It's a trend that's well supported afaik [1]. Whether or not that trend manifests inside you as a defeatist attitude is a personal choice. But at the same time,

It's a trend that's well supported afaik [1]. Whether or not that trend manifests inside you as a defeatist attitude is a personal choice. But at the same time, whatever attitude you have isn't going to magically get rid of whatever disadvantages you were born into, so simply dismissing it a defeatist attitude is counterproductive. The danger is ignoring the tendency of egocentric bias in these articles[2]. Successful people assume that their values and ethics are what led them to success, when that may not be true. Though that then bears the question: who do we listen to for advice on success? Rich people? Scientific studies [3]? A thread I read on a previous hackernews post (coincidentally about Paul Graham, another founder of ycombinator) perhaps puts these ideas in better words than I [4] [1]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/00346543075003417 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/003465430750034... [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I [3]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419857706 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198577... [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27682107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27682107