school. He worked hard and built a successful business. He also really did wish ample doses of pain and suffering on me. And he got his wish. He always thought it was good that I was bullied, that I also failed school, and that everything in life was gen…

Heh. I had some of that "character building", and I credit that I don't seem to have as fragile a temperament as some to it. It worked for the Germans and Huns and Mongols. Too bad we can't run the counterfactual and see if we would be the same across different timelines.

Since we only view this at the population level, there is a big question: Is "character building" improving those who need it to be stronger, or just filtering them out of society?

Re: Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance

#90

Post by alumic »

treespace8 wrote: post #71

The quote: `I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering’ really hits on the nose for me. My Dad had a successful business after a rough childhood, failing high school. He worked hard and built a successful business. He also really did wish ample doses of pain and suffering on me. And he got his wish. He always thought it was good that I was bullied, that I also failed school, and that everything in life was gen…

This maps almost 1:1 onto my experience, except for the fact that my father achieved some measure of success having never gone into business.

I almost didn't graduate high school and made a mess of my time at university, dropping out entirely my senior year (drugs and alcohol fueled by deep self-loathing made this an easy choice at the time).

Like you, I wish my dad had realized what he was doing in raising his children the way he did. His circumstances were deeply cruel. My relationship with him now continues to be marred by my understanding that he doled out the same punishment to his children and justified it by telling himself he was making us tougher.

In the end, it also took me nearly a decade to reach some level of parity with my peers. If that resilience is what got me here, then fair enough. But the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.

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