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This advice perhaps even more apt for grad students. Entrepreneurs at least have the luxury of pivot.

• gabereiser 6y ago
  grad students can change majors. Entrepreneurs can pivot. Workers can quit. We all have free will. I think, if anything, sunken cost fallacy keeps people “believing” well after the picture is revealed.
  • katbyte 6y ago
    Not everyone has the uzery of quitting. Free will we all have but situations can drastically curb our options.
    • WalterBright 6y ago
      Some people I know told me they couldn't quit because of various chains that kept them in place. I went over these chains with them (such as a mortgage) and pointed out all of them were of their own making.
      • katmannthree 6y ago
        >all of them were of their own making. Having taken it out themselves doesn't make the mortgage any less real.
        • WalterBright 6y ago
          I didn't say it wasn't real. I said something along the lines of they are victims (if they are victims) of their own choices.
          • dingaling 6y ago
            If the options from which they could choose were constrained by other factors then they weren't really choices. Free will implies the ability to choose freely.
            • nickpp 6y ago
              How about those who freely choose to reduce their choices? Does that mean their original freedom was not real?!
              • username90 6y ago
                It means they made a tradeoff and shouldn't blame the world for it later. If you laze around and don't gather firewood during autumn then the reason you freeze to death in the winter isn't because nature is unfair but because you didn't get the wood.
            • WalterBright 6y ago
              Please describe some choices that aren't really choices for a typical healthy person in a free country? I can list a few: 1. having a baby is a choice 2. getting married is a choice 3. buying a house is a choice 4. buying snazzy furniture is a choice 5. buying a new car is a choice 6. buying lottery tickets is a choice 7. where you live is a choice 8. using drugs/alcohol is a choice These are the kinds of chains that people forge on themselves.
              • jgwil2 6y ago
                7 and 8 are quite debatable. Where you live is limited by what you can afford, where you work, etc. Drug and alcohol dependence is considered to be an illness by medical doctors, and it's well-known to have strong genetic components. 1 is certainly a choice if people are given access to sex education and contraceptives; unfortunately that is not uniformly the case.
      • username90 6y ago
        I agree with this, most of peoples problems comes from poor choices earlier in life. Like when I say that it isn't hard for poor people to get a good job as long as they are smart people go "But what if you are poor, have 4 kids, no house and have to work two jobs, huh, what would you do?????". Well, every person starts out young with no debt and no kids and at least 12 years of free schooling. That takes you really far if you are in the top 1% of intelligence. If you are worse off than that then you spent your life making it worse instead of better.
        • watwut 6y ago
          But, if you are from rich family you can get well paid job where you slack whole time. Cousin Johny or dad will get it for you. Or you parents will pay nanny. You never get into the two jobs situation. Or you just get house gifted from mom. All examples of normal family help if family can afford it. If you are a man, four kids affect you less in employment options too. It is that thing, even very bad choices have significantly less bad impact on you if you are rich. > That takes you really far if you are in the top 1% of intelligence. 99% of people are not in 1% of intelligence. Per definition and there is really nothing they can do to change it. You can't change own intelligence. (Pls biggest screw up I know had measured intelligence super high and that person is complete absolute fail cause intelligence is not that useful practically on itself)
          • WalterBright 6y ago
            Intelligence is useless if you don't train it, use it, apply it towards something useful, etc. It's like Michael Phelps who was born with a talent for swimming. But that talent was worthless without putting in endless hours of directed training. Similarly, a no-talent swimmer can actually learn to swim rather well. And certainly being very successful in life does not require you to be the best swimmer in the world. Just an adequate swimmer will do just fine.
          • WalterBright 6y ago
            > if you are from rich family Yes, rich people have it easier. There is no path for your life to be better by complaining that life is unfair. You could vaporize all the rich people, and it still wouldn't make your life any better (and would likely make it worse). The good news, however, is you don't have to be born rich to become rich in a free market country. Lots of people do it - 85% of American millionaires are self-made. There's even a book about it and how ordinary people become wealthy - "The Millionaire Next Door".
  • spicyramen 6y ago
    This is one of the most important comments, free will is underrated. I signed up to Blind app few months back and just can see how many people rant about their jobs and salaries and just stay in the same company (I'm not talking about cases which people has no skills or not many job opportunities)