[HN Gopher] The Carrot Problem
___________________________________________________________________
The Carrot Problem
Author : deadcoder0904
Score : 260 points
Date : 2023-08-12 13:57 UTC (9 hours ago)
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| parentheses wrote:
| I think this is a good mental model to employ, but also has the
| potential to poison positivity.
|
| Hard work and perseverance can (and IME often does) lead to
| success. There's this attractive narrative that any outlier
| success is entirely built from seedy/unethical/immoral/corrupt
| acts. This narrative helps to justify and excuse mediocrity.
| Instead, we should be asking the hard questions which may
| encourage harder/smarter work and perseverance.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| It depends on the type of success you are after.
|
| Doing well and creating great stuff can be due to hard work but
| raising to certain positions of power definitely requires
| gaming the system in ways that can be seen as anti ethical or
| at least counter to the alleged ethos of the company, group,
| etc.
|
| People in different hierarchies end up optimizing for their
| careers and detract from any Analysis that will conclude
| otherwise, putting themselves in positions where they have
| always someone to deflect to and focus on personal branding
| over real results because, in the end, it's what allow them to
| also have real results some times.
|
| It's an "end justifies the means" and "it's the name of the
| game".
|
| It becomes more and more buteocratic, political and networkey
| the higher you climb/interact.
|
| Those will be very interested in talking abour merit (
| pretending others are "mediocre") and fairness while playing
| under different rules
| parentheses wrote:
| I agree with you - not all success can be achieved only
| through hard work.
|
| I feel that our (societal) culture is all about bringing down
| those who achieve success by vilifying them for specific
| actions. My purpose of my post was purely to shed light that
| carrot problems are not as common as one may think and that
| they are only part of the story.
|
| Said another way, the article is right that what is said
| about success and how it was achieved is often a marketing
| oriented autobiography. That doesn't necessarily mean that
| the lies and embellishments conceal insidious actions.
| Rexxar wrote:
| I would say that hard work and perseverance are always
| necessary at some point but not always sufficient for success.
| ilyt wrote:
| It's pretty much "if your success depends on luck you still
| have to show up and start rolling the dice"
| winwang wrote:
| I find that people place too much emphasis on "hard" work and
| not the "right" work. Personally, I know too many people who
| have worked their butts off... on the wrong problems.
|
| It's quite simple to continue sweating on the same path, if
| not easy. But it feels like people prefer difficulty to
| complexity.
|
| Of course, even working hard on the right problems carries no
| guarantee. Yet, life isn't about guarantees, but about
| rigging the dice in your favor.
| dale_glass wrote:
| You should be suspicious of anyone outlining their strategy for
| success.
|
| Because if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack to
| make lots of money, why would I be telling people about it?
| Either I get competition, or I might get whatever loophole I was
| abusing closed.
|
| So either I'm lying, or what I'm saying isn't possible to
| reproduce, or the usefulness of the technique ran out and now I'm
| just trying to squeeze a few more dollars by telling the tale, or
| I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model crash and
| burn.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Another reason that they disclose strategies might be that it
| makes them feel good about themselves. -- Whoah you have such I
| pretty girlfriend! How did you accomplish this? -- Well i went
| to those and those places, worked out at the gym and behaved
| like a cool guy in this and that way. (he feels good talking
| about it)
|
| Even if it is true, who says it would work for someone else,
| maybe the real reason for success in this case is just being
| pretty or rich.
|
| The problem is not so much carrot stories, the root of the
| carrot problem is that some people look up to other people's
| accomplishments and want it too. It is easy then to
| see/follow/come up with patterns that have nothing to do with
| it.
| tomcam wrote:
| Well I did it when I had a very successful SAAS 20 years ago
| that still exists. I ended up with multiple competitors who
| stole my business model completely, right down to the micro
| payment system I devised. I had a fantastic run, became friends
| with several of my competitors, and eventually sold my business
| to one of those competitors. I never hid anything about how the
| business was run. I just delivered on the fundamentals and
| wasn't greedy.
|
| I never sold a course or a book or charged for any advice.
|
| The funny thing is, although I mentor people for free they
| often don't call after the initial conversation because they
| think I'm somehow trying to get money out of it.
|
| So I guess you're right?
| ilyt wrote:
| I think that's only when you actually cheated/lied/used
| loopholes to get where you are.
|
| I'm not losing my senior engineer job because I tell some soon-
| to-be junior engineers how to be good at the job. Neither will
| say an established artist or maker; they already have their
| brand.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd go this far. Think of the advice that PG
| gives, which is along the lines of: make something people want,
| get it in front of those people, and work very hard.
