points by pembrook 1 day ago | 0 comments
My point was that the "you got lucky or got unfair advantage" narrative that people use to explain why other people are successful and they are not is motivated reasoning.
So it's far more likely these comments are over-indexing on the "its all luck/unfairness" explanation than the "it's all rational" explanation given there's 100X more people who will have their egos protected by the former positioning (the ratio of executives to worker bees is like 1:100).
[–] icantevenhold 1 day ago
[–] pembrook 21 hours ago
You didn't confront my core assertion.
Yes, both parties use motivated reasoning to protect their ego.
But there's 100X more of the worker bees than there is of the uber-successful.
Therefore any discussion like this one will over-index on the luck explanation.
We're obviously not at risk of assigning too much agency to successful people here on HN, an internet forum filled with frustrated leftist upper middle class last men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man
It’s more that the “i work hard and hustle everyday” narrative from successful people is to protect their little egos from the realisation that 90% of their success is pure luck / chance / chaos.