
A Self-Made Man Looks At How He Made It - barredo
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/07/23/a-self-made-man-looks-at-how-he-made-it/
======
j45
This speaks to a few things and our opportunity to participate in them:

No one is self made. Everyone owes it to breaks from those around them. Get
over yourself. Your life isn't the only hard or misunderstood one.

Give more breaks than you get. No one is a stranger or enemy. Treat everyone
as your friend and they'll become one. Treat someone like an adversary and
they'll become one too.

If you don't take the time to learn someone's story you have no right to an
opinion other than wishing them well.

Keeping kindness, goodness, and sharing opportunity is the bedrock of a world
I want to live in.

Keeping kindness, goodness, and sharing a growing thing is a world I want to
work on. We're dealing with our own stuff, together. Not everyone will get, or
do this. I have my choice.

Remember how connected we are. How I treat others is how I truly do end up
treating myself or being treated. Things aren't black and white, but the greys
can lighten or darken based on me. The drop is in the ocean, and the ocean is
in the drop.

Our universal responsibility for and towards each other. When we can see that
we are owed nothing and owe our respect and contribution to the world in
exchange for becoming better every day, we begin to realize what life is
really about.

It's your job to understand yourself first, enough to keep moving, inward,
onward and upward. Through your understanding of yourself, you'll be able to
connect to others deeply and in a meaningful way. As much as this may terrify
some, it will involve learning to use your heart and gut as much as your mind.

Our responsibility for our society, and our society towards us. We get the
responsibility we deserve and demand/contribute to in our actions.

~~~
omegant
Great lines!

~~~
j45
Wow, wrote this and went to bed. Glad you liked it, learning one line at a
time and I try to remember to practice it one line at at time.

~~~
omegant
Yep certainly is a daily task. All the points derive from knowing yourself
IMHO. You did a great job sumarizing lots of my own thoughts!

------
jpiasetz
Two things comes to mind; the author embodies "I am a great believer in luck.
The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have."

And second I wish the author wouldn't try to ram his point about tax down.
He's looking back at his life and saying taxes gave me a leg up and ignoring
the places where low taxes and regulation did the same (the private school,
AOL).

Nobody who is libertarian argues that there should be charity or we shouldn't
care for our fellow person (well nearly nobody, I'm sure their are some mean
spirited people out there). The point is how efficient we do it.

He's looking down the one path that happened to him but what if instead of
having a military when he was young there was just lower taxes and better
support for mothers would society be better off? What if instead of Pell
grants there was better primary schools? What if we gave Bill Gates more money
to try and make the world a better place? What if lower taxes made food
cheaper so that he wouldn't have to be fed through the schools lunch program?

~~~
stretchwithme
I agree. One cannot just look back at all the things that have happened and
conclude they are right because you have prospered. We have, or some do, the
capacity to think in principles and what things actually provide real benefit.

I happen to think people are more generous when they are free to be successful
and they aren't bled to death.

Even with the high taxes in the US, I read that charitable contributions are
up around $300 billion.

And private charity has some incentives that are absent in government charity.
People are actually more careful with their own money. And when the results
are obviously bad, they change what they are doing.

The federal government has let many bad things happen for decades before
addressing them. The disastrous public housing projects. Welfare that destroys
the work ethic. It eventually changed course on these things, but not without
much political wrangling. A private donor would move to change it after seeing
the evidence.

Worse still is the total lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement that many
recipients of public money seem to have. I feel most people when receiving a
gift from a private donor would say please and thank you. And if the private
donor could not continue to give for some reason, they'd say thank you just
the same, not harass them.

~~~
rayiner
Counterpoint: black people.

The federal government subsidizes Chicago's public schools to the tune of $1
billion. You think private charity would be so generous to a district that's
90% black or Hispanic? You're out of your mind if you do. Whites fought,
violently, for 100 years, to keep blacks from integrating into society. When
the courts desegregated the cities, whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having
to integrate, leaving the urban decay that is a major target of welfare today.

The history of race in this country is an unavoidable prong of the welfare
debate, and it really undermines high-minded notions of how great a system of
charity could be.

~~~
powertower
You are making most of that up. There are more than 1 way to look at
something, and you seem to be focusing at the smaller part.

There are also "white people" that have ended slavery (something done by every
race since the beginning of time), fought for other races giving them full
rights, helped integrate those races into their society, made programs that
removed barriers to schools and jobs while discriminating against their own
kind, and funded integration to the tune of 100s of billions dollars a year
(and now a trillion dollars / year).

