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Do success stories cause false beliefs about success?

• tlogan 5y ago
  This also means that success in business is very much correlated if one’s parents are also entrepreneurs. Now it can be that these people are more well off but it could be also that ones who have parents running the business learn first hand what actually matters. I believe it is combination of two. And things what actually matters is so unsexy that nobody wants to write about it.
• inglor_cz 5y ago
  Maybe we need this kind of optimistic bias in order to get anything new done. The road to every improvement is littered with failures, whose trying and failing was nevertheless necessary to the overall success.
  • darawk 5y ago
    This is exactly right. This kind of optimism is (usually) individually irrational, but extremely beneficial for the collective. Every time the world moves forward it's because some over-confident idiot bets everything on a hare brained idea. It's almost always ruinous, but on a societal level, the successes more than make up for all the failures.
    • Klinky 5y ago
      A lot of our biggest and most transformative "successes" have come at a price, and so do some of the biggest failure. I think the jury is out on net gain.
      • WalterBright 5y ago
        What about clean water? and vaccinations? and no more famine?
        • Klinky 5y ago
          Are these all from the profit seeking entrepreneur?
          • WalterBright 5y ago
            Lack of famine certainly is. Probably the greatest advance ever.
            • Klinky 5y ago
              Haber process was developed while Fritz Haber was at University of Karlsruhe, a public research university. BASF was hesitant to invest in it, but luckily employee/engineer(not exactly an entrepreneur) Carl Bosch was there to convince them otherwise, and was able to industrialize the process. Haber process also has its negatives, such as an ammonia resource for war, and the growing use of factory/unsustainable farming actually threatens environments and clean water. It is also one of the biggest consumers of energy on the planet. Maybe a better example is the transistor(and tons of other stuff) from Bell Labs, but AT&T wasn't exactly a plucky startup, and has a monopolistic/anti-competitive past that tarnishes its history. Maybe both of these examples show the importance of research, and the ability to tinker/explore solutions without profit motive pressures getting in the way.
              • nickpp 5y ago
                We've seen how non-profit-driven research works in Soviet countries: their spies were busy stealing tech from the west, while the country was falling further and further behind. Maybe there are many reasons to do research and people will often learn just for the sake of learning. But to turn that research into an actual useful, available product on the shelf - you need a profit motivation. Otherwise nobody will do the unsexy work and then there will not be money and nice condition for pure research either.
                • Klinky 5y ago
                  The US heavily invests in public research. The NIH budget is larger than all US billionaire's philanthropic donations combined. Public funding has great ability to affect change and discover. "Communists are scary" is a poor argument.
    • risyachka 5y ago
      Absolutely. And this is what drives the progress. This is one of the reasons US is leading in so many industries, especially tech. Sure many individuals will fail, but if you planned everything - you will recover. And the benefits for the collective/country are just so big.
  • Klinky 5y ago
    Ehh, I'd rather society focus on stable foundations that allow for thinking, tinkering and inventions, rather than moonshot attempts at getting rich that destroy you if they fail.
    • jstx1 5y ago
      This doesn't work if progress requires something like making a big jump from one cliff to another. Saying "let's move safely 1cm at a time" gets you to the edge of the cliff, and then you stop and you get nowhere.
