The Carrot Problem
atvbt.com
atvbt.com
Because if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack to make lots of money, why would I be telling people about it? Either I get competition, or I might get whatever loophole I was abusing closed.
So either I'm lying, or what I'm saying isn't possible to reproduce, or the usefulness of the technique ran out and now I'm just trying to squeeze a few more dollars by telling the tale, or I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model crash and burn.
Because you understand that the number in your bank account isn't the score of some weird game. Having more money than other people doesn't make you a better person.
If you have enough money to reach your goals - pay your rent, buy food, indulge your hobbies - that's good. If 20 other people also have enough money to reach their goals, that's a world with more happiness in it. That's a better world. So why not tell other people how to make money in the same way you did, and help bring that world about?
I think this does happen quite frequently. It's just that the knowledge gets passed through networks, so the most successful people help those who are socially near them (and probably not too different in terms of success and comfort).
This is the whole "insider knowledge" that the article alludes to.
>"Success is mostly imitation. We study successful people and then try to imitate what worked."
>"Imagine being Black, learning the history of slavery and racism, and being asked to imitate your oppressors to succeed."
And a followup tweet:
>"The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.” Solve that problem and we’ll have better visibility on the systemic racism that is primarily caused by the teachers unions."
I'm sure I'm missing the meaning here somehow but to me it's quite obvious we may imitate something successful and not imitate something unsuccessful.
>The most damaging reframe in American history is that using the universal tools for success is “acting white.”
If you are not American it may not be clear. One specific example of a "universal tool for success" being marred in this way is that black kids who are successful academically are sometimes bullied for "acting white." I've intentionally found a left leaning source discussing this phenomenon. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/acting-whi...
2. The teacher unions are against school vouchers, which almost completely eliminates competition in the districts that need it most. A large majority of black families are in favor of school vouchers.
“Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people,” the 65-year-old author exclaimed. “Just get the (expletive) away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/23/dilberts-scott-adams-...
“The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.”
https://ew.com/article/2011/03/30/dilbert-scott-adams-femini...
Trump is like the founding fathers and Jesus.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dilbert-creator-on-how-trump-i...
There is a bit of coverage in the wiki. He writes a good cartoon but he is radioactive in his views.
Basically, someone says X, which is crazy, because if X then logically Y would be true and Y is not only wrong but offensive. So he'll publicly assert Y and get people to argue with him, but the only real way to show that Y is wrong is to admit that X is wrong, which was the point.
And then the people arguing with him don't want to do that. They want to be offended by Y without admitting that X is wrong. So he has a bunch of fun with them because they've foreclosed themselves at the outset from winning the debate on the merits.
And the "anything he says that is wrong is him joking" is the idea, because it works both ways. If someone says something which is actually wrong, you can make a convincing argument for why if you're willing to be logically consistent yourself.
But there are also things which are politically offensive yet true, and having a reputation for this kind of trolling is what allows someone to say those things out loud. Because then you make the same claim: "Maybe I'm trolling you, if I am just provide the counterargument."
Which you can't do if the counterargument requires you to admit that X is wrong and you refuse to do that, but you also can't do if there is no counterargument because Y is true.
It doesn't matter whether "is he trolling this time" is falsifiable. What matters is if you can disprove his claim. If you can, go for it. If not, what does that say?
The level of "rich white boomer racism" (which is a bit racially charged in itself, but sure we can go with that) really hinges on how credible he found the poll. It was Rassmussen and also a pollster stirring up trouble so realistically he should have just dismissed it as a likely lie by not-reporting-the-real-context of the question being asked (I personally suspect dodgy framing). Adams should have picked up on that since it is his area, but the argument would have been reasonable if he was silly enough to believe the poll.
This is still in the same format as the above. His claim is that if 47% of black people disagree with the statement "it's okay to be white" then said white people should stay away from them. That's Y. Whether the poll is accurate isn't even the point -- and purposely choosing a poll with an artificially large number could be part of the troll.
X is the belief "it's not okay to be white." Which presumably doesn't actually have a 47% prevalence, but it's also not zero. What he's implying is that if a large proportion of black people actually believed this, his statement would be a completely plausible response from a significant proportion of white people. Which is a bad outcome. So believing X is bad, and increasing the prevalence of the belief X is bad, because if X then Y.
The thing about Black culture in America is that it is a product of very strong selective pressures to be aware of messages that carry meanings beyond what is on the surface, and, well, that one has a history:
https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/4chan-another-trolling-ca...
If somehow that poll is picking up a real opinion then Adams has a point. That sort of racism has no place in modern society, it is acceptable to have any skin colour. And it is acceptable to assert that any skin colour is ok to have.
Which, coincidentally, is exactly the debate dynamic that Adams was likely trying to set up. The slogan is just too inoffensive and reasonable to complain about. The people trying to get worked up about it are just going to look bad.
If you read the link, you would know that it was white supremacist phrase before the 4chan thing that saw a massive upswing in actual white supremacist use not following the isolated use of the supposed bait effort during and since the 4chan thing.
Whether the trolling effort was ignorant of and accidentally tapping into and energizing the preexisting racist usage or a knowing effort to leverage and provide cover for it is something that we’ll probably never know, but what we know for sure is that it is not the origin.
Being a white supremacist doesn't mean they are automatically wrong about everything. In this case reality and slogan have, by happy chance, coincided.
> “The point of IOTBW,” explained one Twitter user, “is to bait shitlibs into showing their ass to normies. The beauty is in the simplicity.”
I think the Twitter user in the article has a more accurate position on this. If the black community were fooled by this into thinking that there is something wrong with the slogan, that is on them. I still don't believe they were, it is more likely that the poll was inaccurate.
