
Life Is Driven by Network Effects - taigeair
https://www.nfx.com/post/your-life-network-effects
======
jotakami
Something about this article doesn’t sit right with me... it’s not wrong,
just... misguided? For one, he talks about these huge crossroads, all of which
take place early in life, and starts making suggestions as if young people
facing these decisions have everything figured out already and just need to
optimize. It just comes off as very... inauthentic.

Reminds me of a line from Nassim Taleb’s _Antifragile_ : “There exist the kind
of people for whom life is some kind of project. After talking to them, you
stop feeling good for a few hours; life starts tasting like food cooked
without salt.”

~~~
MR4D
Not sure I have the same take as you. For instance....

The most important node on the network happens before you were born - it’s the
network between two people that had sex leading to your conception.

So, that’s pretty huge, and it’s very early in life. Finally, it’s the
biggest, most important node in your life because everything in your life will
flow from that node.

So yes, some decisions have been made. As an American, I’m mostly optimizing
early decisions (and mistakes). But to a kid born between two refugees in
Syria, his optimizations will look much different from mine due to the initial
node in his life.

~~~
onion2k
Who your parents are can make your journey easier or harder, but it's always
ultimately up to you to do the work.

What would have happened to tech if a young Steve Jobs had said to himself "My
father was a Syrian immigrant and my mother was pushed to give me up for
adoption else be rejected by her family, so my life isn't likely to be a
success."?

~~~
MR4D
You’re missing my point, which is that is a Steve was born to parents who
never had access to the US, then yes, our world would be different and there
would be no Apple.

There are roughly 8 billion people on this planet, and only about 309 million
in the US. Most people will never be able to come here just due to the large
difference in numbers.

So who your parents are is hugely important in determining not just your
worldview, but your actual world (or where you are on it).

------
woliveirajr
> The most lasting and effective way to change your life is to change who
> you’re surrounded by. Since networks so powerfully shape who we are and what
> we do, the best way to change ourselves is to change our networks.

That's why it's good to be part of groups when you move to a new town, groups
that probably will have person with many similarities with you (and not the
only one that made you choose them). Be part of a literature group and you'll
have things in common that go beyond reading books, as being part of that
group will have effect in your time, routes you take within the city, places
you'll eat, stores that you'll go, and so on.

~~~
daxfohl
One could argue it's a good reason _not_ to be part of groups.

~~~
ismail
Actually I don’t think so. We need the social interaction, to belong, to be
part of something larger. we are inherently social, and we inherently “mimic”
and absorb from those around us.

Watch a child learn. My 1year old will watch me. Then try and do what I do.
Children effectively “absorb” language from their environment- by watching and
hearing us the parents speak.

Rather than giving up groups understand how the groups you belong to influence
you and then apply some thinking. Take what works for you, reject what does
not. Do it consciously.

------
qihqi
"The larger point here is that when groups get larger, it’s an exponential
change, not a linear one" \--- this sentence is a big pet peeve of mine. It's
not exponential, its quadratic. I get that the author trying to say
_superlinear_ and the distinction of exponential vs. quadratic doesn't feel
much. However, if "math" is mentioned in every paragraph, better get the math
right.

~~~
johnsimer
A Network’s value actually usually grows n log n, not n^2, if you assume the
values of the nodes have a Gaussian distribution.

~~~
naasking
Do you have a link where I can read about this?

------
Merrill
Interesting article, but normally "network effect" is associated with the
concept that the value of membership in a network increases as a power of the
size of the network. Rather than size, it seems that the type and quality of
the various networks that an individual is embedded in is the controlling
factor regarding the advantages and disadvantages that shape the individual's
life in a progression from family to education, employment, and community. In
the end, it is more about "path dependency" than "network effects".

~~~
AstralStorm
Albeit if you have a broad network you're more likely to have high quality
connections. At a huge cost to maintain it though and reasonably manageable
networks of relationships are never that big.

------
aussiegreenie
Damon Runyon said, "Always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up
against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you."

~~~
rexpop
Tell it to their chauffeurs and masseuses.

~~~
onion2k
Being an employee of a rich person is not "rubbing up against money". The
point is that you need rich people to see you as either a peer, or as someone
they can nuture and mentor.

~~~
rexpop
Ah, so we're moving the goalposts.

------
GrayTextIsTruth
One of the reasons why I think 100% distributed, remote team might not be the
best. Which is why a middle ground where you work remote but within 1 hour of
a “company hub” so you get to see you team a few times a month.

Ive been remote for a year and a half and I feel I’m not making lasting
connections. It’s probably different for single folks but it’s hard to visit
coworkers with a family.

~~~
rlayton2
I had something similar, to the point where I didn't really know anything
about the people in my team. One small thing that can help a little is to
spend more time on the small talk in team meetings and video conferencing.
"The weather is good today" is cliche, but a good segway into "I might take my
bike out for a ride around town", and maybe a chat about what type of bike you
have etc...

------
bradlys
In a lot of ways - these network effects read more like privileges than
anything. With most of them having been begun with - what family were you born
into. Almost everything else will follow after.

It is why people who are born into such desirable families can end up with so
much more desirable things so much more easily. The effects of being born into
that family will lead to a good high school which leads to a good college
which leads to a good first job... And if your family raised you even half
decently then you'll end up with a spouse who is likely similar to you because
where you go is somewhat correlated with your upbringing. Many people meet
their partner in college or the workplace after all. (And the activities you
will have interest in can be correlated with your upbringing - and/or your
ability to afford them)

~~~
agumonkey
i thought a lot about that and family lineage is not random imo. sure it feels
like injust freeby, but coming from problematic ancestry, i can see how having
the somatic and emotional genes of wealth capable families is of immense value
and that people recognize that implicitly.

------
dcre
We truly live in a society.

------
tempsy
So what does one do if they want to move somewhere where they don’t know
anyone?