      • sgtnoodle 5y ago
        A beginner rock climber should generally practice how to move safely from static position to static position before trying any riskier dynamic moves. That approach will indeed limit where they can climb to, though. An experienced climber can lunge themselves through the air to grip an otherwise unreachable handhold, allowing them to climb to otherwise impossible places. Even the best, most experienced rock climbers in the world take an inherent risk when making dynamic moves like that, and occasionally die as a result. I've gotten into climbing in the past, for the exercise and social aspects. I personally have no inherent desire to climb high enough to require a belay, and prefer the freedom of the bouldering walls in the gym. While I enjoy exploring big rocky areas of nature, I have no desire to dangle my legs over a cliff side or jump over crevices deep enough to severely injure or kill me, unless I have the appropriate safety equipment. As a software engineer typically working on safety critical embedded systems, I try to work pragmatically and incrementally, with a focus on avoiding regressions. When I need to make a riskier move for the good of the system architecture, I'll once again make sure I have the appropriate safety equipment i.e. a peer reviewed plan, unit tests, tooling improvements, etc. The CEO of the company I work for is actually a former professional rock climber. He and a couple other founders started the company with the goal of making an educational toy robot, and found success. They had a team of 20 or so, were shipping hardware, and had lined up millions of dollars of new investments. The founders then did some reflection, and realized that they didn't want to build toys. They took a huge leap and pivoted the company, and figuratively broke most of the company's bones in the process. Under a decade later, and it's a billion dollar company employing hundreds of people across the world, literally saving people from otherwise bleeding to death on a daily basis. The company I work for wouldn't exist in its current form if people like the CEO hadn't taken massive risks and "taken their licks" in the process. The company also wouldn't exist in its current form if they hadn't hired methodical people like me to engineer sustainable technical solutions to serve the business's needs. It seems like there's benefit to embracing both approaches, and as a society we should encourage the diversity of thought rather than discourage one approach or another. Also, there's risk in anything anyone ever does because life is fragile and ephemeral on a geological timescale. I'd rather live in a world where rock climbers plummet to their deaths occasionally rather than in a world without rock climbers. With the former, at least someone may one day invent Spock's rocket boots from Star Trek 5 (which he uses to save Kirk from otherwise plummeting to his death while rock climbing.)
• Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
  Absolutely, I've had friends with limited business or tech background pump hard-earned savings into crazy tech startup ideas, precisely because they've read too many of these success stories. I've been guilty of not trying to talk sense to some of them, so much so that there's one particular marriage break-up related to a stupid tech start up blowing a couples life savings that still haunts me. And for the record, here's some of the ideas that went down in flames... - An application like a geo-fenced Wikipedia for Android devices, except without any content worth using and charging 5 bucks/month for it. - A Flickr/Google maps mash up, again charging customers for a product that's executed much better, and free, elsewhere. - A health start-up targeting a condition that affects 1 in 100k people, usually quite mildly and benignly, but involves surgically implanting a device onto a nerve in the jaw. - A SaaS company, Salmon as a Service, providing next day delivery of fresh salmon, when the same thing can be bought at the local store.
  • andi999 5y ago
    Dont they say you do not invest in the idea but in the team (and hope the succesful pivot makes you rich)?
  • vkk8 5y ago
    > A SaaS company, Salmon as a Service, providing next day delivery of fresh salmon, when the same thing can be bought at the local store. If "fresh" really means caught on the day before, I would use this service. The "fresh" salmon in supermarkets is usually several days old.
    • Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
      Nope, this was from the same supplier as used by the supermarket. In fairness to them it might have been one day fresher than the stuff you get in the shop alright.
      • DimitriPetrov 5y ago
        But they sell wild caught salmon and grocery stores sell farmed salmon.There is a significant difference in quality. In fact most farmed salmon are dyed red to more closely resemble wild salmon
• drewcoo 5y ago
  The paper could just as easily be titled "MTurk Participants Respond As If They Believe What They Are Paid to Read."
  • kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Wait, it is just a MTurk based survey? I missed that upon first reading.
• lpapez 5y ago
  Prime example: if you go to any article about "OKR methodology" you will find the authors stating that it was OKRs that made Google what it is. If your manager sees such an article, you will be switching to OKRs instantly.
  • petecooper 5y ago
    >OKRs Today I learned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKR
    • yesenadam 5y ago
      "Objectives and key results (OKR, alternatively OKRs) is a goal setting framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to define measurable goals and track their outcomes. The development of OKR is generally attributed to Andrew Grove who introduced the approach to Intel during his tenure there. John Doerr published an OKR book which is called "Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs" in 2017."