Scott Adams has been like this for a long time. Trolling or sincere makes no difference, if he acts like a bigot he is one.
You're begging the question re: trolling. You don't know they are trolls; you merely believe so. In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion. That's the whole point: if they always act like fools, they are fools.
But that's exactly what Adams does.
> In fact, there's no way to tell real opinion from flamebait with the people under discussion.
Sure there is. If it's of the form "there is a valid argument against this, but it's inconvenient for partisans to make that argument" then it's flamebait.
There's no way to tell the form you claim is flamebait. You assume it is, but you don't know for sure. If it requires too much assuming, it's indistinguishable in practice for the real thing.
An act that is kept up 24x7 is the real thing as far as I'm concerned.
It's rather strange that people will choose to wholly dismiss a person based on one thing, without realizing that even "evil" people have more facets than a simple bevel.
Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What benefit could society have gained if someone had heard him out and took some measures to help the environment? Most people won't ask that question, because they have the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.
One of the most illuminating things in my life has been discovering what the "bad" and "evil" side of humanity actually thought, instead of the version that the authorities or victors give us.
There's also this modern tendency to assume that whatever you read, you become. So superstitious.
Sure... but there's also a wealth of information out there and filtering out people with known abhorrent views is a decent first pass filter. maybe alex jones or some other neo-nazi dimwit has a few good ideas here and there but why would I subject myself to listening to them(and also enriching them in the process) when I could listen to people that aren't generally awful people?
An acceptable-but-shallow view and an abhorrent-but-shallow view are equally worthless; effectively as much value an upvote.
Well it's not all that interesting question coz he wasn't exactly first or last preaching same thing about the environment, so there is a plenty of other people to listen to that do not happen to be crazy.
But in general I agree that the trend of disregarding someone's entire contribution to everything they contributed based on this or that opinion that is currently regarded as "bad". After all, if you dig far enough (especially in time, kids/teenagers do/think some utterly dumb stuff) you won't find an innocent soul alive...
> or I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model crash and burn
In other words, they wouldn't be able to reach their long term goals because one of the 20 other people are going to eat their lunch. (And all will in fact attempt to monopolize their lunch.)
This is very useful advice to someone who has never heard it (though the last one is very obvious), and it doesn't really take away anything from PG to say it loudly. He is especially unlikely to care if people use his advice to get rich, since he is himself already very very rich. But even someone who was not rich wouldn't really care unless there is a good likelihood that he is giving his competitors a leg up by sharing this advice.
And for someone like PG, there's a net benefit to giving this advice because (1) it will lead to more people who are willing to work hard becoming successful (which will lead to useful products/services being available in the world — including to PG), and it helps to build PG's brand.
The thing you do have to worry about is when there's a potential conflict between (1) what they did to become successful and (2) what they want people to think they did to become successful. That's what this article is about. People want you to think they got ripped by lifting a ton — not by using steroids.
I never sold a course or a book or charged for any advice.
The funny thing is, although I mentor people for free they often don’t call after the initial conversation because they think I’m somehow trying to get money out of it.
So I guess you’re right?
People like explaining things to other people. They like sharing knowledge, they like having other people pay attention to and listen to the knowledge they share. I am pretty convinced that it's an evolutionary adaptation that we feel a compulsion to explain and share interesting things we've learned.
Your logic probably overcomes this built-in tendency for sharing things when the alpha is very directly tied to one's success. So, for example, a hedge fund manager isn't sharing their trading strategies.
But if an executive is explaining how OKRs worked for them, or an engineer is saying typescript was a big help, our first instinct shouldn't be to assume it's a psyop. Those things are not the singular competitive advantage of a company, success is usually the aggregate result of many different things.
However, there are entire industries that don't exist without a growing capable workforce. It's not like software programming would have been much higher paid, if we could have just kept it a secret longer. You need a certain number of skilled people to fill out all the positions and get large projects done. It's not like it's easy, or doesn't require training, but since it produces value everyone can win, because of the productivity of others.
Another example of this right now is building/contracting work. It's a skill that takes time to develop and you can't just do it from watching a video or reading a book, but it pays well. Right now a lot of older folks got out of the game so there's real demand and wages are high. If that demand doesn't get filled... it will be replaced with more automation. It's a case where, if there aren't enough workers economics will adjust to require fewer workers, perhaps dramatically so.
Isn't that desirable? That machines do jobs that they can actually do, then humans can do fun things in life?
Even if it is true, who says it would work for someone else, maybe the real reason for success in this case is just being pretty or rich.
The problem is not so much carrot stories, the root of the carrot problem is that some people look up to other people's accomplishments and want it too. It is easy then to see/follow/come up with patterns that have nothing to do with it.
Yeah, this is why hedge funds keep secrets, and sell side analysis isn't very trustworthy in the investment world. If their info was so good, they would act on it instead of publishing it.*
* some people act on it, then publish it in order to push prices in their favor.
It's basically like finding a gold mine and telling everyone to come over and take what they want from it.
My optimistic theory is that it might be a form of social activism to enact change, as opposed to a plain carrot problem.
IMO that’s a smarter play than having zero income if the trick runs it’s course.
I don’t think anything about them can be used to judge whether a thing is true for everyone else.
Not necessarily true if "every successful business got there by doing something ugly".
I'm not losing my senior engineer job because I tell some soon-to-be junior engineers how to be good at the job. Neither will say an established artist or maker; they already have their brand.
