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Comment by majidazimi | Hacker News Reader

Well, I like to think persistence matters more but getting into top 1% of everything requires more than determination.

1. Going from bad to good requires x amount of effort/persistence.

2. Going from good to best requires 1000x amount of effort.

When you've put 800x amount of effort, you'll realize this harsh bitter fact. You have already given up on your hobbies, family, social life, ... and you are still considered as "good+" not "best-". To bypass being-best-barrier you need more than persistence.

Things like IQ, family wealth, great coach, ... matter when you are approaching near top of the hill.

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+1. The method of getting from good to best also matters a lot. A coach definitely helps. You can't become the best of anything, in isolation. Deliberate practice also helps. I was not a believer in deliberate practice but once I started it, I am seeing good results. For instance, I can retain at least 30% more of what I have studied or coded or even just casually read. However, deliberate practice takes a toll. It's excruciating to do it even for 4 hours a day. Maintaining consistency is even harder. I have probably been able to do it for a week over the last couple of months.

There are still plenty of fields where you can start late in life and not come from wealth but still be the best in the world. It's only the most popular and rewarding fields that require a life optimized to be the best to actually be the best.

>There are still plenty of fields where you can start late in life and not come from wealth but still be the best in the world.

Such as?

Not exactly what you were looking for likely, but Tim Ferriss (author of the 4 hour work week) became the national champion in Sanshou kickboxing, with almost no experience. He exploited loopholes that other competitors hadn't considered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ferriss#personal_life

https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-some-world-class-...

What?

1) Quora is a garbage site

2) All those examples minus one (which I'll get to) people started before the age of 22. That's not "late in life."

4) The example of the person who started running marathons at 84 has broken records "for his age group." Big deal, there's like, what, less than ~5 people in their 80s running marathons in the world?

5) Just because a few people can do it (and that hasn't even been demonstrated) doesn't mean everyone can with a little work.

1) Lol. Not really relevant.

2) 22 is late for athletic careers.

4) You skipped 3? Ok... so you want 80 year olds who just started marathon running to beat everyone aged 20-30 in their athletic prime? That's actually pretty impressive since those other 80 year olds have probably been running marathons their whole life.

5) I agree. It takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice, and few people are willing to do that. Are you upset that only 10% of people can be the top 10% and that the distinguishing factor is often how hard they work?

You should also look at it this way: For most things, you don't need to be the absolute best in the world, nor is there a way to measure who is the best in the world. Who is the best in the world at software engineering?

It's entertaining to note that many of the "late in life" switches were still in their teens.

Stuff from Guiness World Records?

Yes, agreed. Combination of determination/persistence, belief/self-confidence that success is possible and thus will to continue even in doubt, intelligence, and also interest/passion in a particular area. Align those things and generally some flavor of success is possible for an individual. But why though? Because in general, your "competition" (that is, other people trying to do that same thing) will often lack that trifecta in some shape or form.

I do agree with others mentioning comparisons about the top 0.01% and top 1% and top 1% versus top 2% and all that. At a certain point of achievement, virtually everyone at that level possesses that trifecta to some degree or another and then, in those cases, often luck and a little happenstance play a big part in which opportunities emerge and create significant value and success for only a small few individuals.

Very much this - average genes, hard work, and sacrifice can generally guarantee upper middle class (barring accidents). Basically, all you need to get there is being a good cog in the machine. That is to say - you come in groomed, you do your job, you study or take night classes, you don't spend your money on having a life, you don't make mistakes which come with fun. Eventually, you will get to your $100,000/year and your 1 mil networth.

The sad part is that I have met some really low IQ people who are unable to even prep for a college exam, or the SAT, ACT, MCAT, whatever. So, their innate intelligence or upbringing denies them even the shot at an average comfortable life.

$100,000/year salary and $1M net worth are incredibly specific numbers, where are you getting them from?

It's a tautology to claim "average genes, hard work, and sacrifice can generally guarantee upper middle class" because if someone isn't upper middle class you can just claim they don't have average genes, they didn't work hard enough, or they didn't sacrifice enough. None of those things are measurable.

You could come up with some loose measure for each of those. Genes: IQ, hard work: educational attainment, sacrifice: hours worked. Someone with ~110 IQ, college degree, and willing and able to work 60 hours a week is going to have an extremely high probability of achieving upper middle class. The biggest obstacle for that person is going to be health issues.

The median full-time wage in the US is near $50,000 now. That median is a person with two years of college or less.

If you have a four year degree with ten years or more of experience (eg you're around 35 years old), in almost anything to do with eg engineering, getting to $100,000 or close to it, is not difficult.

The average salary for a person with a bachelor's degree, in the engineering field, first year out of school, is around $65,000 for 2018. Emphasis that that's the first year income. Petroleum engineers with a bachelor's degree earn an average of more than $80,000 their first year out of school.

The parent's premise isn't very far out of line, even if it glosses over that the effort required is considerable, and a lot of people simply do not want to be engineers (with the best six figure alternatives for volume being healthcare and sales/biz-dev).

That's realistic income at 45 with a 4-year degree in some engineering discipline. You can save a mil at that income in 15-20 years.

Sure, but what does that have anything to do with the "average person with average genes who works hard and sacrifices?" Most people aren't engineers and most people can't become engineers, the market can't sustain a 200%+ increase in engineers.

You seem to merely be saying engineering is a good career. Everyone already knows that.

