Once
nbashaw.com
nbashaw.com
It's not that they're pessimists, it's just that they aren't interested in new ideas.
I'm reading Guns, germs and steel, and it notes one advantage of European civilization was that it had access to large mammals that were easily domesticated, and one of the ways in which they were easy to domesticate was that they are hierarchically organized socially, and "follow the leader". This helps, because humans just needed to insert themselves at the top of the hierarchy to control the herd/pack.
I'd realized some time ago that we ourselves are also domesticated, but just this morning, in watching a dog cross the road following its owner, I realized that human beings themselves are socially hierarchical, and this makes us easier to domesticate, and easier to control.
We have been controlled by gods/priests, within militaries, within corporations, within sports, taste in movies, TV, reddit memes, pop music, pop psychology, political movements, the habit of obedience we have towards the law, scientific paradigms, by intellectual ideas, by principles - even free-thinking intellectual radicals have leaders they read and follow. Marketers try to identify influencers, thought-leaders, trend-setters. If you control the top of the hierarchy, the rest will follow.
So it's not that normal people are pessimists about new ideas, it's just that they follow what the leader of their hierarchy follows. It takes time for an idea to get to that point, and by then it's no longer "new". Even within startups, there is a great deal of this - people follow the popular companies, brands, products, personalities, from Apple to vim to lisp to Alan Kay. They have religious wars.
The human being who really does follow a new idea for its own sake is rare and in a straightforward biological sense, is not normal.
That being said, I don't buy the "entrepreneurship is very risky" line. I think it's a lot less risky than many other careers that are commonly considered "safe".
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com) in his book “The Black Swan” talks about one of his friends, a stock trader, with a very specific strategy. This strategy involves losing lots of small amounts over time, and once every 6 years or so, one enormous win. He explained that his trader friend needed to check his track record continuously to remind him of the actual benefit of this strategy, because even the small losses were eating away at him. Up to a point where he wanted to give up.
Your dreams do not make you morally superior. Your ambition does not make you a better person. It does not make you smarter than everyone else. It doesn't make you immoral, a bad person, or stupid either. Having the maturity and humility to recognize that everyone chooses their own path for their own reasons, many of which are beyond their control, is the only way we can possibly relate to other human beings and live a humane existence.
The drive/desire/ambition to do 'better' DOES make you a better person. The people with that quality are the ones who've provided every major improvement in quality of life around the world.
I had a lot of difficulty replying to your comment. I feel intuitively that it's wrong, but it's hard to articulate why.
I guess there are a couple of problems:
a) ambition often drives both good and harmful behavior. Because of this, I feel that ambition is morally neutral.
b) I rankle at the notion that people can be "better" than one another, except in extreme circumstances. Is Mark Zuckerberg better for inventing Facebook, or is my dad better for making a career of healing people's marriages and personal problems through psychotherapy? My dad likes what he does, and is successful, but those who know him would not describe him as ambitious per se. Personally, I believe that Mark Zuckerberg and my father do what they do for their own reasons, and not out of altruism or a desire to make a better world. Or maybe they both do what they do out of a desire to make a better world. I don't think either of them is better than the other.
Your dad sounds like he probably effectively has his own business which I admire and aspire to.
Personally what I hate is this attitude that think if you didn't become google/facebook you failed. There was a reddit post a while back about some guy who opened a cleaning service that replaced his "cog" salary and allowed him to quit his day job. One of the first comments was "this won't scale!". He was able to quit his job! How much more scale does he need?
No, that's exactly what I mean. You are not better than the "cogs" simply because you've made different occupational choices. We all have our reasons for choosing what we do. And some people don't even have much choice.
Big companies are just a game of musical chairs for managers. They just need to show something on their 360 reports so they can get a promotion and they couldn't care less what happens to their previous team once they get that. They don't even care about the company itself, only climbing the ladder. If the company fails then they can just move somewhere else with their new higher rung experience and start the climb again. If you're a developer in such a place either you're trying to play the game yourself or you're literally whoring out your mind and fingers for cash. The job itself is utterly meaningless and can never be made meaningful because what you produce is irrelevant. The only part that matters is the politics.
It's true that many of us end up here because we have no other choices, but it's important to keep in mind what you're actually doing. Don't romanticize being an intellectual prostitute. Save up as much as you can so you can get out. If you're happy to stay in such a place, then yea I do have less respect for you.
I would say that we mostly agree on both points.
I think that the word 'ambition' is colored in a negative light, which is probably the source of your intuition feeling that it was wrong. That's why I specifically used 'drive' or 'desire' first in the sentence.
Your father is successful, because he had the drive to get to where he is in life. I was not referring to the drive to be better relative to others, per se, but the drive to better oneself, one's life quality, etc. by internal yardsticks.
As a few other posters have talked about - I think someone who gets into a 'cog' position, and then ceases all personal growth and betterment is 'not as good of a person' as someone who gets into a 'cog' position and continues their attempts at growth and betterment. They may end their life/career in the cog - successful growth is not the requirement, merely the desire for it. And that growth may be entirely outside of 'work' - moving into charity, the arts, etc. is all just as good, from my point of view.
Does that clarify at all?
I've met plenty of entrepreneurs whose desire to "do better" means, to them, a willingness to violate ethical, moral, and even legal principles that society holds quite dear. The valley isn't that different from Hollywood in this regard. It doesn't mean you can't find some outstanding people amongst entrepreneurs, because you absolutely can, but you can encounter some of the most horrible wretches known to man as well.
a startup exit is opium for ambitious techies
That's not to say you shouldn't go for it, just make sure it's not your opium in life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias
I think pg indulged us in this experiment. IIRC the front page was pretty much the same.
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I've seen people succeeding in several areas two or three times in a row, which means they don't apply to the 99% of failure each time. Maybe it's a matter of starting to know things from the inside and the odds could easily switch to your favor.
Besides, pessimism is rarely followed by success.
I don't know much about startup financing economics, but when it comes to talented people, it seems to me like there is a huge bubble.
Thought experiment time. Suppose you have a 1% chance of cashing out spectacularly enough to live off the proceeds for the rest of your life, and provide for your children too. You need to get 69 "at bats" before you have more than a 50% chance of winning (.99^69 is about .49983). Are you going to start 69 startups before you die? No? Then please, unless you really have a good idea, just go work for someone else (even if it's a startup), you'll be happier. I know, I know, execution is everything, but you do need a good idea to execute.
http://davidvaldman.com/post/20027940591/psychofhardproblems