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HN should ban the adjective "cute" from all posts. Does using this adjective make you feel superior? Also, it's kinda amazing how this issue gets brought up so

HN should ban the adjective "cute" from all posts. Does using this adjective make you feel superior? Also, it's kinda amazing how this issue gets brought up so many times on HN and is proven to be false (there are tons of examples where extremely successful entrepreneurs came from poor upbringing, and in many cases the bad condition was what motivated them to push further) and yet you keep seeing the same argument over and over. For gods sake there are even people who used to serve in prison make a great business that you will never be able to create in your whole life if you keep thinking that way. Sure, it would be great if the world was more fair. But it's not. You can either bitch about it on HN like this like a sour social justice warrior, Or, you could go do something.

loorinm 9y ago
Bitching and doing something are not mutually exclusive activities. Some successful people being from poor upbringings does not make it commonplace. If your claims were true, by definition we would not have inequality.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Except that your narrative is exactly trying to paint it as "only rich people get to succeed", which will lead to the "not rich" to give up trying, which will only make things worse. You probably think you're doing justice to the world, but you're actually doing the opposite. The real successful people succeed DESPITE their perils and in many cases BECAUSE OF their perils, and these people should be encouraged to pour all their passion into whatever they want to achieve and succeed. Instead I see people like you always saying "doesn't matter how hard you try, the world is fucked up because only the rich get richer, so don't tell people to work hard, it's just exploitation". That probably makes you feel better about being "woke", but your argument does nothing but convincing people to give up. These people who come from bad background, when they do succeed, they they give back to the alienated community they came from. These are the people who actually make progress with inequality, not some guy on HN and Medium.com bitching about how the world is unfair and all the successful companies are shit because of that. Your narrative only gives people excuse to complain and get distracted from actually building valuable things. Like I said, the world IS unfair, and nothing will stop it from being unfair for unforeseeable future. The most efficient way to make sure we get out of this situation is to encourage the alienated people to succeed instead of getting them into "me vs. you" mindset, because that mindset is a loser mindset which only leads to wannabe activism, instead of actually creating something valuable. If you want to prove me wrong, just tell me a single successful person who built a valuable business or product, who spent most of their time playing gender/sex/income/inequality/whatever activist. Unless your business itself is a consulting business to sell to these classes, I have never seen one.

loorinm 9y ago

Bitching and doing something are not mutually exclusive activities. Some successful people being from poor upbringings does not make it commonplace. If your claims were true, by definition we would not have inequality.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
Except that your narrative is exactly trying to paint it as "only rich people get to succeed", which will lead to the "not rich" to give up trying, which will only make things worse. You probably think you're doing justice to the world, but you're actually doing the opposite. The real successful people succeed DESPITE their perils and in many cases BECAUSE OF their perils, and these people should be encouraged to pour all their passion into whatever they want to achieve and succeed. Instead I see people like you always saying "doesn't matter how hard you try, the world is fucked up because only the rich get richer, so don't tell people to work hard, it's just exploitation". That probably makes you feel better about being "woke", but your argument does nothing but convincing people to give up. These people who come from bad background, when they do succeed, they they give back to the alienated community they came from. These are the people who actually make progress with inequality, not some guy on HN and Medium.com bitching about how the world is unfair and all the successful companies are shit because of that. Your narrative only gives people excuse to complain and get distracted from actually building valuable things. Like I said, the world IS unfair, and nothing will stop it from being unfair for unforeseeable future. The most efficient way to make sure we get out of this situation is to encourage the alienated people to succeed instead of getting them into "me vs. you" mindset, because that mindset is a loser mindset which only leads to wannabe activism, instead of actually creating something valuable. If you want to prove me wrong, just tell me a single successful person who built a valuable business or product, who spent most of their time playing gender/sex/income/inequality/whatever activist. Unless your business itself is a consulting business to sell to these classes, I have never seen one.