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Comment by avindroth | Hacker News Reader

Is it so hard to imagine that some people get genuinely inspired by stories of other people's successes?

Yes, some success stories are propaganda. But many others are genuinely inspiring (and have something to teach us). For what it's worth, I think this extreme take is more propaganda than most success stories.

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Just knowing that something is possible is a huge motivator and a motivated person is much more likely to succeed.

In sports, it's common theme to think that something is impossible until someone does it and the previously impossible achievement becomes the new standart as more and more people start doing it.

For something to be teachable it must be reproducible to some degree. Because the number of failures is hidden, it's impossible to know what actually works or not. You're only seeing the numerator and not the denominator too. That's why survivorship bias is so important.

> I think this extreme take is more propaganda than most success stories.

Success stories are not propaganda in the sense that they are false stories you would be convinced to believe. They're propaganda in the sense that hearing them influences you to believe in the economic system itself and then spread (propagate) those stories to others.

Doesn't this kind of imply that the other economic system are either full of failures or at the very least don't have that many success stories?

> re not propaganda in the sense that they are false st

propoganda is agnostic on the truth value. The whole point of it is to promote or advocate an idea, via whatever methods you find effective.

No, when someone uses the term "propaganda", she is convinced that the promoted idea is false.

Whether or not she agrees with the overall goal of the campaign, the individual piece of information can be true ( or unverifiable). Much of the most effective propaganda is about missing or misleading context, not false information. This is the context of the parent comment, not the campaign.

>some people get genuinely inspired by stories

Isn't that the explicit purpose of propaganda? Why do people get so hung up on delegitimizing the outcome of anything stuck with the label "propaganda"?

So anything inspirational is propaganda? Where do you draw the line? This is clearly an incomplete definition of propaganda...

Of course. Telling people to get vaccinated is propaganda. Propaganda is neutral it's the message coming with it that can be a bad or a good one.

because propaganda implies a nefarious agenda.

propaganda by popular definition is not legitimate

> Is it so hard to imagine that some people get genuinely inspired by stories of other people's successes?

It's impossible not to imagine. That's the purpose of propaganda, to move people.

Whether they are 'inspiring' or not is one thing, whether they are legit or not is another.

Success stories in capitalism are usually heavily censored to hide the trail of wrecked careers, shady dealings, and invisible nepotism that occurred along the way.

If you want to know the truth about a company, ask its least popular member... or, better yet, someone who was fired.

When I was interviewing most recently I always included a question along the lines of “what do you hate here?” And while I didn’t ever hear about firings, I did often hear about issues that regular workers saw in their company. It was enlightening.

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