The hard part is recognizing them in the midst of a lot of chaff.
especially if they work in sales, HR, product, BOFH :-)
In fact I’d bet a lot more people think to themselves that they are only successful because they are a genius than there are geniuses. Because it’s even more likely that coming from a highly rich or well connected family is truly the key factor in their success, and people would would much rather attribute success to talent or intelligence than daddy.
It is definitely true though that prodigious talent isn’t by itself sufficient to be successful. Also, intelligence helping you is kind of a given - it’d be like an NBA player saying “being 6’8” really helps”. There are a lot of really tall people not in the NBA and a lot of prodigiously talented people who aren’t conventionally “successful” either.
Where does one get intelligence from? Your intelligence is inherited from your parents (just like any other physical characteristic), so if your biological parents have an extensive influence on your upbringing, it's completely possible that both nature and nurture, almost your entire existence, all your qualities, can be reasonably attributed to the family into which you were born.
I don't think many people asked Yao Ming if being 7'6" helped with his basketball career, or Michael Phelps if his human flipper feet helped win a medal or two. But they have spoken at length about how they trained for their careers, and sane people can understand that being a genetic freak doesn't make you a world class anything. It predisposes you to success if you seek it - and both those people spent an enormous amount of their youth working to get there.
The point is that success is not determined before you're born, and reasonable people understand that there's such a thing as variance in human anatomy.
Success financially (depending on what threshold you use) is largely ruled out by birth for most everyone ever born. Exceptions occur, and some places and time periods may have afforded the opportunity to more people, yet always a sliver.
So technically success isn't entirely determined before you're born. But for most it is at least off the table, unless the threshold is very low or they are exceptionally lucky and driven.
For top .0001% success in some fields (most sports, for example), you need genetic qualities AND hard work.
But in real life luck (or "chance" , if you prefer) plays a part, sometimes a significant part.
It was lucky that John and Paul went to school together. It was lucky they got on together and became good friends. Thanks to that luck ee got the Beatles.
Of course it (usually) takes -more- than just luck, but dig deep enough and its there.
This reminds me of a story I heard nearly 20 years ago. (Told by a UCLA staff member.)
In the early 2000's, a UCLA professor invited a successful entrepreneur to give a guest lecture on one of their business courses. During the lecture he was asked what made him the success and the fortune - and the answer was distilled to less than seven words: "Get lucky. Then stack the deck." He went on to explain that the best way to maintain a competitive edge was to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to try to follow his steps or to circumvent his position. But first you had to get lucky enough to afford it.
He was not invited again. Too honest and demoralising for the students.
I do believe luck/chance is the most important ingredient.
So there are multiple factors. Some initial lucky opportunity, the insight to spot it, the willingness to take a risk on it, and hard work to see it through.
Yet, IMO, that’s the primary factor to being wildly successful.
Knowing that you’re the right person in the right place at the right time ranks second.
Taking advantage of the opportunity presented as the right person in the right place at the right time is third.
Personality is fourth.
Skill is somewhere below that.
Ultimately, luck always sets the maxima.
Though, this only applies if you’re measuring success by the amount of excess you can accumulate.
You can live an incredibly fulfilling and happy life without any of the above if you set your own criteria for success to fall within the constraints of your particular circumstance.
Brian Epstein, a nobody, recognized opportunity when he met the Beatles.
I’ve also met hundreds of musicians who practice and try for years and are basically the same at the end as when they start.
The difference between being OK and quite good indeed can be bridged with practice.
The difference between being a quite good and polished songwriter and being Paul McCartney involves being fucking born Paul McCartney.
Also “they sucked at the beginning bf their career?” What in the the fuck are you talking about? They had a hit with Love Me Do when their ages ranged from 20-23 years old. That’s not fast enough for you?
Paul Simon had his first hit single as a teenager. Robert Plant was 19 when he recorded Zeppelin I.
No amount of practice alone is going to to get you to that level of talent.
Anyone implying otherwise 1) is trying to sell you books and 2) has spent zero actual time as a musician and around musicians and songwriters.
If there are so many, then they aren't incredible.
It takes a lot more than talent to be successful in music. More than musical talent, too. One has to also be able to create catchy tunes, play them, fit in with your band, pick the right look for the band, the right name, packaging, etc. etc. etc. I recommend reading up on what Brian Epstein did for them.
The songs of the Beatles (and Michael Jackson) are consistently better than the songs of their contemporaries.
> the percentage that become the "it" acts is microscopic
Are the 99% simply not that good? I enjoy music from all kinds of bands, but the quantity and consistent high quality of the Beatles' and Jackson's work are standouts.
It seems like a lot of your viewpoint is based on am assumed consistency that doesn't exist.
I don't think the music industry is run by fools.
> So much opportunity is either created or destroyed by external circumstances that we don't perceive, let alone control
However, doing nothing guarantees failure. Some aspects of working smart:
1. doing the prep work so when opportunity does come your way, you are capable of taking advantage
2. placing yourself in a situation where opportunity can find you
3. learning to recognize opportunity (it often comes disguised as hard work)
4. be willing to take risks
I have seen this view towards luck a few times — some variant of "make your own luck" or "put yourself in situations where you're more likely to be lucky", and similar.
I don't object to it by itself, but there's a subtlety that is often missed: it only applies to yourself, not other people. Or perhaps more accurately: it only applies to your choice of action, not evaluating others' results.
The reason I have misgivings is because I have seen it used as a cudgel; someone fails, and a person with this mindset is more prone to rationalize it, saying "oh, they didn't try hard enough" or "it was their own fault, they should be smarter about it."
No.
No matter how hard a person tries, they can still fail, and it may not be their fault at all. At least when it's your own self, you have more information to know if you could have done better. When it's directed at others, it's extremely dicey to make those judgements.