|
| This is very useful advice to someone who has never heard it
| (though the last one is very obvious), and it doesn't really
| take away anything from PG to say it loudly. He is especially
| unlikely to care if people use his advice to get rich, since he
| is himself already very very rich. But even someone who was not
| rich wouldn't really care unless there is a good likelihood
| that he is giving his competitors a leg up by sharing this
| advice.
|
| And for someone like PG, there's a net benefit to giving this
| advice because (1) it will lead to more people who are willing
| to work hard becoming successful (which will lead to useful
| products/services being available in the world -- including to
| PG), and it helps to build PG's brand.
|
| The thing you do have to worry about is when there's a
| potential conflict between (1) what they did to become
| successful and (2) what they want people to think they did to
| become successful. That's what this article is about. People
| want you to think they got ripped by lifting a ton -- not by
| using steroids.
| blobbers wrote:
| Loose lips sink ships, right?
|
| Yeah, this is why hedge funds keep secrets, and sell side
| analysis isn't very trustworthy in the investment world. If
| their info was so good, they would act on it instead of
| publishing it.*
|
| * some people act on it, then publish it in order to push
| prices in their favor.
| winwang wrote:
| It's even worse in the case of hedge funds (well, arbitrage
| in general), because any given strategy has a maximum amount
| of profit it could make before the market loses that specific
| inefficiency. Or at least, that's the theory.
|
| It's basically like finding a gold mine and telling everyone
| to come over and take what they want from it.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| This is exactly why I don't understand the strategy behind
| sites like https://www.quiverquant.com/
|
| My optimistic theory is that it might be a form of social
| activism to enact change, as opposed to a plain carrot
| problem.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Reminds me of the constant hum around Renaissance Technologies.
| Everybody brings up that rumour about them using satellite data
| and other exotic stuff, but there's no way that is the
| difference between winning and losing.
| Cpoll wrote:
| By that token, we should be suspicious of you for telling us
| how to avoid bad strategies for making money :)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Exception: you've exited and have nothing to lose by sharing
| kurthr wrote:
| Beware the, "I'm already a bitcoin billionaire so I'll share
| my secret to success". Either they're lying about the Lambos,
| or they suddenly got less greedy. One of those is more
| likely.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Unless they charge for the advice in which case it would be
| obvious, maybe they just know that keeping more people
| buying it is required for it to keep value
| ilyt wrote:
| Or, in rare cases where someone gets to billion dollars and
| says "okay it is enough": The opportunity is no longer
| there and world changed enough for advice to be near-
| useless.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| _Or_ their actual secret to success is "Buy a bunch of
| bitcoin when it cost less than a dollar.", and any
| subsequent success is a artifact of that non-replicable
| starting point.
| lapcat wrote:
| > have nothing to lose by sharing
|
| Not necessarily true if "every successful business got there
| by doing something ugly".
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Or the boost to my ego of being admired for being so smart is
| larger than the boost to my ego of being even richer.
| habitue wrote:
| > Because if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack
| to make lots of money, why would I be telling people about it?
|
| People like explaining things to other people. They like
| sharing knowledge, they like having other people pay attention
| to and listen to the knowledge they share. I am pretty
| convinced that it's an evolutionary adaptation that we feel a
| compulsion to explain and share interesting things we've
| learned.
|
| Your logic probably overcomes this built-in tendency for
| sharing things when the alpha is very directly tied to one's
| success. So, for example, a hedge fund manager isn't sharing
| their trading strategies.
|
| But if an executive is explaining how OKRs worked for them, or
| an engineer is saying typescript was a big help, our first
| instinct shouldn't be to assume it's a psyop. Those things are
| not the singular competitive advantage of a company, success is
| usually the aggregate result of many different things.
| kurthr wrote:
| In general this is true of influencer type garbage and "get
| rich" stuff. It's junk food for the fearful/hopeful/greedy
| mind.
|
| However, there are entire industries that don't exist without a
| growing capable workforce. It's not like software programming
| would have been much higher paid, if we could have just kept it
| a secret longer. You need a certain number of skilled people to
| fill out all the positions and get large projects done. It's
| not like it's easy, or doesn't require training, but since it
| produces value everyone can win, because of the productivity of
| others.
|
| Another example of this right now is building/contracting work.
| It's a skill that takes time to develop and you can't just do
| it from watching a video or reading a book, but it pays well.
| Right now a lot of older folks got out of the game so there's
| real demand and wages are high. If that demand doesn't get
| filled... it will be replaced with more automation. It's a case
| where, if there aren't enough workers economics will adjust to
| require fewer workers, perhaps dramatically so.