    • marcosdumay 5y ago
      Looks like the basic procedure for planning. You decide what you want and break it down into more measurable pieces. My only problem with it is why the hell isn't this called "planning", instead of opaque jargon? Is there an ecosystem of consulting firms selling it? Besides how often plans lead to the planned outcome?
  • lampe3 5y ago
    The amount of companies doing now OKR is baffling to me. Also most companies I have seen and worked with are doing OKR as a to-do list for the management to check what people are doing.
    • lpapez 5y ago
      I can see the appeal, "use this and become the next Google". However, like you said, without a clear vision and long-term strategy, OKRs basically become "management wishlist".
• jonathankoren 5y ago
  Survivor bias is a thing. It reminds me of all the stories of the young college drop out with the successful company… that’s been funded by their rich parents.
  • cryptica 5y ago
    This is definitely a thing. Nowadays, the only thing I care about when considering to join a startup is "Does this founder have a rich daddy?"
  • goodpoint 5y ago
    Not only that, but many billionaires came from influential families with political connections, e.g. bill gates. Next thing, the majority of the top 100 billionaires came from families with wealth and education far above average, and from wealthy countries. Social mobility can be measured and numbers show that the rags-to-riches stories are statistically very rare. The best success advice is "be lucky" but the narrative of "hard work" is more convenient.
  • nickpp 5y ago
    • cryptica 5y ago
      If you look at who is getting all the funding, you will see that they have rich and/or politically connected family members in 99.9% of cases.
      • nickpp 5y ago
        That is simply not true. There are countless angel, pre-seed, seed and VC funds begging founders to apply and funding any idea with the slightest chance of success. We are rather living boom times in funding, both in US and EU. What we are lacking is entrepreneurs: people willing try to work and prove ideas.
        • 5y ago
• paraschopra 5y ago
  Wrote an essay a few years back on how to critically dissect a success story: https://invertedpassion.com/how-to-critically-dissect-a-success-story/ https://invertedpassion.com/how-to-critically-dissect-a-succ... I think there's definitely a lot to learn from success stories, but being critical and actively engaging with counterfactuals is the key to getting that benefit.
  • 123pie123 5y ago
    I like the essay - thanks
• szundi 5y ago
  Does anyone know a site that collects failure stories? Would be nice to check it out.
  • bytebln 5y ago
    Yes, here: https://www.failory.com/interviews?type-of-interview=Failed%20startup https://www.failory.com/interviews?type-of-interview=Failed%...
    • chrischapman 5y ago
      Wow. This is so useful. I'm always left a bit speechless when I come across something really useful like this. It should be a first stop for all would be entrepreneurs. Thanks.
• lampe3 5y ago
  From my personal experience I would say we have this bias not only when it comes to success stories. One person has done something good or bad. Then all people who are in that specific group must be like this. Think of Politicians. One does something bad they are all bad. One bicycle driver is riding like crazy so lets ban all of them. I had some bad Asian food so Asian food in general must be bad. Country X had a shooting once so it must be a unsafe country. You can find examples like that everywhere. It makes sense that we also have that bias when it comes to success stories. Plus with the social media culture of "Do thing X" and you will be successful. I see that all around: Write a paper journal and you will be successful. Wake up early and you will be successful. Read a bazillion books a year and you will be successful. Read my book and you will be successful. Listen to that podcast and you will be successful. Start a shitty idea startup and sell it after X years and you will be successful. In the end success is not only hard work. Its not only doing thing X. It has so many variables and random points that we can't just replicate someones success story. Just think about it for a second. As a European reading about US success stories. How much does it help? The (business) culture is totally different. Yes the internet makes it kind of easier but still its just not the same. Also whats different is that you are not starting at the same time, location, community, knowledge and luck/random level. So yeah its fun to read these success stories but they should not be your guide of how to become successful yourself.
