Life is exactly what you make of it - For most people, this is a bad thing

http://andrewoneverything.com/life-is-exactly-what-you-make-of-it-for-most

by sendos • 14 years ago

7 8 14 years ago

sendos2• 14 years ago

I'm curious what you guys think of this.

It very closely relates to something we see a lot here on HN, which is the call to leave the boring job at the "big company" and follow your entrepreneurship dreams.

The issue is that not everyone is cut out to be a successful entrepreneur, no matter how much effort they put into it. And I don't see this aspect discussed on HN much.

batista2• 14 years ago

The issue is that not everyone is cut out to be a successful entrepreneur, no matter how much effort they put into it. And I don't see this aspect discussed on HN much.

A much more important issue is that the system cannot work, and actually WONT work, with everybody being an entrepreneur, so not only are not everyone cut for it, even if they were, they would still could not be. An economy NEEDS the office drones, the service workers, somebody to take out your garbage, etc etc.

But this "everybody can be anything" is a fairy-tale ingredient of the American Dream, so it's not talked down that much.

Like how only one guy out of 300,000,000 can be the President, but there's this wishful thinking that "anybody can be". Well, no, each term is 4 years, so only around 15-20 people in a generation's lifetime (~80 years) get to be the President (and I'm not even counting double terms, or that you have to be > 21 to become the President).

Gravityloss• 14 years ago

Interview lottery winners.

I've been saying this for years.

giusemir1978• 14 years ago

Andrew got it right, it is a problem of survival bias.

I have been lucky two times.

I have been an entrepreneur, I was succesfull enough but not enough to cover the risks (i am italian, doing business here is risky).

Then I set up myself to find a job, in a time where there aren't many and in a country in full recession. And found a good one!

I can say it was hard. But even if I had been told that i could try and fail, I would have tried anyway.

Sometimes, you really have nothing to lose.

goblin89• 14 years ago

Those who failed might have been tried very hard indeed, but this doesn't mean that they were moving in right direction. My opinion is that each one can excel, if they really would want it, put a lot into it, would be willing to constantly learn from their mistakes.

As for the poem… Liked it very much. I think I can get that feeling myself sometimes. But—it's been said a lot that the way itself should be the end goal, not destination. Otherwise such pessimism would be inevitable. Don't look to get to ‘another land, another sea’. Enjoy the journey.

batista2• 14 years ago

The cliche that "life is what you make of it" is actually true. In a free and developed country, whatever job, friends, or relationships you have are all dependent on you.

No, you have some power.

Let's ignore random events that can happen to everyone regardless of their starting condition (i.e getting run over by a car).

Even with those out, you cannot chose to be born with caring or rich parents, or to have been raised in an environment where your drunk father didn't hit your crack addicted mom, for example.

Now, despite those things, is it possible to make to it to achieve some X? Well, people have achieved any given X (like: being a rich entrepreneur, a famous actor, a great scientist, a good parent, etc) from very different starting points, including unfavorable ones.

But this "life's what you make it" thing misses one basic point: that the WORK and CIRCUMSTANCIAL LUCK needed to achieve X varies widely based on the starting point. A poor black kid born in the 1920 would have zero chance to become, say, the President. As would an atheist, cross-dressing communist. But if you think those are extremes, consider that people from poop backgrounds are much less likely to become, say, doctors that people from rich families and/or people with doctors as parents.

So, "like if what you make it" can be better rephrased as: "life is what you make it, but for a lot of people it takes 10 times the effort other people to make it the same thing, and/or extremely rare lucky breaks".

sendos2• 14 years ago

> No, you have some power

I agree, which is why the post says "the reality is that what we achieve is limited by our abilities, our personality, timing, and luck"

That is, yes, there is an element of timing and luck and other things beyond your control, but a huge portion of it is your abilities and talents.

> Even with those out, you cannot chose to be born with caring or rich parents, or to have been raised in an environment where your drunk father didn't hit your crack addicted mom, for example.

Well, those things are part of who you are. That is, a person with a given DNA, if raised by caring and educated parent will turn out to be a very different person, with different abilities, talents, and character, than if they were raised by a crack addicted illiterate mom.

So, the phrase "life is what you make of it" means not, "life is what your DNA has dictated" but "life is what you (as shaped by your DNA, your upbringing, and major events in your life) make of it"

> So, "like if what you make it" can be better rephrased as: "life is what you make it, but for a lot of people it takes 10 times the effort other people to make it the same thing, and/or extremely rare lucky breaks".

I agree, but the main point of the post was not to focus on the large hurdles that the disadvantaged have in achieving any given goal.

The main focus was on the fact that, for people facing a similar set of hurdles, their whole persona (abilities, talents, personality) is a huge determinant of their success, and as a result, the life they can make will be very different, even if they both work equally hard.

For example, take two middle-class fresh grads from great schools moving to Silicon Valley to make it. One is a top-notch programmer and great at socializing and is immediately likable when people meet him, while the other is a so-so programmer and not that good at socializing and meeting people. Who do you think will make more connections in Silicon Valley, get better job offers, etc?

To summarize, the main point of the post can be captured by the following: "Life is what you make of it, but for most people, what they can make of it is not much (especially if their sights are too high)"

6ren• 14 years ago

He disputes the success stories because of absence of failure stories (survivorship bias) - and then uses this lack of evidence to assert the opposite is true.

Life is exactly what you make of it - For most people, this is a bad thing

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