Hacker News Reader

I find it really interesting that so many people hear what they want to hear in his talks.

People on both sides of the talent vs hard-work debate are posting here using his books and lectures as support.

Personally, I'm in the "work matters more than talent" camp. so of course, that's what I remember from his work :-)

[edit: clarification]

I read it as an argument that to reach truly obscene, globally recognizable levels of achievement, you need talent, determination, discipline, and luck.

It kind of makes sense if you think about it, since achievement typically has a log-normal distribution with a long right-hand tail, which implies that it's based on multiple normally distributed underlying factors.

Take away any one of the factors, and you rapidly approach more "normal" levels of achievement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com