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Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

I think the skill most people lack is just initiative and risk tolerance. Behind many, if not most, highly successful people, there's often a story of them just trying lots of stuff until something sticks. I have a pack of a few friends who have been doing this for years. I think most of their ideas are pretty awful, but who knows, maybe one day they'll be right?

Even this site is maybe a good example. You can apply to YCombinator with little more than a partner, plan, and pitch. The worst that happens is they say no, and if they say yes then you get a $500k funded shot at your idea with lots of advice on top and people trying to help you succeed. Yeah the chances of acceptance are low, but if you've ever read applications for pretty much anything, a ridiculous amount are just complete garbage, so your chances are better than the numbers suggest if you're halfway competent.

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Wait, are you saying my jeans with reinforced kevlar crotches won't take off!? Blasphemy; I'll never give up on Crotchstrong.

> I think the skill most people lack is just initiative and risk tolerance. Behind many, if not most, highly successful people, there's often a story of them just trying lots of stuff until something sticks.

Also remember survivorship bias: lots of folks with "initiative and [high?] risk tolerance" fail, but you may not hear about them.

Obligatory:

* https://xkcd.com/1827/

I don't think most fail is the right word. Because for instance appealing to my personal anecdote of my friend pack of serial entrepreneurs, they're mostly making beer money from their projects.

If you clocked the hours they spent and compared it to a decent consulting fee then yeah - they're losing lots of money. But in reality they're doing that stuff during the time that most of us are shit posting, browsing the web, playing games, and so on. And so if you compare it to that, they're making a hefty chunk of change with the upside that they do have a chance, whatever it may be, of something really sticking and that being their to the Moon project. And you know, even just getting to the atmosphere is enough for a life changing result.

Or getting back to the Y Combinator thing. It costs $0 to apply, and the worst that happens is that they say no. All it takes is giving up a bit of time off our shitposting time. But that's somehow not an offer many of us are willing to accept, which is really pretty weird if you think about it!

This is correct. HN is full of people making mid 6 figures that can't seem to get over the idea that people making 7 figures or more are doing it unfairly just because those people aren't scaled up versions of themselves. You don't have to be smarter than a good engineer to be a good founder or CEO because it's fundamentally a different skill set and risk tolerance. They latch onto single cases of fraud and generalize it to all rich people because it is convenient. Of course theft and fraud occurs at all levels on the org chart, but it doesn't make the news when some IC steals a couple hundred K from his company.

There are plenty of fair points many would find uncomfortable trying to accept from above, particularly around how much risk is sensible to take and deal with. Hell, even knowing and believing people tend to undervalue risk... I still don't think I take enough risk myself.

At the same time, I think going from mid-6 to 7 figure income is a lot less controversial than 10 figure net worth. It's still unlikely to be related to whether someone is a scaled up version of another, but at what point you consider the reasons for earning that much "fair" tend to go a lot deeper than plain fraud.

The people who succeed the most with fraud are those who tell lies that people want to believe. A LOT of people wanted to believe that there could be a second electric car company and that they could get rich off it. That is why the fraud worked so well.

AI is the same. I am pretty sure at any company you have executives saying things about AI that not only aren't true, they can never be true. However, this is the story that people are willing to believe.

Also, just generally, the question is wrong. Perpetrating a massive fraud is very time-consuming and, ultimately, requires a level of self-deception that most people don't have the energy for. Milton, SBF, etc. did the things they did because they wanted to believe they were someone other than who they were. There is nothing wrong with knowing who you are and just being that person. To say this another way, Milton was clearly unwell, he is now unwell with more money than can be actually used, being unwell is not an example for anyone particularly when you trade it for something with extremely limited marginal value.

> The people who succeed the most with fraud are those who tell lies that people want to believe.

Jason Zweig:

    There are three ways to make a living:
        1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
        2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
        3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.

* https://jasonzweig.com/three-ways-to-get-paid/

A difference in skill level is not a difference in morality. Nobody is out there only scamming people out of thousands because they have a moral objection to taking millions.

It also goes hand in hand with people undervaluing the act of taking on risk in the first place. Hence overbeaten cliches like "insurance is a scam"/"stock market is just gambling" etc.

(Don't get me wrong there are systemic issues with both of the examples above, but the point is fundamentally there's value in understanding and taking on risks that others might be less willing to take)

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