Someone more in tune with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune might be more inclined to actually help that person, rather than blaming them for things outside of their control.
It's tricky, because the "try harder next time" whip is useful, to be sure, but it also can be an enemy of empathy.
Of course. I never wrote otherwise.
Many successful people I know failed multiple times.
> "it was their own fault, they should be smarter about it."
The successful people I know who failed multiple times and eventually succeeded all blamed themselves for the failures, with "I should have been smarter about it".
The great thing about taking responsibility for one's failures is it is empowering - it means you can succeed by learning why one failed and doing it better next time.
You could consider it like airliners. Crashes are not attributed to "bad luck". The cause is always searched for, and once found, it gets fixed. Over time, this has resulted in incredibly safe airliners.
Do you really expect to successfully ride a bike the first time you swing your leg over the seat? Nope. You fall off, get back on, fall off, get back on, fall off, get back on, hey! I'm riding!
Translating the analogy back, what you describe is the entrepreneurial fail-until-you-win method. The alternative method of progression is that of apprenticeship or gradual promotion, which in my country is associated with traditionally middle-class professions like finance, medicine and law. In such a conventional career, success is almost guaranteed, as the number of people entering the profession is very close to the number retiring out of it, and the assumption is that, because the endeavour has always been profitable, it will be for you too.
Ideally, the profession as a whole gradually improves under this system, but no individual member of it has to engage in any more than an average level of risk to be personally successful.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-a...
60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Been in both situations; grew up impoverished, now doing well.
Living paycheck to paycheck is never a lifestyle choice; there are choices that come out of that because even poor people don’t want to feel poor, but given the option, not a single one in most cases would prefer to be paycheck to paycheck.
So for you I guess lazy people don't exist? People who refuse to learn, change and adapt? People who just wanna smoke weed, play xbox, jerk off to pornhub and eat Nachos (not necessarily in that order)? People who'd rather make a quick buck doing some border-line illegal "deals" than have a regular honest job? People who would rather play the popularity game in high school than study? People who would rather slack off around the watercooler at work than do what "the boss" asks? People who prefer to coast although their field is changing under them?
It must be nice to live in a world without such people...
It’s not that poor people don’t want to save and invest; it’s that because cost of living in most places has far outpaced salaries, there literally is no money to save.
Most Americans live under mountains of debt. My mother had thousands and thousands of dollars in credit card bills because she had to, in order to survive and support a family of four. And we lived in the projects in Brooklyn.
She never told me about it until I was in my twenties, because she never wanted to worry me with it, and moreover, she never wanted me to know we were poor. Pride is a real thing.
It doesn’t really matter that you think “poor people” aren’t really that poor. They are, and risk is much harder to stomach when it means becoming actually homeless. Denying that is sticking your head in the sand.
Rich kids can afford 'responsibility' because they have money to pay for their mistakes. Poor kids don't.
Best way to be prepared for success? Be born to a rich and well connected family.
In my perception many of the rich kids lack the drive to work as hard as you need to, to become a successful entrepreneur, instead opting for a safer route. Granted, if you are from a really poor background and live in the US without much of a social safety net, I could see how that could hamper your prospects, but that's hardly a problem where I'm from.
If you're surrounded by entrepreneurs (such as SV) it's not a representative sample. Even being born "middle class" is a narrow slice of humanity today, much less everyone ever born.
Of all the people rich today -- or ever -- how many started middle or lower class?
How many came to America with nothing and died, barely survived, went to jail, got deported, peaked at lower middle class, etc.?
If I know a lot of plane crash survivors I still would not recommend getting on an unsafe plane. (I actually only know one crash survivor and would not get on a small plane unless it's a life or death emergency.)
Which is funny, since now the descendants of some lucky people get the opportunity to take lots of chances and say "look how hard work pays off — I made my own luck!"
Though that's a pretty simplistic take; I feel like hard work really does pay off, broadly speaking, but also luck plays a (much) bigger role than most give it credit.
Those born wealthy can often buy so many tickets it's virtually guaranteed they'll stumble into something that works, at least once.
No one is saying people don't have to at least lift a finger to try. Just that birth luck affords so many other opportunities that the advice of outliers and the born comfortable isn't transferable.
>> Of course. I never wrote otherwise.
I did not mean to imply that you did (:
You touched on a general topic, and I was speaking to that, more than your specific words.
> successful people ... blamed themselves for the failures
I'm sure that's true. But I'm trying to draw a thin, wiggly line between awareness of room for improvement (usually more on a rational level), and blame/judgement (usually more on an emotional level). The former is great, the latter not so much.
I'd wager that there are also a whole lot of un-successful people who blamed themselves for their failures, even if they could do no better. People who hate themselves. People who are unhappy. My commentary is more directed at those people and those who would care about them, than the ones you mention.
> taking responsibility ... you can succeed by learning
This definitely straddles the wiggly line (: One one side is "taking responsibility," and on the other is "it's your fault."
Certainly one should internalize the lesson. But hopefully not the shame/blame. Perhaps neither you nor your successful acquaintences suffer from this affliction, but in my experience many do.
I realize that some people are lazy and looking for excuses to escape responsibility, so perhaps you see my viewpoint as somehow enabling or encouraging that bad behavior. I just want to point out that there are downsides in the other direction too, if taken to puritanical extremes. And I daresay the "being lazy is bad" side of the argument gets a whole lot more headspace in our culture than the "it's okay, there's nothing wrong with you" side. Hence my attempt to bring some balance.
> You could consider it like airliners ...
> ride a bike the first time ...