It takes more than hard work to stick out engineering for 20 years, its not a job for everyone, you're going to burn out if you absolutely hate the work. I personally know two mechanical engineers who were both straight A students but hated it once they got to the job. Both didn't even make it to 5 years as engineers.

Do you have any research backing up this position? It seems to fly in the face of every reputable study I've seen, which suggests the opposite is true - average genes, hard work, and sacrifice is not enough to "guarantee" anything.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, but some things sure stack the deck. Average skills, hard work and a bit of ambition will greatly increase your chances of a comfortable life.

"Increase your chances" is not the same as "guarantee."

It seems a bit nieve to think that you need to have an above average IQ to make it into Middleclass society.

A person who manages to accumulate a million dollars is far beyond middle class and a wage of 2x the median household income is well beyond middle class.

The comment you are replying to was not saying that.

IQ is a garbage measurement that isn't predictive of future results, yes. It's more the hard work and sacrifice part I'm disagreeing with.

IQ is highly predictive of future outcomes. Where are you getting you data from?

IQ is highly predictive of the outcomes of future IQ tests, and to a degree academic performance (though much of academic measurement is based on similar theories, so this is unsurprising)

There's much less corellation when you consider "future success" in terms of things like job performance, financial success, happiness, et cetera. IQ is obviously measuring something, because IQ tests are quite reliable, but the thing it's measuring does not seem to show a strong corellation with a lot of real-world goals.

It's one of those measurements that people _want_ to use a lot, and so it sees a lot of use, but the idea that you can boil general intelligence down to one number is fallacious to begin with, so many of the things it's used for are not useful.

This is literally one of the things the post we're commenting on is saying. High IQ people are not automatically successful and whatever effect high IQ may or may not have on future success is easily lost in other, more significant, factors.

> whatever effect high IQ may or may not have on future success is easily lost in other, more significant, factors.

IQ correlates with income more than any other factor. When you take away the correlation between socioeconomic situation and IQ (which admittedly there is), it correlates even more.

High IQ people are not automatically successful in the same way that tall people are not automatically basketball players.

You're making a lot of claims contrary to generally accepted research. It's invaluable, and not in the good way.

It's common sense. I did say barring accidents and having an actual life. The below is conservative.

1. Pick practical degree, because you are poor and anything else is luxury.

2. Work in college, because you are poor. End up with 30k of debt because you are dumn and didn't get a scholarship.

3. Make 40k a year. (22% fed, let's say 4% state), 30k net. -10k rent, -10k expenses, 10k left.

4. Pay off college by 25.

5. Save up 50k by 30.

6. Masters degree by 32 with no debt.

7. Increase income to 100k by 45.

8. Congrats middle class pleb. (Which I am, though this isn't my story)

I can tell that that isn't your story, because there's a lot of conjecture in there that isn't supported by the data. Even just starting with #1, the ability to pick a degree at _all_ is a privilege not automatically afforded to everybody. Should you be able to do so, then working during college is strongly linked to worse outcomes, as you have less time to dedicate to learning - thus making #3 harder as you're competing against people who have had better chances than you. If you can't do 3, you can't do 4, 5, 6, or 7, and 8 is predicated on that.

It might be "common sense" to you, but it's directly contradicted by all the data.

"the ability to pick a degree at _all_ is a privilege not automatically afforded to everybody."

I completely agree that this is a huge issue. A large problem for kids from "bad" families is not having any idea what they "should" be doing, and by the time they figure it out, they may have already ruined their life and missed opportunities.

You seem to be assuming there isn’t any genetic component to hard work.

Willpower can be trained: https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower.aspx

But what if I can't be bothered?

(Seriously. Training willpower takes willpower. If someone has some kind of executive disfunction or something, they literally can't 'just choose the right thing'.)

Very few people have absolute 0 willpower.

Excepting those with a medical condition, low willpower individuals can invest that willpower in developing more willpower and get to average levels over time.

I've seen this many times working with the homeless and in addiction recovery. It's just like compound interest with investing.

Just because you start with a very very small amount doesn't mean it can't grow over time.

This is embarrassing as hell to admit, but in high school my ADHD was so bad the only thing I enjoyed was World of Warcraft. I would commonly play for more than 24 hours and couldn't get myself to stop for anything. It completely dominated and ruined my life. You can say video game addiction isn't a thing if you want, but I was definitely acting like it was. Tried alcohol, cocaine, etc.. and never had a problem, but I could not control myself with certain video games.

When I started developing my Willpower it was literally with 5 minute breaks every 4 hours. And it was extremely difficult. After a week, I extended those to 15 minute breaks, and it was 6 months before I got my total WOW time to less than 8 hours in a day. But I did it.

I'm in my 30's now, and this new World of Warcraft expansion is the only one I haven't played at all. Hoping to keep it that way.

One can enter the top 2% of almost any field in one year, especially with the help of nootropics. It doesn't take much to cross the threshold. If not among the top 2% in such a time, then there was usually zero aptitude. Being the best or getting that much better tends to take more effort.

Hmmmmm, in case you are a middle eastern immigrant tackling a Ph.D. in the US, it takes around one year (including security check) to take a visa just to get into the US. :D Meanwhile your German rival has arrived 11 months before you and probably had applied for an internship by the time you arrived.

I can't stop myself comparing people. :D

A Ph.D. in what? Top 2% of that field is usually accessible within a year.

I wasn't opposing you. I just tried to mention, how easy it is to loose to your rivals by just being born in a wrong country.

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