| kabalunga wrote:
| [dead]
| edgineer wrote:
| "Success" could include a type of "business model" but other
| positive-sum games, too.
| somsak2 wrote:
| What a cynical take. For your own sake, I'd recommend looking
| for more positives in others.
| chrchang523 wrote:
| The possibilities you mention are definitely worth keeping in
| mind. However, they are not an exhaustive list; there are
| positive scenarios that are better than "trying to squeeze a
| few more dollars by telling the tale".
|
| The hard part is recognizing them in the midst of a lot of
| chaff.
| Karellen wrote:
| > if I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great hack to make
| lots of money, why would I be telling people about it?
|
| Because you understand that the number in your bank account
| isn't the score of some weird game. Having more money than
| other people doesn't make you a better person.
|
| If you have enough money to reach your goals - pay your rent,
| buy food, indulge your hobbies - that's good. If 20 other
| people also have enough money to reach their goals, that's a
| world with more happiness in it. That's a better world. So why
| not tell other people how to make money in the same way you
| did, and help bring that world about?
| kabalunga wrote:
| [dead]
| tomcam wrote:
| Oops, I didn't realize you had made this comment, which is
| better than mine:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37103107
| jancsika wrote:
| OP would presume they covered that in their last OR branch:
|
| > or I'm actually stupid and about to see my business model
| crash and burn
|
| In other words, they wouldn't be able to reach their long
| term goals because one of the 20 other people are going to
| eat their lunch. (And all will in fact attempt to monopolize
| their lunch.)
| the_snooze wrote:
| >So why not tell other people how to make money in the same
| way you did, and help bring that world about?
|
| I think this does happen quite frequently. It's just that the
| knowledge gets passed through networks, so the most
| successful people help those who are socially near them (and
| probably not too different in terms of success and comfort).
|
| This is the whole "insider knowledge" that the article
| alludes to.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This comment is in no way an endorsement of Scott Adams, I
| generally do not like him. However, he recently posted
| something on Twitter that has been a brain worm for me.
|
| >"Success is mostly imitation. We study successful people
| and then try to imitate what worked."
|
| >"Imagine being Black, learning the history of slavery and
| racism, and being asked to imitate your oppressors to
| succeed."
|
| And a followup tweet:
|
| >"The most damaging reframe in American history is that
| using the universal tools for success is "acting white."
| Solve that problem and we'll have better visibility on the
| systemic racism that is primarily caused by the teachers
| unions."
| jdpigeon wrote:
| The last tweet is a little confusing. Teacher's unions?
| Really?
| tomcam wrote:
| 1. No evidence at all that teacher unions help students.
| Test scores have gone down drastically all over the
| country for the last 30 years or so.
|
| 2. The teacher unions are against school vouchers, which
| almost completely eliminates competition in the districts
| that need it most. A large majority of black families are
| in favor of school vouchers.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I used to watch Adams' podcast. It would require a lot of
| context to fully make sense. Suffice to say he thinks
| teacher's unions are a big component of the problem here
| and imo the primary value of his comment here could be
| conveyed if you remove the tail end of that Tweet which
| puts it on the teacher's unions.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm not sure context helps him with his other outbursts.
|
| "Based on the current way things are going, the best
| advice I would give to White people is to get the hell
| away from Black people," the 65-year-old author
| exclaimed. "Just get the (expletive) away. Wherever you
| have to go, just get away. Because there's no fixing
| this. This can't be fixed."
|
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/23/dilberts-scott-
| adams-...
|
| "The reality is that women are treated differently by
| society for exactly the same reason that children and the
| mentally handicapped are treated differently."
|
| https://ew.com/article/2011/03/30/dilbert-scott-adams-
| femini...
|
| Trump is like the founding fathers and Jesus.
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/dilbert-creator-on-how-
| trump-i...
|
| There is a bit of coverage in the wiki. He writes a good
| cartoon but he is radioactive in his views.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Terrible people are sometimes capable of saying things
| worth considering, and it's possible to consider one
| thing he says without endorsing or accepting other things
| he's said or even his personal context for the words
| being considered.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| It's difficult to defend a stance like one you're
| adopting, because of how quick to judge the general
| public is. They'd never know that someone like Ted
| Kaczynski actually held a PhD and wrote an interesting
| essay before committing to his campaign of terror.
| (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski)
|
| It's rather strange that people will choose to wholly
| dismiss a person based on one thing, without realizing
| that even "evil" people have more facets than a simple
| bevel.
|
| Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What
| benefit could society have gained if someone had heard
| him out and took some measures to help the environment?
