Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
benkuhn.net
Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
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Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#2Reasoning based on fear has taken over far too great a mindshare. We continually convince ourselves of our rightness righteousness and betterness by down-putting the hopeful, the ambitious, the would-tries. There's a new church of doubt in our fellow man & willing against the try. This post sets a nice positive message I long to hear, about trying, trying hard, about swinging for great.
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#3[deleted]
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#4> The founders of Wave seem much smarter, more relentlessly resourceful, and more trustworthy.
I appreciate the casual trashing of Theorem's trustworthiness as someone who has been on the receiving end of the lack of it.
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#5Reasoning based on fear has taken over far too great a mindshare. We continually convince ourselves of our rightness righteousness and betterness by down-putting the hopeful, the ambitious, the would-tries. There's a new church of doubt in our fellow man & willing against the try. This post sets a nice positive message I long to hear, about trying, trying hard, about swinging for great.
Nicely said. While I do think being realistic about things is overall good, I'm not a fan of the pessimism / cynicism that I see in startup culture. Anytime somebody says, "Here is how I did X", it's immediately flooded with "survivorship bias", "born rich", and all the other tired responses. While those may be true, pointing them out on their own is boring. Like Paul Graham has said in the past: Is this the most interesting takeaway? I find the "survivorship bias" and related responses to be a cover for admitting you don't want to take a risk, do the work, put yourself out there. Which is fine, but just say that upfront alongside the survivorship silliness. We are all aware that startups have low success rates. /rant
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#6Reasoning based on fear has taken over far too great a mindshare. We continually convince ourselves of our rightness righteousness and betterness by down-putting the hopeful, the ambitious, the would-tries. There's a new church of doubt in our fellow man & willing against the try. This post sets a nice positive message I long to hear, about trying, trying hard, about swinging for great.
Nicely said. While I do think being realistic about things is overall good, I'm not a fan of the pessimism / cynicism that I see in startup culture. Anytime somebody says, "Here is how I did X", it's immediately flooded with "survivorship bias", "born rich", and all the other tired responses. While those may be true, pointing them out on their own is boring. Like Paul Graham has said in the past: Is this the most int…
Survivorship bias card is worth holding up
when people try to teach the secrets of success and are potentially misleading with general statements interpolated from an N=1 sample.
Same goes for working at Google as your only job then writing a definitive book about how SWE is done, without further research on what else is out there.
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nicely said. While I do think being realistic about things is overall good, I'm not a fan of the pessimism / cynicism that I see in startup culture. Anytime somebody says, "Here is how I did X", it's immediately flooded with "survivorship bias", "born rich", and all the other tired responses. While those may be true, pointing them out on their own is boring. Like Paul Graham has said in the past: Is this the most int…
Survivorship bias card is worth holding up when people try to teach the secrets of success and are potentially misleading with general statements interpolated from an N=1 sample. Same goes for working at Google as your only job then writing a definitive book about how SWE is done, without further research on what else is out there.
Maybe for the general public, but the posts that are written here are USUALLY written in good faith, not snake oil marketing. I just personally find it tired and played out, similar to how on Reddit I frequently see people adding things like, "in my / your opinion, <insert statement that is obviously an opinion." Yes, yes, we get it. If I say The Last of Us is the best game of the past 10 years, it is obvious that that is my opinion. We don't have to be so dull with our language. The corollary here is that if a founder writes about how he or she found their first 100 users, it should be obvious to anybody on HN to apply some discretion instead of assuming this is now a universal truth applicable to all startups until the end of time.
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#8Meh. Maybe not so many people should be trying to be outliers. Maybe society would be better off if we stepped back from the always-on, up-or-out culture and accepted that most people are average and (rightly!) value consistency more than upside. (Is it unfair to immediately wonder if the article was written by someone with an upper-class upbringing, who's always had access to a safety net that most people don't?)
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#9Put another way, don't extrapolate based on unspecific information. Context matters a lot, and the average case is rarely useful for making a decision.
Ben mentions his writing on outliers [1] and how "low-info heuristics tell you that outliers can’t exist", which is completely true but I want to add another perspective to that.
As mentioned in the outliers piece, you want to rule things in not out. The average case is good for ruling things out, but terrible for ruling things in. Specifics to your scenario will always be the reason to rule in on things that look bad in the average case.
Re: Be Less Scared of Overconfidence
#10Outliers happen all the time. The sort of "overconfidence" described in this article is really about outlier detection and being willing to take a risk on something being an outlier. I have some thoughts on outlier detection.
* Avoid groupthink. If everyone thinks it's an outlier then it probably isn't. I won't touch anything more than two people tell me to look at.
* Sometimes you do know something the market doesn't. Sometimes you can maintain a position longer than the market can remain irrational. This is something that happens every day.
* Ask why it's different. Outliers have distinguishing characteristics from their peers.
* Look as the population the potential outlier belongs to (businesses, athletes, commodity futures, etc). Understand key statistics such as variance, confidence intervals, range, mean, and mode. This helps answer basic questions like "To be successful will this need to be in the top 20% or top 0.002%", "If this fails completely, what will it cost me" and "What is the range of the 95% most likely outcomes." A lot of people will avoid something that feels more risky than it actually is.