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I think the real problem with success has nothing to do with psychological issues. It's that it often shields you from having to confront your blind spots, negl

I think the real problem with success has nothing to do with psychological issues. It's that it often shields you from having to confront your blind spots, neglectful attitudes and delusions. Not having to face reality seems more like a positive thing in terms of mental health. It's like religion, it creates mental comfort. It's a comfortable abstraction which makes things seem better and simpler than they are. When you fail, you are forced to confront the causes of your failure; the things you didn't see or anticipate (your blind spots) and you start to see the world in higher resolution. After enough failures, starting anything can become difficult because you can see all the things which can go wrong and you realize that there are so many of them that you have almost no control at all over your own success. Almost all the variables are against you; if any of them doesn't line up exactly right, it's over. When you're successful, most of the variables tend to work in your favor, even those you don't see or understand... That's why most wealthy people still don't understand that the fiat monetary system is broken, for example.

zamfi 4y ago
Super anecdotal, but most people I know that fit your description had one success early in their careers and then rode that wave to future successes. That is definitely some people, and perhaps even many of the people who are the most visible (since that visibility is one way to ride the wave). But by far most of the successful people I know have confronted a ton of failure as well, and adapt to it quickly: they treat it as a noisy data point, take what they can from it (like updating blind spots, etc.), and move on. You don’t make 100% of the shots you don’t take, and precisely because there are so many variables you can’t control, you need to take many shots. The folks who see failures as inevitable and as barriers to success and who as a result don’t even bother to try…almost by definition cannot succeed. I think you may have the causality pointing the wrong way here.
bobthechef 4y ago
cs137 4y ago
This is on the money, and it's a real problem. You see survivorship bias all over this economy, and it's manifested most strongly in the self-help and toxic-positivity cultures. People who succeed don't understand or know why. They might have earned their success (some did, some didn't) but being competent at something is orthogonal to knowing why one succeeded at it, over the hundreds of others who fell on their faces. They know the least about how the system works, because they won the lottery by having the whole edifice stay out of their way. On the other hand, people who failed tend to know exactly why they failed. This doesn't mean they understand the system either. Individually, almost no one does--successful or otherwise. Thing is, no one wants to listen to them. All they can tell you is what not to do, through a story with a depressing ending. It's very easy to write them off as bitter old washouts who never belonged in the game in the first place. In general, there's a conflict in our society that, I think, explains a lot of the weird dichotomies that emerge, including political ones, and it's this: holding an external locus of control and a negative view of society makes you correct, but isn't always conducive to ideal mental health. On the other hand, believing in an internal locus of control and holding a pleasant view of society, although it largely makes you incorrect, seems to increase the likelihood that you will enjoy positive mental health and therefore succeed. Classical decision theory holds that having more information leads to better decisions and higher utility; on the other hand, when it comes to locus-of-control and the nature of society, being correct is observably maladaptive. It's tough to say which is "better".
- cryptica 4y ago
  This resonates strongly with me. It seems to be a kind of vicious cycle. By over-idealizing successful individuals and completely discarding the unsuccessful ones, society is going to keep offering more opportunities to those successful individuals and thus make it easier for them to keep succeeding (while retaining their blindspots) and fewer opportunities will be given to unsuccessful individuals who have learned to see the world in the highest resolution. But really, who is the better player after 10 years? The person who keeps losing while playing the game in 'impossible mode' or the person who keeps winning while playing in 'easy mode'? It may be that we've reached a point where the people who are running the world today are among those who least understand it (they certainly seem to be missing all the details and nuance). That might explain why a lot of what's currently happening in society comes across as ridiculous, nonsensical or hypocritical to the majority. Clown world.

zamfi 4y ago

Super anecdotal, but most people I know that fit your description had one success early in their careers and then rode that wave to future successes. That is definitely some people, and perhaps even many of the people who are the most visible (since that visibility is one way to ride the wave). But by far most of the successful people I know have confronted a ton of failure as well, and adapt to it quickly: they treat it as a noisy data point, take what they can from it (like updating blind spots, etc.), and move on. You don’t make 100% of the shots you don’t take, and precisely because there are so many variables you can’t control, you need to take many shots. The folks who see failures as inevitable and as barriers to success and who as a result don’t even bother to try…almost by definition cannot succeed. I think you may have the causality pointing the wrong way here.

bobthechef 4y ago

cs137 4y ago

This is on the money, and it's a real problem. You see survivorship bias all over this economy, and it's manifested most strongly in the self-help and toxic-positivity cultures. People who succeed don't understand or know why. They might have earned their success (some did, some didn't) but being competent at something is orthogonal to knowing why one succeeded at it, over the hundreds of others who fell on their faces. They know the least about how the system works, because they won the lottery by having the whole edifice stay out of their way. On the other hand, people who failed tend to know exactly why they failed. This doesn't mean they understand the system either. Individually, almost no one does--successful or otherwise. Thing is, no one wants to listen to them. All they can tell you is what not to do, through a story with a depressing ending. It's very easy to write them off as bitter old washouts who never belonged in the game in the first place. In general, there's a conflict in our society that, I think, explains a lot of the weird dichotomies that emerge, including political ones, and it's this: holding an external locus of control and a negative view of society makes you correct, but isn't always conducive to ideal mental health. On the other hand, believing in an internal locus of control and holding a pleasant view of society, although it largely makes you incorrect, seems to increase the likelihood that you will enjoy positive mental health and therefore succeed. Classical decision theory holds that having more information leads to better decisions and higher utility; on the other hand, when it comes to locus-of-control and the nature of society, being correct is observably maladaptive. It's tough to say which is "better".

cryptica 4y ago
This resonates strongly with me. It seems to be a kind of vicious cycle. By over-idealizing successful individuals and completely discarding the unsuccessful ones, society is going to keep offering more opportunities to those successful individuals and thus make it easier for them to keep succeeding (while retaining their blindspots) and fewer opportunities will be given to unsuccessful individuals who have learned to see the world in the highest resolution. But really, who is the better player after 10 years? The person who keeps losing while playing the game in 'impossible mode' or the person who keeps winning while playing in 'easy mode'? It may be that we've reached a point where the people who are running the world today are among those who least understand it (they certainly seem to be missing all the details and nuance). That might explain why a lot of what's currently happening in society comes across as ridiculous, nonsensical or hypocritical to the majority. Clown world.