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"this should come as no surprise"? To me, the 60% figure seems like an invertible fact.[1]

Imagine the article said, "75% of successful entrepreneurs are single." People would post comments similar to yours, but with other rationalizations for why the fact is true. "This isn't surprising. Single people have more free time." "This shouldn't come as a surprise. Single people don't have to worry about providing for a family." "This doesn't surprise me. Single people can take more risks."

We like to project an unsurprised, unperturbed, and confident attitude. But thinking "I knew it all along" can be dangerous.

The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little. I expect more from our community. The world is complicated, and our minds can't model it accurately all the time. Paradoxically, we should expect to be surprised.

1. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/

> The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little.

We all comment from our own experience, and as such these are anecdotal bits of evidence rather than hard data. Not every HN post starts out with a double blind study over a statistically significant portion of the population with splits per level of affluence and further splits to offset for geographic diversity.

> I expect more from our community.

Sorry to disappoint you.

A community is the sum of its individuals, and slightly larger than that if you're lucky with the communities that you are part of. As such the way to improve on the status quo is to lead by example.

Looking around me at the 100's of business people that I have contact with the vast majority (much larger than the 60% quoted here) of people with some level of success is in a relationship and a not-so-vast majority (but still substantial) have kids and are living a relatively steady life.

For me the young kid that strikes it big is the exception, and as such I am not particularly surprised by this outcome.

It would be much more surprising to me if the opposite were the case, your '75% of successful entrepreneurs are single' example would really turn my head because it goes directly against my personal experience.

That's not hindsight, it is just reasoning from available data and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

We should expect to be surprised, but that does not mean that we have to actively twist available data so that we're surprised all the time.

Sometimes a result is simply what is to be expected and I firmly believe this is one of those. But I can see how to some people here this comes as a surprising result because of the echo chamber aspect of being focused solely on a single community, especially one that contains a pretty substantial bias because of the company sponsoring that community.

>We like to project an unsurprised, unperturbed, and confident attitude. But thinking "I knew it all along" can...

For anyone who's interested in these topic and how people behave when facts are presented in one way or another, take a look at this book. In my opinion, it's completely worth reading this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Is-Obvious-Common-Sense/dp/...

It's not the time that's missing for most people it's the serious motivation. Having more people who depend on you is a huge external motivation factor.

I love lesswrong but don't think his comment is hindsight biased. I do not have kids and me and my wife do not want kids anytime soon just because we enjoy playtime and having less responsibility and more freedom.

YC doesn't have a target demographic. It has a target company type, described here: http://paulgraham.com/growth.html

That's one way to look at it but you are skewing towards a certain demographic by putting up a whole pile of demands before the application process has even begun that rules out a large portion of the potential applicants.

The net effect of that is that you will find in your pool of applicants a dis-proportionally high number of young single males and single females from a limited geographic region.

Whether that is cause or effect isn't really all that important, it's just a fact and if that increases the chances for success of the companies you fund then so much the better.

"The HN illusion"

Rather, it is perhaps a filter in part created by a Silicon Valley mythology. It's reflection on HN is in large part based on YC's template for success, which in turn draws upon the arc of Graham's own experience.

HN is directed at a more specific species of entrepreneurship than that of the study. The exit strategy of a defense manufacturer is decidedly different than that of the companies YC tends to fund.

This is actually the exact opposite of what I thought. To me people with families will take less risk. Extra pressure and time constraints put by supporting the family will cause bad judgement (putting cash flow before long term success, focusing to consultancy to survive etc.)

Not to mention in my experience many geeks will fail under money pressure rather than flourish when it comes to developing a project.

Bad judgment can happen on either side.

Being cash flow positive means you can survive for as long as you want and you don't have to depend so much on investments, which are a ticking time bomb. Investments should be taken for quick growth, but if you depend on investments for survival, or if you don't actually need quick growth, then you're fucked.

>To me people with families will take less risk.

But to me, this is the biggest myth of all: starting a business has risks to be sure. As does planning your career path in the corporate world. Your skill could get automated or outsourced. You could get cut at a critical point in your career.

There is no "safe" path these days. There are paths that seem to have less risk, but you can approach business in a way that limits your exposure easier than you can do that with a job (most jobs require an investment of 40+ hours per week). I think Patio is an example of this.