
Once - nbashaw
http://nbashaw.com/post/22658840550/once
======
6ren
> Normal people are pessimists [ _about new ideas_ ]

It's not that they're pessimists, it's just that they aren't interested in new
ideas.

I'm reading _Guns, germs and steel_ , and it notes one advantage of European
civilization was that it had access to large mammals that were easily
domesticated, and one of the ways in which they were easy to domesticate was
that they are hierarchically organized socially, and "follow the leader". This
helps, because humans just needed to insert themselves at the top of the
hierarchy to control the herd/pack.

I'd realized some time ago that we ourselves are also domesticated, but just
this morning, in watching a dog cross the road following its owner, I realized
that human beings themselves are socially hierarchical, and this makes us
easier to domesticate, and _easier to control._

We have been controlled by gods/priests, within militaries, within
corporations, within sports, taste in movies, TV, reddit memes, pop music, pop
psychology, political movements, the habit of obedience we have towards the
law, scientific paradigms, by intellectual ideas, by principles - even free-
thinking intellectual radicals have leaders they read and follow. Marketers
try to identify influencers, thought-leaders, trend-setters. If you control
the top of the hierarchy, the rest will follow.

So it's not that normal people are pessimists about new ideas, it's just that
they follow what the leader of their hierarchy follows. It takes time for an
idea to get to that point, and by then it's no longer "new". Even within
startups, there is a great deal of this - people follow the _popular_
companies, brands, products, personalities, from Apple to vim to lisp to Alan
Kay. They have religious wars.

The human being who really does follow a new idea for its own sake is rare and
in a straightforward biological sense, is not normal.

~~~
Mz
Have an upvote, which in this case does not specifically express agreement.

------
swombat
That's only true when the cost of failure is low. That's a small, but very
important caveat.

That being said, I don't buy the "entrepreneurship is very risky" line. I
think it's a lot less risky than many other careers that are commonly
considered "safe".

~~~
AznHisoka
Yep, easy to say failing is cheap on paper. But once you experience it, it
feels morally excruciating. Hard to come back from a couple of failures

~~~
marklindhout
True that. Losing money hurts, and will always be connected psychologically to
that 'failure'.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (<http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com>) in his book “The
Black Swan” talks about one of his friends, a stock trader, with a very
specific strategy. This strategy involves losing lots of small amounts over
time, and once every 6 years or so, one enormous win. He explained that his
trader friend needed to check his track record continuously to remind him of
the actual benefit of this strategy, because even the small losses were eating
away at him. Up to a point where he wanted to give up.

------
notJim
It is incredibly difficult for me to express how much I hate this kind of smug
startup boosterism. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of reasons not to
start a startup that don't have a goddamned thing to do with pessimism. It's
like you've never met, talked to, or considered the possibility of the
existence of anyone who isn't caught up in the silicon valley echo-chamber.

Your dreams do not make you morally superior. Your ambition does not make you
a better person. It does not make you smarter than everyone else. It doesn't
make you immoral, a bad person, or stupid either. Having the maturity and
humility to recognize that everyone chooses their own path for their own
reasons, many of which are beyond their control, is the only way we can
possibly relate to other human beings and live a humane existence.

~~~
count
I agree with almost everything you have said, with the exception of one
principle.

The drive/desire/ambition to do 'better' DOES make you a better person. The
people with that quality are the ones who've provided every major improvement
in quality of life around the world.

~~~
notJim
_note_ : had a totally different answer here which I decided I did not like.
Apologies.

I had a lot of difficulty replying to your comment. I feel intuitively that
it's wrong, but it's hard to articulate why.

I guess there are a couple of problems:

a) ambition often drives both good and harmful behavior. Because of this, I
feel that ambition is morally neutral.

b) I rankle at the notion that people can be "better" than one another, except
in extreme circumstances. Is Mark Zuckerberg better for inventing Facebook, or
is my dad better for making a career of healing people's marriages and
personal problems through psychotherapy? My dad likes what he does, and is
successful, but those who know him would not describe him as ambitious per se.
Personally, I believe that Mark Zuckerberg and my father do what they do for
their own reasons, and not out of altruism or a desire to make a better world.
Or maybe they both do what they do out of a desire to make a better world. I
don't think either of them is better than the other.