| Most people won't ask that question, because they have
| the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.
|
| One of the most illuminating things in my life has been
| discovering what the "bad" and "evil" side of humanity
| actually thought, instead of the version that the
| authorities or victors give us.
|
| There's also this modern tendency to assume that whatever
| you read, you become. So superstitious.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > There's also this modern tendency to assume that
| whatever you read, you become. So superstitious.
|
| Sure... but there's also a wealth of information out
| there and filtering out people with known abhorrent views
| is a decent first pass filter. maybe alex jones or some
| other neo-nazi dimwit has a few good ideas here and there
| but why would I subject myself to listening to them(and
| also enriching them in the process) when I could listen
| to people that aren't generally awful people?
| setr wrote:
| I think shallow views is a much better first-pass filter
| than abhorrent views; a sufficiently in-depth abhorrent
| view can and likely will have components worth taking
| from, even if their final conclusion is absurd (or just
| overreaching).
|
| An acceptable-but-shallow view and an abhorrent-but-
| shallow view are equally worthless; effectively as much
| value an upvote.
| ilyt wrote:
| > Ted killed himself in prison a few months ago. What
| benefit could society have gained if someone had heard
| him out and took some measures to help the environment?
| Most people won't ask that question, because they have
| the intellectual and philosophical depth of a puddle.
|
| Well it's not all that interesting question coz he wasn't
| exactly first or last preaching same thing about the
| environment, so there is a plenty of other people to
| listen to that do not happen to be crazy.
|
| But in general I agree that the trend of disregarding
| someone's entire contribution to everything they
| contributed based on this or that opinion that is
| currently regarded as "bad". After all, if you dig far
| enough (especially in time, kids/teenagers do/think some
| utterly dumb stuff) you won't find an innocent soul
| alive...
| pharmakom wrote:
| Reading Ordinary Men changed how I feel about good and
| evil.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The thing to understand about Scott Adams is that if he
| says something that sounds outrageous, he's probably
| trolling you. He'll in fact describe how to do this in
| order to generate publicity, or as a mechanism to expose
| hypocrisy or bad logic. But when he's in the middle of it
| he'll commit to the bit.
|
| Basically, someone says X, which is crazy, because if X
| then logically Y would be true and Y is not only wrong
| but offensive. So he'll publicly assert Y and get people
| to argue with him, but the only real way to show that Y
| is wrong is to admit that X is wrong, which was the
| point.
|
| And then the people arguing with him don't want to do
| that. They want to be offended by Y without admitting
| that X is wrong. So he has a bunch of fun with them
| because they've foreclosed themselves at the outset from
| winning the debate on the merits.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The thing to understand about this argument is that it is
| unfalsifiable nonsense. Anything he says that is wrong is
| him joking, you just can't tell because he pretends so
| well! No, dude. He is wrong a lot and like a 5yo, when he
| realizes he cannot actually defend or explain something
| he did he falls back on "it was just a joke!"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Of course he's wrong a lot. The point isn't that Y is
| _right_ , it's that X and Y are both wrong but you can't
| admit to that if you're a hypocrite.
|
| And the "anything he says that is wrong is him joking" is
| the idea, because it works both ways. If someone says
| something which is actually wrong, you can make a
| convincing argument for why if you're willing to be
| logically consistent yourself.
|
| But there are also things which are politically offensive
| yet true, and having a reputation for this kind of
| trolling is what allows someone to say those things out
| loud. Because then you make the same claim: "Maybe I'm
| trolling you, if I am just provide the counterargument."
|
| Which you can't do if the counterargument requires you to
| admit that X is wrong and you refuse to do that, but you
| also can't do if there is no counterargument because Y is
| true.
|
| It doesn't matter whether "is he trolling this time" is
| falsifiable. What matters is if you can disprove his
| claim. If you can, go for it. If not, what does that say?
| rodrattt wrote:
| Just a thing I noticed since I don't know Scott Adams
| etc. -- surely being a slave couldn't be considered a
| success!?
|
| I'm sure I'm missing the meaning here somehow but to me
| it's quite obvious we may imitate something successful
| and not imitate something unsuccessful.
| barrkel wrote:
| The implied theory in the paraphrased quotes is that
| Black people are not successful in part because they have
| learned a framing where success requires acting like a
| slave owner, or acting white. That is, behaviors that
| correlate with success are tainted with being the way
| (oppressive) white people act.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think this part clarifies it:
|
| >The most damaging reframe in American history is that
| using the universal tools for success is "acting white."
|
| If you are not American it may not be clear. One specific
| example of a "universal tool for success" being marred in
| this way is that black kids who are successful
| academically are sometimes bullied for "acting white."
| I've intentionally found a left leaning source discussing
| this phenomenon.
