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Comment by confluence | Hacker News Reader

From the article comments:

> "Successful people become successful despite their methods, not because of them."

I think most of these articles mix correlation with causation.

A better article would state this: to be successful be an upper middle class white male whose parents can afford to send you to Stanford before one of the greatest bull runs in economic history happens in California. Now attribute success to personal habits which have fuck all to do with anything.

These types of articles are complete fucking jokes. Fundamental attribution at work people.

Beware breathless entrepreneurship bullshit - there is oh so much of it.

Next you'll be telling me that getting a mustache makes me Stalin.

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The last 4 founders I worked for went to: -Stanford -Harvard -Harvard -Oxford

I'm always amazed how people talk about the SV startup community as if it is some sort of equal opportunity venture. These people become founders and meet VCs because of the connections their family has and the connections their school has given them. Whenever I see a specific former boss asked their key to success and they say some super high level touchey feely crap and not "well, my dad knows a bunch of VCs and basically talked them into funding us". Its basically the same as Republican's telling you how hard they worked to get where they are when really they were born on third base and think they hit a triple.

This psychological bias is called the just world fallacy and is a derivative of the aforementioned fundamental attribution error.

It is this phenomena under which the conservatives, republican party, libertarians, and the concept of meritocracy can exist and be honestly entertained and adopted by seemingly well adjusted people. To anyone aware of this bias the preceding philosophies verge on the psychopathic.

On following advice: if it's not listed as a series of facts, it's probably bullshit.

To me it sounds like you are using the same illogical mix of correlation and causation assuming that Thiel's success must be solely attributed to luck instead good methodologies, hard work, etc. It is wrong to assume his methodologies must be bogus only because he's been fortunate in other ways.

Sounds like you've never heard of the survivorship bias. I'm sure there were plenty of Peter Thiels out there with the exact same personal habits that failed.

There are a thousand Thiels born everyday. Most are fucked by being born into poverty - of those that aren't - their success is separated by mere path dependent chance.

Humans are similar. Situations aren't.

i love this confluence guy

But I'm sure there are several other Mr. confluences out there with the same personal habits and commenting habits that are not loved! :-(

Just kidding, I love him, too.

> "be an upper middle class white male whose parents..."

You forgot to mention "born in the USA" which excludes at least as many people as any other thing you've listed.

Correct. But I didn't want to rip out too many egos today - I haven't had breakfast yet.

Being alive today is another important factor. 125 billion people have ever lived - it's just sheer luck that one is born today at all.

Hell there were 250 million sperm at conception and by sheer accident each and everyone of us was born - I'm amazed any one of us is even around.

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