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I'm not sure what to do with your insight. Should we not listen to successful people's advice? Should we listen, but be more skeptical?
by jeffdavis 10y ago
I'm not sure what to do with your insight. Should we not listen to successful people's advice? Should we listen, but be more skeptical?
- cwyers 10y agoSo, there's signal and then there's noise, right? Successful people do know things about success. But they have various biases -- hindsight bias, selection bias, etc. -- that add noise to what they know. So yeah, "listen, but be more skeptical" I think is the right approach. And one thing I think (but I could be wrong!) is a thing to listen for is successful people who acknowledge their good fortune. It speaks to a self-awareness that suggests they may understand their success more than someone who isn't aware of their biases.
- consz 10y agoI would say, yes -- "do not, or heavily discount, all successful people's advice" -- is advice that is life +EV. Most successful people are not statisticians, nor drawing their conclusion from a sample larger than, say, themselves and perhaps the few successful friends closest to them, when giving the sort of advice in the OP. Moreover, given how easily humans tend to conflate "What did successful people do?" with "What did successful people compared to the set of people who tried to be successful?", the risk of bad advice is even larger. At best, you're hearing white noise, but more than likely, you're hearing a case of survivorship bias (even worse than white noise).