Hacker News Reader

Comment by temp1928384 | Hacker News Reader

temp1928384

Man I can't wait for this wave of "VC as pseudo social media philosopher" to end.

An impression I have of USian culture is that one is only “allowed” to spend time on pursuits such as essaying, the humanities, etc. without mockery after one has made a fortune

who can philosophize better about wealth than the people that became successful and wealthy? The other kind of social media philosophers is the Socialist type that were never successful but blame the system and everything else

Being successful does not make you uniquely qualified to assess how to be successful. In my experience most people will rationalize success stemming from their own superiority and minimize the role of luck and standing.

Or it could just be like Skinner's superstitious pigeons - it was mostly chance and now they attribute it to some series of events that really have nothing to do with it.

What? He had superstitious pigeons?? I know his daughter killed her self so apparently the skinner box wasn’t as seamless as planned..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Superstition_in_...

> who can philosophize better about wealth than the people that became successful and wealthy? The other kind of social media philosophers is the Socialist type that were never successful but blame the system and everything else

Sociologist who studied average outcomes, successes and failures. Also, an independent person not personally invested in making oneself sound as awesome. Also, someone not having personal interest in changing how other people act for own benefit.

Obvious example: If 10 people takes same risk and 9 of them ends up super poor and 1 super rich, then the risk taking philosophy wrote by the 1 will be significantly different then the one that takes into account also those where risk part happened.

if luck does not explain 100% of the variance on average more successful people will have better skills than those who are not. It is a pretty big bias to think in terms of 1 or 10 or units

As someone who personally makes high seven figures and who's met dozens of people of 9, 10-figure net worth -- I think it's ridiculous that anyone thinks becoming phenomenally wealthy is not overwhelmingly determined by luck. None of the rich people I've met have any notable characteristics that explain their "success" -- although certainly, some have convinced themselves it was due to some quality of theirs that they could control (and not just that, for example, they were lucky to get into the right team, at the right firm, at the right time, etc.).

I assume people who believe wealth and success of individuals can be explained by predictable qualities or behaviors of that person have simply never met a rich person in their life.

how can you be sure that you and me are not biased since the definition of bias is to belong to the losing group? (you are upper quadrant for sure but still)

That is certainly not the definition of bias. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=define+bias

And you don't believe a "winning group" would hold its own biases?

was a matter of speech and I am sure you understand my argument

Better skills in one specific thing does not imply better skills in another thing. For example, ability to sell well does not imply ability to create accurate philosophy about what makes people end up rich vs poor. Different skill.

If one person rolls a die and gets a six and another person rolls the same die and gets a one the person who rolled the six will claim it was the way they rolled the die that led to their success.

apply big numbers and the majority will be people that had less luck unless luck is 100% of the variance which is not

Reply on news.ycombinator.com