The thing about airlines is that they operate in a very carefully crafted environment. Planes stay away from each other, are generally aware of each other (notwithstanding that friggin' biplane without a radio that cut me off on downwind... grr), have high maintenance standards, etc. etc. Real life can be much more dense/messy/fast-moving/full of unknowns, I find. You do not always get the luxury of knowing the variables involved.
But the problem with both of your examples is that they assume you can learn and try again. And that's not always the case.
What if you're a passenger on one of those airliners that crashes? What should you have done better, personally?
Born in a poor country? Sorry, no re-try.
Born with a damaged brain or body? Sorry, no re-try.
Have abusive parents? Maybe a few can pull themselves out (probably mostly by luck or the help of others), but it will have lifelong effects.
You get the idea. And those examples are extreme; there are myriad other "softer" struggles people have, with varying levels of control. Depression comes to mind.
So, in conclusion, my whole long-winded reply is just trying to say: sometimes people (like you) express the "you have nobody to blame but yourself" attitude, with good intentions, directed at the sort of enabled people you were talking about, but it gets applied to other people, with heart-wrenching effects.
They do now, as the consequence of many crashes.
> And that's not always the case
I liken this as "humans have two legs" and the riposte is "not all humans have two legs". Notice the requirement to insert a missing word, "all". I hope you'll forgive me, because I am rather testy about this sort of waste of time. If I mean "always" or "all" or "100%" I would use those qualifiers. Those qualifiers exist for a reason.
> Born with a damaged brain or body?
Oh criminy. I shouldn't have to add that if you're mentally deranged none of this applies. In fact, I believe I even wrote somewhere here "of sound mind and body" because I know somebody would pipe up with "not everybody likes ice cream".
I am not trying to play word games or pull "gotchas" on your phrasing. I think I have a straightforward underlying message; I hope you can hear it through my imprecise miasma of words.
Maybe you already heard it, but are only replying to the remaining small tidbits you object to; I'm unsure.
In truth, I have a similar frustration, where I feel the fragmentary quotations of mine you reply to do not give justice to the larger context in which they were written. But I don't hold it against you; I know that struggle.
Anyway, one more attempt:
You presented some simple advice ("It's not about working hard. It's about working smart."), and as mentioned I don't disagree with it per se.
But in my life, I have seen that advice used "for evil", if you will. (I do not mean to imply that you intend it that way, of course).
And in particular, I do find that people giving and following that advice are often either willfully or ignorantly (more often the latter) blind to the downsides that can go along with it — vis-a-vis empathy towards others, for instance. Of course, I do not mean to imply that you are blind to it. I don't know you.
So, I hoped to give some voice to that other perspective, is all. I find it to be under-represented, in discussions like these. Hugely so.
----
Re: humans having two legs: I truly am not sure if you are messing with me, or if I really failed to deliver my idea so totally. I swear I don't mind if it's the former, though I feel it is the latter (: Help me improve my communications protocol?
I thought our sequence went something like this:
you: work hard and learn from your mistakes
me: agreed. but also, beware of assigning blame for misfortune
you: here are some examples of how learning from mistakes is useful/empowering [airliners, bikes]
me: yes, and here are some examples of misfortune that's not blame-worthy [unlucky birth, etc.]
you: my examples were not meant to be all-encompassing [humans have two legs]
me: ???
Actually, writing it out maybe makes it more clear. Perhaps you feel I was disagreeing with your initial advice, and trying to counter it somehow. But rather, I am trying to add something to it; draw a bigger circle around everything on the Venn diagram, so to speak. Not cross yours out.
5000 job applications with evenly weighted resumes randomly paired with names more commonly given to white children and names more commonly given to Black children. The "White" applicants were FIFTY PERCENT more likely to get a callback.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
Here's one from Georgetown that follows performance disparity and wealth, with marked differences appearing in kindergarten.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231198317...
Here's an article from the fed discussing a study that shows the average white family has just under 5x more assets than your average Black family, and crucially, that intergenerational wealth doesn't play a big role in that:
https://www.bostonfed.org/news-and-events/news/2023/03/bosto....
There is so much more empirical proof that the US simply is not a meritocracy. You must be deliberately shielding yourself from it or astonishingly naive to think otherwise.
Today, with the internet, nobody needs to know anything about you for you to run a successful business.
You seem to require that I must be born wealthy. I was born on an Air Force base and spent many years living in base housing. If you're from a military family, you know that ain't wealthy and ain't the path to wealth.
My father grew up in the Depression, and his father apologized profusely to him for asking for a portion of the money my father made collecting scrap so he could buy food. My mother lost everything (and I mean everything) in WW2.
I've posted before about wealthy friends who came to America with a suitcase.
The idea you must be born into wealth in order to be successful in America is simply false. I know too many wealthy people (including Blacks and women) who demonstrate otherwise.
Here's a recipe to move from poverty to the middle class:
1. don't do drugs
2. don't do crimes
3. stay in school
4. learn what the school provides
5. get a loan for college
6. go to college, pick a major that pays well, learn the material rather than cheat
It's a pretty good default strategy. It doesn't take any miracles or unusual effort.
> astonishingly naive to think otherwise
Maybe you should tell that to the millions of poor people attempting to get into the US.
It's much easier to do prep work when you have a social safety net to keep you clothed, housed and fed while you're prepping.
It's much easier to place yourself in a situation where the opportunity can find you if you know that if opportunity doesn't find you, you'll be ok.
It's much easier to take a gamble that a bunch of hard work will lead to a fantastic opportunity if the cost of it not leading to an opportunity is very low.