…Something that no other race has done in the history of the world.

> whites fled to the suburbs to avoid having to integrate

No, that's only part of it, the human part (that likes unity of race, culture
and behavior). They also fled because they were scared that crime and violence
would follow.

Your blame of the dysfunctions of the black community is seriously misplaced.
White people are not responsible for the care of black people anymore than I'm
responsible for you having a life. Until you figure this out and stop the
blame game, that dysfunction will likely continue.

~~~
rayiner
The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional. We
who live in the U.S. are the beneficiaries of tremendous investment into the
country by Americans who came before us. We either inherited these benefits,
having been born here, or bought into them, by choosing to immigrate here. We
have inherited their sins as well. I was not born here, but every morning I
ride to work on a train line that was built when Jim Crow still reigned in the
U.S. and would still reign for another half a century before it was dismantled
by the federal government. The obligations incurred by our predecessors are
baked into the brick and concrete and steel of the civilization which they
built.

The marginalization of blacks in the U.S. is not some academic issue that
happened in the long-forgotten past and involved long-forgotten people. At the
time my grandfather was starting his medical practice, which would sew the
seeds for the prosperity of his family in my own time, blacks in the United
States were systematically oppressed, prevented from participating in society
or getting an education. This all happened in essentially modern times. George
Wallace made his stand to resist integration 16 years after the transistor was
invented at Bell Labs, and 5 years after the first integrated circuit was
demonstrated at Texas Instruments. It was not that long ago even on the
technological time scale, and a blink of an eye on the sociological time
scale.

~~~
powertower
> The idea that you can inherit money but not obligations is dysfunctional.

The idea that white people come from old money that gets passed down from
generation to generation is not based in reality. Many whites came here from
the peasant class, and stayed this way for centuries. And most still are in
this class one way or another.

> We have inherited their sins as well.

Sure, if you ignore every single positive thing white people have done; and if
you assume that white people have some type of an agenda to actively
discriminate against non-whites (at a greater degree than non-whites do
against whites).

But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America
should feel ashamed and guilty for being white.

That's a personal choice you made for yourself. Don't make it for me.

~~~
eropple
_But what it really seems like you are saying is that white people in America
should feel ashamed and guilty for being white._

No, that's not what he's saying, at all. Nowhere has "old money" or "guilt"
entered the equation and that you are feeling very defensive does not give you
license to put words into his mouth. rayiner (who I often disagree with, but I
have to applaud him for this) is saying that people with privilege have
responsibilities as well as benefits. You have, and I'm going to use a
technical term, a metric fuckton of privilege being born white and male in the
United States.

He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it
than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

~~~
powertower
> He is saying that you have a responsibility to society to be better with it
> than to say "fuck you, I've got mine."

As a citizen of the USA I agree that I have a responsibility to my country and
society. I just don't agree that you get to decide for me what that
responsibility is.

> You have, and I'm going to use a technical term, a metric fuckton of
> privilege being born white and male in the United States.

Please, be specific about my situation and what you have decided my skin color
owes, just don't use nebulous politically-correct terms such as white-privlege
... unless you are trying to end the conversation.

~~~
eropple
_> As a citizen of the USA I agree that I have a responsibility to my country
and society. I just don't agree that you get to decide for me what that
responsibility is._

Society does. That's why it's there. You don't define the social contract.
That mindset is what leads to "fuck you, I've got mine."

 _> Please, be specific about my situation and what you have decided my skin
color owes, just don't use nebulous politically-correct terms such as white-
privlege ... unless you are trying to end the conversation._

You're joking, right? "White privilege" isn't a term of _political
correctness_. It's a sociological construct that's used to frame and discuss
relative advantage given majority or otherwise preferential traits (such as,
in the United States, being any or all of white, male, heterosexual, and
Christian).

Using the common constructs of the topic isn't "ending the conversation", it's
being specific. I'm not going to fall prey to the commonly-used tactic of
enumerating exactly why privilege is what it is so that you can attempt to
bury the overall point beneath the details on which you think you can nullify
the entire academically settled topic. You are welcome to educate yourself on
the topic if you so choose.

You won't, but you are welcome to.

