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Comment by hugodan | Hacker News Reader

That’s an aggressive problematic gambler mentality.

No it's not. Gambler's fallacy is "I just flipped tails so heads is more likely now". I read this article as "heads has a 50% chance of coming up so I'll get one eventually" (which is true - law of large numbers).

I think none of those blanket statements here work.

Really it's just odds of finding success vs effort / time spent. And whether that's worth it.

Any of the blanket statements could be true depending on what the exact odds are.

There could be near 0% chance of finding success and it would be better idea to rethink and spend time elsewhere, or yes, there's 10% chance of finding success and it's significant enough that trying 20 times is enough.

If we are talking about e.g. finding a house, if you are not finding any it could very well be that your expectations vs budget is unlikely to find anything and you have to reconsider strategy.

Someone could be repeatedly trying to find work, and thinking it's just a matter of time, but really time would be better spent on improving their strategy, resume, or other means.

These statements to me seem like motivational non-sense which misrepresent how real world works or what the patterns really are like. At best they just give someone a false understanding of how the world works, at worst they make someone spend all their time in the wrong direction.

The difference is that if I apply for 10 jobs at once or put a bid in for 10 houses hoping one will succeed, I’ve lost nothing for trying 10 times.

If I gamble and try 10 times and win once - I have probably lost money.

Even if I interview 10 times and fail 9, I’ve learned something from each interview and I’ve gotten better. That’s also not true from rolling dice.

You lost something when every other person started doing the same thing. Now you have to write or review ten applications instead of one. Now you're going to get paid less because it cost $20k to hire you instead of $2k. Now your company is going to be filled with like-minded people, "hustlers", who do not know how to improve things themselves, just spray and pray until someone mistakenly rewards them.

When the outcome is positive, I see nothing wrong. Especially if you lose basically nothing in trying.

Your time, energy, etc are not nothing. If you think like that, you have already lost and are not making optimal decisions.

That counter-argument is only valid if you actually had other things to do.

If the alternative to send to yet another university application is to start a new match of CoD then it wasn't a loss.

Interestingly I found my first job through a video game and I never went to uni. I got good at the game (to brag, top 0.1%) and met people in the game who referred me because of the "respect" from being good at that particular game got me. Might seem odd, but a lot of people in the industry played this game and ability to be good at the game did signal something.

I have never spam applied anywhere, and have hyperfocused on very specific positions, putting a lot of prep effort into what I have considered strong matches.

The way I read this is that there are many "games" in life (applying for schools, jobs, dating, etc) where the odds of "winning" each instance are not in your favor, but you only need to win once to win overall. If you treat every absence of a positive outcome as a failure, then you're inevitably going to lose hope and give up.

This is in contrast to gambling where you actually do need to win more often than not to win overall.

Seems like a momumental waste of energy being pushed as "hustling". Applying to college should be cooperative between you and the admissions office: asking, are we a good fit? Applying in the hope they mess up and admit you when they're really better off rejecting you is so antisocial.

Admissions are sort-of Pareto distributed, so most people admitted were on the edge of being rejected. Since there is a bit of noise in the process, this is why any one individual applying to 10x as many places of a similar tier will be more likely to get into one. But then when everyone does it, no one is more or less likely to get in except those that are actually cooperating with the admissions office. You're burning down the commons for a fleeting bit of warmth. Might I suggest installing a furnace in your house instead?

All I can say is that the method works specifically because people like you exist. It kind of defeats the purpose if we try to change your mind about this.

So, yes, you are absolutely right.

Lol, yes. If you're a selfish egoist, you probably don't want to convert others to your philosophy.

I think it's possible to punish people who are taking these selfish actions, and I think universities should. Maybe they should make a secret database where they list the people who applied to their university, and subtract off points for every other university they applied to. Or, recruiting agencies can mark down candidates for every other job they are applying to. I don't think they do, and this isn't the startup I want to make or area I want to devote my life to, it just sucks that people are being rewarded for playing negative-sum games.

> Applying in the hope they mess up and admit you when they're really better off rejecting you is so antisocial.

What? That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I just found the post to be a helpful reminder of how to have a healthy mindset towards some uncertainties in life, but it seems like you took away something completely different.

What do you mean by "a healthy mindset"? It isn't healthy for society. It isn't healthy in the world where everyone has this mindset. It isn't healthy to treat your life as a lottery, hoping for a winning ticket instead of creating that ticket yourself. The fact that you consider applications to be uncertainties in life is very telling. You can make them much less uncertain, if you stop thinking of them like a lottery and start doing the things that prove you are valuable to others.

Did you know that USAMO qualifiers have >50% rate of admission to MIT? IMO gold medalists have >80% acceptance rate, and it's only so low because international admissions is limited to 10% of the student body. Life is only a lottery if you have an unhealthy mindset holding you back from improving yourself. Just because university admissions involve a lot of luck at the bottom does not mean you have to limit yourself to a bottom feeder spraying and praying to get in.

Again, I think you've completely misinterpreted the post as well as what I'm trying to say. A "healthy mindset" is simply one that gives you a framework to navigate the world without falling into despair when things don't go your way. Learning to accept that things won't always go your way, and that in some cases they might not go your way the majority of the time, but that they don't have to, is one component of that.

I'm not making any recommendations on how people should actually go about finding wealth, or success, or happiness, or whatever it is you're looking for in life; only how to deal with it when they don't get those things immediately.

Again, I think you don't understand: your "healthy mindset" here is a vice. I do not think it is healthy to drink away your woes. I also do not think it is healthy to cope by treating your life like a big lottery. As I have said several times, the reason I do not consider it healthy is it does not actually help you get what you want, and statistically will leave most people worse off. Finally, from a societal perspective, just like drunk driving hurts everyone around you, this coping behavior also hurts everyone around you.

I would be okay with people spreading beliefs that only hold themselves back, especially if it made them happier. However, I draw the line when they endorse antisocial behavior. I've personally been negatively effected by these hustlers' acions. Almost everyone has, whether or not they can articulate why it seems impossible to get interviewed for a job these days.

I'm not at all advocating for treating life like a lottery. I've had overall a successful career due in large part to my own effort, but the best opportunities have come to me simply by being in the right place at the right time, so it would be arrogant to discount luck entirely. I've also had periods of repeated failure, and if I had counted each and every one of those as a score against my own value then I wouldn't have made it this far. Put more simply, the healthy mindset I have is to do what you can, and accept what you can't. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. Easier said than done.

It seems like you're misinterpreting my words through the lens of your own frustrations right now, so I don't think there's anything else I can say to help you. I just hope you find what you're looking for eventually.

You are not even talking about the article at this point. "All it takes is for one to work out" is TFT. You are instead saying, "be stoic in the things you cannot effect." The latter is much more defensible, and something I endorse. But if you hold the latter, then all it takes is for none to work out. You would accept none, even if you would prefer one, two, or ten. Your comment is a classic motte-and-bailey defense.

There are plenty of gambling scenarios where a single win can offset thousands of losses.

Is it ? In gambling your odds are fixed, but in real life, wouldn't you get better at solving problems with each iteration ?

Depends - are you meaningfully trying to improve or do you keep doing the same thing over and over not getting it?

Indeed. "Just one more roll of the dice and I'll be ahead."

Worse, this guy isn't trying to get a job. He's just trying to get into grad school. Which is no longer a guarantee of a good career, but may be a guarantee of a big debt. Remember that "I did everything right" post on HN a few weeks ago? CS degree from a good school, but nobody wants junior CS people any more.

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