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/acting-
| whi...
| porkbeer wrote:
| My darker friends often caught hell from associating with
| a 'white boy' like me. The racism problem is bad on the
| other side too and many people discount this, but it may
| be a bigger problem than the obverse for culture and
| progress.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Didn't even Obama face some of this in his campaign
| because he wasn't "black enough"? I think SNL even had a
| running gag about it.
| dark_star wrote:
| The quote is talking about emulating the white
| oppressors, who oppressed people to gain wealth and
| power.
| jwie wrote:
| I'd believe the thing about the carrots was about marketing for
| carrots before tricking the Germans.
|
| It's not like such things haven't been done. In the states there
| are plenty of scams (marketing) to convince us to eat more
| grains, or drink milk, or consume more {product}. Don't see why
| it wouldn't be the same anywhere else.
|
| We had a whole cartoon character dedicated to convincing people
| to eat spinach, which we were wrong about being particularly
| beneficial as well. These kinds of things, even when well
| intentioned, have secondary, harmful effects, that far outweigh
| their purported benefits.
| q_andrew wrote:
| As someone who went into a STEM field without any family
| connections to STEM, I have definitely been stuck eating carrots
| and not knowing why it didn't work.
|
| Interestingly, the human brain tells itself carrot stories all
| the time:
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-hidden-prospect/...
|
| tldr: patients with split brain hemispheres will reflexively make
| up explanations for decisions made by the other half of their
| brains. Fascinating stuff, and makes me wonder how many things
| I've done that serve my subconscious' ulterior motives.
| bennettnate5 wrote:
| I'd love to hear more about what kinds of carrots you were fed
| coming in from a non-STEM background. For me, the one I can
| remember was a family friend recommending I stick to an
| engineering field (mechanical, electrical, civil, etc.) rather
| than CS because "there was much more money to be made in those
| fields". Thankfully I stuck to what I liked, which was coding.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Even if you made less with coding, there's also a life
| balance question on the trade-off of doing what you like VS
| pure money quantity. Long term, you want to enjoy your day to
| day, in any kind of endeavour and the good can get you
| through the bad.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't dispute the split hemispheres story but I don't think
| its particularly informative about normal cognitive function. I
| mean missing the connection between your brains is a pretty
| extreme situation.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| There are deliberate carrot problems, where the successful person
| deliberately misleads their audience as to the source of their
| success, and non-deliberate ones, where the successful people
| themselves doesn't understand why they are successful so tell
| people the narratives that make them feel the best about
| themselves. You see this often when someone with prodigious
| genetic ability doesn't want to admit to others or themselves
| that their success was determined before they were born, and not
| due to hard work or some immeasurable character trait.
| duped wrote:
| > You see this often when someone with prodigious genetic
| ability doesn't want to admit to others or themselves that
| their success was determined before they were born
|
| I don't think many people asked Yao Ming if being 7'6" helped
| with his basketball career, or Michael Phelps if his human
| flipper feet helped win a medal or two. But they have spoken at
| length about how they trained for their careers, and sane
| people can understand that being a genetic freak doesn't make
| you a world class anything. It predisposes you to success if
| you seek it - and both those people spent an enormous amount of
| their youth working to get there.
|
| The point is that success is not determined before you're born,
| and reasonable people understand that there's such a thing as
| variance in human anatomy.
| achenet wrote:
| I think there's a lot of truth to the quote "hard work beats
| talent when talent doesn't work hard".
|
| For top .0001% success in some fields (most sports, for
| example), you need genetic qualities AND hard work.
| opportune wrote:
| I think it's not that people with prodigious abilities don't
| want to attribute that to their success so much as mentioning
| that as a factor comes across as very narcissistic and
| unlikeable (even if it's true) unless you are literally an
| Einstein/Von Neumann type. For example, even Terry Tao has
| enough humility to self censor himself not to attribute his
| success to being a far-outlier-genius.
|
| In fact I'd bet a lot more people _think_ to themselves that
| they are only successful because they are a genius than there
| are geniuses. Because it's even more likely that coming from a
| highly rich or well connected family is truly the key factor in
| their success, and people would would much rather attribute
| success to talent or intelligence than daddy.
|
| It is definitely true though that prodigious talent isn't by
| itself sufficient to be successful. Also, intelligence helping
| you is kind of a given - it'd be like an NBA player saying
| "being 6'8" really helps". There are a lot of really tall
| people not in the NBA and a lot of prodigiously talented people
| who aren't conventionally "successful" either.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Secret to success: Rich parents and luck
|
| Another secret to success: Have enough luck to make up for not
| having rich parents.
