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Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

OP should list these defeatist attitudes as something to eliminate if you want to be successful.

It's a trend that's well supported afaik [1]. Whether or not that trend manifests inside you as a defeatist attitude is a personal choice. But at the same time, whatever attitude you have isn't going to magically get rid of whatever disadvantages you were born into, so simply dismissing it a defeatist attitude is counterproductive.

The danger is ignoring the tendency of egocentric bias in these articles[2]. Successful people assume that their values and ethics are what led them to success, when that may not be true. Though that then bears the question: who do we listen to for advice on success? Rich people? Scientific studies [3]?

A thread I read on a previous hackernews post (coincidentally about Paul Graham, another founder of ycombinator) perhaps puts these ideas in better words than I [4]

[1]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/003465430750034...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I

[3]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198577...

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27682107

> whatever attitude you have isn't going to magically get rid of whatever disadvantages you were born into

Yes, it is. I see it all the time. Scott Adams wrote a book about it entitled "Loser Think".

BTW, everybody is born with disadvantages. But everyone also has advantages. Like being born in the US (instead of, say, Venezuela) is a big advantage.

If by defeatist attitude it is meant acknowledging the reality that some people have a head start or immense amount of luck than I'm not only a defeatist, I am a Christian during the 31th December 999, 11:59:59PM waiting for the apocalypse.

I have a family relative, one of the most lazy people in the world, that some day found herself rich. How? Hard work? Business value? Education? No, she discovered she had a grandaunt and that she would be the heiress of three 300000EUR houses, plus half a million euro. The scene seemed out of a 90s love comedy, if only it weren't tragic.

Starting with money is a bane. (I know, you’ll find the worst-of-the-worst example of poverty just to be right, like “What if you are in the middle of nothing and have unrelated skills”, but hear me). People who start with money have way-too-high costs and are incapable of optimizing the business. They run inefficient companies.

So, if you start with money, you end up like WeWork. You may renew your money but nobody likes you.

What's tragic about it?

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