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Comment by Evgeny | Hacker News Reader

“You can be president of the Unites States, if you really want to!"

This one motivates person to at least try his best

A more truthful message would be, "You have much higher odds of being struck by lightning than of ever becoming president of the United States"

This one motivates the person to sit on his backside and do nothing.

My guess would be that if everyone was thinking in terms of "truthfulness", we would not have a civilization at all. After all, there's always more chances to NOT make a discovery than to make one, to NOT become the next Google than to become one, to NOT find a new continent than to find one etc.

And of course, he was going to miss a few blocks. But, suppose that everything else is equal - training, physical abilities, skill, and your opponents are ready to give it all and fight for each ball, while your teams is expecting to miss a few here and there - who would have better chances?

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Being "ready to give it all and fight for each ball" and "expecting to miss a few here and there" are not mutually exclusive.

One is a statement on commitment. The other is a rational assessment of the likely outcome.

The last section of the article is perhaps the most important. It contains this paragraph:

After surveying and studying that database, Hill has identified key characteristics that enabled these dieters to achieve their impressive results, and he has distilled them down to a series of tips. Among the first tips is this: Expect failure…but keep trying.

This 'expect failure' bit just does not sound right to me. 'Do not fear failure' - maybe, or 'don't get discouraged by failure', or something like that.

Rational assessments can prevent commitment. Only one out of millions becomes an Olympic champion (rational), why even try? (lack of commitment as a result of rational assessment)

Why sugar coat it? You will fail along the way. A lot. If you expect it, you're less likely to see failures as disastrous.

It's the people who continue on despite knowing that today's effort won't make much difference that can achieve great things. It will make some difference, but not much. But added up over years, you've achieved something significant. Any single Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practice I attend won't make much difference in how good I am. But five years worth of consistently showing up despite that I now have a purple belt, and I compete in the advanced division in competition. Any given day I show up at the office won't make much difference in my research, but five years worth of that means I'm close to my PhD.

>"You can be president of the Unites States, if you really want to!" >This one motivates person to at least try his best >A more truthful message would be, "You have much higher odds of being struck by lightning than of ever becoming president of the United States" >This one motivates the person to sit on his backside and do nothing.

No - telling someone something so patently unlikely sets a disconnect between a goal and the effort required to reach it (as if the only thing required to be president of the USA was to want it.) Two possibilities: the person ignores the message (if they're sensible), or they take it to heart and then get dejected when they fail.

This is also the current thinking on teenage girls and anorexia; presented with supermodels in the media and the (implied) message that they should/can emulate those role models is what is thought to cause self-esteem problems in impressionable teenage girls, which can lead on to more serious disorders.

I think it would be better to teach people how to make the best of their circumstances (and by this I mean personal attributes as well as social surroundings), rather than encourage unrealistic expectations.

> “You can be president of the Unites States, if you really want to!"

The theory that I think applies is the idea of global and local maximums. It is unrealistic to shoot for being a global maximum (the best in the world). For example, the POTUS is a global maximum. Local maximum is president of your school board. You have much better odds of achieving the local maximum ("big fish in small pond"). It's hard to be the most social guy in a club, but if you host and throw a party, you are the most social guy by definition.

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