| achenet wrote:
| I like to believe consisently making good decisions is also
| part of success, but I'm not that successful yet.
|
| Also, if "luck" is factors outside of your control, having rich
| parents would count as luck. :)
| derefr wrote:
| This is one reason the field of behavioral economics is important
| to society: there are things that an individual or company would
| never publicly admit to doing -- but which they're fine to
| admitting under NDA, to be used as a datapoint in an anonymized
| dataset used in academic research.
|
| So, while no individual company will tell you that everyone's
| using dark patterns or hiring their friends, behavioral
| economists _can_ put forth evidence-backed arguments that this is
| the case -- and so save you the trouble of bothering to chase the
| Carrot.
| hammock wrote:
| There is a great quote I read here about how your life changes
| once you are read into valuable info that no one else has. It
| was Daniel Ellsberg giving advice to Henry Kissinger when he
| first got his security clearances:
|
| _> You will feel like a fool for having studied, written,
| talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions
| made by presidents for years without having known of the
| existence of all this information, which presidents and others
| had and you didn't, and which must have influenced their
| decisions in ways you couldn't even guess. In particular,
| you'll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for
| over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have
| access to all this information you didn't know about and didn't
| know they had, and you'll be stunned that they kept that secret
| from you so well._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364718
| esafak wrote:
| See also Bruce Schneier's essay on the same subject,
| discussed just yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37091989
| bombcar wrote:
| There's an offshoot of this where they don't know why anything
| worked, so they ascribe success to the things they hope worked.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I was thinking the same. Luck also plays a huge part in this
| area, but will the highly paid managers admit this or even know
| about it
|
| no - they'll say it's down to <insert absolutlty anything they
| can make up>
| bombcar wrote:
| They admit luck plays a huge part - but only bad luck
| destroying their perfect plans.
| leoc wrote:
| Viz. the screenwriter William Goldman's "Nobody knows anything"
| from his book _Adventures in the Screen Trade_.
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-11-ca-807-st...
| https://variety.com/2018/film/opinion/william-goldman-dies-a...
| snthd wrote:
| The carrot misdirection had sincerity behind it. That doesn't
| apply to the other examples, so I don't think it's a good term to
| use.
| porkbeer wrote:
| How is a literal psyop sincere?
| hinkley wrote:
| I had to deal with that (digital) six sigma crap because Jack
| Welch had not yet left a giant crater in the ground and so people
| thought he was a wizard.
|
| He helped bring us the mass layoff and made tons of money dumping
| PCBs into the river. Apparently wells there are still toxic
| without treatment.
| [deleted]
| noduerme wrote:
| Here's another carrot problem:
|
| You see people all around you appearing to be cooler and more
| popular by proclaiming there's no point in working hard because
| the whole system is rigged. Not working and riding to the top of
| HN on your cynicism sure is tempting if you can justify it. But
| you don't know whether the people who claim that are actually
| secretly successful and just trying to win points by appealing to
| popular discontent. And you won't find out whether studying and
| working could have made you successful, because now you feel it's
| not worth trying.
|
| Even in the slacker 90s where we were all convinced we'd never
| earn as much as our parents, the self-pitying cynicism wasn't
| this rampant.
| opportune wrote:
| I don't think you can ever really learn from what a person says
| helped them do X. You have to look at the person themselves and
| try to figure out what about them made X happen - people have too
| much of a blind spot comparing themselves to the world outside
| their bubble, or understanding how other people perceive them.
| They lack the perspective to really know what about them is
| different
|
| For example most successful founders and CEOs in my experience
| may say taking meeting notes or setting a high bar helps. But
| really what helped is that they had personality traits leading to
| these behaviors which are what truly drove the benefits - they
| are meticulous and detail oriented so they want to use writing to
| nail down ideas, they set high standards for themselves and
| others so they do whatever it takes to avoid a bad hire or lazy
| decision. It would be considered impolite for the CEO to say that
| about themselves, and maybe they don't even notice how much of an
| outlier they are in those traits, so instead you get told the
| effect rather than the cause of their success. Someone without
| those traits trying to ape out the processes won't be able to
| realize the benefits.
|
| Similarly I think to a degree the whole "be connected or
| privileged from birth" is meant to be taken implicitly rather
| than ignored altogether, sometimes. Nobody wants to launch into a
| discussion about social class or inequality in some PR puff piece
| that's like "oh mr startup ceo why are you so rich and
| successful". Like in tennis nobody is going to say the secret to
| success is to have tiger parents and access to facilities and
| training from a young age that 99% of people can't afford. When
| people say "leverage your connections" they're kind of saying Joe
| Average without connections is out of the game until they build
| those connections, but politely.