  • bladegash 5y ago
    Great points and with that, I would say with that success, in my opinion, should be far more an internally derived metric than an external one. Sure, material success is one form of achievement in life. However, there are so many other forms of success (e.g., parenthood, safety, etc). FOMO is real and sometimes people measure themselves so harshly against the accomplishments of others that they fail to acknowledge their own successes in life.
    • pdimitar 5y ago
      I want to prioritize everything else more than money. For now I can't because I am mostly living month to month without any savings. I hear what you say but we operate on a hierarchy of priorities. Right now I am definitely above the survival stage... but only 1-2 tiers above. I can't in good conscience drop my job and just go gaze the stars with my wife. I won't be at peace. :|
• Animats 5y ago
  "Interestingly, however, the authors observed the opposite: despite seeing opposing examples or no data at all, the overwhelming majority of participants expressed substantial levels of confidence." Which is the usual big problem - overconfidence in the absence of data.
• cryptica 5y ago
  Yes, because the most critical element of most successes which are almost never mentioned in success stories is the social connectedness of the founders to wealthy individuals. This is 99.9% of what success is. You can have a terrible idea, terrible execution but if you're friends with the CEO of a big tech corporation, you are still likely to get a ton of funding and a multi-million dollar exit. This is made obvious based on how often they shut down the projects after acquisition; they never cared about the tech... It's pure cronyism.
• Grustaf 5y ago
  I think they probably do. But the worst part about success stories is all the LinkedIn cringe, inspirational quotes, smug advice and airport business books they generate.
• going_ham 5y ago
  Nobody writes it, but it's okay to have average job, with average life and average family as long as you can enjoy your life! Why burden yourself with idea of success and setting expectations. At this point I am sure life doesn't give anything unless you look for it. And even if you seek, there is no guarantee. So I think it's waste of energy. My experience so far. I am really glad that I learned how stability is necessary in life. I have been led into this "work and be successful" bias my reading PG's essay, story about motivated dropouts, Outlier's etc. I thought putting hours was enough to be successful! But nah, nothing is possible without some play of luck. Luck feels like multiplier. Therefore, now that old perspective has changed, I am able to see completely new perspective. Instead of startup I look for long term careers. Instead of chasing money, I chase my own curiosity with optimism. I accepted that I amount to nobody!! The beauty of this approach is I can let go of "I must do something important" mentality and explore anything which may sound super dumb and useless to society. For example, the other day I was looking into Gameboy architecture, one day GDB. That day I learnt you can record and replay programs in GDB! They don't teach this at college. The hindsight is I get to enjoy the life! To me enjoying my life is being successful ;)
  • andriesm 5y ago
    I fought like a mad man, because I had to try to become rich in shithole country that was busy imploding and erecting discrimination laws against my class of people... so it was not easy, but success already can be quite hard without a bit of luck... I made it... it was insane... yes it is very satisfying to have financial freedom... but oh boy the price I paid, I dunno if I can recommend it. I was the kind of guy who would crawl through broken glass (like Elon said) to get to success. I used to look. down on people who didn't persue their goals or didn't have grand goals... I do not anymore because I know it's not cowardice it could be entirely sensible. The price of. success can be very high. Sometimes too. high. Especially if you value other things that money does not buy. Still, money buys freedom and options. Which for. a creatively driven person who does not fit in well with the world, this is a VERY valuable thing.
  • whilestanding 5y ago
    Check out the underachievers manifesto. A short book that's right in line with what you're thinking in this post.
• polote 5y ago
  1. If we knew the factors to make successful companies vc would not fund 90% of companies that fails 2. We don't know what has made a company succeed, so success stories only show cherry picked reasons of the overall 3. Success stories are biased towards making people look good and less socially acceptable things (like, the founder lied to the customers) are hidden
  • brabel 5y ago
    > vc would not fund 90% of companies that fails Imagine if VCs were so good at spotting success that 90% of companies they funded were successful. They would then be able to fund a LOT of companies... but is there even a chance that there's actually room for so many new companies? Eventually, the rate of success would need to drop drastically, you can't just inject thousands of new companies into the world and expect them all to succeed. I always think about it like this: how many new services have I or my company actually purchased during a year, or even might want to purchase if we just had perfect knowledge about all these new companies coming up and had actual need for many of those? I can't think of it being more than one or two at most. Now, spread that over the whole population and you'll probably find that on average, only one or two companies could possibly enter any field successfully on any given year. And guess what: that's pretty much what we see in the real world.
