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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Many, many more people work at things other people think are silly and insignificant only to discover that thing is silly and insignificant and then they give up. Occasionally the opposite happens and the person succeeds. If you only look at the successes it probably looks like a willingness to be low-status is a marker for success, but it really isn't. It tells you nothing of the future outcome. The only thing it predicts is a lack of understanding of survivorship bias.

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Yes - there is likely a "high-risk, high-reward" dynamic here, which is entirely consistent with both your and OP's descriptions: the long tail will toil uselessly, while the lucky few will a) discover that they were right about its significance, b) be in a position to explore and articulate that significance, and c) find themselves suddenly at the top of a new field with few competitors.

On the other hand: there's a second interpretation of all this, which is that doing just about anything big - a major product launch, a body of research, etc. - involves a lot of drudgery. In other words, even big significant things involve a lot of work that looks silly / insignificant. I would agree that learning to commit to that drudgery, and to see it as necessary and even occasionally enjoyable (or at least meditative), is essential to reach a positive outcome. (Which is not to say that all drudgery has value, or that we shouldn't still seek to reduce / manage toil over time: it's also possible to fall into the trap of assuming all drudgery is of equal value, which it definitely is not.)

There's probably also the matter of competition. If something is considered significant and important, there won't be much low hanging fruit. If something is considered silly or insignificant, there are fewer people working on the same thing and an increased likelihood you'll be able to contribute something substantial.

Yeah, but in the end you still have something that is considered silly and insignificant, so there's still an uphill battle to success.

It's probably necessary but not sufficient. If you can't deal with being low status you won't get through the grind and the suck. But there are a million grinds that don't go anywhere. Look at what it takes to level up a character.

The necessary condition seems to be invalidated by the “family-tradition” narrative where someone goes directly from son of a 4* general to becoming a 2* general as long as they don’t mess up too badly. For them, their default amount of status can lead to success as long as they don’t put too many chips on the wrong games.

I’m not actually sure how true that is in practice, but the stickiness of income bracket and legacy enrollment in universities seems to give some credence to this type of construction.

Income brackets are not as sticky as you might think[1]. If you are in the second or third quintile, you are more likely to move income quintiles than stay where you are over ten years.

If you are in the bottom quintile, you only have a 64% chance of staying there. That's not incredible, but it does make you question the "inescapable poverty" narrative when a full 1/3 of impoverished people escape it every decade.

Across every income quintile, you are more likely to die richer than your father[2].

[1] https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/publicat...

[2] https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economi...

Perhaps. But the trends are not encouraging.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...

The "success" OP seems to be referring to is all top quintile, not a kid who stays off drugs and stays in school and goes to college and gets a good trade or a white collar job.

Anyway, "dying richer than your father" is extremely different for the bottom quintile than the top, which shouldn't be equivocated. When half of people stay near where they are born in wealth, it's pretty clear that there is a massively unlevel playing field.

I think underlying that there is actually a similar root in both cases: the old adage "It's not what you know, but who you know" (or perhaps more precisely, who knows you).

In the son-of-a-general instance, the son is born into those connections. But if you are able to associate yourself with high-level decision makers in a relevant low-status role, that can pay off.

I've done this twice, once as a marketing intern at a news startup where our CEO connected me with some decision-makers in the journalism industry (though I decided I didn't like the journalism industry), and again when I got my foot in the door as a customer support rep at a tech company to leverage my software development skills into a dev job with no relevant professional experience or education.

I’m actually a bit unsure how to think of status in a generic sense. The reason that is important is because I feel like we’re talking about the same thing, just at different resolutions. That idea is based on thinking of status as a combination of <connections, culture, wealth> or something of that nature, either accrued or inherited.

One could think of the “don’t mess up too badly” as “dad’s friends will still interact with me in public”, which is just a proxy for connections as you mentioned.

Going from low to high status is definitely made easier by leveraging high status individuals. Lower, but not necessarily low, status is still expected, I think, as the son of the general still goes to West Point and proves themselves in lower-status roles like being a lieutenant - the gears are just greased to keep going.

