6 ms·

I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at le

I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. You might be broke and posting from your mom's basement, or from the top of a penthouse that you bought from building successful companies/startups. We don't know, so your advice will be treated like: just another opinion, from a internet rando/keyboard warrior, and everyone has opinions. I listen to PG as he has been more right then wrong, also he was very successful, multiple times, and is single handedly a major contributer to many products I use.

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jolux 6y ago
Many successful people overrate their personal characteristics and underrate the degree to which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. Fortune favors the prepared, of course, but I personally believe there are far more people in the world who are adequately prepared for success who do not succeed because they are under-resourced or poorly connected.
- pgayed 6y ago
  > because they are under-resourced or poorly connected This is soluble.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Often not by the people in that situation but as a society yes it absolutely should be soluble.
    - pgayed 6y ago
      Then how did the first people in that situation do it? Said differently, who invented the first bootstraps and how did they do it without bootstraps?
- chenpengcheng 6y ago
  only when the tide turns, you get to see who was swimming naked. luck plays an important part, but not everyone realizes it or admits it.
  - andrewseanryan 6y ago
    And yet... those who stay in the game and who try new things regularly get “lucky” while those who quit, don’t develop and learn from a process, and who try the same methods over and over don’t get lucky. It is far too simple to say that it is only luck. Persistence and good processes often lead to “luck”.
    - jolux 6y ago
      Hence why I said fortune favors the prepared. If you’re not ready for the opportunity you’re going to miss it when it hits.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      We have a saying in one of the Bulgarian towns: "Luck doesn't come to you, you go to it". Which is to say you are right: if you keep showing up at stuff you will eventually get lucky. Luck can only happen to those who try and get lucky. Our real world resembles an MMORPG game -- you need a team for 98% of everything -- then I'd say both you and your parent poster are correct.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. If you are successful several times against the odds it's probably not just mere coincidence anymore. You know, stats.
  - warlog 6y ago
    Unless you have VCs betting on the same horse... Accrual of advantage, etc etc. You also likely have funds to float you for longer. You also likely have a network to leverage/exploit. These external things all can stem from a lucky first go.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Hard to say. There are knock-on effects from being highly successful. If you win the lottery and subsequently become a highly successful investor, for example, there’s a clear element of chance. You may have the latent abilities of an investor and the skills to fully realize them, but without the opportunity afforded by a windfall you would never find out.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    If someone lucky to be in area/time of great development or inherited a lot of money, or have a good connections... Then following your advise in less lucky situation is likely to fail.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    With sufficiently large population, someone will randomly win against unlikely odds. For example, if there is a 1% chance your startup will succeed, but one million people try it, statistically one of them will have 3 successful startups in a row even without being better than average. Though, realistically, the chance should increase for the following attempts, because you can reuse some resources and contacts you gained with the first success. The first startup is like "I need to succeed within three years, or return to a regular job to pay my bills". But if it succeeds, the second startup is like "I can keep trying as long as I want to, no pressure".
ryeguy_24 6y ago
It's fine to listen to him. And your logic is sound. And I am in my parent's basement. My post was firstly a question and secondly an opinion on this type of content. So, it's good to know you appreciate it and might be at a different place in your evolution in content consumption. We are all different and get benefits from different things. Just wanted to know where others stood.
Debug_Overload 6y ago
Regardless of whether the argument of the commenter is valid or not, appeal to authority isn't very compelling.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  pg boosters all seem to be forgetting that the opposite of an ad hominem is an appeal to authority.
tester756 6y ago
I'd rather hear stories from people who fucked up hard than some celebo with yet another generic advice You know, learn from mistakes of others.
spitfire 6y ago
> I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. > On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. So do you listen to Sam Altman?
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VoodooJuJu 6y ago
It's funny you mention taking advice from successful pro athletes. I'm reminded of a great essay, "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" by David Foster Wallace. He writes about his admiration for a successful pro tennis athlete, her intensity and dedication to her sport, and her strangely vacuous response to the question "How do you do it Tracy?" - which she answers with some vague platitudes. His point is: very successful people are so busy being successful, they're so deeply immersed in their craft, that they don't seem to even have the conscious introspective wherewithal to articulate what it is they're doing. Everything they know about their craft and their life is just so tacit to them. They've either never taken the time to really introspect, again because they're so caught up in just winning and getting things done, or they're just genuinely incapable of gleaning any wisdom from what it is that they do. So maybe it's not particularly useful to take advice from these people after all. Now, this is probably the case for most such people, but there is a very small minority that do eventually cultivate the ability to articulate their internalized understanding and wisdom of their success to others. Maybe PG is one of them. Maybe not.
- z3t4 6y ago
  If you want to destroy someone's game - just ask how they do it. Thats why you learn a lot by teaching others.
rytor718 6y ago
This is an almost ironic response to the article for a couple of reasons that caught my attention (read: not a bad response, just somewhat ironic). The first was mentioned by someone else in the thread whose response i can't find again due to opening this in a different device: why is it more valuable to hear advice from winners than, say, a failure from their mother's basement as you put it? In relation to the article's key point, that's very conventional (hence the irony) :) The second thing I noticed was the assumption that a successful person knows their success or could explain it to anyone -- I haven't found this to be true and can personally attest that I can rarely explain my own to someone else. But there are definitely other reasons I can't, not least I'm just a poor explainer. I found the article intriguing for a lot of reasons, not least of which is I always see a bit of myself in nerd content like it. I found myself thinking of all the conventions I absorb and recall when I realized I'd absorbed them. On the other hand, I'm renown in my family and among friends as completely unconventional and am generally The Weirdo. The resolution of that tension is intensely interesting to me. How I see all the conventions in myself, but near no one else seems to see it that way at all. More to the point: given the option, I'll read the advice of a failure in a heartbeat and ponder it for days. I've never found advice from "pros" or success stories to be nearly as interesting. If you can, explain why opinions from winners is more interesting to you. Genuinely intrigued and curious to hear a different perspective.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  Someone who failed because of doing everything obviously wrong from the start... that would be boring. But someone who almost succeeded, and then failed because of X... if you want to try the same thing, you probably want to know about X. You probably want to know about X regardless, because it may generalize to other situations.
b0rsuk 6y ago
Say Hellooo to survivorship bias, then!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias You're throwing half of the information away. You need to know not just what to do, but also what not to do. Losers can teach you about mistakes, injuries etc.
- FabHK 6y ago
  Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
nevertoolate 6y ago
Good luck