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• cracrecry 5y ago
  First thing you need to do is define the term: Success Living in the US of America is already a success compared with most other places in the world. Success for most people is not making a billion dollar company. Success for them is being able to raise a family, work on their own, pursue their interests and be free. In the US you can do that way easier than in the rest of the world. Billionaires are not happier than other people. Sleeping on your job like Musk and working all the time will not make you happier. And most people will not do that if they have the opportunity, they will prefer doing things like spending more time with their family even if that means they don't get to be billionaires. I have seen men living isolated in Winter in Alaska and they were happy, because that is what they wanted to do. Obviously is you raise your bar so high (billion dollars) almost nobody will do it. But in the US you can actually make millions and have a freedom the rest of the world envies, if that is what you want, or maybe you want to surf all day long. Probably if you want to surf all day long and make a billion company it is way harder, but even that is possible in the USA, like the GoPro founder proves(he also bankrupted the company extracting so much for himself). In other countries the educative system selects early on(ten years old) who is going to be engineer or doctor, don't let you have kids (or now they want to force you to have them), have way less economic opportunities and horrible salaries, there are no self employed people, or tax you to death. Also the optimism the USA HAS is an enormous economic advantage over Asia, Europe and Africa. North Americans exterminated the native population living there very recently, almost in 20th century, and as a result have an enormous country with bast resources for a population that is small and young compared with Europe or Asia. Also they attract the brightest talent from the rest of the world, that does not like to be confiscatory taxed or censored or prosecuted. In most Europe and specially Asia most people is so old that Pessimism is part of the culture, it is an illness. Africa is young but pure chaos and extremely corrupt few places there have the peace you need to prosper working. In Japan for example, if you have an idea on your own almost everybody will try to sabotage it. Your friends and your family, for your own good.
  • throw8932894 5y ago
    > Living in the US of America is already a success compared with most other places in the world. > Success for most people is not making a billion dollar company. Success for them is being able to raise a family, work on their own, pursue their interests and be free. In the US you can do that way easier than in the rest of the world. This is such self absorbed and delusional opinion! Your point proves point of the article. US is extremely hostile to families. It is incredibly expensive to raise children. System itself is rigged against families, it tries to tear family structure apart. Even finding fertile partner who wants children is very difficult. Let us know when you get pregnancy leave and affordable health care :)
• taeric 5y ago
  Does showing a lottery winner increase the number of people that purchase lottery tickets? I feel that there are large parts of academia that have fallen behind, not to "industry" at large, but to marketing. :( Edit: To be fair, this is a study that is worth doing.
• aww_dang 5y ago
  On the other hand, belief in success is often a prerequisite to putting effort or resources towards a goal. Failure can teach important lessons to those willing to learn and adapt. Probability can be an interesting tool for approximating conditions, but ultimately if we are looking to profit from our actions we need to think about things from a deterministic perspective. I agree that a class of ridiculous "prosperity preachers" exists. These people sell a product which is similar to a diet fad. A fantasy people can indulge in without doing hard work or making sacrifices. Most people choose to focus on their successes. They might not list all of their failures. Meanwhile, those who have failed and quit might choose to focus on their failures. Unsolved problems become unsolvable items beyond their control. Themes of unfairness and the unreasonable expectations surrounding them usually follow. If we are to acknowledge survivor's bias, we should also acknowledge "croaker's bias". Just like there is irrationality surrounding prosperity preachers, there is also toxicity surrounding the "can't do", "it is all unfair", "he just got lucky", "because silver spoon" ideology. No effort is required to engage with this toxic ideology's self-fulfilling failure mode.
