[HN Gopher] How to increase your luck surface area (2010) ___________________________________________________________________ How to increase your luck surface area (2010) Author : deadcoder0904 Score : 250 points Date : 2021-01-30 13:09 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.codusoperandi.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.codusoperandi.com) | jonnycomputer wrote: | Given just how much _bad_ luck I 've had in my life, I'm not sure | I want to increase my Luck Surface Area. | | Ha ha. I know, that's not what the blog post is talking about. | Well, sort of. Obviously, more exposure also means more risk. | Like, I never used to get publication scam spam until I got | published. | Invictus0 wrote: | There is no such thing as being lucky. It is just a matter of | perspective. Luck is what happens when people spontaneously feel | grateful. | OgAstorga wrote: | Isn't a good hand in Texa's considered luck? Isn't being | invited by M. Zuckerberg to help code a side project named | thefacebook considered luck (whether or not you've accepted)? | Invictus0 wrote: | These are just circumstances that present themselves to you. | They are no more or less lucky than waking up in the morning, | seeing the sun shine, or having clean water to drink. It's a | matter of perspective. | freshpots wrote: | Check this out, your opinion may change: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I (12:03) | adnzzzzZ wrote: | Check this out, your opinion may change: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw (54:01) | alfiedotwtf wrote: | I think from your comment, you didn't the article | sh490 wrote: | By increasing the size of your exposure. Ideally, diversifying | exposure to opportunities/people/circles/etc. | | This should be done concurrently with (if not as a result of) | increasing quality and amount of your output. By the time you | meet the 'right' person, are in the 'right circle', you'll have | something to show. Otherwise, it's wasted opportunity, and hence | wasted luck. | hntrader wrote: | That's what the article says: | | Luck = Doing * Telling | bigbassroller wrote: | I have come to a similar conclusion through the phrase "luck is | opportunity meets preparation". | yalogin wrote: | This is only tangentially related to the article. | | I keep hearing a lot of "put effort into what you are passionate | about". One thing I found is passion is also generated. It | happened to be many times, I force myself to work and n something | for some time and I automatically see the beauty/challenge in it | and develop the motivation without the need to push. I want to | hear other's opinions on it. | pontifier wrote: | This puts the onus on others. In my opinion the biggest | contributors to luck are observation i.e. the ability to see | opportunity, and willingness to execute on the opportunities you | see. | motohagiography wrote: | Taleb talked about this with his recommendation to get exposure | to randomness that has asymmetric upside, and is analogous to | luck is preparedness meeting opportunity. What I like about the | OP's model is it also explains the asymmetry of social media | where people do very little at all and talk about is _a lot_ | because the kind of non-linear success we are aiming for is a | function of exposure. | | When you have wealth of any kind, you naturally orient to getting | exposure to opportunity for diversified parts of it, but when you | have a scarcity view, your decisions are necessarily all/nothing, | and it even becomes a class culture thing. It's circumstances, | but also learned attitude. | | Related, I'm sympathetic to what's happening with GME and WSB, if | a young persons net worth is four digits, it seems insane _not_ | to gamble it on options, as the housing bubble has cut off the | last way for working people to get leverage. GME may mark the | inflection point in the markets where young people realize it 's | their best or even only opportunity for leverage, and meme stocks | are going to be the new normal because the economy doesn't | provide anything better to invest in for under $50k. (that is, | unless remote work makes distant property viable to live in) | stouset wrote: | Your observation about young people with four-figure net worths | thinking it's rational to gamble it all on options is pretty | much this week's equivalent of those living paycheck-to- | paycheck "investing" in the lottery. | | The bigger problem is that this is rarely just a one-time | decision to gamble. And repeatedly doing this is statistically | pretty certain to lose you significant amounts of money-- | particularly when compared to just investing in the market as a | whole--over the long run. It's just another way that the poor | are trapped in poverty, even though you can of course always | find individual cases where someone got lucky and made | millions. | | This is one of the reasons I think Robinhood is a | _fundamentally_ an evil company. It's been pretty conclusively | demonstrated that the more trades you make as a retail | investor, the worse your returns. To wit: Fidelity did some | internal research on their customers to see which cohort had | the highest returns. The winning cohort? The dead. Dead people | don't make trades, and so perform better than the living who | do. I'd be willing to bet a _large_ sum of money that | Robinhood's internal metrics conclusively prove that the net | effect of their existence is a wealth transfer from the poor to | the rich. | | The real Robin Hood-esque company in this whole thing is | Vanguard, who have almost certainly done more than most any | other company in this space to return profits from the market | to customers of all wealth ranges. | jcims wrote: | >Your observation about young people with four-figure net | worths thinking it's rational to gamble it all on options is | pretty much this week's equivalent of those living paycheck- | to-paycheck "investing" in the lottery. | | One difference here is the solidarity aspect of meme stocks | vs lottery. | conformist wrote: | These are good points and the lottery analogy seems quite | accurate. I think, there may be an additional macro-aspect to | this: If you are a young person with a four-figure net worth, | you should be able to leverage this to buy (non-financial) | options that have a much higher expected payoff than hyped | stock options. For example, being able to quit a job to apply | for others, moving to another town, spending additional time | and money on education or similar. These are all options that | you haven't got without the four-figure net worth. The real | tragedy is that these options seem to be becoming more | expensive or scarcer. Many are still better than an iterated | lottery, but the (perceived) decline in optionality may be | worthy of some sympathy. (Completely agree on Vanguard.) | throwaway2245 wrote: | > Your observation about young people... equivalent of those | living paycheck-to-paycheck "investing" in the lottery. | | You're so close to uncovering something here...! Why do you | think so many people play the lottery? | ghaff wrote: | I'm sure there