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There is no such thing as a self-made billionaire. Luck is such a huge factor that it makes the other characteristics irrelevant. I think that there is more to

There is no such thing as a self-made billionaire. Luck is such a huge factor that it makes the other characteristics irrelevant. I think that there is more to learn about life from a bum on the streets than from a billionaire.

muzani 9y ago
There's a trick to luck: find the best set of dice for you and keep rolling them. The bums are interesting, but more so the ones that end up millionaires or billionaires. I've learned that a lot of millionaires are not very intelligent; they're just incredibly persistent. They can do the exact same thing, despite failure, for nearly a decade and end up gathering a reputation for it. Whereas most people would just give up and change careers in the middle. There's also an element of luck here - Bubba Gump comes to mind. But sometimes luck is just being in the right position at the right time, and there is a methodology to being in that position.
Jdam 9y ago
"luck favours the prepared mind"
- jondubois 9y ago
  Yeah but just because you have two legs, it doesn't mean that you're going to win the 400m relay in the Olympics if you keep trying... Having two legs barely scratches the surface; even in the extremely unlikely case that you actually make it to the Olympics, you have to account for the fact that your personal success depends more on your team's performance than on your own performance. Everybody and everybody's mum has a 'prepared mind'. The kind of basic level of intelligence that's required for earning a billion dollars is extremely common among the general population. Billionaires are not geniuses; they have slightly above average intelligence and/or skill. The pool of people who have 'slightly above average intelligence and/or skill' is massive. Hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand, the pool of people who are billionaires is tiny in the thousands. It's easy to see why it's a lottery.
  - Jdam 9y ago
    I'm glad that I don't have this limiting mindset.
    - jondubois 9y ago
      I don't know who you are or what you do but I know for sure that you're not a USD billionaire and I can also predict that you will never become a billionaire. The fact that I can make this prediction has nothing to do with who you are as a person and everything to do with probability.

muzani 9y ago

There's a trick to luck: find the best set of dice for you and keep rolling them. The bums are interesting, but more so the ones that end up millionaires or billionaires. I've learned that a lot of millionaires are not very intelligent; they're just incredibly persistent. They can do the exact same thing, despite failure, for nearly a decade and end up gathering a reputation for it. Whereas most people would just give up and change careers in the middle. There's also an element of luck here - Bubba Gump comes to mind. But sometimes luck is just being in the right position at the right time, and there is a methodology to being in that position.

Jdam 9y ago

"luck favours the prepared mind"

jondubois 9y ago
Yeah but just because you have two legs, it doesn't mean that you're going to win the 400m relay in the Olympics if you keep trying... Having two legs barely scratches the surface; even in the extremely unlikely case that you actually make it to the Olympics, you have to account for the fact that your personal success depends more on your team's performance than on your own performance. Everybody and everybody's mum has a 'prepared mind'. The kind of basic level of intelligence that's required for earning a billion dollars is extremely common among the general population. Billionaires are not geniuses; they have slightly above average intelligence and/or skill. The pool of people who have 'slightly above average intelligence and/or skill' is massive. Hundreds of millions of people. On the other hand, the pool of people who are billionaires is tiny in the thousands. It's easy to see why it's a lottery.
- Jdam 9y ago
  I'm glad that I don't have this limiting mindset.
  - jondubois 9y ago
    I don't know who you are or what you do but I know for sure that you're not a USD billionaire and I can also predict that you will never become a billionaire. The fact that I can make this prediction has nothing to do with who you are as a person and everything to do with probability.