~~~
anigbrowl
I have done this several times. You situate yourself in places where you will
meet a bunch of other people and aggressively socialize (as in pushing
yourself to go out and mingle with strangers even though it's a lot of work,
not force your way into conversations).

You'll have to introduce yourself over and over and of course the basic
questions are where you were, why you left, and why you came to where you are.
You have to do this often enough that it sort of becomes like a pitch that you
need to refine to avoid boring others or exhausting yourself, so it's a good
time to decide how you want to appear and basically redesign your life to the
extent that you feel like doing that.

A downside from the economic point of view is your lack of an existing
network, but then again you'll also be open to opportunities you might not
have considered otherwise, and you'll also be the New Interesting Person for
everyone you meet. If you can tell interesting stories about where you've been
or what you've noticed in where you just arrived (without making them all
about you), and are in turn good at asking questions and actively listening,
then doors will open up for you.

Pay attention to appearances and think about yours (what you want it to be and
how much work that will take to maintain) as it will have a big impact on your
encounters and subsequent experience.

------
robocat
Religion, language, culture, where you lived, IQ/EQ, socioeconomic status, and
temperament are more important than some of the 7 listed networks. The 7
listed "crossroad" networks were: family, high school, college, first job,
marriage, where you live, and "Reassessments" (silly).

However I think there is a glint of gold somewhere in the dross of that
article.

~~~
rexpop
> Religion, language, culture, where you lived... socioeconomic status

Those are all socialized by, and therefore downstream of, one's milieu, aka
social network.

> temperament

Also, largely, socialized. Sad how you miss the forest for the trees, here.

Edit:

IQ, hilariously, is a supposed "biological" attribute, and yet has been shown
to be more about one's acculturation into the proctors' cultural memes.

~~~
cylon13
> IQ, hilariously, is a supposed "biological" attribute, and yet has been
> shown to be more about one's acculturation into the proctors' cultural
> memes.

Can you post a source for this? As far as I'm aware, IQ is one of the best
understood and well studied metrics in human behavior, and it definitely has a
large genetic component.

~~~
paganel
> IQ is one of the best understood and well studied metrics in human behavior

Not the OP and I don't have any studies at hand, but what I think he/she meant
to say was that IQ tests only validate the worldview of said "proctors", which
in our case happen to be proctors belonging to a technological society. We
don't know if said IQ tests would hold any value in a hunter-gatherer society
or in a society based on different things compared to the things that are seen
as "smart" by our said technological society (my instinct is that they won't,
and as such I agree with OP that IQ tests only serve to validate a certain
state of things).

Later edit: Come to think of it the request itself of "show me the studies"
represents a point of view specific to a certain "world" (that technological
society I mentioned), your request would be null in a society "built" on
different epistemic stuff (for example in Roman times one might have asked
"show me if this is true based on how that crow flies" [1] etc)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augury)

------
acoye
I feel it goes against the idea I (we) may have about personal freedom.

This makes someone not aware of said systems a puppet doesn't it? To the point
you think you have freedom, but your attempts could be doomed to failure.

We are still free to shape our networks yes, and it requires work ... So
success is a function of how good you are at Psyop then /s

~~~
AstralStorm
The problem being that maintaining and shaping networks is very expensive in
the most limited resource: time and attention.

And the more realistic model of such networks are cliques, and switching or
merging cliques is hard - were it easy we would not talk of charisma and
makers. To join a clique you have to be compatible with its selection process
in some way, and certain cliques are made of birthright.

Face it, we're all elitist. We have to be or we would be socially overloaded
or worse, exploited.

Ultimately, because there are statistics involved, there will be social
butterflies and successful climbers, but they will be rather rare and it's
hard to discern chance, opportunity and genetic (including environmental)
source of said success from each other. It's extremely hard to run such
experiments due to age number of social feedbacks involved.

I do not trust the "simple math" involved, though certain coincidences might
have enough weight to statistically dwarf others. A lot of the alleged laws
like Zipf's is trivial restatement of correlations between diverse subgroups
of a group. They're not constructive nor prescriptive.

Cliques tend to not obey commands of individuals who are not influential nor
even if influential ones if the command goes against the existence or success
of the clique, and an outsider is especially not influential. (The degree by
which they do is called stability.)

People tend to be in many networks but rather few cliques. Network is much
less relevant than the cliques. (E.g. being a banker vs personally a few
bankers in a specific bank vs knowing and working with Congress budget
committee.) The overarching network effects tend to be shared by big groups
and likewise can prove to be big barriers or boons, but they're not something
you can change on your own or even as a society most of the time. It's often
that genetic reasons cause the relatively even probability of being in or out
to shift due to feedback effects, and feedbacks are rather hard to change.

Most importantly, few people have the resources to explore properly.

There's no question of probability of high achiever group when genetic causes
are not in place as that clique will reject you. (At least earlier in life.)
Likewise if you're ugly, good luck getting into cool kids club. It can change
somewhat, but more often than not it doesn't.

Society tends to put social success on pedestal, while such aspirations might
not be achievable by most due to lack of any of the necessary components that
are unknown.

------
mirimir
The title would be more accurate with "My...".

Edit: It's not about "life", in any general sense. It's about human lives.

------
jowdones
Although I'm gonna change the World, not much network so far on my side. And
I'm not taking trying to be friends with the rich and powerful. The poor and
hopeless are equally unfriendly.

One word: middle class.