| codeulike wrote:
| So a bit like big corporations making tons of money through
| monopolies, regulatory capture and corporate welfare, but then
| having to pretend their success was down to 'the market'
| the_snooze wrote:
| >For this reason, Carrot Problems greatly increase the value fo
| being an "insider".
|
| >There's some fields where it really might be true that you can
| learn everything you need to know by reading books at the public
| library. But anytime people are succeeding for reasons they won't
| admit in public, it's hard to get a grasp on the situation unless
| you have private back-channels.
|
| I feel this is a natural response when you're in a low-trust low-
| signal-to-noise-ratio environment. You have to keep things close
| to the chest and limit access, or else you'll spend all your time
| sifting through the noise. For example, the best way to reach me
| is by phone. But it's not enough to know my phone number to
| successfully reach me; you have to be in my private circle for me
| to pick up and respond. Everyone else is likely just scammers and
| telemarketers.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| It's also often the case that a lot of the hands-on day-to-day
| practical things are simply not very prestigious and can't be
| published in a way that they will appear in the "public
| library" or academic journals. It's not even necessarily that
| people want to withhold that knowledge to reduce competition,
| but simply the effort of writing it all up properly is not
| worth it. The same time could be spent working on something
| that results in a prestigious publication. Of course sometimes
| people will altruistically draft up such things in blog posts.
| But then again, anything people write passes through their own
| internal filter of "will this make me look good?" so
| ultimately, you can only see the real tips by closely working
| with and watching with successful people.
|
| For example many of these people may work ridiculous hours and
| sacrifice on their personal relations. Now try posting that on
| Twitter and you'll be crucified that you are encouraging
| unhealthy culture and you are a bad person for posting this. So
| most people don't bother.
| DanHulton wrote:
| This is a great way to describe all those "buy my book to learn
| how to make money online!" scams. The real way to make the money
| is to trick people into buying the books/courses/doodads, but you
| can't actually _say_ that. (Or if you do, you have to do so in
| such a way that you're pretending you're letting the buyer become
| part of the "inside club", so they don't feel tricked, they feel
| like they can start tricking people now, too. Very classic con
| strategy.)
| mercurialsolo wrote:
| Business advantages only exist with some degree of information
| asymmetry. People only want to share this over when either they
| are not playing the game or the market incentivizes open sharing
| (e.g. patent systems for innovation).
|
| Unfortunately for business outcomes or in case of war advantages
| - it has the exact opposite incentive - sharing this leads to
| loss of market share, more competition, chances of leaks and
| enemy knowing about your tactics and investing in R&D.
| tantalor wrote:
| "dark patters" -> "dark patterns"
| ubac wrote:
| thanks, fixed!
| re-thc wrote:
| The carrot problem is that there are too many rabbits.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| or is that an opportunity?...
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I'm really glad to have a word for this now.
|
| It makes me wonder how many carrot problems I've fallen for
| myself, or have been intending to fall for )not realizing they
| are carrot problems) and haven't got around to yet.
|
| Also how many other ideas I would like to have a word for.
| MrPatan wrote:
| The formula for success is not a sum of factors, it's a
| multiplication of factors.
|
| Yes, you need luck to be > 0. But you better have hard work also
| > 0, or you won't have any success anyway.
|
| No, the sales and marketing guys are not parasites leeching off
| your hard work because you're the one wrinting the code. It's not
| S + C, it's S * C.
|
| No, it doesn't matter how good and productive you are, if you
| don't know how to search for jobs, pass interviews, etc, you
| won't have a job.
|
| And not wanting to work hard because "you need luck anyway" is
| not a winning strategy.
| swayvil wrote:
| 1) People want X
|
| 2) Tell people a big lie about how to acquire X.
|
| 3) Chortle, possibly profit.
| chefandy wrote:
| While the carrot problem is real, it alone doesn't explain the
| shittiness of rich people's advice on becoming rich. So much
| opportunity is either created or destroyed by external
| circumstances that we don't perceive, let alone control. Since we
| all subconsciously write our own creation myths, it's not easy to
| discover and attribute forces that we aren't aware of when
| looking back on our life paths. The perennial bullshit self-
| explanation is _hard work._ How hard they work is one thing that
| they _can_ control, and they know they worked hard, so they
| assume it had more of an effect than it did... and in turn,
| others that worked less hard didn 't succeed. For example, they
| might assume that their uncle was willing to set up that meeting
| with their first big client because they worked hard enough to be
| worthy of it, rather than realizing that others who worked as
| hard or harder lacked a _connected uncle_.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| These people need to believe they're exceptional and therefore
| deserve it. In reality they (sometimes) worked very hard in
| order to have a chance to be lucky.
