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Any headline that starts with the name of an SV billionaire reads like an The Onion headline to me. Getting lucky and becoming rich doesn't make you an expert
by curiousgal 5y ago
Any headline that starts with the name of an SV billionaire reads like an The Onion headline to me.
Getting lucky and becoming rich doesn't make you an expert on anything.
- kushan2020 5y agoCouldn't agree more! Yet our tribal brains are hardwired to listen and follow the people who have a lot of clout.
- mgamache 5y agoIt’s a proxy for adaptive success. He accumulated lots of resources so we pay attention and emulate him because his strategy has paid off. Not saying it makes sense in a modern context.
- Waterluvian 5y agoIt’s basically just some rando tweeting a hot take.
- drcode 5y agoHe created two multi billion dollar companies just by "being lucky"? I'm skeptical.
- gota 5y agoI don't think the second one is as hard as the first. Maybe the luck requirements to do it once or twice are the the same.
- drcode 5y agoI agree that tech CEOs say a fair amount of dumb shit (because they tend to be brainstorming, free associative thinking types) but if you think any guy off the street could have been Jack Dorsey, if the dice had just rolled differently, then I would disagree hard.
- arp242 5y ago"Any guy"? No. At least tens of thousands if not more? Probably. How many African tech billionaires do you know of? And is it a coincidence that the only two I can think of from the entire continent of 1.3 billion people (over 4× of the US) are white Afrikaners? Probably not.
- drcode 5y agoTens of thousands I think is possible- The problem is we don't know the identities of those 9,999 people. If we did, I agree the opinions of those people should be given a ton of weight.
- jvanderbot 5y agoPerhaps he had something special to start two successful companies, but I still agree with GP, that doesn't necessarily transfer to special insight into global economics. Still, a broken clock is right twice a day, and it isn't too hard to predict inflation when inflation is already happening at higher than normal levels. That's like predicting floods when its raining.
- toaam 5y agoIts all good. Let people see them for who they are. Learning takes time.
- dang 5y agoOk, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
- curiousgal 5y agoIsn't it a fact that he is not an economist? Oh well.
- dang 5y agoBeing an economist is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good HN submission. That's true even just for economics topics. I'm not saying this was a good article, but adding a bad comment article just adds more badness.