are many reasons. But many boil down to: I | (rightly or wrongly) think a few lottery tickets don't | really matter to my ability to eat/make rent/etc., it's fun | to dream, and it's the only way I'll ever have even a | remote chance to be "rich." | dataflow wrote: | > Your observation about young people with four-figure net | worths thinking it's rational to gamble it all on options is | pretty much this week's equivalent of those living paycheck- | to-paycheck "investing" in the lottery. | | It's not--the lottery is _by design_ guaranteed to have | negative expected returns. The stock market isn 't. | graeme wrote: | Stock trading has negative expected returns compared to buy | and hold though. | the_local_host wrote: | > Your observation about young people with four-figure net | worths thinking it's rational to gamble it all on options is | pretty much this week's equivalent of those living paycheck- | to-paycheck "investing" in the lottery. | | But when you "invest" in the lottery, you don't get to help | blow up a hedge fund. I think many of the retail participants | in the GME phenomenon find some entertainment value in what | they're doing. | | That said, I do think Robinhood makes it too easy for people | to put on positions that they simply don't understand. The | fiasco with "1R0NYMAN" comes to mind. | im3w1l wrote: | So something I've been thinking about: Living people enter | the market when they make money, and they do that in a | correlated way (times of high employment). And they exit the | market in a correlated way to spend on retirement or college | or whatever. Entering and exiting when everyone else do means | you get a bad price. | sokoloff wrote: | I agree with your points on trading frequency, but I still | think Robinhood is good for people rather than bad. | | I think the alternative destination for a lot of that | Robinhood money isn't "Vanguard VTSAX" but rather slightly | positive lifestyle inflation/expenses. | | To the extent that's the case, all the gamification and | reinforcement is creating a behavior that's better than the | likely alternative. (Returns are not good if your total | _lifetime_ investment trades are zero.) | dehrmann wrote: | > The real Robin Hood-esque company in this whole thing is | Vanguard | | This. | | I do worry a bit that there's something I'm missing because | Vanguard is a Boomer thing that's no longer relevant, but I | suspect all the research is solid and Vanguard being | shareholder-owned aligns interests. Robinhood is probably | just clever marketing and gamification of stock and options | trading. | threedots wrote: | No you're good. I'm a career hedge-fund/market guy and all | of my investable assets (outside of my company and my | house) are in vanguard trackers. I'd guess most of my | friends who are professional investors are the same (except | they likely have some investment in their own fund). | | That's not to say there aren't better investment options in | the world but they aren't accessible to ordinary people | (even quite rich ones). | dehrmann wrote: | > I'd guess most of my friends who are professional | investors are the same | | I'm curious about this. Hedge fund guys make enough to be | accredited investors, but they mostly don't invest in | them? Are the minimums too high? Are the yields not that | great? I know the 2010's weren't great years for hedge | funds. I also halfway wonder if the _real_ product hedge | funds sell is complex strategies to pension fund manages | who think it 's hard to explain their job if they're just | buying index funds. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | Being a 4 digit net worth grad student in Europe, riding a | few meme stocks just for a short-while has increased my | 'wealth' and given me tremendous amount of financial freedom. | I understand that the odds are against me, but really, the | expectation even when accounting for variance, and adjusting | for risk tolerance are a no brainer to me. | | I made >40% of my net worth in the first 2 weeks of January | alone, and with GME I have multiplied my net worth by | (>tenfold). Yes I understand that these are 'extraordinary | times', but accounting for everything. I have literally | nothing to lose. I can fast for a week if I need to, I can | walk instead of taking the metro. Whatever. I am not going to | lose a lifestyle that I never had and I never had a safety | net to begin with because being a 4 digit net worth student | doesn't give you any safety net. | | Keeping track of my bets even before getting into this, I was | right more often than not, and I am aware of survivorship | bias and confirmation bias. In the limit, it makes more sense | to spend 4-5 hours per day learning about market analysis, | observing trends close to me and making decisions about | sectors/fields that I know about. | tylerhou wrote: | In the short term, when someone gains in the stock market, | someone else loses. Because of "invisible" transaction fees | that go to Wall Street, retail is losing on net. So in the | bigger picture, small investors aren't winning, despite our | insistence that we are. Some of us are winning. Most of us | are losing. And the net result is that Wall Street is | getting richer. That's not good. | uyt wrote: | Expected value (a straightforward sum of total money in | the system) is the wrong way to look at it. | | His point is that the expected _utility_ of these gambles | is still positive for people who have nothing. | tylerhou wrote: | Expected utility is positive implies that people have | discontinuous utility functions wrt. money. That is, | utility will jump significantly after reaching a certain | net worth. | | Another explanation that is consistent with gambling | behavior is that people have inaccurate _risk_ functions; | that they overestimate positive upside and underestimate | downside. | | I am not familiar with the economic literature. But I | believe that there is more evidence to support the second | hypothesis. Behavioral economics has showed that humans | are notoriously unable to estimate risk accurately. I | have not seen as much evidence that humans have | discontinuous utility functions. | | Behavioral economics also tells us that humans are also | terrible at estimating their actual utility functions. So | I also don't trust the original poster who _claims_ that | they have a discontinuous utility function. The only way | to test that is to observe actual human behavior. | salty_biscuits wrote: | The obvious discontinuity is "never have to work". People | talk about this all the time when they talk about this | stuff. | [deleted] | darkerside wrote: | The trouble is that, if it works, why wouldn't you try it | again? You're not only a single data point, you are also a | snapshot in time. Two months ago, you didn't have much. | And, unless you truly decide to stop doing what you're | doing, you are likely to have about the same two months | from now. | credit_guy wrote: | My advice to you would be to have an exit plan. For | example, set aside 20% of your assets in a savings account, | maybe even some type of account where it's not that easy to | cash out, to limit the temptation of dipping into it. Then, | as your assets grow (if they do), at various thresholds, | you set aside preset amounts of money. This way, if you | "lose it all" one day, you don't get to "walk instead of | taking the metro", you get to afford a down payment for a | smaller apartment instead of a bigger one. | __turbobrew__ wrote: | Why not go to the casino and bet your 4 digit net worth on | black jack? You probably have similar or better odds of | making money compared to meme stocks. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | I wouldn't say so. After running some simulations and | assuming a fair dealer, it makes more sense to follow | r/wsb. Doing a sentiment analysis on WSB after you | account for bots and spam generally outperforms the | market. | stouset wrote: | Look, it's great that you managed to be one of the people | who came out ahead in all of this. | | But while you personally have seen some success so far, | it's important to recognize that _overall_ this is a | transfer of wealth from people in your financial situation | to the wealthy. The fact that this one situation is so | incredibly newsworthy should be strong evidence of how | unlikely such successes are in practice. | | Further, a lot of the people holding on to $GME right now | _will_ be caught holding the bag once the selloff begins. | Once the reversion happens, there won 't be buyers willing | to take this rapidly-pluging asset at every price point | along the way. Certainly some people will get out at sky- | high prices, but the overwhelming majority will be left | holding a $10 asset they purchased at $400+. | | > I made >40% of my network in the first 2 weeks of January | alone... | | Only if you've sold. And if you haven't, I do genuinely | hope that you're one of those who manages to get out in | time. But even if you are, it's important to realize that | the eventual winners of this scenario aren't going to be | the Redditors holding on to $GME shares, but the wealthy | short-sellers who manage to either predict the pop or | simply have enough assets to hold on long enough for it to | happen. | | > I have literally nothing to lose. | | No, you had 4 digits of net worth to lose. And while that | might not seem like "much", it's quite literally not | nothing. And while you've been fortunate to win on this | play, the statistics are pretty clear that plays like this | keep more poor people poor than make the poor rich. | | > Keeping track of my bets even before getting into this, I | was right more often than not, and I am aware of | survivorship bias and confirmation bias. In the limit, it | makes more sense to spend 4-5 hours per day learning about | market analysis, observing trends close to me and making | decisions about sectors/fields that I know about. | | First off, compare your plays to overall market returns, | not to net-zero. Your benchmark over the past five years | should be something around +90% (about 14% YoY returns). | Actually, you need to be a little better due to trading | expenses and (in the U.S. at least) short-term capital | gains tax raets vs. long-term gains. | | Second, it's astonishingly easy to be profitable when the | overall market is having record returns. The trick is not | losing your shirt when the market goes upside down, and | everyone thinks that part is going to be much easier than | it really is in practice. | | In sum, I genuinely wish you luck, but I'm sadly all too | aware that the statistical reality is that spending 4-5 | hours per day learning about market analysis and making | trades based on your findings is overwhelmingly more likely | to leave you poorer than richer. | | You can find people who've become rich betting it all on | black at the casino, but that money didn't come from the | house. It's just redistributing funds from all of the other | suckers at the table, while the casino takes home the real | winnings. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | Thank you for your concern, I appreciate it. Yes I have | an exit strategy, and with the second semester starting | again, I won't really have the time to deal with this all | of this. I made enough to setup a system to run | experiments and fund my research for a year or two | without needing to bug professors or make commitments on | topics that don't really interest me. | Judgmentality wrote: | > But even if you are, it's important to realize that the | eventual winners of this scenario aren't going to be the | Redditors holding on to $GME shares, but the wealthy | short-sellers who manage to either predict the pop or | simply have enough assets to hold on long enough for it | to happen. | | What the hell are you talking about? The short sellers | are literally losing tens of billions of dollars, and I | believe they are going to lose several times more within | the next week. | | The short sellers are overleveraged right now, and unless | they find some bullshit way to fuck everybody (people are | switching away from RobinHood in droves) then they are | going to not just lose more money, but go insolvent. | | I don't know what's going to happen, and rumors are | Melvin is about to get a giant capital infusion, but it | really seems like the short sellers are the ones that are | fucked and believing otherwise is ignoring data and | simply assuming nothing ever changes. The fact that | they're doubling down is a sign of desperation, not | strength. It's like saying Lehman Brothers can never lose | money in 2008. | stouset wrote: | > What the hell are you talking about? The short sellers | are literally losing tens of billions of dollars, and I | believe they are going to lose several times more within | the next week. | | Yes, Melvin is losing their shirts. | | But if you accept that the price _is_ going to go down, | and sharply at that, then _somebody_ is going to make an | absolute killing here from a short position when the | price inevitably craters. And that amount will utterly | dwarf the gains from WSB redditors, mostly coming at | their expense. | | There's orders of magnitude more money to be made today | shorting $GME at $400 than there was shorting it at $20. | Judgmentality wrote: | > There's orders of magnitude more money to be made today | shorting $GME at $400 than there was shorting it at $20. | | There's also orders of magnitude more money to be lost, | because there's just more money on the table. At the end | of the day it's a bet based on assumptions. A month ago | everybody that was investing in GME was told the same | thing by people that wanted to short it. | | The market can remain irrational longer than you can | remain solvent. | stouset wrote: | > There's also orders of magnitude more money to be lost, | because there's just more money on the table. | | And my point is that the losing side of this is | inevitably going to be the majority of people long $GME. | | > The market can remain irrational longer than you can | remain solvent. | | Billionaires can remain solvent longer than you can | remain irrational. | | Again, Melvin is almost certain to lose their shirts