Leveraging everything you had and bought MSFT when it went public. Or AMZN. Or Bitcoin. Or Apple. As the value of the stock increased, buy more on margin.
Of course, this is risky. Note I mentioned a willingness to take risks.
You can start an investment program for $100 at robinhood.com.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-a...
58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Throwing money into some Robinhood investment when you're living paycheck to paycheck, especially if you're responsible for other people, as many people in lower socio-economic brackets are, is completely irresponsible.
That's one of the most misleading statistics ever. Lots and lots of people live paycheck to paycheck because they see money they spend money. I know people who live in McMansions with new cars, spiffy threads, and expensive furniture who spend every dime. Every time they get a raise, they ramp up the spending. When I worked at Boeing, payday was every other Thursday. People would leave the building and run to their cars. This is because they'd already spent the money and needed to get the paycheck deposited ASAP.
They're not poor people. What they are are fiscally irresponsible.
A corollary is the percentage of people with less than $500 in the bank. Well, I have less than $500 in the bank. It's not because I'm poor, it's because I put every dime to work for me in investments.
BTW, what do you think of those millions of people dressing up like Barbie and going to see Taylor Swift concerts, spending a thousand bucks and more on travel, tickets, costumes, etc.? Me, it shows Americans are not mired in poverty.
Until a corporation dilutes the shares by issuing more.
Making lots of money is usually proportional to how much risk you're willing to take.
BTW, AMZN had far, far better odds than any lottery.
The Seattle Times reported in the 1990s that there were over 10,000 Microsoft millionaires living in the Seattle area, excluding housing. And that was when a million dollars was real money.
Ten thousand.
There's probably a similar figure for Amazon employees.
There's a big difference between being wrong/full of shit and outright lying because to tell the truth would harm your ability to make money. The former is just being an idiot, the latter is being a market manipulator/con /artist/grifter/etc.
The one I see constantly is people selling courses on how to make money. They talk about how they made money as a consultant and decided out of the kindness of their hearts to teach others.
What's clear is that the money the majority of them made wasn't from "doing the thing" but rather from the course that they're teaching.
Then someone takes the course and copies + puts their own spin on it. Rinse and repeat.
Paul Jobs was born and raised in Wisconsin, not SV. He never graduated from high school.
> Gates
His father was a high powered lawyer in Seattle; his mother was a member on a number of corporate and philanthropic boards, including one that gave her direct access to the Chairman of IBM at the precise moment that Microsoft was attempting to sell software to IBM.
> Bezos
His parents loaned him a quarter million dollars to start Amazon in the mid 90s.
> Ballmer
His father was a "manager" at Ford, which could mean a wide range of things; he grew up in a very wealthy area.
> Allen
He seems to have come from genuinely middle class roots - his parents were a librarian and an elementary school teacher.
> Musk
This one is pretty complicated; his father owned an emerald mine and seems to have been quite wealthy, though Elon disputes his father's claim that he invested money in Elon's first company.
> Page
Both parents were academics in computer science.
> Brin
Both parents were academics, immigrating from the USSR to the US - his father ended up teaching math at the University of Maryland, his mother doing research at NASA.
So that's two (Gates and Bezos) where their parents were significantly wealthy and influential in useful ways; two where it's unclear how much they got real benefit from their parents' wealth, but they certainly didn't grow up poor (Ballmer and Musk); two where the parents weren't rich but academically involved (Page and Brin); and one where they were genuinely just middle class folks (Allen).
He gets irritated as hell when people use him as a token success story because he knows none of it would have happened if he— among many others just like him— didn't win the lottery at an elite prep school close enough for him to logistically manage attending despite no family resources. The hard work, character, and intelligence were the base line that would likely have meant modest incremental gains— like his smart, capable, hardworking father made— without winning that hat draw. The connections he made in prep school— not even at Harvard— got him where he is in his career. When you're living on the edge of financial solubility, you just don't get the opportunity to invest in the future because 100% or more of your output goes into funding your present, and there are a hell of a lot more smart people out there than lottery spots in elite prep schools. The difficulties that his childhood friends faced progressing through public high school in that environment sink a lot of people with a lot of potential-- the graduation rate of his local high school is currently 26%, and how many of them do you think attend Harvard, where 46% of white students were admitted with the help of legacy status, proficiency in almost exclusively white sports not available in public schools like fencing, squash, and crew, or being the child of faculty? If you think people who get that start in life have equal opportunity to make something of themselves, you're delusional.
I'd actually be quite curious about her own views on the degree to which government-provided assistance made it possible for her to get where she is today, though she seems to have avoided voicing them publicly.
We have the school lunch program for that.
But I enjoy everyone needing to keep moving the goal posts. In what other country can a Black woman on welfare become a billionaire?
Oh and the school lunch program is still socialism, btw!
Holy F!
this is in words the problem that I have had for over a decade as a consultant ;
I was a consultant who was not aware of the leverage against me by consultancies for whom I executed billion $ projects and they just squirted me out after they got their fill.
I cant articulate a clear picture in words at the moment - but your comment snippet really triggered the way my emotions are to those I worked for in the past and how robbed I feel. (I have my own self fulfillment - I am just recognizing how much I was truly being taken advantage of...
Hard work and perseverance can (and IME often does) lead to success. There's this attractive narrative that any outlier success is entirely built from seedy/unethical/immoral/corrupt acts. This narrative helps to justify and excuse mediocrity. Instead, we should be asking the hard questions which may encourage harder/smarter work and perseverance.
Doing well and creating great stuff can be due to hard work but raising to certain positions of power definitely requires gaming the system in ways that can be seen as anti ethical or at least counter to the alleged ethos of the company, group, etc.