• temp12913231 5y ago
• hubraumhugo 5y ago
  I always liked the quote "Most advice is people giving you their winning lottery ticket numbers". There is always something to learn from others but you can’t just take their exact circumstance and map it onto yours.
  • Maursault 5y ago
    I like this one: I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.
    • kayodelycaon 5y ago
      Ecclesiastes 9:11. :)
    • Jiro 5y ago
      I like this version (whose source seems to be unknown, I googled it and found https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/04/race-swift/ ): The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet.
      • Maursault 5y ago
        But at what odds? The less your risk, the less your reward. With that strategy, ultimately, it's no longer betting.
• nathias 5y ago
  It's the error of consequentialism that maps the moral order with causality 1:1 and doesn't account for contingency.
• Maursault 5y ago
  Success itself causes false beliefs about success.
• jonplackett 5y ago
  I had a dumb idea about this a while ago - to do a massive completion for coin flipping. Get thousands of entries. Each ‘match’ just involves the two people flipping coins to decide the winner. You make a documentary about it where you ask everyone about their tactics and strategy. Someone has to win all their matches. They will have developed some ‘tactics’ that they probably strongly believe in. Of course we know it’s just completely random. It’s basically an exposé of survivorship bias. Probably no one would watch it though…
  • _qua 5y ago
    I think Warren Buffett used this example in one of his investor letters.
  • shmageggy 5y ago
    It's actually even worse than that though in real life, since (to continue the analogy) winning the first few rounds makes it easier to win subsequent rounds.
    • pdimitar 5y ago
      Depends on the circumstances in the real-life game you're playing but I hear you. From what I've seen, if you win the first N rounds (N=1..20) then you gain critical mass and it becomes harder and harder to fail. So yeah, what you say is based in solid reality in my experience as well.
  • rileyphone 5y ago
    Reminds me of the start of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead”, great absurdist play. https://www.cusd80.com/cms/lib6/AZ01001175/Centricity/Domain/963/Rosencrantz%20and%20Guildenstern%20Are%20Dead%20full%20text.pdf https://www.cusd80.com/cms/lib6/AZ01001175/Centricity/Domain...
  • gnicholas 5y ago
    There's a funny youtube video [1] about 10 coin flips in a row. The guy apparently did tons of takes until he got it. The successful take is one in which he alternates HTHT... which makes me think that he was trying for all H, all T, or alternating HT, to make it easier on himself. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHU-L3BLd_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHU-L3BLd_w
• kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  I don't think the article proves that all advice for becoming successful is bunk, just that it is difficult to evaluate. Surely "from nothing comes nothing" is still mostly true. Of course a lot of people these days believe that the only way to become rich is to inherit. Which ironically could also be a false belief about success, as per the article.
• bratwurst3000 5y ago
  I have chronic imposter syndrom… every success I have feels somehow like a lie… but honestly, better that way then believing to much in oneself… keeps one moving :)
• nottorp 5y ago
  Besides the survivor bias, most success stories are also incomplete. The non glamorous parts get skipped. Look up who Bill Gates' mother is if you wonder how they got IBM to talk to them for MS-DOS in the first place.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    IBM went to talk to Gary Kildall (CP/M) first.
    • nottorp 5y ago
      > IBM went to talk to Gary Kildall (CP/M) first. Yeah, and that makes sense. You need an OS you talk to the guy who has an OS first. What's not mentioned in any success story about MS is how they got to start talking with IBM in the first place after the negotiations for CP/M failed. It's not like they had an OS product. Anyway, networking is essential to doing business, we all agree on it. What I'm saying is the "success story" is incomplete because it doesn't mention it. And so are most other success stories, perhaps in less obvious ways.