I know a successful doctor who's convinced software development is an inherently unstable, unprofessional, and boring career. I really like the guy but I couldn't disagree more with him about this issue.

I bring this up to say: what other people think is significant career-wise is really only a helpful opinion if it's informed. Outsiders (friends, family, etc.) may have helpful questions but they often just don't have enough information to help you decide when to give up or press on.

I'd stress the informed part. Career prospects may look much differently on the outside than they do from the inside.

A common example I see is wondering if and when programming will be automated away. These questions come from ingesting the hype surrounding AI. So unless you're inside the industry, or have someone from inside explain things to you, you'll have a mistaken perspective on the future of software careers, thanks to the ongoing barrage of marketer lies. I imagine it's the same for other industries.

But without willingness you also wouldn't have succeed as you would have stopped long before succeeding.

So while it does not make you successful it removes one potential reason of failing to become successful.

I agree, but being willing to be [insert whatever] can be indicative of a more general flexibility, which is an important trait to have. Probably not what the author of the quote meant, though.

The opposite hypothesis, about someone unwilling to work in a low-status role, is almost certainly a strong indicator of future failure in startups. Every founder I know has tales of having to do the crappy jobs that had to be done in order to make the business succeed.

It's not what the tweet is saying, but being willing to admit you got something wrong is very valuable, and some people refuse to do it for (more or less) status reasons.

I think there's a special talent into feeling insignificant activities and to quickly enough turn them into 'added value'.

Otherwise yeah you can pack burgers every day and stay at that level if you want. But some will make more, find more customers, more venues, new ideas. The growth spirit maybe ? I don't know.

That's trying to elevate a task to significance. That seems more an unwillingness to let the insignificant remain insignificant.

You could say the thing about risk tolerance. Many, many more people gamble and play the lottery than start a business. Yet I think it'd be pretty hard to deny that the willing to take risks is almost always a pre-condition to outsized success.

Nassim Taleb would approve of your POV.

This is the correct answer.

I love perpetual motion machines. Absolutely fascinated by them. I am quick to dump on flat earthers and antivaxxers and understand the science against perpetual motion just as well.

That said, given a strong UBI or a grant of a billion dollars I would GLEEFULLY spend the rest of my life working on trying to build a perpetual motion machine. Sometimes we just have to remember that if we are honest with ourselves we are not as rational as we would like to believe.

Aren't you actually asking for a grant to be an installation artist working in the field of pretty moving machines.

I don't think society should fund research into the flatness of the earth or perpetual motion, but I do think there is plenty of scope for making beautiful things.

Especially if you explain it gleefully when you unveil your latest :-)

I’m afraid no one would define any of my attempts so far as pretty except to call them pretty bad! That’s actually a great idea though, I could probably reduce the money sink a bit by trying to them some of my projects into art work. Thanks for sharing that idea!

There is serious work happening on building perpetual motion machines of the third kind (one that moves forever but does not produce energy). But to contribute to that work takes years of serious study. It's probably a good idea to do that study in a formal setting to avoid fooling yourself into thinking you understand when you don't.

Although impossible, I wonder if striving for perpetual motion could lead to discoveries to create very efficient machines? So may be worth funding.

Working towards perpetual motion would probably lead to advancements in low-friction materials, which might make cars more efficient, for example. I think you're right that it's not an entirely pointless endeavor, although the actual goal will probably never happen.

No one I know who could qualify for a UBI has any desire to spend their life on a lark. They all experience an urgency that seems like it would be foreign to you.

>No one I know who could qualify for a UBI

You know the U is for universal right?

Yeeeaaaah and I truly find that people at/near my income don't need any more money, and I will always speak from that perspective.

I responded on topic to the OP with a single data point supporting their position. I expressed my willingness to toil away as a low status person (perpetual motion chaser) that has zero expectation of success amongst rational people.

I don’t understand why you decided that needed to be followed up with a personal attack.

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