People in different hierarchies end up optimizing for their careers and detract from any Analysis that will conclude otherwise, putting themselves in positions where they have always someone to deflect to and focus on personal branding over real results because, in the end, it's what allow them to also have real results some times.
It's an "end justifies the means" and "it's the name of the game".
It becomes more and more buteocratic, political and networkey the higher you climb/interact.
Those will be very interested in talking abour merit ( pretending others are "mediocre") and fairness while playing under different rules
I feel that our (societal) culture is all about bringing down those who achieve success by vilifying them for specific actions. My purpose of my post was purely to shed light that carrot problems are not as common as one may think and that they are only part of the story.
Said another way, the article is right that what is said about success and how it was achieved is often a marketing oriented autobiography. That doesn't necessarily mean that the lies and embellishments conceal insidious actions.
It's quite simple to continue sweating on the same path, if not easy. But it feels like people prefer difficulty to complexity.
Of course, even working hard on the right problems carries no guarantee. Yet, life isn't about guarantees, but about rigging the dice in your favor.
For example most successful founders and CEOs in my experience may say taking meeting notes or setting a high bar helps. But really what helped is that they had personality traits leading to these behaviors which are what truly drove the benefits - they are meticulous and detail oriented so they want to use writing to nail down ideas, they set high standards for themselves and others so they do whatever it takes to avoid a bad hire or lazy decision. It would be considered impolite for the CEO to say that about themselves, and maybe they don’t even notice how much of an outlier they are in those traits, so instead you get told the effect rather than the cause of their success. Someone without those traits trying to ape out the processes won’t be able to realize the benefits.
Similarly I think to a degree the whole “be connected or privileged from birth” is meant to be taken implicitly rather than ignored altogether, sometimes. Nobody wants to launch into a discussion about social class or inequality in some PR puff piece that’s like “oh mr startup ceo why are you so rich and successful”. Like in tennis nobody is going to say the secret to success is to have tiger parents and access to facilities and training from a young age that 99% of people can’t afford. When people say “leverage your connections” they’re kind of saying Joe Average without connections is out of the game until they build those connections, but politely.
So, while no individual company will tell you that everyone's using dark patterns or hiring their friends, behavioral economists can put forth evidence-backed arguments that this is the case — and so save you the trouble of bothering to chase the Carrot.
>You will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn’t, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn’t even guess. In particular, you’ll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn’t know about and didn’t know they had, and you’ll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well.
no - they'll say it's down to <insert absolutlty anything they can make up>
I may sound like a rich apologist, but please believe me when I say it is harder to spend 10 hrs a day cranking on a risky startup if you know you can be clubbing with daddy's money
>There's some fields where it really might be true that you can learn everything you need to know by reading books at the public library. But anytime people are succeeding for reasons they won't admit in public, it's hard to get a grasp on the situation unless you have private back-channels.
I feel this is a natural response when you're in a low-trust low-signal-to-noise-ratio environment. You have to keep things close to the chest and limit access, or else you'll spend all your time sifting through the noise. For example, the best way to reach me is by phone. But it's not enough to know my phone number to successfully reach me; you have to be in my private circle for me to pick up and respond. Everyone else is likely just scammers and telemarketers.
For example many of these people may work ridiculous hours and sacrifice on their personal relations. Now try posting that on Twitter and you'll be crucified that you are encouraging unhealthy culture and you are a bad person for posting this. So most people don't bother.
You see people all around you appearing to be cooler and more popular by proclaiming there's no point in working hard because the whole system is rigged. Not working and riding to the top of HN on your cynicism sure is tempting if you can justify it. But you don't know whether the people who claim that are actually secretly successful and just trying to win points by appealing to popular discontent. And you won't find out whether studying and working could have made you successful, because now you feel it's not worth trying.
Even in the slacker 90s where we were all convinced we'd never earn as much as our parents, the self-pitying cynicism wasn't this rampant.
This bullet point makes me wonder if there are situations where newcomers end up beating the original company because consumers are willing to pay an enormous premium just to avoid the dark patterns.
Carrot solutions? :)
Some of these cost me > ~35-40% long-term, but it reassuring that, if I am suddenly in misfortune or tight spots, I could rapidly rid myself of some luxuries in a blink. :)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nobody_ever_went_broke_undere...
And plausibly "nobody ever made money by overestimating the intelligence..."
He helped bring us the mass layoff and made tons of money dumping PCBs into the river. Apparently wells there are still toxic without treatment.
I just asked my wife, who is from Hong Kong, if she had heard this as a child and she said she had not. Her grandparents were really young during the war and Brits and Cantonese were pretty segregated until after ww2, so it might make sense that this didn’t reach her family.
Cargo cult: The advice is applied incorrectly.
Carrot problem: The advice is provided incorrectly.
How to distinguish the two, without understanding the details? Looking at what worked doesn't help. Checking the motivation for providing the advice is asymmetric. Any other ideas?
It makes me wonder how many carrot problems I've fallen for myself, or have been intending to fall for )not realizing they are carrot problems) and haven't got around to yet.
Also how many other ideas I would like to have a word for.
Another secret to success: Have enough luck to make up for not having rich parents.
Also, if "luck" is factors outside of your control, having rich parents would count as luck. :)
It's not like such things haven't been done. In the states there are plenty of scams (marketing) to convince us to eat more grains, or drink milk, or consume more {product}. Don't see why it wouldn't be the same anywhere else.
We had a whole cartoon character dedicated to convincing people to eat spinach, which we were wrong about being particularly beneficial as well. These kinds of things, even when well intentioned, have secondary, harmful effects, that far outweigh their purported benefits.