      • WalterBright 5y ago
        > It's not like they had an OS product. Gates had a plan to get one, though. > networking Want to improve your odds? Go to tech conferences. I met and talked with Gates at one in the 80s. Nothing came of it, but I didn't really try to engage him. I spent a half hour talking to Allen, too. He offered me a job. I turned it down. My mom didn't open these doors. I did.
        • nottorp 5y ago
          > My mom didn't open these doors. I did. I'm pretty sure that your success story will be missing some facts too if you write it. Perhaps just because you don't consider them important. My one significant career enhancing event happened because I knew the right person. Not a parent, just another programmer friend who brought me into a job, but still.
• qaq 5y ago
  I think one trait that is a very strong indicator is ability to sell well. It's anecdotal but I literally know 0 people who are good at selling and who long term failed.
• mihaaly 5y ago
  Yes.
• dvh1990 5y ago
  Imagine if (apologies for the metaphor) each and every sperm cell knew the odds of fertilizing an egg and had a choice whether to pursue that goal or not. I think that in that case no egg would ever be fertilized, right? I think success is 99% dumb luck. I think everything in life is 99% dumb luck. The fact that each and every one of us exists is dumb luck. But if we resign to that belief, nobody will ever do anything interesting or grand. The remaining 1% (it's way less than 1% of course), is skill, determination, tenacity, ambition, etc. Without those, we wouldn't have any business successes. Should you draw lessons from successes like Elon, Bezos, Zuck, Jobs? To an extent. But you can't really emulate anybody else. Everyone needs to find their own path. But what we can do is get inspired by those people. Get inspired by the fact that some human being WAS able to achieve something interesting.
  • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    Elon, Zuck, Bezos, Jobs all had incredibly privileged backgrounds. Jobs was probably the poorest - which is to say his adopted parents were comfortably middle class - but he also had a mentor who worked at HP and deliberately scouted out smart kids with an interest in electronics. There's a sweet spot where opportunity, mentoring, and motivation are far more evenly distributed. The ideal growth culture provides a mix of challenges for everyone who can handle them and support - of all kinds - for everyone who shows some evidence of talent and motivation. Culturally we're nowhere close to that. So instead we have fairytales about super-special people who are incredibly smart and hard working - where in fact they're not outstandingly smart or hard working, but they may be more motivated (not always for good reasons) and possibly more divergent than average. And mostly they're born with extra opportunities which aren't available to most people. It's debatable if this is inspiring - or at least questionable if it's more inspiring than a much wider range of successes and success stories would be.
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• Arisaka1 5y ago
  Confirmation/survivorship bias thrives when paired together with the illusion of free will. If we were talking about a philosophical example of an apple tree in a remote closed garden, people would agree that the presence of the apple tree itself is a factor that plays a role to whether you'll eat an apple. No matter how much you can stretch your hand or climb a ladder, if there's no apple tree to climb there's no way you can eat apples no matter how hard you tried. But the more we increase the complexity (like putting a store that sells apples close to the garden) the more people are willing to believe that it was their own ability that made them eat an apple, and not the access to the tree or the store. Now increase that complexity even further and the noise will become high enough to make you think that everyone can get the metaphorical apple if they try, which is so dumb that is baffling to me. I had an argument with a friend over the role things outside of his control played in getting his first job as a self-taught. We almost made this a political argument for absolutely no reason. He felt offended because I was trying to tell him that the country of birth still plays a role on not only how much money you can potentially make but also the ease of access to entry level jobs (unemployment rates are a thing outside of your control). People would rather romanticize their self-reliance than adjust it by admitting external circumstances as ONLY A FACTOR to their success, to the point where they will feel offended and rather remove you from their life than admit the role of the environment and timing in everything we do.
  • asiachick 5y ago
    but none of them had any choice in how they reacted now did you have a choice in how you reacted since as you pointed out free will is an illusion
  • hartator 5y ago
    This is just basic nihilism. Nihilism is easily rejected for things that matter. It’s easy to reject the abstracted Apple when you are not hungry. Bur when you are hungry, you are very glad you have access to these apples; no matter what social projections of privilege or not you thought these apple were representing when your belly was full.