~~~
powertower
So you won't define this social contract that you (you somehow also
representing the society) are holding me to (the contract I'm supposedly
violating or ignoring somehow by disagreeing with something you said, or
having a different P.O.V.), nor will you enumerate what my white privileges
are; both of which you have brought up. Because if you did so, you'd be
falling prey to _my_ (my!) tactics. And E.O.C to me too.

~~~
stretchwithme
A contract that you cannot get out of and that never allowed you to approve or
reject it in the first place, is not a valid contract. Its slavery.

Of course, it is fictional. And if they can get you to submit to the fiction,
they are only too happy to tell you how it obligates you to serve their pet
projects.

------
linuxhansl
"I pay a lot of taxes. I don’t mind because I know how taxes helped me to get
to the fortunate position I am in today."

Exactly! I pay a lot of taxes too and do not mind. How could I be stingy on
welfare, public healthcare, education, etc, anything that can help others. (no
sarcasm, I mean it)

~~~
rayiner
On the subject of paying taxes... there are places I could live where I would
pay less taxes than I do in New York City. Texas comes to mind, but also India
or for that matter Somalia. Yet people generally move in the opposite
direction as they become more successful.

I find it deeply ironic that David Koch lives in Manhattan, with its high
state and city taxes, as well as extensive welfare spending. It's almost as if
paying taxes buys you access to civilization, which makes living in a place
desirable.

~~~
gm1000
I find it a little troubling that you're implying that welfare and high taxes
made New York one of the richest cities in the world.

~~~
pessimizer
He's not implying that at all. I think he's saying that the wealthy like to
live in places with high taxes and welfare because places with low taxes and
no welfare are shitholes.

------
jacoblyles
Yes, I appreciate public services. But I don't enjoy paying my taxes to
inefficient institutions, or institutions that spend my tax money primarily to
benefit insiders rather than the needy. And I don't want to live in a high-tax
society where private individuals don't have the means to independently
experiment with their capital in ways that benefit us all.

If the United States had taxes as high as Denmark, then Elon Musk wouldn't
have had the money left over from Paypal to start Space X. When you watch the
rockets fly to Mars, thank whatever god you believe in for low American taxes.

I appreciate the sentiment behind some of these comments, but _fuck_ all these
straw men and apologists maintaining a smoke screen for poorly run
institutions ( _cough_ Sacramento _cough_ ). And no, I'm not evil, selfish,
greedy, or ignorant if I want lower taxes. I am making a rational judgment
based on what I believe will make the best society to live in.

~~~
Confusion

      If the United States had taxes as high as Denmark, there
      would be no Elon Musk.
    

Why do you believe this? Denmark also has multmillionaires that fund startups
or start their own.

~~~
jacoblyles
Elon invested all his money from the Paypal sale to make Tesla, Space X, and
Solar City at the same time. He had to borrow money from friends to make rent.
Take away an additional 30% from his Paypal money and either Tesla or Space X
would have never been born.

And that's only one entrepreneur's story. That same scenario is repeated
thousands of times around the country. Taxes are sand in the gears of an
entrepreneurial economy.

~~~
Confusion
No entrepreneurial economy would exist if there wasn't a government to
streamline the organisation of many mundane things such that the entrepreneurs
aren't bothered by them. No entrepreneurial economy exists without a police
force, a fire department and an influx of capable employees.

~~~
jacoblyles
You are right! And it is perfectly possible to provide those public goods
without European levels of taxation (or hell, Californian levels of
taxation!). Hong Kong manages to do it with an 18% flat tax.

------
jandrewrogers
With any story like this, I have a hard time extrapolating it to the
circumstances of anyone else. Most people have been fortunate to run into
individuals that ultimately benefitted their careers. I certainly have. But
let us not extrapolate one man's experience to everyone's experience. Most
people never have the opportunity to even be easily lucky. Often, people have
to work very hard to grasp just a little bit of luck. That reality should be
recognized. And I cannot complain. I have done well for myself by working hard
and grasping opportunities.

Scalzi is right to consider how he arrived at his current position. However,
the tacit assumption that everyone in his position enjoyed the advantages he
did is false and pernicious. Many people work much harder and sacrifice much
more than the story portrays. I don't begrudge Scalzi in the slightest. My
concern is that people will think his experience is typical.

Hard work is a big part of it, luck is a big part of it, and being in the
right place at the right time is a big part of it. People that work smart,
hard, and efficiently are not common but those that do, or at least
occasionally approximate it, generally do well over the long term no matter
how their "luck" plays out.

~~~
brennenHN
You missed the point. This is not an expectation of luck, but is his
acknowledgement that he could not have made it alone. The post is not meant to
help you achieve like him (which I understand is different from most of what
is posted on Hacker News), but is a retrospective acknowledgement that it is
impossible to succeed alone.

~~~
j45
You so nailed it.

As a corollary I think it also speaks to the importance of keeping moving, be
it inward, onward, and upward in life.

------
anujkk
This reminds me of what my grandfather told me once -

"I often hear many people(mostly teens) claiming that they are independent and
they can live life as they wish. They say they don't care about society. They
wrongly perceive society as something evil that is stopping them to live the
life they want. They forget that in society we are neither independent or
dependent, but interdependent. It is next to impossible to live completely
independently."

~~~
j45
These are really great words that stand the test of time. Inherent truth is
eternal.

------
1123581321
I think that if we want to have more John Scalzis in the world, we need to
lower taxes. I am glad his mother could get him into private school. There are
many parents who could if they did not have so much withheld from their
paycheck, did not have a large property tax bill, or did not have to pay rents
inflated by taxes. We don't need to pay for such an expensive military just to
give military moms some help. We could give free healthcare to so many more
poor women and still save money if we reduced our military budget.

~~~
Confusion
They wouldn't need a private school if higher taxes paid for better public
schools. Which they do in most of Europe.

~~~
jacoblyles
The United States spends more money per pupil than most European countries[1]
in K-12 education, $11,000 per student compared to the EU average of $7,700
per student. Where are you getting your beliefs from?

At some point, the public bureaucracy needs to stop draining the blood out of
the private economy and learn to do more with less. Or, in the case of US
schools, do more with more.

[1] [http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-
glance...](http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/education-at-a-
glance-2012/indicator-b1-how-much-is-spent-per-student_eag-2012-16-en)

~~~
Confusion
You are asserting generalities, while your arguments are based on _your_
_current_ government spending money inefficiently. If you would stop arguing
in generalities and instead try to address the actual problems you have (which
is not the height of the tax!), you may actually achieve something.

As your own numbers show, European governments have succeeded in organising
education much more efficiently than your government. This is a counterexample
to your general assertion.

------
jhales
Taxation is not equivalent to charity or 'giving back.'

This is sadly an incredibly common conflation.

~~~
KC8ZKF
Nor is it equivalent to handing over the fruits of your work to armed thugs,
another incredibly common conflation.

~~~
ams6110
Try not paying them then

------
amy_seqmedia
TL;DR Always work hard, keep your eyes open, and be helpful.

On the point of luck, yes there is a whole lot of lucky circumstance which you
have no control over that puts in you in a lucky position. But I believe you
pass a point in your life where it goes from being purely lucky to being just
plain prepared. If Scalzi didn't work at his craft or his networking, the
opportunities that availed themselves to him probably would not have happened.

I think a lot about where I am and where I'm going. There's lots of things I
do now that don't have immediate payoff. Rather, I think of everything as just
training for something else down the road. So I try to get good (or at least
passably decent) at a breadth of things and specialize in a few. Hopefully
then when luck swings my way I'm prepared to go after that small window of
opportunity with full force.

I'm also a big fan of paying it forward, like Scalzi. Not everything is money
---often it's just time. Giving someone honest feedback, lending them a hand,
or supporting their efforts is all good karma. When you help others in a way
you help yourself: growing your community of interest, raising the overall
standard of living, moving groups of people forward.

------
antidoh
This reminds me of my favorite joke:

Man has progressed to the point of rivalry with God. Man talks to God and
brags about his accomplishments. God agrees that Man has accomplished a lot.

God reminds Man that God made him from dirt. Man says "Oh, we mastered that
long ago." God says he'd like to see that.

Man smiles, and reaches down for a handful of dirt.

God says "Ah, no, you go get your own dirt."

------
chernevik
It's great that OP had super public school teachers. Mine were lousy. Sorry,
it's just a fact, they collected their checks and went home on the clock and
didn't give a damn about the kids they taught.

There was one who was outstanding. He got laid off in a budget cutback because
he was junior. Everyone agreed it was a shame, but no one did anything about
it. That's what taught me what those people were about.

I've been helped by a great many people. Public school teachers aren't in my
particular set.

------
SCAQTony
I was not impressed with both the individual and the article.

First off the man deserved all the success he achieved but seriously, he had a
solid education, high self-esteem, he was summarily effectual, he showed up to
work and was industrious. (80% of success is just showing up- Woody Allen)

If higher taxes assisted him then why is the United States faltering and our
educational system becoming such a joke? I mean to say are we not paying
enough taxes? If so how high should they be?

I pay federal income tax, SSI taxes, state tax, sales taxes, property tax,
garbage fees, gas taxes, utility taxes, I pay car registration fees, and
probably a bunch of fees I am missing.

My fed tax rate is 21.7%, my California tax rate is 9.55%, sales sax 8.75% I
believe, but with all of the above I easy pay 40% of my income.

~~~
ubernostrum
_If higher taxes assisted him then why is the United States faltering and our
educational system becoming such a joke? I mean to say are we not paying
enough taxes? If so how high should they be?_

Keep in mind that in the US, much school funding comes from _property_ taxes,
and is highly tied to the specific location of the school. Thus, affluent
areas "magically" have better schools, and poorer areas have worse schools.

~~~
bridanp
I'm confused as to why so many comments on the story are stuck on the very few
lines regarding taxes. The vast majority really leads back to his Mom's
abilities to seek out ways to provide for him and then putting him in front of
opportunities that eventually helped him become who he is.

If she had not been so active in putting him in the right places at the
beginning, his life would have been vastly different.

But I can't place where he advocates higher taxes or the misuse of tax money.

~~~
ubernostrum
Internet libertarians -- of which there are a few on HN -- do not like
anything that even _hints_ at the possibility that government can do anything
positive, or that taxes should be seen as anything other than a government
SWAT team kicking down your door and stealing all your money at gunpoint to
give to people who don't deserve it.

------
phreanix
This is a really great and inspiring read.

The key takeaways, at least for me, were:

Your parents play a huge part in establishing a primary path through life for
you. His mother worked hard and did what was necessary to give him a chance to
concentrate on learning, to appreciate books, and to give him opportunities to
grow and explore his world.

Your integrity, earned respect, and power of networks and relationships can't
be emphasized enough. At almost every critical junction in his life, it was a
personal relationship or the recommendation of people who had respect for his
abilities and skills that opened a door and led to better opportunities. That
says a lot, not just about the impression he's made on others (purposely or
not), but on the confidence his friends, peers, and acquaintances had in him.
That was no easy feat, tho some people can do it without effort. It is
interesting that he remembers so many names, all the way back to teachers in
elementary school. I may not have the best criteria for "great people" but to
me, someone who makes the effort to remember key people in their lives for
decades is in turn worth remembering.

Grab opportunities. Put in the work. I know this should be a given, but I know
it can still be daunting. He took jobs he had no experience in and he moved to
better opportunities as he saw fit. Passion can manifest in a kind of
restlessness, and properly tapped, can mean the difference between mediocrity
and absolute fulfillment.

Lastly, the most important part I think is the acknowledgment that you don't
get to be where you are alone. Yes, one has to have that rare combination of
drive, talent, intelligence, charisma, and everything else that makes up a
certain formula for success, but "luck" can also be the result of stirring the
pot just right. Being at the right place at the right time can also be
attributed to having enough people recognize all the memorable and remarkable
qualities one has that will make them remember to recommend you for a position
or even just to point you out as an authority on a particular subject. The
people around you are just as important to success.

------
rayiner
One major thing missing here: luck! Lucky to be born in the U.S.A., of course,
but also lucky to be born with a high IQ (those test scores that got him into
the University of Chicago), lucky to be born with a creative streak, and lucky
to make certain connections in the right time in his life, etc.

~~~
shanelja
I believe that everyone is helped out by a hefty dose of luck across their
lives - being in the right place at the right time often serves us well.

Admittedly, it often comes down to hard work and preparation in the daily
struggle, but that day where you needed to guess a few test answers and got
them right, or you posted a job offer to a company you didn't think would
notice you and happened to catch a random recruiters eye, or you happened to
perform well on the exact day your boss wanted to promote somebody to an empty
senior position they wanted filling.

Life is a series of hard work, intermingled with sprinkles of luck, sometimes
good, sometimes bad.

True, having the IQ at a young age to go to a private school on a scholarship
is fortunate and not the kind of advantage most people have, but I'm sure it
still wasn't easy at some points, the author simply had the ability of self
preservation to survive their trials.

~~~
rayiner
I might be inclined to charecterize things in the opposite way: life is a
series of lucky opportunities that you work hard to take advantage of.

Anyone who has the test scores to get into the University of Chicago is very
likely in the top 1-2% of IQ's. It's hard to say that everything doesn't
ultimately stem from that initial stroke of luck.

------
OldSchool
The term "Self-Made" is repulsive. If you're not acquainted with the term
"survivorship bias" get to know it well before you read any success story.

Just after the end of the 90's boom, I was taking care of the storage of my
[insert name of any large luxury item] and on the other side of the counter
was a guy about my age and disposition who said, "hey what do you do for a
living?" I gave him a minimal description and he soon responded with "Wow
that's nice, my (tech-related) business went bust and now I work here behind
the counter and live upstairs, trying to get back on my feet."

There wasn't the remotest possibility that there was a thousand-fold gap
between us in any entrepreneurially-related skill category yet Lady Luck had
placed us on opposite side of the service counter that day.

Always be humble. Life is not wholly deterministic.

~~~
ScottBurson
Your point is not a bad one, but you clearly didn't read a word of the essay.

~~~
OldSchool
I got the point of the essay. Mine was more a practical rant that the term
Self-Made is so widely accepted as part of culture. Being a parent for many
years now I've seen more "just believe in yourself" messages in kids' movies
than I can count.

------
chrisringrose
Beautiful. I fear this is a story about the OLD America, before The Right took
intellectual control. Most Americans now believe that welfare is a handout to
the lazy, as though the poor chose to be so, and would rather receive than
work.

But these people don't view the cranky old miser in It's a Wonderful Life as a
glorious capitalist hero, or George as a socialist. I know these people agree
with giving to those _they know_ in need, but when it's broader assistance,
like through government, and those being helped aren't friends, they lose
interest.

We need to get The Right to have empathy for strangers.

------
confluence
Or as Chris Sacca once put it in "The Trouble With Libertarians":

> _I think, sometimes, like, arguing with libertarians can be really
> frustrating because, I think, it can be, um..., I think it can be
> intellectually lazy. And I think it can be convenient, and, in the same way
> that, um, you know when everything is going right it's easy to attribute it
> to your own success and when things are going wrong, it's because you got
> fucked or because you were unlucky etc., like, I think sometimes, like, the
> libertarian point of view can be, um..., can be rooted in a limited set of
> circumstances where you give yourself a little more credit than, um.., than
> you want, or than you are due, probably._

Source: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHuU6-CFDo>

I recommend watching the entire Chris Sacca Pando Monthly Fireside chat.

It is extremely awesome.

Just a teaser of what you'll see: $12 million is gained and lost, bankruptcy
makes an appearance, the dot com crash crushes everybody, the rise of Google,
playing with $4 billion in cash at FCC poker, running a billion dollar hedge
fund, being a ski bum whilst simultaneously graduating near the top of his
class at law school, then going on to live in poverty and working his ass off
just to stay in the game and getting really, really, really fucking lucky :)

Yes, that awesome.

Entire talk here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUG2_cmZ6I>

Both the above article, and Chris Sacca are actually referring the the just
world fallacy, a derivative of the fundamental attirbution effect, which in
combination with cognitive dissonance, allows people to do the following:

> _As a simple example, consider a situation where a driver, Alice, is about
> to pass through an intersection. Her light turns green, and so she begins
> moving forward when an ambulance blows through the red-light with sirens
> blaring and lights flashing, and cuts her off. Despite knowing that there is
> a good reason for the driver's behaviour, she is likely to form a negative
> opinion of the driver, e.g. "what an inconsiderate driver!"._

Source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error>

You will not believe how many things in life are, ironically enough, a
derivative of the fundamental attribution error (e.g.
republicans/conservatives/religion/start-up conferences - so many others).

And another video on what entrepreneurship feels like:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3NC_w9AOSA>

------
martinced
I begin to understand why HN is so filled with negativity.

A lot of people here are bitter because they failed or because they know that
they'll eventually fail. This place is a hive of socialists who do not have
what it takes for to create future wealth.

It's very ironic to see them using hardware and software made by Intel /
Google / Apple / etc. to spread their poisonous words.

Don't forget what made your country great (I'm not american and I'm not in the
U.S.) and which kind of men you owe the technological world you live into
(including, but not limited to, computers, space rockets, medecine).

And please: stop to try to create things and stop being negative with those
who do. Go find a job as a state servant and, please, leave enough oxygen to
those trying hard to create future wealth.

------
scotth
Interesting, but a useless exercise.

~~~
scott_karana
Far from it; if anyone's able to take inspiration, or bring success to
themselves or those around them, it is of great use.

