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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

If you've convinced yourself you cannot succeed, you won't.

Your fairy tales ignores all the people that tried correctly to build the their luck and yet ended in a worse situation by pursuing success based on incorrect world view.

This is irresponsible.

I’ve watched this argument play out many times here, and I can see you’re dedicated to winning it. Have a quick think about what will gain by successfully convincing the person trying to help you that success is impossible.

Personally I’m really happy that I gave up making excuses and actually tried to improve my situation. Despite all your persuasive arguments and conviction that it’s all a pretty fantasy, it did in fact work.

Here’s hoping we get to see you arguing the other side one day.

Their point isn't that success is impossible. It's that "If you work hard you will succeed." is a fairy tale and that it's irresponsible to assert otherwise.

I never once wrote "if you work hard you will succeed".

That's something for the other poster then. It seems you both are talking past each other. I'm not trying to support one argument or the other, just clarifying to improve the discussion.

What do you think was the probability of success before you set out to do it?

These kind of arguments would greatly benefit from people just saying what they think the actual number is

Being able to disregard everyone who thinks it's 1 or 0 is quite handy

I’m at 2 for about 15 now, in terms of profitable SaaS businesses to good, several month attempts. It took maybe six or eight tries to get the first one going, so I’d say I’m getting better with practice.

I don't state that success is impossible. I just don't care, my only argument is to entice people act on well informed situation, properly evaluate their luck or chances of improving it.

This is the real and _only_ way to improve their chance of success, just telling that «you have to create your luck» or other non-sense, is just dangerous advice that exists only based on survivor bias and does nothing but improving the risk of destroying lives.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” - Henry Ford

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/978-whether-you-think-you-c...

You must be young…

Depends how you define young. He has a few years left I would hope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright

I'm not dead yet. In fact, I'm feeling much better!

I wish. But my attitudes have been formed by my life experience, that of my friends and acquaintances, and my reading of history books.

A common thread is if you believe you cannot succeed, you won't. If you blame your failures on others, fate, etc., you will not succeed. If you find yourself saying "it's not my fault" a lot, your life isn't going to go well.

On the other hand, if you accept full responsibility for your failures, and do your best to learn from them, and are willing to try again, then success becomes probable.

I know these views are very much out of fashion today. But they still will work for you, if you choose to implement them.

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