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Resenting someone's good fortune helps no one but certainly hurts the resenter by blinding them to what (could have) helped the other guys attain said good fort

by Sai_ 3y ago

Resenting someone's good fortune helps no one but certainly hurts the resenter by blinding them to what (could have) helped the other guys attain said good fortune. Yes, Reddit had standard Web 2.0 features but they had to build it and have it working when the masses arrived. Yes, they were helped by YC but they had to go out and market themselves to the people running YC. Yes, they were alive, if barely, when Digg suicided, but give them credit for being around. To me, the key takeaway is not to resent their success but to keep doing the little things that matter, stay in the game for as long as you reasonably can, and wait for the pack leader to falter. In fact, some pols make careers out of this - e.g., the October Surprise aspect of US elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise. It take hard work to get lucky.

flangola7 3y ago
This entire comment is unnecessary. Nothing that they said is incorrect. Whether you, personally, consider it "resentment" or not is completely irrelevant.
- Sai_ 3y ago
  Did you miss that the OP themselves used the word “resent”? Don’t know if they edited their comment to remove the word “resent” (haven’t checked) but it was certainly there when I replied to them.
rcxdude 3y ago
I don't think the resentment is for the good fortune, it's for the misattribution of the source of the fortune. It's a massive survivorship bias which happens everywhere: for every instance of someone working hard, waiting for the oppurtunity, getting lucky and having great success, there are many instances of people working just as hard on just as reasonable bets, for just as long if not longer, and not getting lucky, and you don't hear their stories. And because luck is such a strong component, looking at what successful people have done is a very noisy signal for what leads to success, especially once you get to any specifics. That's where the resentment comes from, the assumption that because these execs were successful that this was due to great foresight alone, and very little due to luck.

by Sai_ 3y ago

flangola7 3y ago

This entire comment is unnecessary. Nothing that they said is incorrect. Whether you, personally, consider it "resentment" or not is completely irrelevant.

Sai_ 3y ago
Did you miss that the OP themselves used the word “resent”? Don’t know if they edited their comment to remove the word “resent” (haven’t checked) but it was certainly there when I replied to them.

rcxdude 3y ago

I don't think the resentment is for the good fortune, it's for the misattribution of the source of the fortune. It's a massive survivorship bias which happens everywhere: for every instance of someone working hard, waiting for the oppurtunity, getting lucky and having great success, there are many instances of people working just as hard on just as reasonable bets, for just as long if not longer, and not getting lucky, and you don't hear their stories. And because luck is such a strong component, looking at what successful people have done is a very noisy signal for what leads to success, especially once you get to any specifics. That's where the resentment comes from, the assumption that because these execs were successful that this was due to great foresight alone, and very little due to luck.