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.”
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.
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."?
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).
Are we talking about the same young Steve Jobs that disappeared from his hard work at Bushnell's company Atari because he preferred doing hippie things in India? And only left India because of his hard work getting a massive hepatitis infection?
I don't know if I agree with how you see the article (I'm simply not convinced whether I like it or not), but the quote from Taleb feels brilliant to me.
There is something to be said for breaking through local energy barriers to access new spaces, that's not with the intention of chasing particular milestones, but it is driven by some objective function.
> 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.
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.
"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.
It seems like the author is misusing the term “network effects” (superlinear value growth with more users) and confounding it with “your network” aka “who you know.”
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".
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Signaling that you are valuable fot that network.
Practical example would be having repositories on github that signal skills and genuine interest in a topic.
Companies (which are netowrks too) would reach to you eventually, or as other are saying meetups, etc.
But I think the key is signaling value.
Dance lessons and meetups are a great way to meet people in a social atmosphere. Board games might be good if you're into that. Join an adult co-ed sports league, and if you're not particularly athletic then do kickball, Cornhole, or ping pong. Join a hiking and outdoors club. If you work remote, work from a co-working space. Attend meetups. Explore local live music scene.
For starters, wouldn't said person work at that new place? They can meet colleagues there and become friends with them. Or clients, or people working for clients, or suppliers, ...
Wouldn't they also go out at bars, restaurants, cafes, etc?
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.
> 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.
> 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)
This video about the problems with The Bell Curve (a book about IQ and other things) does a lot to explain a lot of the problems with IQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo. The video is well-researched; I've been a long-time fan of the creator for putting out quality stuff.
>and it definitely has a large genetic component
There's a number of studies showing that IQ is "heritable", but this is different from saying it's genetic. The video above (around the 39:00 mark) and https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-psychology/cla... both get into this point. Wearing earrings is highly "heritable" despite being an arbitrary social custom, and having 10 fingers is not "heritable". It's also important to avoid falling into the conclusion that many people take about IQ that it being heritable means that educational efforts to improve it are worthless:
>Think about the relative heights of men in a poor village in an underdeveloped country 100 years ago. The average height for these malnourished men might be 5 feet 2 inches. The heritability in observed heights within this particular society can be quite high; men of tall fathers are on the average considerably taller than men of short fathers. However, this does not mean that a program of improved sanitation and nutrition could not significantly raise the average height of this group in a few generations.
Irrelevant point because the topic is networks - you can be a node in multiple non-independent groups. Also highschool etc as in the article are also dependent (as presented in the article).
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
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.
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 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.
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...
Try moving across the country, then later accepting a remote job. Not only have new connections been minimal, my old networks have largely died after 5 years of 0 maintenance.
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.”