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- Even very successful people frequently misunderstand their own success Do you think this is related to impostor syndrome[1], or something different? Perhaps

• dhimes 13y ago
  I think it's partly to do with the fact that in a complex system it's sometimes pretty difficult to clearly identify lines of cause and effect, but most smart people will think about it until they've satisfied themselves that they have figured it out. This is why I'm not so sold on advice given by 'one-hit wonders,' people who scored big with a startup and are now seen as gurus because of it. I'm interested to hear what they say, but I'm skeptical.
• nl 13y ago
  No, I think Amir is suggesting something different here. I suspect what Amir is saying is that some successful people attribute their success to one thing, but that may not be the actual reason. As an example - where the successful person has been clever enough to recognise their initial hypothesis for their success may have had flaws - many early Paul Graham essays credited the success of his Viaweb startup to the use of Lisp[1], while now most of his advice doesn't touch on a specific technology stack at all[2]. From my experience the things successful people credit for their success are infrequently wrong, but very often incomplete. [1] eg, http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html (from 2001) [2] eg http://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html (2013)