~~~
jamesrcole
Do you think someone can be worse than someone else? That someone can be
selfish, inconsiderate, have only interests in making things better for
themselves, regardless of how it may negatively impact others? Do you think
there's different degrees of how much worse someone can be? I'd suggest that
_if_ you do, then this also implies that people can be better than others to
varying degrees.

~~~
notJim
Well, my main point in my comment is that choosing a different occupation or
choosing a different company to work at doesn't make you a better person.

------
oskarth
I appreciate and believe in the message, but perhaps it's time to consider the
quote:

 _a startup exit is opium for ambitious techies_

That's not to say you shouldn't go for it, just make sure it's not your opium
in life.

~~~
rhizome
You also have to go into it with your eyes open, because your deal is not
going to improve from what you negotiate at the start. Not all startup exits
are life-changing.

------
ilaksh
There are lots of real problems actually. I think this is a better
explanation:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_quo_bias>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion>

------
ScottWhigham
I'm sorry - I just don't understand (a) why this is a blog post, and then (b)
why it was submitted here. This reads like a comment on someone else's blog,
or a "note to self", or a Facebook status update. And yet, here we are - it
has 33 upvotes as I write this. I wish there was some way we could say, "only
count votes from accounts older than 1 year" in the "points" so we could see
just how much influence the newbies have in story votes.

~~~
bobds
"only count votes from accounts older than 1 year"

I think pg indulged us in this experiment. IIRC the front page was pretty much
the same.

~~~
286c8cb04bda
It's available at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/classic>

~~~
epaga
and note this post is front page there as well...

------
sheldor
I don't think the statistics are accurate. They may apply for most of us out
there but once you're on the train, the odds could be better for you (or worse
of course).

I've seen people succeeding in several areas two or three times in a row,
which means they don't apply to the 99% of failure each time. Maybe it's a
matter of starting to know things from the inside and the odds could easily
switch to your favor.

Besides, pessimism is rarely followed by success.

------
jcnnghm
Unless you run out of liquidity before you are right once.

------
windsurfer
I'm approaching finding employment the same way. You only have 1 career, after
all. Sending your resume to fifty places you wouldn't enjoy working at serves
no purpose other than diluting your efforts. Put 100% of your time and mental
capacity into only a small number of paths is best. Being wrong a few times is
fine, but being wrong without giving it your best shot is what you'll regret.

------
leif
Companies like instagram, when they hit high profile exits, only add fuel to
the fire that is hordes of decent people that would otherwise be excellent,
productive, happy employees, wanting to play the startup lottery.

I don't know much about startup financing economics, but when it comes to
talented people, it seems to me like there is a huge bubble.

Thought experiment time. Suppose you have a 1% chance of cashing out
spectacularly enough to live off the proceeds for the rest of your life, and
provide for your children too. You need to get 69 "at bats" before you have
more than a 50% chance of winning (.99^69 is about .49983). Are you going to
start 69 startups before you die? No? Then please, unless you really have a
good idea, just go work for someone else (even if it's a startup), you'll be
happier. I know, I know, execution is everything, but you _do_ need a good
idea to execute.

------
EREFUNDO
My dad asked me once why I would ever leave my good paying Finance job to
start a company with a 1% statistical chance of success. I told him that if
you want to belong to the top 1% you have to take the 1% chance of success.

~~~
leif
Your company has a 1% chance of success? Where do I sign up?

~~~
EREFUNDO
haha we're still on stealth mode but we're building a system that will open
online payments to the rest of the world. We mean EVERYONE!. 80-90% of people
in emerging market economies have no access to online payments because they
don't have bank accounts or credit cards. Our system will bypass that
requirement and just enable people to accept payments immediately, it's that
simple. Of course we are willing to discuss/brainstorm our ideas with other
entrepreneurs.

------
dmvaldman
i expanded on this idea in a recent blog post: the psychology of tackling hard
problems

<http://davidvaldman.com/post/20027940591/psychofhardproblems>

------
emehrkay
This is an okay blog. I am enjoying the entries.

------
waxjar
Gambling is generally considered bad.

~~~
danssig
You think so? I think Gambling irresponsibly is considered bad, but Gambling
if you can afford it is pretty fun.

------
moron
That's true, you only need to be right once. But you may end up being right
zero times.

~~~
marklindhout
Try naught, get naught.

------
SpiderX
I don't click on any links that are not descriptive enough, mr nbashaw.
Please, when you submit your link please describe or hint at what exactly I
will see if I will follow the link.

~~~
nbashaw
"Once" isn't a news story. It's something you already know but need to be
reminded of from time to time. Giving it a functionally descriptive title
would spoil the effect.

