

Nothing succeeds like success - nopinsight
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21601494-and-science-has-now-proved-it-nothing-succeeds-success

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cateye
Link to the paper:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/23/1316836111.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/23/1316836111.full.pdf)

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nopinsight
There is an interesting comment thread below the article.

[http://www.economist.com/comment/2369619#comment-2369619](http://www.economist.com/comment/2369619#comment-2369619)

I'd say that in addition to learning from failures, having the energy,
resourcefulness, and courage to try enough times to gain the necessary lessons
is also important.

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toppy
"Sorry… We are performing essential site maintenance and should be back soon.
We apologise for the inconvenience."

You've killed The Economist!

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gd1
Not to state the bleeding obvious, but isn't real life a little bit different
to the internet? If I want to see which kickstarters have had a modicum of
success, I just do a descending sort. It doesn't work like that in real life.

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eroded
I fail to see the difference between "real life" and "the Internet". Surely
they're the same thing these days?

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gd1
Didn't I just explain it? I can't do a descending sort of every store on my
local high street based on their success so far. These things snowball on the
internet because the sorting and quantifying process lends itself to viral
snowballing.