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jolux 6y ago

Many successful people overrate their personal characteristics and underrate the degree to which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. Fortune favors the prepared, of course, but I personally believe there are far more people in the world who are adequately prepared for success who do not succeed because they are under-resourced or poorly connected.

pgayed 6y ago
> because they are under-resourced or poorly connected This is soluble.
- jolux 6y ago
  Often not by the people in that situation but as a society yes it absolutely should be soluble.
  - pgayed 6y ago
    Then how did the first people in that situation do it? Said differently, who invented the first bootstraps and how did they do it without bootstraps?
chenpengcheng 6y ago
only when the tide turns, you get to see who was swimming naked. luck plays an important part, but not everyone realizes it or admits it.
- andrewseanryan 6y ago
  And yet... those who stay in the game and who try new things regularly get “lucky” while those who quit, don’t develop and learn from a process, and who try the same methods over and over don’t get lucky. It is far too simple to say that it is only luck. Persistence and good processes often lead to “luck”.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Hence why I said fortune favors the prepared. If you’re not ready for the opportunity you’re going to miss it when it hits.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    We have a saying in one of the Bulgarian towns: "Luck doesn't come to you, you go to it". Which is to say you are right: if you keep showing up at stuff you will eventually get lucky. Luck can only happen to those who try and get lucky. Our real world resembles an MMORPG game -- you need a team for 98% of everything -- then I'd say both you and your parent poster are correct.
ekianjo 6y ago
> which they were merely in the right place at the right time and such. If you are successful several times against the odds it's probably not just mere coincidence anymore. You know, stats.
- warlog 6y ago
  Unless you have VCs betting on the same horse... Accrual of advantage, etc etc. You also likely have funds to float you for longer. You also likely have a network to leverage/exploit. These external things all can stem from a lucky first go.
- jolux 6y ago
  Hard to say. There are knock-on effects from being highly successful. If you win the lottery and subsequently become a highly successful investor, for example, there’s a clear element of chance. You may have the latent abilities of an investor and the skills to fully realize them, but without the opportunity afforded by a windfall you would never find out.
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  If someone lucky to be in area/time of great development or inherited a lot of money, or have a good connections... Then following your advise in less lucky situation is likely to fail.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  With sufficiently large population, someone will randomly win against unlikely odds. For example, if there is a 1% chance your startup will succeed, but one million people try it, statistically one of them will have 3 successful startups in a row even without being better than average. Though, realistically, the chance should increase for the following attempts, because you can reuse some resources and contacts you gained with the first success. The first startup is like "I need to succeed within three years, or return to a regular job to pay my bills". But if it succeeds, the second startup is like "I can keep trying as long as I want to, no pressure".