on | this. But there's many, many more hedge funds that are | sharks circling the waters. And Melvin and WSB are _both_ | going to be their prey. | Judgmentality wrote: | > Billionaires can remain solvent longer than you can | remain irrational. | | Melvin Capital has a very real chance of going insolvent. | Also have you heard of Lehman Brothers? Hell, just | watching Cramer get upset is enough for me to realize the | rich aren't happy with what's happening. It seems pretty | obvious they're worried. Why else would they pay for ads | claiming to have closed a position for which they | supposedly no longer have an investment stake? | | > And my point is that the losing side of this is | inevitably going to be the majority of people long $GME. | | I said the same thing about TSLA way back when. So did | David Einhorn. I still believe TSLA is more than 10x | overvalued, and people continue to get rich despite my | "rational" obstinance. | | Also you're completely missing the point. Do you not even | understand most of these people aren't trying to make | money? If you don't understand that, then you don't even | have a basis to start the conversation. | PartiallyTyped wrote: | > There's orders of magnitude more money to be made today | shorting $GME at $400 than there was shorting it at $20. | | I have been running scenarios of this in my head over the | previous days. This play would be to short while the | squeeze is near closure and force the remaining shorts to | purchase your stock. The problem with this play is that | eventually you need to cover, albeit at much lower price, | unless, of course, the bag holders i.e. remaining retail | isn't willing to sell to you at a lower price, so you can | never close. If anyone else attempts to short at the | rebounded prices, you can close your position, but this | becomes a perpetual game of hot potato. For this play to | you work, you need to assume the retail will paper hand, | but if WSB is any indication, WSB can, as they put it, | stay retarded longer than you can stay solvent and if | they don't paper hand at those prices, they won't give it | to you that easy. | | The alternative play, is to make a deal with other firms | where you rotate who owes the shares and you share the | profits from shorting the top, but I suppose that | constitutes market manipulation. If we were to assume | that the market moves up and the profits can be | reinvested and profit more than the interest, this play | makes the most sense. | | These two plays assume that all the floating shares are | held by WSB, and if that is true; the bag holders will be | people willing to let the prices literally moon. Then the | only solution would be to wait for GME to issue more | shares. The most plausible case is that WSB will be the | ones holding the shares when it eventually squeezes and | the shorts need to cover since all others in retail would | have already sold. | | This isn't a particularly good position for anyone to be | in because no institution will be selling and nobody will | be buying, so you will end up with a staring contest | between you and WSB, and if the past few days are any | indication, your only bet is your profits outweigh the | interest. | | If you can imagine the actual play executing in a | scenario where WSB doesn't hold you by the ..., please | share, I am interested. | HenryBemis wrote: | >Taleb talked | | Only because I happen to just starting reading this 4 books | [0-3] motohagiography (word-depipction-of-saints?), and until | 2-3 weeks ago I am ashamed to say I didn't even know who that | was: | | Nassim Nicholas Taleb. | | [0-3]: Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled By Randomness, The | Bed of Procrustes | motohagiography wrote: | Same Taleb. I recommend reading his books back to front | because he's clearly difficult to edit and starting at the | end means you don't have to go through the process of | listening to him sound his ideas out. Most non-fiction works | that way. If you only read his "Bed of Procrustes," and a | selection of his technical papers, you'd be both better off, | and following most of his advice. | | A hagiography is a story that exalts the life of a saint. An | "autohagiography," is what some writers call a shamelessly | self-aggrandizing memoir. Motohagiography was a play on | writing about motorcycles in a self-aggrandizing way, but | could be extended to other technology. But thank you for | giving it some thought! | Jommi wrote: | and each book just re-iterates the same things. Gets old | fast. | genuine_smiles wrote: | What's better to invest in once you have 50k? | punnerud wrote: | I love how Reddit (and HN) enable fast sharing, fact checking | of information and lifting ideas. | | When it comes to increase luck surface I think Clubhouse maybe | will become one of the most important platforms. | | GME case seems to exploit the possibility for "short attack" by | flipping the table into a infinite price increase, because the | hedge funds accidentally created more fake shares that there is | shares in existence and now have to by back. | | Short attack = Using the possibility brokers have to artificial | creating fake shares to drive down the price, in combination | with shorting stocks for earning money. | | More detailed explanation: | https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/309... | | The combination of Clubhouse and Reddit will probably be one of | the most important "inventions" this decade. Where GME could | wake up everyone? | sgpl wrote: | I'm actually not super bullish on clubhouse. I'm sure they'll | find some success but to call it something that will become | one of the most important platforms, I don't see it. And | perhaps I'll be proven wrong in the next decade on this. | | I've recently started using twitter again (after initially | using it in 2010/2011) and I feel that there's so much self | promotion all the time disguised at knowledge sharing. It | also seems like everyone (most people) have a podcast, a | newsletter, a youtube channel, etc. I understand that on a | surface level people are doing this to increase their | 'surface area' but there's just too much and while I'm sure | it does a some/a lot of good for the people putting it out | there, most of it just seems like noise to me. So that's my | reasoning to think that clubhouse won't really become as | meaningful as you - it just adds more noise. Sure I can | hangout in this room or listen to some folks talk about x/y/z | topic, etc. but honestly I feel that after some time people | will realize that their time could be better spent. | YZF wrote: | Not too sure about the "fact" side of things. But the | Internet has created opportunities for all sorts of people to | get together faster than ever for all sorts of things. | | You don't need >100% short interest for a shorted stock to go | to infinity. A single share can do that. If I own all the | shares, and you borrowed a single share and sold it back to | me... well, good luck. Also these sort of attacks aren't | really new. Short squeeze has happened before and various | other similar ideas (attacking someone with leveraged | positions or otherwise risky positions, including | currencies). The interesting bit here is IMO the way these | people, at least temporarily, acted together. Also the way | the hedge funds couldn't grok that like they surely would if | they were under attack from a more standard player. | gwnwest21 wrote: | Hedge Funds managers have infinite resources and are working | with Data Firms to prevent this from getting out of control | again. These firms will use AI to scout social media | platforms chatter and report back in real time what stocks | are gaining momentum with retail investors. | | https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wall-street-looks-for- | ways... | | https://www.ft.com/content/04477ee8-0af2-4f0f-a331-298744489. | .. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | They also have bots posting shit encouraging people to sell | | Also, whats 'Infinite resources?' | dehrmann wrote: | > the economy doesn't provide anything better to invest in for | under $50k | | What's wrong with index funds? Real estate isn't everything. | fnimick wrote: | I think the underlying assumption, which wasn't spelled out | in the parent, is that any amount of money under $super-rich | is similar amounts of worthless. If you genuinely believe | that, then high-risk swings at a big payday make more logical | sense than a low-risk gradual growth strategy. | | I've heard friends express this - if you don't have $1 | million +, you're just varying degrees of poor - so there's | no point at gradual growth from 20k to 50k and etc when | you're just as miserable. Might as well risk it all to try to | get to the big time, since they don't see a reasonable path | to growing gradually to anywhere worth living. | tomfast wrote: | Interesting comment. | | Would you explain a little more about what you mean by | "diversified parts of it" in "you naturally orient to getting | exposure to opportunity for diversified parts of it, but when | you have a scarcity view, your decisions are necessarily | all/nothing"? | Nevermark wrote: | I hate to say "Bitcoin" because of its high risk, short track | record, volatility, faddish aura, etc, but: | | I believe it's filling a gap beyond being a better gold-like | asset. Better gold = digitally portable, 24 hr liquidity, | digital literate friendly, fixed cap, transactions (even with | its limits), decentralized control, etc. | | But the solidly fixed cap is more profound than I think most | people recognize. Potentially, once Bitcoin finds its "true" | price, it will continue to grow in value in proportion to all | wealth in the economy - over the long run. So it won't just be | a hedge against downturns, but eventually a semi-stable way of | sharing in overall increasing wealth in the economy. | | I don't know of another instrument that anyone can easily buy | that might track (over the long run) with global wealth as | apposed to particular entities or particular aspects of the | economy. | | So in that sense, anyone can participate in overall wealth | growth. A very useful new tool! | | OF COURSE, this is SPECULATION on my part. But I think the idea | of a total global wealth correlated asset is new and useful. | dehrmann wrote: | > fixed cap | | This makes it more like a collectable (say, baseball cards) | than a currency. The number is capped and some will be lost. | It has value as long as people are interested in it--scarcity | does not imply value. | | It also has a short track record and could run into issues if | miners collude, there's a DDoS attack, or someone with a lot | of resources reverses transactions, hurting confidence in it. | xyzelement wrote: | An Israeli entrepreneur once introduced me to the idea of "the | adjacent possible" - meaning, as you progress to "the next point" | - the possibilities connected to that point are available to you. | | Somewhere else, I read the definition of "intelligence" as that | which maximizes its future options. | | I think both things hit at the same idea of "surface area of | luck". We think of luck as "a good opportunity you can take | advantage of" - if you become someone who can take advantage of | more opportunities, you become luckier. | | Some of the strategies that helped me (none of them are | intentional): | | - Never passing up an opportunity to learn - whether new skill or | new degree or new industry or a new personal challenge. As Steve | Jobs said, sometimes you don't learn until later how the dots | connect to what you eventually do. | | - Diversifying my experience. EG: 13~ years ago I was a "senior | software developer." Since then, I had been a "development | manager", a "product manager" and also for a time a "senior | software developer" again. When I lost my job a few months ago, I | was able to look at opportunities along all 3 of these job | tracks, whereas if I had stayed in the single track, I'd have 1/3 | the options. | | - Ditto to industries. Until now, everything I did was in | finance, so I intentionally found a role outside of finance, | because I could always go back to it if I need to, but now I am | proving to myself (and to my resume) that I can cross industries | and work anywhere. That again increases. your surface area. | | - Have a diverse network, for example find a way to connect with | young talented people where you are (first job, university) | because they will disperse throughout the world and may do cool | things and you may want to do those things with them, or they can | just help you. It has been amazing how much people that I had | barely connected with when we worked together were willing to | help when I needed a referral/advice/whatever. | | - I'll call this one out separately: help people. Make time to | mentor people, help them get jobs, put in a good word, whatever. | Not everyone will "pay you back" but it doesn't matter, the | reputation of "xyzelement's a good guy, he's generally helpful" | means the world, especially as you become more senior. | | - Be the dumbest guy in the room. You grow more when being | surrounded by those who can challenge you uncomfortably. Pick the | right room. Comfort = death. | | - Troubleshoot your mind. Most of us are held back by stupid | hangups. For example, most developers I know could be overall way | more successful if they got over shyness/fear of public speaking. | Figure out why you fear whatever you fear, and work to get over | it. Imagine you didn't go for your dream job because it has some | minute attribute that you pointlessly fear. | | - Check your language. If you find that "they" are responsible | for what's happening to you, you have given away all your power. | Figure out how "you" are responsible for where you and and what | opportunities "you" have, and then own it and act. | KineticLensman wrote: | I'll stick with the proverbial Seneca: "Luck is what happens when | preparation meets opportunity." | | Which is actually a generalization of the author's (relatively | narrow) thesis where 'opportunity' depends primarily on the | people that you meet and the 'preparation' is being passionate | about something. | king_magic wrote: | A previous manager of mine told me that same quote years ago. | It's never left me, and has always been a valuable way to look | at the world. | Closi wrote: | I think this is roughly the same thesis with different words - | preparation = doing and telling = creating opportunities. | dade_ wrote: | Except Seneca said this 2000 years ago and used far fewer | words than this blog post. | binbag wrote: | Do things you're keen on? Deep. | soared wrote: | I really really dislike the idea that everything you do needs to | be multiplied by networking. Not everything is entrepreneurship, | not everyone is looking to meet people to accomplish x. | | I had hoped this article was something unique, but one paragraph | in and it's more growth hacking nonsense. | baxtr wrote: | I just love the positive tone of this article. There is so much | hope and positivism. I find it energizing. | colanderman wrote: | (2010). There's since been much discussion of this post here, and | generalization to other aspects of life. E.g. I remember the | example, if your goal is to date a model, start hanging out in | places (cafes/bars) where models hang out. | villasv wrote: | > When you pour energy into a passion, you develop an expertise | and an expertise of any kind is valuable | | I don't disagree with the overall spirit, but these Paul Graham | aphorisms always turn me off. | | > To satisfy my mathematically oriented brain I've gone one step | further and formalized the concept into the equation L = D * T, | where L is luck, D is doing and T is telling. | | See? There's no passion here. It really isn't relevant to what is | being discussed. | | Sure, passion is great. The more the better, the world is | incredible when you're surrounded by it. Developers are fond of | writing beautiful code, I am one of those too. But god damn, hold | the inner coach and remember y'all are not psychologists. There | is no reason to reduce the multitude of complex motivations to a | single amorphous concept such as passion. | jonnycomputer wrote: | It is funny, because D * T suggests that it can all be done | with D with just a smidgin' of T, or that you can just do a lot | of talking with just a smidgin' of D. | | But I guess I forgot about the Trump Presidency. So maybe D * T | is the right model. | choxi wrote: | Product-market fit often has an element of luck, otherwise | someone else would have found the opportunity already. So this is | really good advice for anyone working on a startup, it's sort of | another way of saying the classic YC advice that you should be | "building things and talking to customers". | | I really like this mental model, one thing I've noticed about my | failed startup attempts is that I did a lot of "doing" but not | "telling". | Closi wrote: | I think that's a slightly different thesis - I think this one | is more about 'lucky breaks' I.e. Microsoft selling its first | basic compiler, vs finding your product market fit. | postit wrote: | I struggle a lot with advertising my work outside the company. | | I'm the kind of engineer that will get anything done regardless | of the tech (or people/process) complexity, and I always end up | watching someone else in the team going to conferences to present | my work. | | Random reasons random, but mostly because my inner klout is way | bigger than my outer persona. | ghaff wrote: | Do you not want to be the person presenting or are you being | prevented from doing so for whatever reason. (And if the reason | is something like presentation skills, do you care enough to do | something about it?) | kharak wrote: | Being passionate about something for a long time (not just a | couple of hours or weeks) seems to be a rare quality. Too bad for | those who lack it, as it seems to be a requirement for success in | everything. There are so many posts that try to tell you how to | get the most out of your passion, I haven't seen one that | explains the origin of passion or whether it is possible to | become passionate. | EGreg wrote: | Here is a comment: | | Passion is a direct result of three things: | | 1. Awareness of a major problem that affects a lot of people | | 2. Becoming convinced of a certain solution that is currently | not being implemented | | 3. Having your needs met for a long time, also known as | financial freedom | | To the extent you find people with 1 and 3, you can recruit | them with 2. | abdullahkhalids wrote: | I think you are switching the order of things. Passion often | comes after doing something for a long time. The trick is that | you have to mindfully analyze what parts you enjoy about the | thing, and how you can enjoy or tolerate the parts you don't | like. | mettamage wrote: | What also isn't talked about: | | __Burnout and Passions__ | | Here's a comparison: I once build a computer graphics engine in | 2 weeks and a few years prior I played WoW for 2 weeks. | | In both cases I spent between 16 to 20 hours per day on it. I | got ill, had an angry girlfriend (in the computer graphics | timeline), and I did everything I wanted to do (it was done). | | __Passions and Interests__ | | I have a genuine interest in security. Once every year I become | super passionate about hacking/red teaming for 2 months. I'm | like a cat in heat or something, but then with security. I play | hackthebox, I follow security courses and clock 12 to 16 hours | per day on it, 7 days per week. Converted to working days, that | is around 5 months of working days. | | Yet, people mistake this as me having a passion for it. I can | assure you, if the article is technical and I'm in the other 10 | months, I'd need to apply quite some self-control and | discipline to be able to read it. | | __It's not always the subject__ | | I have this weird trait. Whatever my friends are interested in, | can become a passion of mine. One requirement: I need to do it | with them. If I do and I'm having a positive interaction with | my friend, then I'm passionate about it. However, I know it's | not the subject, it's simply being with that friend. I figured | it out by first noticing this in video games. It turns out I | don't care about video games, I simply care playing them with | friends. It turns out, it's true for all activities I have an | interest in. | | __Passions and linking to other topics__ | | I love imagining music. It's a compulsion I had since I was 4. | Because of this, I quite like making music as well. However, I | also like not being poor. I've seen quite a few poor musicians, | so I've never focused too much on my music creation and I think | that's quite a sad fact about my life. | | _But!_ It turns out, that (web) app development for things | that I find cool or useful scratches exactly the same itch. So | that means that passions are wider than your interest alone. It | turns out that passions might be able to transfer to other | passions if they have the same properties. | | Unfortunately, I don't feel passionate about (web) app | development for corporations. This is mostly because a lot of | the creative freedom isn't there, but when you make your own | stuff it is there. | | --- | | My 2 cents. | asimjalis wrote: | I found your introspection valuable. I work as a presales | engineer. When a customer has a problem and is stuck on | something I become obsessed with it. But as soon as we have a | fix or a workaround I lose interest in the area. This makes | it hard to generalize the solution or publish it as a blog | post. | m463 wrote: | "stop starting and start finishing" | | On the other hand, we have so little time here. Who's to say | whether narrow and deep is always more rewarding than broad and | shallow? | | You know, be mindful of doing the wrong thing well instead of | the right thing poorly. | | So learn to forgive ourselves for pursuing things that fizzle | out or lose our interest. Leave space to preserve passion to | the benefit of our health and happiness. More interests might | also mean more opportunities to align shared passions with | others. | pototo666 wrote: | I haven't seen one that explains the origin of passion or | whether it is possible to become passionate. | | --- | | As Bezos said, you can't choose your passion, your passion | chooses you. | rmelhem wrote: | yep, i suddenly felt in love with music after my dad passed | away - was in college studying materials engineering, and | made a living out of music for 6 years (until the pandemics) | OrbitRock wrote: | Scott Alexander's the lottery of fascinations is a good read | in this area: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the- | lottery-of-fascina... | pototo666 wrote: | Good read, thanks for sharing :). | | I will keep the article in case one day I want to persuade | my child to love math. | etrautmann wrote: | I disagree - passion can emerge after you're much deeper into | something. I liked building things but wasn't passionate | about engineering until my last year in undergrad. It took | 3-4 years of grinding away uncertainly until I had enough | skill to make it really fun and interesting. That knowledge | snowballs. | | Plenty of people are passionate about work which appears | arcane. Few of them started with that. | jlevers wrote: | Cal Newport has a book that discusses this this called So | Good They Can't Ignore You, which I found really | interesting. His thesis is basically that the people who | are most satisfied with their work are those who stuck with | something until they got really good at it, regardless of | whether it was the topic they were "most passionate" about | (passion can be fickle, IMO). | pototo666 wrote: | Agree with what you said. | | Liking is also a great signal for passion. If we like | something, we are more likely to do it for years and then | have the passion. I don't think we can choose what we like. | | There are of couses cases when children are forced to do | something early and later fall in love with it. | vincentmarle wrote: | > Being passionate about something for a long time ... seems to | be a requirement for success in everything. | | There's a book that attempts to debunk this myth by making the | case that generalists are typically more successful: | https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Range | mojoe wrote: | There's a difference between being passionate about a | skillset and passionate about a field. For instance, I can be | passionate about renewable energy and still be a generalist | in terms of my day-to-day work. | analyst74 wrote: | Opposite of passion is contentment, which is also very | desirable for many. | | You just can't have both, because with a burning passion, comes | a sense of imperfection and constant struggle to get better but | never enough, or worse, fear of decay and irrelevance, an | inevitable outcome as one ages. | nicbou wrote: | You can be passionate and content. | | There are plenty of passionate artists, athletes and | engineers who don't care about going pro, getting famous or | changing the world. | | For example, I'm passionate about software development, but I | make simple things that don't matter. I'm passionate about | cooking, but only for myself and the occasional guest. I'm | also passionate about the website I live from, but I don't | worry much about its growth. | | I like to build stuff, but I don't want an audience or its | recognition. I don't want users nor money. I just do it | because it's nice. | Judgmentality wrote: | I think this is just a simple semantics distinction. | | I believe what you mean by passion is interest, and what OP | means by passion is drive. I think you're discussing | slightly different things. | | I don't believe it is possible to be driven and satisfied | at the same time. But I believe it is possible to be | interested and content simultaneously. | moron4hire wrote: | I would say this is exactly how I was able to pivot out of web | and database development into VR development[0]. I spent a lot of | time going out to meetups when I first started getting into VR. | Meeting people, talking to people. Eventually, I started showing | people the stuff I was building. That led to getting asked to do | talks at the meetups about the stuff I was building. That led to | more contacts. I ended up making friends with folks who would one | day make the connections that got me my current job. | | Incidentally, when folks at my current employer started talking | about hiring someone for my role, they kept running into people | who knew me and had a high opinion of me. | | Networking works in many directions. But it only works if you | don't go into it looking for it to work. I think the big key was | that I wasn't out to gladhand with folks. I was just out to make | friends over a shared passion. It gives an authenticity to your | speech that people can see. | | [0] Which now has a big web and database component, all in | service to the VR app that I'm building. | sigmaprimus wrote: | I'm not sure the variable of how many other people I tell about | my passion has an effect of its success. | | I have several passions and many ventures based on them. | | I believe "A farmer has as much luck as he has seeds in the | ground" regardless of how many people are involved. I my case | "seeds" are ventures that I start based on my passions, many will | wither but some will do well and a few do great. | | The great ones seem to draw others to get involved even when I | try to keep them low key. | pototo666 wrote: | I like this idea. It's simple and elegant. | | I am accidentally practising it. | | I make games. I tried and failed to get investement and partners. | | So I am making games alone. Last week I started streaming my | daily work. I stream my the other screen display, such that I can | decide what to show and what to hide. | | I told myself, streaming cost me no money and I might attract | attention of partners and investors. Nothing unfold yet. But I | would continue. | _jjkk wrote: | I have seen multiple indie developers successfully begin | marketing on their unfinished / unremarkable prototype far in | advance. In fact some of them get so popular they pivot into "I | make videos of myself making games" instead of "I make games" | | I would recommend doubling up exposure by recording your | streams, then cutting up the best clips and releasing them as | Youtube videos. Also posting these Youtube videos to Reddit | when possible (obviously following their self-promotion rules) | | Here is an example channel: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEhOhNgoZHI | pototo666 wrote: | Recoding stream is a good idea! Thanks for this concrete | advice and example :)) | williamonill wrote: | I think this equation completely forgets to take into account the | power of the people you tell about your ideas. If you are | studying in Stanford and can literally walk into the office of | professor X and tell him about your ideas (which worked pretty | well for Elizabeth Holmes and professor Channing Robertson but | that's a different story) you have an enormous competitive | advantage. And if you have a Stanford professor on your side, | it's pretty easy to open doors to other influential people. | | On the other hand, if you tell your idea some stranger on the | Internet... chances are much lower that you will find the right | people. | freshpots wrote: | This is an excellent video from Veritasium that discusses luck as | a factor of success: https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I | ldbooth wrote: | I like the visual of a surface area. It adds to how I think about | it... The equation for luck similar as luck being the compounding | interest component and over time, compounding itself with | consistent doing. Compounding applies to many things, but take a | business, years in business and word of mouth/experience is a | form of compounding customers/revenue. Same for luck and doing | something consistently with enthusiasm. | hwestiii wrote: | Louis Pasteur figured this out in the 19th century. "Chance | favors the prepared mind." | brudgers wrote: | A theory that only works for people who are lucky enough to be | surrounded by supportive people. | | Some people have the misfortune to know people whose usual | reaction is throwing sand in other people's gears. People who | crap on other people's plans. | | Just as good luck can compound, so can bad luck. | umvi wrote: | > A theory that only works for people who are lucky enough to | be surrounded by supportive people. | | It's possible to change who surrounds you. By socializing in | new bubbles, making new friends, or just plain moving to a new | location. | Shared404 wrote: | With enough bad luck, it's possibly to never have the | opportunity to make those changes. | doctorhandshake wrote: | That's what the internet is for! | TheCowboy wrote: | This is also possible, but it's also something where luck, | personal resources, and experience play a role in determining | how successful such changes will be. | brudgers wrote: | Whether or not that works is a matter of luck. Part of that | luck is the recognition that the people close are | unsupportive and knowledge that there are supportive people. | | If someone has had the bad luck of growing up surrounded by | unsupportive people, the recognition and knowledge don't | occur naturally. | | The problem of long term socialization with assholes is that | a person tends to be socialized to being an asshole. That | facilitates new friendships with new assholes more than it | facilitates new friendships with non-assholes. It facilitates | socializing in asshole rich bubbles...etc. | mish33 wrote: | Bad luck may follow the same formula: what you did wrong times | how many people that affected. | mrandish wrote: | The concept in the post is something I've observed in my own life | and the lives of others. The article highlights that it's just | not "doing" but doing something you are "passionate" about. I get | a little stuck on that word because it evokes the "follow your | passions" type of advice which can be taken the wrong way. Here I | think the key is it's not just "doing" _anything_ but rather | something you care enough about to at least try to do well. In | other words, you 're putting attention and energy into it. This | tends to be something others notice because it's authentic. | | The other thing which seems to elevate outcomes in this context | is not just "telling" people as measured by quantity but also by | quality. Just sharing with large numbers of people may work but | trying to share with those who also "do" things will reach those | most likely to care about what you're doing, the way you're doing | it or even just that you're "doing" things with genuine personal | investment. When I see that, it usually stands out and I'm much | more likely to want to engage with that person. | carrozo wrote: | I've had this old post from Marc Andreessen pinned in my mental | browser for a long time now. There are four types of luck and you | can influence three of them: | | _Chance I is completely impersonal; you can 't influence it._ | | _Chance II favors those who have a persistent curiosity about | many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment | and explore._ | | _Chance III favors those who have a sufficient background of | sound knowledge plus special abilities in observing, remembering, | recalling, and quickly forming significant new associations._ | | _Chance IV favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric | hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors._ | | https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html | rexreed wrote: | Of all those kinds of chance, the kind that you can really | prepare for is really only Chance-type III. | | Chance I is truly deus-ex-machina stuff you can't foresee nor | plan for. | | Chance II encourages randomness and serendipity, but those who | lack the ability of discernment and proper focus risk being | ADHD never focusing enough on anything to capture any | opportunity, should it even emerge. | | Chance III rewards those who have deepened their knowledge and | have stubborn persistence to weather the inevitable rough | patches. Because if it's not rough, then it's too obvious, and | if it's too obvious, there's no real upside opportunity. You | can plan for Chance III and prepare yourself for this. | | Chance IV is black swan. It is the rarest of conditions where | an eccentric hobby results in significant upside. You can't | plan for this, and if you do pursue an eccentric hobby you | should do it out of pure personal interest rather than planning | for a black swan upside opportunity. | | I have a feeling Marc Andreesen would consider himself to be | Chance II or Chance III. And I question if his "luck" can truly | be attributable to Chance II but rather his ability to "will" | his fortune into being by virtue of being in Chance III. | ghaff wrote: | And he really owes much of his fortune to Chance I. Right | capabilities/decisions but right place/time. | the-dude wrote: | I practice this in billiards/carambole ( 3 balls, no pockets ). | | I try to avoid 'perpendicular' approaches, instead opting for | shots with big angles, even if they are technically more | difficult. | | This literally translates into a larger area where I have the | chance to touch the 3rd ball. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-31 23:00 UTC)