| II2II wrote:
| In other words: you can't make luck, but you need to lay the
| foundations for it.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yeah. You need to work hard for a chance to roll the dice.
| duped wrote:
| The carrot problem in TFA describes when there is an incentive
| to lie - what you're describing is something else entirely.
| It's not usually in the interest of someone with wealth to lie
| about how they got there.
|
| There's a big difference between being wrong/full of shit and
| outright lying because to tell the truth would harm your
| ability to make money. The former is just being an idiot, the
| latter is being a market manipulator/con /artist/grifter/etc.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Very few business success stories credit luck with being a root
| cause.
|
| But in real life luck (or "chance" , if you prefer) plays a
| part, sometimes a significant part.
|
| It was lucky that John and Paul went to school together. It was
| lucky they got on together and became good friends. Thanks to
| that luck ee got the Beatles.
|
| Of course it (usually) takes -more- than just luck, but dig
| deep enough and its there.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Various companies make a lot of money by implementing "dark
| patterns", such as getting customers onto subscriptions and then
| making it hard for them to cancel. They can't admit that this is
| why their revenue went up, so they make a bunch of claims about
| how their success comes out of [various beneficent strategies],
| but anyone who tries to replicate the success by using those
| lovely strategies is liable to go broke.
|
| This bullet point makes me wonder if there are situations where
| newcomers end up beating the original company because consumers
| are willing to pay an enormous premium just to avoid the dark
| patterns.
|
| Carrot _solutions_? :)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Another example: when I realized that most of the commercially
| successful bands that got played on the radio when I was young,
| including a few that I liked, were there because of payola, not
| because their music was better or their work ethic or whatever.
| They were probably better at sucking up to the gatekeepers who
| would pay off radio stations (illegally) to play their songs.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| So, "lying".
| iandanforth wrote:
| A specific and interesting form of lying! The pantheon of lies
| is rich enough to warrant additional terminology :)
| swayvil wrote:
| Oh there's a whole lying taxonomy and nomenclature. Be
| assured of it. But only the members of the inner house are
| allowed to see it. It is restricted technology.
| solarbubblewate wrote:
| Two of my favorites are "Affirming the Consequent" and the
| logically equivalent "Denying the Antecedent". How about
| you?
| cauliflower2718 wrote:
| Are there other examples that you particularly like?
| solarbubblewate wrote:
| The fallacy of the undistributed middle is particularly
| prevalent. However, in practice it is usually hidden in
| implications rather than explicitly stated. For example:
|
| 1. Murder is a crime. 2. We should be tough on murder. 3.
| Therefore, we should be tough on crime. (Deliberately)
| Omitted: Jaywalking is a crime. Should we be tough on
| jaywalking?
| jsunderland323 wrote:
| Damn. My mom told me carrots would improve my eyesight when I was
| little and I've lived with this my whole life. This article
| ruined my sense of accomplishment after eating carrots but I
| loved it.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Another possible term for it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| Horffupolde wrote:
| "Sandbagging" fits better.
| hk__2 wrote:
| And another related concept:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
| almostnormal wrote:
| One entity provides advice, a different one applies it.
|
| Cargo cult: The advice is applied incorrectly.
|
| Carrot problem: The advice is provided incorrectly.
|
| How to distinguish the two, without understanding the
| details? Looking at what worked doesn't help. Checking the
| motivation for providing the advice is asymmetric. Any other
| ideas?
| solarbubblewate wrote:
| Another wiki describing the term:
|
| https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Parallel_Construction
| jrflowers wrote:
| I like how the author has established "The Carrot Problem" as a
| novel concept that cannot be explained as "the stuff that happens
| after people lie"
| bonoboTP wrote:
| But it's much more specific than that. I know that it's common
| in such blogs to introduce useless neologisms and reinvent
| established concepts, but this seems to warrant it enough.
|
| It's specifically that success often relies on something that
| its user doesn't want to admit (either to stop competition, as
| in the war example, or just because the tool is socially
| unacceptable or wouldn't make them look good), but they also
| don't want to say "I won't tell you, it's a secret" and instead
| they make up some other reason that actually doesn't work. This
| is way more concrete than just "what happens after people lie".
| Many lies aren't about reasons and recipes for success.
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