Sorry, they lied. You really can’t be anything you want.
September 11th, 2007 by Kavan WolfeToday at the Public Intellectual, Frederick makes the point that when parents, teachers, politicians and those assholes in Hollywood say that you can do anything, they’re lying.
This reminds me of the classic book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill (decades later, it’s still a best seller). Hill studied a bunch of rich people and concluded that the secret to success is persistence. Unfortunately, this is bogus. The problem is selection bias: he only studied the successful. When you want to know the antecedents of success, you must study both successful and unsuccessful people. Otherwise, you just get a bunch of characteristics that all successful people have. You can’t tell if any one characteristic is a necessary condition for success, or a sufficient condition. If successful people are all persistent, persistence is likely a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for success, because there are plenty of persistent people who die before they ever taste success.
Like so many things, this ‘work hard and you can do anything’ prattle is a lie. There are plenty of things I can’t do, and plenty of things you can’t do, and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. But that doesn’t mean you should ever, ever give up.
While persistence does not guarantee success, giving up guarantees failure.
September 14th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
“Hill studied a bunch of rich people and concluded that the secret to success is persistence. Unfortunately, this is bogus. The problem is selection bias: he only studied the successful. When you want to know the antecedents of success, you must study both successful and unsuccessful people. Otherwise, you just get a bunch of characteristics that all successful people have.”
Me: Oh, you got PWND, bitch face
That’s seriously what went through my head when I read that. I have no idea why.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:20 am
“One day I’ll get what’s mine, through the persistence of time.” - Anthrax
I can recall someone telling me at a baseball camp when I was a lot younger, “practice doesn’t make perfect… perfect practice makes perfect.” You’re right, persistence doesn’t always pay off. Neither does giving up, so it’s a mixed bag. Throwing in the towel during a boxing match is better than an embarassing knockout, in some cases, but I like the Ali, “rope-a-dope” strategy. I hate to use sports as an analogy on a non-sports topic, but this can apply to just about anything. Ali fought George Foreman towards the end of his career, and had lost some of his speed and agility. Since Ali could no longer rely on his ability to move in the ring, he would, starting in the first round, sit there and take punches. He would take the beating until Foreman ran out of energy. Then, after Foreman was tired, he went in for the kill.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
21d746bbca66…
21d746bbca663e1184c8…