    • Noumenon72 5y ago
• peoplefromibiza 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...
• 8K832d7tNmiQ 5y ago
  Success stories has been a textbook example of survivorship bias, and I'm surprised people still religiously follow them with no questions.
• chiefalchemist 5y ago
  This boils down to story taking precedent over fact. More specifically, there's a difference between causation and correlation;a delta that is so often ignored,even by the experienced and intelligent.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  Do fail stories cause false beliefs about failure/success?
  • paulryanrogers 5y ago
    My personal theory is that story telling is an ancient meme that may predate modern humans. By telling failure and success stories we learn from the experiences of others, sometimes even when exaggerated or largely fictional. On the whole it makes some tribes better equipped to survive. Even the movie Croods has the father telling failure stories each night to warn the kids. At least until meeting the more 'successful' boy.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• lvl100 5y ago
  Depends on what you see as success. Often times it equates to money and that’s a bad way to view success. A good deal of monetary success is by luck and/or exploitations.
• refurb 5y ago
  I recommend people read the book “The Halo Effect”. It’s not about individual success but corporate success. Basically it’s all BS and the book outlines some nice ways to identify it.
• ksec 5y ago
  Yes. And I have been challenging many of these false beliefs and bias for over a decade. The amount of crap people take as gospel from VCs. ( Not hating on VCs ) Things like "Execution eats strategy for breakfast". But this is tiring. For a different reason. So what happen is media will now try this narrative. See if it works. And if it did, it will enter a positive feedback loop ( in terms of clicks ) and the whole PR industry reinforces itself. Mass public will now start hating on these success stories. The pendulum will swing from one end to another. Success Stories Cause False Beliefs About Success wasn't "false" 10 years ago. It is only false now because the narrative no longer works for masses. Everything depends on context. But no one want the context, they only want the answer.
• Cupertino95014 5y ago
  "Do <outlier> examples lead people to think that <outlier's outcome> might be theirs?" It's everywhere: One kid becomes autistic after the DPT vaccine, and everyone hears about it. Someone sees you jogging on three separate days, and assumes you must do it every day. Several people I know or know of are killed in private plane crashes, so I won't go up in a private plane anymore. (Just to show I'm not immune either.) People are helpless at estimating likelihood.
• thenerdhead 5y ago
  > For instance, disproportionate attention is placed on wildly successful “unicorn” companies, while the far greater number of unsuccessful companies often goes unaccounted for. There is a "winner takes all" market effect on success stories in general. They almost become their own trope and honestly exhausting to hear the same ones referenced in every piece of literature and copy/pasted on social media. The reality is that if you do the things the 1% do, your odds are higher at becoming part of the 1%. The challenge though is that if everybody tells you that you need to do the things the 1% do, you're really doing what the 99% are doing. Your success is subject to your own story. Imitate, iterate, and make it your own.
• rileyphone 5y ago
  I recommend the book The Scout Mindset which examines biases like these and advocates for a more epistemic, “scoutlike” approach rather than sheer confidence. Self help for people who don’t like self help.
• benreesman 5y ago
  I’m no finance expert, but I’ve been semi-adjacent to finance stuff enough to end up in conversations with tons of friends/family about what makes for investment returns in everything from tech startups to US equities to crypto coins and have coined a tongue-in-cheek maxim: Reesman’s First Law of Investment Success Evaluation: As concerns returns, that which can explained by survivorship bias is due to survivorship bias.
• after_care 5y ago
  > Optimizing predictions for sounding good as stories, when nature optimizes for no such thing, creates a bias that Nick Bostrom has termed good-story bias. [0] If you do not think you suffer from this bias I suggest you review the bias blind spot, or the failure to believe you are biased. [1] [0] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/good-story-bias https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/good-story-bias [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot