
Confirmation Bias – Why nobody is allowed to be successful on the internet - jasonkester
https://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/confirmation-bias.html
======
grecy
This applies to basically everything on the internet now, not only starting a
company or something similar.

What everyone seems to forget is the truth that a successful person is one who
failed a lot and just tried one more time. For example - Dr Seuss was rejected
by 100 publishers before he found one that said yes.

What's the important part of that story? He kept trying.

I feel certain if he posted on the internet today (especially HN) "Hey
everyone, I followed my dreams and got my quirky children's books published"
with the advice of following your dreams, there would be a hundred comments
saying "blah, blah, advising others to follow their dreams is all about
Confirmation Bias."

"Confirmation Bias" is just a convenient excuse the internet has when what
they really mean to say is "What you're proposing is not without it's risks,
and I'm too scared to take that risk."

~~~
rocannon
When looking at someone like Dr Seuss who kept trying after numerous failures,
you also have to consider that there's an opportunity cost to doing what he
did. Note: his story "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" was
rejected 27 times before being accepted:
[https://www.npr.org/2012/01/24/145471724/how-dr-seuss-got-
hi...](https://www.npr.org/2012/01/24/145471724/how-dr-seuss-got-his-start-on-
mulberry-street) Maybe if he'd been rejected 100 times, it would have been
worth thinking about trying something else?

Also, if you follow the above link, you find that Dr Seuss admitted it was
sheer luck that he got published. He was ready to give up! '"He bumped into a
friend ... who had just become an editor at a publishing house in the
children's section," McLain explains. Geisel told the friend that he'd simply
given up and planned to destroy the book, but the editor asked to take a
look... "He said if he had been walking down the other side of the street, he
probably would never have become a children's author," McLain says.'

I'm guessing, but I'd think that for most people, getting rejected after
trying the _same thing_ 100 times probably means that your product is not
good. So giving up after some reasonable number of tries, and pursuing
_something else_, is often the better course. If you have nothing better to
do, and don't mind failing in the end, then you can keep trying, too!

The problem then is trying to figure out when to quit, and when to keep trying
at the same thing. Some people have faith in themselves because they know that
their product is great. But it's hard to tell the difference between justified
self-confidence and unjustified self-delusion.

~~~
conception
From what I've heard and read there are several occupations, comedian and
writer immediately come to mind, where the advice is "if you can do literally
anything else, do that. If not, you might make it in this business in a decade
or so. But probably not."

------
jadell
It is survivorship bias when someone says "they're not lucky, they just kept
trying and failing until they succeeded." The vast majority of people don't
have the time/money/talent/resources to keep trying new ideas again and again
until they succeed. There are many who use their life's savings, sacrifice
their relationships, drain their personal health in pursuing an idea. Whether
or not that idea is successful is dependent on many factors outside the
person's control. The uniting factor is that if that one idea fails, that's
it. That was that person's one shot, and now they've lost everything and have
to go back to the grind.

Being able to fail yet still having the resources try a dozen more ideas comes
down to where you are starting from, and luck plays a huge role in that.

~~~
jasonkester
_That was that person 's one shot_

The nice thing about our industry is that "shots" are essentially free. When
domain names cost seven dollars and hosting is measured in pennies per month,
you can try as many things as it takes until you find something that works.

The only thing you risk is some nights and weekends.

Here's Josh Pigford's list of the 50 failed business ideas he pursued in the
15 years before he found success with Baremetrics:

[https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/1033032915175858176](https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/1033032915175858176)

~~~
jadell
Anyone can throw up a marketing site with no actual product behind it to
"gauge interest" in a weekend for a few dollars (though even a few dollars
isn't trivial to everyone, so can't be assumed.) Marketing, actually building
the thing, maintaining it long term, possibly quitting your job to pursue the
idea. These things are hard and life-altering when you're living paycheck-to-
paycheck (as the vast majority of Americans are), or on less than living wage,
or potentially with a family to support or having a chronic medical condition
to deal with.

We can't assume everyone is in a situation that allows them unlimited nights
and weekend time. It's also biased towards software companies; not every idea
worth pursuing is in software. It takes time, money, and effort to build a
company that makes tangible things.

------
speedplane
Most successful companies have to execute perfectly AND have an some of those
extrinsic factors, such as family money, personal connections, good timing, or
dumb luck. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that. It doesn't make the
successful founders bad or less worthy to give advice, it helps explain the
conditions necessary for success.

Anyone receiving advice should be aware of the prerequisites to that advice.

~~~
cpkpad
Nope. I've seen plenty of successful companies bumble around and have dumb
luck. The reverse is also true -- perfect execution is rare and almost
guarantees success.

I'll reemphasize that even competent execution is rare; few people can execute
perfectly on business AND technology AND marketing AND design AND ....
Especially first-time entrepreneurs.

Fortunately, the other guy's deeply imperfect too. In capitalism, you just
have to be better than the other guy. It's pretty hard -- the other guy has
been at it for a while and you're just starting out, but it's far from
impossible. Most businesses execute very poorly.

Fortunately, each time you try to execute, you get a little bit better at all
of those, so after a few tries, you can out-execute. You also learn the
advantages smaller, more agile players have over bigger ones.

I agree with the persistence bias argument 100%.

~~~
smokestack412
Execution is an HN startup meme. Correctly: most businesses execute very
unluckily. You're hopelessly down the rabbit hole if you think skill has the
most to do with it, it's total nonsense. VCs don't invest in skill, they
invest in crapshoots. Skill is a prerequisite, luck is what makes people rich.
Don't pretend otherwise or you'll make it more painful when you fail (99% of
the time).

~~~
cpkpad
I've seen order-of-magnitude difference in abilities of companies to:

* Build products

* Sell products

* Recruit

* Build rapport with customers

* Evaluate business models

Most of that is ability. Few people have ability in /all/ of those directions.
I've seen people who are even competent (not great) at all of those launch
successful business after successful business.

By "successful" I don't mean billion dollar unicorn. I mean businesses which
employ tens (or hundreds) of people, have millions in revenue, and last
indefinitely.

This stuff isn't rocket science. If a Fortune 500 make widgets, and you make
higher quality widgets at lower cost and make people aware of that, you'll run
a sustainable business.

As a small business, on one hand, you'll have slightly less access to
distribution and marketing channels. On the other hand, you'll have a much
leaner cost model (no multi-layer executive hierarchies to sustain). Your team
will also be much more focused, productive, and agile. You'll also be more
risk-tolerant. All of those provide competitive advantages.

~~~
smokestack412
I wish we'd (as a whole) stop using quantitative terms for things that aren't
quantifiable. We can all do that, it's easy and it makes us sound smart.

I've seen $100mm+ companies fail because Google decided not to like them
anymore. I'm talking about external forces that are far more powerful than
execution. And there are lots of 'em (an infinity, even!).

~~~
cpkpad
External forces happen. I've certainly seen businesses shut down for reasons
outside of their control. It's just that this happens a minority of the time.
Most of the time, businesses shut down either because:

1\. High-risk venture. Someone wants to be the next Facebook and takes a
1-in-a-100 gamble at a billion dollars.

2\. Stupid idea/business model. Founder is a true believer in some idea which
doesn't match reality.

3\. Poor execution. It's a good idea and business model, but any of the
hundred things which can shut down a business do: technology takes 10x as long
to develop and is buggy; founder fails to recruit good people; zero external
sales/visibility/marketing ("if you build it they will come" or wildly
implausible assumptions about viral or similar); costs get out-of-control;
etc. Most founders I know can do all of those reasonably, and one or two
brilliantly. It's hard for me to emphasize how important (and hard) it is to
be at least competent at all of those since messing up any one will shut down
a company.

------
TangoTrotFox
I sometimes wonder if there is something genetic involved here. From an
evolutionary perspective, a society full of 'leaders' is one that's going to
collapse. You need a large proportion of followers to maintain social order.

There was an interesting article a while back indicating that entrepreneurs
were much more likely than average to have tried to sell things at an earlier
age, taken on a job at an earlier age, and generally engage in a variety of
atypical behavior from a very early age -- independent of class. Bezos, as an
example, worked at McDonald's during one summer, hated it, and the next summer
started a week long summer camp for kids -- with a whopping 6 signups for the
first batch, but still probably earning more in that week than he did in the
summer months at McDonalds -- certainly having more fun. Jack Ma is perhaps
the most pure example of this phenomena. [1]

But of course not everybody can do this. I mean they technically can, but
neither the market nor society would be able to sustain itself if everybody
decided to try to lead and create instead of follow and consume. Perhaps it
sounds extreme, yet people regularly attribute vastly more esoteric notions,
such as mastery of everything from board games to music, to genetic factors.

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

------
namanyayg
There's definitely skepticism about success stories but it's not all invalid
either. Many such stories are found to be marketing pieces for their
app/service when you reach the end, and it makes sense that authors would be
incentived to fabricate details.

Look at all the Kickstarter fails, see all the "dropshipping" success stories;
there's plenty of scams and lies in this industry.

------
gumboshoes
In which the author condemns poor thinking and then commits his own in the
form generalizations, cherry-picking, not-me-ism, and edge case selection.

------
treve
The article has an interesting premise, but ultimately fails to deliver. It's
feels like someone venting or feeling insecure about a recent experience, and
now I'm just left wondering what it was that upset them.

~~~
jstandard
I also felt this way. There is a large amount of "one weird tip" self-
promotional blogspam in the startup space.

Self-promotion isn't bad on it's own, we all have motivations at some level.
But too often pulling back the curtain on the "how I bootstrapped into $30k
MRR while living on a beach" stories reveals something far different than the
simple tips prescribed.

For something at a larger scale, I recommend critiques of Jim Collins' "Good
to Great".

------
asdfasgasdgasdg
> You see, the biggest reason the business in question was successful was that
> our hero went out and built it. He actually tried.

This is begging the question. That is exactly what people who make accusations
of bias are contesting. (Although I'd say survivorship bias is probably the
more appropriate choice.)

------
hevi_jos
From my point of view the biggest gift if your life if you want to make a
business is not money, it is not connections, it is just mindset, and the
emotional training of your parents.

The most successful people I know in business have no formal education, no
career. My super smart friends with PhDs and advanced degrees can't touch a
business with a 100 meters stick. They work in places like Academia,
constantly talking bad about it.

They will be paralyzed at taking risks, handling this much responsibility over
other people. The constant fight, people looking at you for guidance and
having to decide with incomplete information,people not paying you, your
salaries, your taxes... The anxiety they would face is too much for them.

With all the money in the world, with all the connections it takes an entire
emotional reprogramming of your mind to be able to handle this.

I regularly see people with 100.000, 200.000 euros in the bank telling me they
can't create the business they always dreamed about, if only they had enough
money...the reality is that they are in doubt, insecure about risking their
own money but somewhat they expect someone else to risk their own money
trusting them when they can't even trust themselves.

~~~
cpkpad
You have to look at the other side of the equation too: expenses and family
structures.

$200k euros in the bank is a ton if you're a single student. It's a very short
runway if you have 6k/month in mortgage, 2k/month in childcare, car costs,
educational debt, and so on.

Unfortunately, most people don't have that type of savings until they're also
saddled with obligations.

------
smokestack412
This guy just learned the term "confirmation bias."

The ability to take risk is a privilege that many don't have and he doesn't
get that. A lot of really unsuccessful people work incredibly hard and never
get lucky. He's demonstrated in one word-vomit of a blog post how ignorant
(and unappreciative) he is of his own luck. Good job bro.

~~~
jasonkester
How about we grant that luck is a factor and that you need to be in a
situation where you're able to at least try? That still leaves roughly
everybody here in the pool of people who can build a software business in
their nights and weekends.

The important takeaway is that so many people, yourself included it would
seem, use confirmation bias as a shield they can hide behind. A way of proving
to themselves that success is impossible, and that therefore the best course
of action is not to try at all.

That's a shame, since it's so self-reinforcing. If you never even try, it
doesn't matter how good the odds are. You still won't get there.

~~~
smokestack412
I've been successful way beyond my control and I understand that. This guy
doesn't and blames people who weren't for making him feel bad.

~~~
Vinnl
FYI: You're replying to the person who wrote the article.

That said, I do think he's raging against people pointing out Survivorship
bias [1] rather than Confirmation bias. But perhaps the confusion between the
two is the reason he's missing the point: the "critics" are not so much
pointing out that a successful person's advice is worthless and that their
success is sheer luck and that therefore you shouldn't try - it's that
whatever worked for them might not work for you, and whatever did not work for
them might work for you. In other words, don't expect a successful person's
advice to be a magic formula, and don't be discouraged if their advice seems
unattainable for you to follow.

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

~~~
smokestack412
I read the premise of the article to be that people who aren't successful a)
aren't taking enough risks, and b) aren't working hard enough. This is wrong
in at least two ways and denigrates people who a) can't, and b) are. I'm
restating my original point but please correct me if I'm wrong. I find that
kind of reasoning to be utterly _disgusting_ , ignorant and self-serving. That
was my issue with the article.

~~~
jasonkester
Allow me to correct your misunderstanding.

My premise is that there are way too many people who haven't built successful
software companies because they a) never even tried.

And, that the reason many of them never tried is because of rationalizations
that the "successful" people must have had some special quality that they
themselves could never possess, and that therefore it would be pointless to
try at all.

Which is a shame.

~~~
themarkn
Hmm. I disagree with this overall assessment that that's what's going on. I
think people some people (especially hn people) are rightly suspicious of
advice that is related to that one specific time success happens. Though of
course some individuals apply this in a kneejerk way which must be infuriating
if you're trying to make a more subtle point.

But I think in general it's a trend against the idea that successful people or
projects are successful because of a particular sequence of steps that could,
if replicated, make an observer successful also. Whereas, as you point out,
it's more about this meta thing of how we do our best to recognize good
conditions for success, and then keep showing up. If the chances of success
(especially really big success) are small- trying more times increases your
odds.

I think people, broadly speaking, understand this idea, and all the yelling
about confirmation bias has roots in real instances of people
bragging/advising/publishing books/whatever based on anecdotes about things
that happened during their specific successful project, with less recognition
of how much coincidence matters.

And yes, you can't benefit from coincidence if you don't show up. If you
aren't trying in the first place. If that is your actual premise, it's not
very obvious to me from your post. Honestly the tone of your post felt more
like complaining/whining that people won't listen to your advice when you want
to give it and how frustrated that makes you, than a sincere attempt to talk
about the pros and cons of repeatedly taking risks on new projects when you
could be doing other things.

~~~
jasonkester
It's surprising to hear that you (and others) think I'm talking about the
reaction to _my_ advice. I don't think I've actually seen anybody call my
writing confirmation bias any of the times it has made it here.

This is something I notice in the reactions to other people's posts. I'll read
something, nod along to a bunch of good ideas and overall wisdom, then come
read the commentary here dismissing the whole thing.

Oddly, thinking about it now, it's something that never seems to happen to my
own advice. Perhaps it's so self-evidently obvious that my success is random
chance and bad ideas that worked in spite of themselves, that nobody ever felt
the need to point it out.

~~~
themarkn
I guess I'm projecting that then. The opening "Have you ever noticed that
nobody is allowed to be successful on the internet?" struck me as very silly
and I must have gone on from there and filled in my own thoughts about why
anybody would write this way. "Allowed" to be successful makes it seem like
you have a huge chip on your shoulder with somebody - who does the
disallowing? How do they actually _prevent you from being successful_? It sets
the tone of the post as a story of persecution which I'm guessing you did not
intend.

------
cortic
The reason advice from _successful_ entrepreneurs is generally considered
worthless is because for every successful person there are thousands or
millions of unsuccessful people who did exactly the same thing, worked just as
hard and weren't successful. There is probably an equation here where; the
number of simultaneous unsuccessful identical attempts is proportional to the
magnitude of the success multiplied by the fame or notoriety of the
successful.

There is no magic recipe for success, and anyone trying to sell such a thing
is trying to sell snake-oil, or trying to feel special. This depends of course
on how you define success, as it applies to the above pseudo equation.

------
bobosha
Survivorship bias is more apt here.

------
lbj
The zeitgeist is even worse than this post suggests. The common thread is that
no-one can stand out. There are no exceptional executive's, the are "leaders
who lead from behind". We see the horrible effects of this false humility most
clearly in Elon Musk. Determined he was, to be the one suffering the most at
Tesla - And the result is a man bearing all the markings of a mental
breakdown, tearing the stock to bits with tweets that could only come from a
man who's been suffering for far too long.

------
RickJWagner
At least in some circles, meritocracy seems to have a strong bearing on
success.

A good example is Linus Torvalds. He dreamed up Linux, which is an outside-
the-park home run. Then he thought up Git, which is another runaway winner.

As a programmer, I am happy with my own skill set. But I recognize that Linus
plays in a whole other league.

There are others that are likewise serial succeeders, and in different
disciplines. P Diddy (nee Puff Daddy) is an example here. This guy just digs
and digs until he succeeds.

So I don't buy into the idea that external forces are the reason for others'
successes. I just think some people are gifted and they exploit what they've
got.

------
jondubois
Maybe the author should write a follow-up article in a few years after a
hotshot VC-backed startup or a large corporation starts competing with his
product and destroys his company.

If I was the author and I didn't have personal connections to tech elites, I
would try to sell my business ASAP. Paradoxically though, not having those
elite connections does make it harder to get your startup acquired.

~~~
jasonkester
Does this concern come from experience? Or is it just your expectation of how
the world works?

I find it hard to believe that there are currently any hotshot VC-backed
startups executing hard to crush a little $10k MRR market and push out the
incumbent mom & pop SaaS currently occupying it.

Every once in a while you'll see one of those shops get stepped on
accidentally by a _feature_ of a giant company. But I can't think of any
examples of a "Show HN: My little bootstrapped thing that pays the rent" that
was subsequently targeted for extermination.

~~~
jondubois
It's from both personal experience and from discussions with others.

It happened to me for every project that I've started. The first time was a
drag-and-drop CMS; this industry quickly attracted several VC funded
competitors and they were very fast in terms of development so I had no chance
to compete on my own and so I gave up after 3 years.

Second time was an open source project; a full stack Javascript framework.
Competitors (MeteorJS and other smaller ones) also started spawning up and I
was struggling to keep users so I extracted a small part of my project and
spun it off as its own standalone open source product - That was maybe 1 or 2
years before MeteorJS decided to do something similar by spinning off Apollo.

Thankfully MeteorJS spun off in a different direction than me so my project
was able to survive and achieve linear growth year on year since.

I have other stories from many colleagues I worked with over the years (as a
contractor for many different companies) so I'm basically sure that what I'm
saying is correct. I'm pretty sure that my social circle is an accurate
representation of the 'typical developer/entrepreneur' as well; I'm pretty
sure that this is the majority.

Oh and trust me, a big company will take over this space eventually. Their
product will do more and integrate better with other products.

~~~
gammatrigono
Trying to compete against Dropbox/AWS/Box as a lone developer is like trying
to build an international airline when all you have is a paper plane.
Complaining about venture-backed companies beating you makes it seem like you
aren't being realistic about what you can actually achieve.

~~~
jondubois
I don't think that's a fair comparison because the problem is not building the
product. The problem is marketing.

~~~
gammatrigono
Can one person really handle development, feature improvement, security,
system management, customer service, marketing, and sales by themselves? For
some services, yes, but in a field like cloud storage you simply have to beat
Dropbox et al on all counts or you're not going to get any customers.

------
hokus
keep trying until the unfair advantages line up :P

~~~
cimmanom
Most people don’t have the good fortune to be in a financial position to keep
trying.

------
pdimitar
> _The real reason you succeeded were all those unfair advantages that you
> had._

Everything that you enumerated in this section is luck. Rich parents is not
something you can work on, for example.

> _Worse, if you do manage to persuade these people that you were in fact not
> all that rich or successful when you started out, and that the only
> connections you have were even more broke than you, well, you still don 't
> get to give advice._

Broke connections > no connections.

I have zero connections right now. I would have to pocket 5-digit sum for
marketing expenses. If I want to start a business, I have nobody to say that
to. Random internet strangers don't help.

> _And that 's really all those "how I built an X" writeups are describing:_

Stop with the universal wisdom. It does not exist. Only thing I will grant you
is -- you won't gain anything from luck if you don't show up. That's it.

> _Dismissing the author 's wisdom and not trying to start a business will
> never, ever, in a million years, leave you with a successful business._

Who said it will? WTF?

> _And if you keep trying, eventually you might be lucky enough to have some
> clown on the internet dismiss all your hard work as Confirmation Bias._

Why do you care about "some clown on the internet"? You said you live
comfortably off of the profits of one of your products. Go and enjoy your life
and ignore people who obviously don't want to listen to you.

Take the hint.

> _If you try something with a 10% chance of success enough times, eventually
> it will work. Think of it as Persistence Bias if you like, and it makes a
> lot more sense._

Not all of us can try 50 times. Most of us cannot. If I try 2 or 3 times and
fail, my savings are gone and I might actually have to live on the street.
Thought of that? Thought of people who are _already_ burned out from too many
failures before? Yeah, "keep trying". Sure. When the only thing you want is
some peace of mind and the world just to leave you the frak alone for 2 years
but no, you have to try even harder now. A-ha. Your recipe of success via
persistence is an eye-opener! Nobody ever thought of that before!

> _You see, the biggest reason the business in question was successful was
> that our hero went out and built it. He actually tried._

True. If you never try, you will never succeed. Again though, many people
cannot try 20+ times, or even 5. Don't forget that.

Your post is a useless rant (like my reply here).

People discard successful people advice because it's highly context-sensitive
and includes a ton of factors that played in the favor of the said person.
What worked for you might not work for many others -- and what did not work
for you might work perfectly for me. This is universally true and it makes you
an a-hole to dismiss it.

All in all, a superfluous article which mostly makes you wonder why a
successful person cares about what random people say.

OP needs therapy sessions on self-worth.

~~~
gammatrigono
Maybe you do. You might not think they're connections, but the people you
interact with online for sure constitute connections and/or people you can
share your product or service with.

~~~
pdimitar
It is possible. From the "universal wisdom" you see on the net, it would seem
that connections > everything else. Execution matters very little, most people
have no idea what are they doing and still succeed because they manage to
iterate (eventually).

As for my self-worth, it is not a subject of this discussion. Whether I have
or don't have self-worth problems, it has zero weight on the discussion at
hand.

------
hprotagonist
_Randy could see where it was going. Kivistik had gone for the usual
academicians’s ace in the hole: everything is relative, it’s all just
differing perspectives. People had already begun to resume their little side
conversations, thinking that the conflict was over, when Randy gave them all a
start with: “Who decides what’s bad? I do.”

Even Dr. G. E. B. Kivistik was flustered. He wasn’t sure if Randy was joking.
“Excuse me?”

Randy was in no great hurry to answer the question. He took the opportunity to
sit back comfortably, stretch, and take a sip of his wine. He was feeling
good. “It’s like this,” he said. “I’ve read your book. I’ve seen you on TV.
I’ve heard you tonight. I personally typed up a list of your credentials when
preparing press materials for this conference. So I know that you’re not
qualified to have an opinion about technical issues.”

“Oh,” Kivistik said in mock confusion, “I didn’t realize one had to have
qualifications.”

“I think it’s clear,” Randy said, “that if you are ignorant of a particular
subject, that your opinion is completely worthless. If I’m sick, I don’t ask a
plumber for advice. I go to a doctor. Likewise, if I have questions about the
Internet, I will seek opinions from people who know about it.”

“funny how all of the technocrats seem to be in favor of the Internet,”
Kivistik said cheerily, milking a few more laughs from the crowd.

“You have just made a statement that is demonstrably not true,” Randy said,
pleasantly enough. “A number of Internet experts have written well-reasoned
books that are sharply critical of it.”

Kivistik was finally getting pissed off. All the levity was gone.

“So,” Randy continued, “to get back to where we started, the Information
Superhighway is a bad metaphor for the Internet, because I say it is. There
might be a thousand people on the planet who are as conversant with the
Internet as I am. I know most of these people. None of them takes that
metaphor seriously. Q.E.D.”

“Oh. I see,” Kivistik said, a little hotly. He had seen an opening. “So we
should rely on the technocrats to tell us what to think, and how to think,
about this technology.”

The expressions of the others seemed to say that this was a telling blow,
righteously struck.

“I’m not sure what a technocrat is,” Randy said. “Am I a technocrat? I’m just
a guy who went down to the bookstore and bought a couple of textbooks on
TCP/IP, which is the underlying protocal of the Internet, and read them. And
then I signed on to a computer, which anyone can do nowadays, and I messed
around with it for a few years, and now I know all about it. Does that make me
a technocrat?”

“You belonged to the technocratic elite even before you pick up that book,”
Kivistik said. “The ability to wade through a technical text, and to
understand it, is a privilege. It is a privilige conferred by an education
that is available only to members of an elite class. That’s what I meant by a
technocrat.”

“I went to a public school,” Randy said. “And then I went to a state
university. From that point on, I was self-educated.”

Charlene broke in. [. . .] “And your family?” Charlene asked frostily.

Randy took a deep breath, stifled the urge to sigh. “My father’s an engineer.
He teaches at a state college.”

“And his father?”

“A mathemetician.”

Charlene raised her eyebrows. So did nearly everyone else at the table. Case
closed.

“I strenuously object to being labeled and pigeonholed and stereotyped as a
technocrat,” Randy said, deliberately using oppressed-person’s language[ . .
.]. Some of them, out of habit, looked at him soberly, etiqutte dictated that
you give all sympathy to the oppressed. Others gasped in outrage to hear these
words coming from the lips of a known and convicted white male technocrat. “No
one in my family has ever had much money or power,” he said.

“I think the point that Charlene’s making is like this,” said Tomas, [. . .]
“Just by virtue of coming from a scientific family, you are a member of a
privileged elite. You’re not aware of it—but members of privileged elites are
rarely aware of their privileges.”

Randy finished the thought. “Until people like you come along to explain to us
how stupid, to say nothing of morally bankrupt, we are.”

“The false consiousness Tomas is speaking of is exactly what makes entrenched
power elites so entrenched,” Charlene said.

“Well, I don’t feel very entrenched,” Randy said. “I’ve worked my ass off to
get where I’ve gotten.”

“A lot of people work hard all their lives and get nowhere,” someone said
accusingly. Look out! The sniping had begun.

“Well, I’m sorry I haven’t had the good grace to get nowhere,” Randy said, now
feeling just a bit surly for the first time, “but I have found that if you
work hard, educate yourself, and keep your wits about you, you can find your
way in this society.”

“But that’s straight out of some nineteenth-century Horatio Alger book,”
Thomas sputtered.

“So? Just because it’s an old idea, doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” Randy said._
1999

~~~
mwcampbell
Appears to be from Cryptonomicon (which I haven't yet read), for anyone else
who was wondering.

------
sbr464
I can recommend his s3stat software. We used it to analyze thousands of
devices that were uploading daily backups. It made it easy to see devices that
had incorrect backup configs, for example, were uploading active .pst files
from outlook etc, that changed daily (causing large continuous uploads) and
other similar files. Also more active clients that allowed us to
understand/handle pricing differently.

