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Reading this conversation reminded me of something Steve Jobs once said: "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter t
by kidsil 4y ago
Reading this conversation reminded me of something Steve Jobs once said:
"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.
Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again"
- swalsh 4y agoIntelligence has diminishing returns. Not enough, and that is a problem, but as you get more it becomes worth less and less by itself. The most valuable commodity in our economy is productive attention. A dude with a 105 IQ who "grinds" 16 hours a day will out-compete a dude with a 130 IQ who has a million ideas and thoughts, but can't grind them to reality. Of course someone who is high in both, can become Elon Musk.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoYou forgot the bit where you inherit an apartheid emerald fortune.
- Cwizard 4y agoI will be honest, even if I would inherit a fortune 2x as large I would still not be able to achieve what that guy has done. Impressive regardless of any inherited ‘privilege’. Sure he is a little weird but who isn’t.
- svnt 4y agoYou would also need the capitalist indoctrination at a young age so you’re inherently acquisitive at an animal level, and then a ton of luck. You would likely get the first part for free if your parents managed to amass that kind of fortune. The second part is just success bias over a large enough population.
- b112 4y agoSo your assertion is that people who start with capital, always succeed, irrespective of the parent's statement? Because loads of people have a leg up, and go absolutely no where.
- boringg 4y agoIn fact there are a lot of expressions describing how most people born of wealth go on to lose it. From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves …
- Schroedingersat 4y agoI never asserted you don't need the other things. You need intelligence, social skills, hard work, privilege, and a complete lack of morals.
- b112 4y agoWhat a horrible, dim, dark view of reality. You do not need a lack of morals to succeed. And privilege is not a precursor for success either, it just helps, and as others have said, very much does not guarantee anything.
- svnt 4y ago> You do not need a lack of morals to succeed. What is your definition of success? What is your definition of morals? Parent probably means something like “become a billionaire through hostile takeovers” and “interpersonal applied empathy, conscientiousness, and compassion.”
- muglug 4y agoI think Elon is a shit person, and deserves tons of scrutiny, but this line of attack is not really true. It's hard to square the idea that he inherited all that money with his life in Canada as a student, where by all accounts he was living with a lot of debt, paycheck to paycheck.
- EricDeb 4y agoI think it's fair to say he was well off enough that he knew he had a nice fallback if he took some risk. He may not have actually been getting checks from his parents but I'm sure he had a nice inheritance coming.
- flavius29663 4y agoemerald fortune? His father paid 275k USD or so for that mine. It's not that much...average people on HN make that in a year. He says his father invested 20k or so in his business, again very little by comparison. Elon Musk was definitely privileged, but he built himself up.
- ForHackernews 4y ago> Elon Musk was definitely privileged, but he built himself up. Mostly he got lucky that his early crappy company got acquired by Paypal, and then he won the Paypal lottery. The Musk story is about 70% right-place-right-time, 25% great salesmanship and 5% actual engineering genius. Keep in mind this is a guy who thinks a billion dollar explosive vacuum tube[0] is a better idea than... a train. [0] https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/'serious-engineering-analysis-shows-hyperloop-is-decades-away https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/'serious-engineerin...
- flavius29663 4y agoI think Musk is both an engineer but also a great salesman. The stupid tube is the salesman part... A lot of people won the paypal lottery, also other lotteries...if you keep winning the lottery(paypal, starlink, tesla, spaceX) maybe it's not a lottery after all. Few have driven a handful of companies to success like he did. That being said, it's hard to trust the guy, because you never know when it's the salesman or the engineer making the pitch. Also, I wouldn't want to work for him.
- colinmhayes 4y ago> The Musk story is about 70% right-place-right-time, 25% great salesmanship and 5% actual engineering genius It's just so hard for me to believe this when he's had 3 successful companies. At that point he's making his own luck. I'd put the numbers at 20% luck for being able to attend expensive schools, 65% salesmanship for getting people into EVs and rockets and being a huge persona on twitter, and 15% being good at listening to the engineers he hires and getting the most out of them.
- 4y ago
- nashashmi 4y agoExcess Intelligence is like weight weighing you down and preventing you from movement. Intelligence when you are moving fast is like energy and it helps you move faster.
- czbond 4y agoIt's not intelligence. I've found too smart of people typically prophesize as an intellectual exercise rather than feeling the "I have to do something or I'm a failure so let's get building" of the lesser IQ's.
- kilroy123 4y agoWhile I believe this deeply. Putting really smart people into a room to work on big things is optimal.
- checkyoursudo 4y agoI sympathize, but there is also a tendency for these "big things" that attract groups of really smart people to be the rooms of the biggest money-making ventures rather than the best-social-benefit ventures, no?
- towaway15463 4y agoI’d agree if you replace “smart” with “competent and experienced in the domain in question” and “room” with “the place where their decisions are going to be implemented”.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rexreed 4y agoHaving money and resources, influence and respect certainly doesn't hurt either. I've known a lot of great people with great ideas but poor in resources, networks, and connections, and also lacking much respect out of small circles. They were certainly smarter than others, but they were also unable to influence much.
- czbond 4y agoTrue - but most founders don't have any of those. I know many, many founders. They were all broke as f*ck for years to build it, living off a spouse working ... to magically exit. It ain't money, it's hard work eschewing the other opportunities many so quickly jump at. It's being there building long enough to have "the timing" work out for you. Or it's being so right with timing that you in essence lucked on that part of the curve out. People don't like hearing this bc it's against their personal narrative.
- themenomen 4y ago"living off a spouse working" is not exactly "broke as f*ck". If that disappears, then yes, is mostly about money.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- czbond 4y ago2 people 1 middle income wage with kids (most I knew had young kids).... is close to scraping by. Some were on foodstamps. Meaning - it can be done by many in the U.S. - that's the take-a-way for everyone reading this.
- tomtheelder 4y agoI mean my anecdote vs. your anecdote, but every successful founder I have ever met had significant personal resources that allowed them to take almost no personal risk, and in most cases they had immense resources that gave them a significant leg up. I have never, ever seen a successful founder who was broke, unless they were a college student in which case broke is not really as useful a descriptor.