Yes, you need luck to be > 0. But you better have hard work also > 0, or you won't have any success anyway.
No, the sales and marketing guys are not parasites leeching off your hard work because you're the one wrinting the code. It's not S + C, it's S * C.
No, it doesn't matter how good and productive you are, if you don't know how to search for jobs, pass interviews, etc, you won't have a job.
And not wanting to work hard because "you need luck anyway" is not a winning strategy.
There are two secrets to being successful:
1. Don't explain the secret to your success.
Unfortunately for business outcomes or in case of war advantages - it has the exact opposite incentive - sharing this leads to loss of market share, more competition, chances of leaks and enemy knowing about your tactics and investing in R&D.
The problems regarding this, that make it a true carrot problem, are as follows:
1. Enhanced athletes aggressively claiming to be and marketing themselves as natural for explicit monetary incentives.
2. Enhanced athletes claiming to achieve amazing things naturally for obvious incentives and mitigation of disincentives. Generally, the notion that any top athlete isn't "enhanced" is absurd. Anabolic steroids are a huge boost, trust me. Wink wink nudge. You go from being a mere mortal to feeling powerful, and your physical recovery is completely changed. You become wolverine.
Enhanced athletes claiming to be natural because they don't want to get in trouble and telling you to do pyramid supersets isn't really a problem because it's probably going to work (hypertrophy isn't hard, it's easy) and it's pretty obvious they're enhanced. You don't need steroids to get decent results, pretty much everyone has a base capacity for this.
Enhanced athletes explicitly claiming to be natural for monetary incentives can harm people financially and physically, and this is a wildly popular grift.
It's specifically that success often relies on something that its user doesn't want to admit (either to stop competition, as in the war example, or just because the tool is socially unacceptable or wouldn't make them look good), but they also don't want to say "I won't tell you, it's a secret" and instead they make up some other reason that actually doesn't work. This is way more concrete than just "what happens after people lie". Many lies aren't about reasons and recipes for success.
If you listen to the Solid Gold Oldies channel on Music Choice, you'll, of course, hear The Beatles, Elvis, Beach Boys and others like them, but you'll also hear LOADS of songs you might recognize from artists you've never seen before!
If you read their Wikipedia entries (well, the artists that have one anyway; many have been memory-holed), while they benefited from payola, not only did their careers not really go anywhere after that one hit or two, but because of how recording contracts were structured back then (one full record, usually several, with a few mandatory Christmas songs and almost none of your creative input), once those records ultimately didn't sell, they were kicked from the record and never recovered.
Not even sucking up was enough to guarantee a decent career in music, even if your song hit the air waves!
(I'm mentioning SGO since payola was big back then. Payola was outlawed years later, but given that iHeartRadio/Clear Channel basically bought out most of the radio stations in the US and control entire playlists, has it _really_ gone away?)
So the question is - how does this happen today? Journalists investigating companies? Analysts giving insight into what is happening behind the scenes? Whistleblowers?
This isn’t really an answer to your question, but the bummer is that even someone like the people you listed telling the truth isn’t enough. Shit, tons of people still believe the thing about carrots.
but after working out for 4 years consistently, i can pretty much say its nigh impossible.
if you want to bulk up like that, you need steroids. yes, even john cena like body which doesn't look that huge but its huge & can't be done without steroids.
heck, the liver king used the carrot problem incredibly to his advantage. he told people he got big eating liver. only after he made his $100m empire did he admit to it on andrew schultz podcast.
i have heard you can't get big in hollywood/bollywood if you don't exchange sexual favors. that's why they all protect rapists, sexual assaulters, etc...
there's a reason those who complain about sexual assaults, rape, etc... have their careers finished rather than the opposite.
like epstein's connections are not known bcz they are all in on it. everyone has skeletons in the closet. i mean it wouldn't be hard to get away with murder/rape if someone were rich. sounds like sci-fi but i find it real after hearing those dubai stories.
this is just one example. 3 examples op listed were also terrific.
one such case is recent. someone who is a recent graduate got a job through connections (nepotism?) & makes a lot of salary than others working the same position while doing little to no work. this is a personal experience of someone close.
then there's black hat tactics startups use that they can't admit to. like airbnb using #1 hacker. or someone using leaked databases to find emails. i saw a recent startup that matched twitter accounts with emails when twitter database got leaked. i'm sure that person is telling people some other story on how he got emails.
once you look at it, you'll find a lot of carrot problems in life. the reason why i posted it last night as soon as i found it.
Interestingly, the human brain tells itself carrot stories all the time:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-hidden-prospect/...
tldr: patients with split brain hemispheres will reflexively make up explanations for decisions made by the other half of their brains. Fascinating stuff, and makes me wonder how many things I've done that serve my subconscious' ulterior motives.
Sorry, but obscurity is a big part of security. Always has been, always will be.
Are these different, they seem the same to me if your thinking about them on the same level?
So the point is hard work and determination is about 1% of the equation and luck is the other 99%. Like my brother likes to say, I would much rather be very lucky than very smart.
Just saying......
2) Tell people a big lie about how to acquire X.
3) Chortle, possibly profit.
“ when what you’re aiming for doesn’t add up directly “
No carrots or distractions involved.
1. Murder is a crime. 2. We should be tough on murder. 3. Therefore, we should be tough on crime. (Deliberately) Omitted: Jaywalking is a crime. Should we be tough on jaywalking?
1. Situation X in my mind is jaywalking. 2. We should legalize Situation X. 3. Therefore, we should legalize jaywalking. (Accidentally?) Omitted: Situation Y is jaywalking. Should we legalize Situation Y?