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Comment by hayksaakian | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's anyone's fault for starting out poor, or becoming poor from outside factors (war, medical condition, etc.)

But barring all those factors, if you don't make a deliberate choice to change something, the world around you will keep you down.

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> if you don't make a deliberate choice to change something, the world around you will keep you down.

One of the problems is that usually poor people is a lot less educated. They don't event know the actual value of the knowledge that they lack. So it's quite easy that when they try to "improve" their situation they take ineffective or even harmful steps.

That's why education is so important for a well working society. It will give a more fair start to every one even if the resources that that people have are not fairly distributed. We tend to underestimate the value of our knowledge of the world that offers our cultural background.

In some places I know of, a lot of the poor are hostile towards education because they see it as a cultural affront to their values and self-sufficiency and as a form of counter-culture of sorts. This is something that Bill Gates may not have observed much in his travels because this is something I think may be perversely unique to the United States, but I have seen it for myself and it's one of the things that makes me wonder whether encouraging people to do anything beneficial is of value nor even a morally correct choice when they don't want help and would literally rather die than go to college or leave their impoverished communities in search of self improvement. These are areas where even public education is considered "brainwashing" and while maybe somewhat approaching cult-like societal tendencies they're still aware to a degree of what their situation is.

Yes, but you might try very hard and still not move up. It's debatable whether it's better to "Fail never having tried at all" versus "Fail having tried as hard as you could".

Trying hard does not guarantee success. But not trying at all does guarantee not-success.

Probably in developed countries, trying hard might be an option where in poverty means you most likely have cell phone, laptop and roof over your head. But in developing countries like India, where abject poverty its ugly head, the people even are not aware that there are opportunities which could enable them to move up. All they have time and energy to think about is how to get the next piece of meal for their family. This also partly due to social structure which is deliberately designed to keep them that way for the benefit of upper class people.

So what you're saying is that not trying hard will leave them starving, posdibly dead? Sounds like pretty strong incentive to try hard ...

Trying hard to get the next meal... If getting a meal is s being successful then I think we have very different definition of success.

Yes, we do. That's the whole point. You define what success means for you.

That's also why "what you believe shapes what you achieve".

> But not trying at all does guarantee not-success.

It might guarantee less pain.

Some kinds of success are achieved through not doing things. And then we get into the question of "to do" vs. "not to do".

Think of it as a function. Privilege ia the y-intercept, trying hard is the multiplier, doing are all the factors with an x, and success is your desired Y.

Solve the equation and voila. Doing can be negative if your desired Y goes in that direction from your y-intercept. Remember, you can also control which way axes point.

This can be a multivariate function/equation. It can also have multiple dimensions. The important part is that all of it is definable by you.

Your question is basically "should you bet or not?"

Said like that the answer becomes obvious: It varies from situation to situation. Some bets are good and some are bad.

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