ryeguy_24 6y ago

It's fine to listen to him. And your logic is sound. And I am in my parent's basement. My post was firstly a question and secondly an opinion on this type of content. So, it's good to know you appreciate it and might be at a different place in your evolution in content consumption. We are all different and get benefits from different things. Just wanted to know where others stood.

Debug_Overload 6y ago

Regardless of whether the argument of the commenter is valid or not, appeal to authority isn't very compelling.

Apocryphon 6y ago
pg boosters all seem to be forgetting that the opposite of an ad hominem is an appeal to authority.

tester756 6y ago

I'd rather hear stories from people who fucked up hard than some celebo with yet another generic advice You know, learn from mistakes of others.

spitfire 6y ago

> I don't know, but I rather hear sporting/fitness advice from someone that won NBA finals, or the soccer World Cup, then just some random loser. The winner at least can tell you how they did succeed personally, even if they have no comprehensive studies with data. > On the other hand, you are just a random guy from the internet, and offering advice with no data at all. So do you listen to Sam Altman?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

VoodooJuJu 6y ago

It's funny you mention taking advice from successful pro athletes. I'm reminded of a great essay, "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" by David Foster Wallace. He writes about his admiration for a successful pro tennis athlete, her intensity and dedication to her sport, and her strangely vacuous response to the question "How do you do it Tracy?" - which she answers with some vague platitudes. His point is: very successful people are so busy being successful, they're so deeply immersed in their craft, that they don't seem to even have the conscious introspective wherewithal to articulate what it is they're doing. Everything they know about their craft and their life is just so tacit to them. They've either never taken the time to really introspect, again because they're so caught up in just winning and getting things done, or they're just genuinely incapable of gleaning any wisdom from what it is that they do. So maybe it's not particularly useful to take advice from these people after all. Now, this is probably the case for most such people, but there is a very small minority that do eventually cultivate the ability to articulate their internalized understanding and wisdom of their success to others. Maybe PG is one of them. Maybe not.

z3t4 6y ago
If you want to destroy someone's game - just ask how they do it. Thats why you learn a lot by teaching others.

rytor718 6y ago

This is an almost ironic response to the article for a couple of reasons that caught my attention (read: not a bad response, just somewhat ironic). The first was mentioned by someone else in the thread whose response i can't find again due to opening this in a different device: why is it more valuable to hear advice from winners than, say, a failure from their mother's basement as you put it? In relation to the article's key point, that's very conventional (hence the irony) :) The second thing I noticed was the assumption that a successful person knows their success or could explain it to anyone -- I haven't found this to be true and can personally attest that I can rarely explain my own to someone else. But there are definitely other reasons I can't, not least I'm just a poor explainer. I found the article intriguing for a lot of reasons, not least of which is I always see a bit of myself in nerd content like it. I found myself thinking of all the conventions I absorb and recall when I realized I'd absorbed them. On the other hand, I'm renown in my family and among friends as completely unconventional and am generally The Weirdo. The resolution of that tension is intensely interesting to me. How I see all the conventions in myself, but near no one else seems to see it that way at all. More to the point: given the option, I'll read the advice of a failure in a heartbeat and ponder it for days. I've never found advice from "pros" or success stories to be nearly as interesting. If you can, explain why opinions from winners is more interesting to you. Genuinely intrigued and curious to hear a different perspective.

Viliam1234 6y ago
Someone who failed because of doing everything obviously wrong from the start... that would be boring. But someone who almost succeeded, and then failed because of X... if you want to try the same thing, you probably want to know about X. You probably want to know about X regardless, because it may generalize to other situations.

b0rsuk 6y ago

Say Hellooo to survivorship bias, then!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias You're throwing half of the information away. You need to know not just what to do, but also what not to do. Losers can teach you about mistakes, injuries etc.

FabHK 6y ago
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/

nevertoolate 6y ago

Good luck