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Comment by fearless | Hacker News Reader

>>We're often distracted by the Zuckerbergs or Jobs' who are abrasive and embody their own don't-care-for-anything style, but the ugly truth is that those guys got so unbelievably lucky that they never needed to actually work on themselves.

[citation needed]

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> [citation needed]

This is obviously my opinion. You are free to voice another one or present data that offers another perspective. There is really no "citation needed" for every thesis a person happens to entertain, and that comment alone with no other content accomplishes absolutely nothing besides being rude. Try to reason with me, or if you're lazy, vote me down; though I personally prefer to vote on post quality rather than agreement/disagreement. [citation needed] is not a meaningful interaction in my opinion.

While I agree that "citation needed" is rampant around here, part of the reason is phrasing. You stated an opinion as a fact. A lot of people roll their eyes at this, but if you expect something to be taken as an opinion -- which is totally reasonable -- then you should phrase it that way.

"I get the impression they never had to work on themselves" doesn't beg a citation. It's clearly an opinion and doesn't imply that it's attempting or intended to be anything else.

It may seem pedantic, but when all people have to go on are the words you put in the form, being clear is important.

I think you have a point, but context is important. And I say this as someone who has been repeatedly accused in this forum to make abundant use of "weasel words" just to qualify the boundary between fact and opinion. As a result I don't do it as often anymore, especially when the context of the subject itself already serves as a good indicator that whatever follows will be opinion.

Still, I have to admit that I do believe it to be factual that extremely successful people did not have to work on making themselves pleasant or conformant to the same degree as normal people. I explained the reasoning for this in the sister comment, but the upshot is that I indeed see this as a fact that probably could be supported by biographical evidence.

Meh... I used to feel that way, but over time I've realized that life is too short to stop and waste the time to put "I think" or "I feel" or "in my opinion" in front of everything I write. If I write something, it's implicit that it's my opinion. It may or may not also be a fact. In either case, if somebody disagrees or has a counter-claim or wants to present evidence to the contrary, then let them do it. But bitching because people don't load every paragraph with qualifiers, weasel-words and cop-outs is just silly.

Expecting people to say what they mean has absolutely nothing to do with weasel words or qualifiers. If you can't be bothered to communicate clearly, all you're doing is diluting your message. Hopefully you have nothing important to say, because if you do, everyone loses when you fail to say it clearly.

Right, but adding "in my opinion" and "I think" and "I feel" in front of every opinion has nothing to do with communicating clearly. There are lots of things in communication that are implicit and don't need to be stated explicitly.

Right, but I think that adding "in my opinion" and "I think" and "I feel" in front of every opinion has nothing to do with communicating clearly. In my opinion, there are lots of things in communication that are implicit and don't need to be stated explicitly.

Now, would you really argue that the second version is any more clear, or that anyone's understanding would be changed by adding all those qualifiers? Personally I don't find it to be anything except unnecessarily verbose. shrug

When you say something is "the ugly truth", you're presenting it as fact, not opinion. I don't mean to be rude, but the prevailing attitude on HN of "successful people are successful because they got lucky" is poisonous to say the least.

I'm not asserting that all successful people are that way because of luck, but those two examples are certainly valid in that sense. The citations can be found all over the place, including Wikipedia. That doesn't mean those people didn't have talent. I'm simply stating that they could get by without changing their style because their success predated their need to get along with people.

A lot of extremely successful people got there because of extreme luck. Their extreme luck became an essential component of their success. It's not that they won a planetwide lottery without doing anything for it. It's that they won the lottery and were very competent, and in some cases, hard working. Again, please note that I'm talking about the extremely successful people that we like to iconize.

To be phenomenally successful you typically are extremely young, come from a reasonably affluent background, have enjoyed a very nice education, and your early life is characterized by crossing paths with lots of influential rich people. Contrast that with "normally" successful people, they are just different. They can be any age, come from a variety of backgrounds, and typically they had to deal with (and improve on) a longer streak of rejections.

I don't think it's poisonous to acknowledge luck, it is one of the necessary ingredients of extreme success. And extreme success is usually a necessary ingredient for trend-setting the styles and mannerisms we have come to expect from all successful founders.

It is my opinion that "[citation needed]" can push conversations in a direction that I value, and as such is often a meaningful-to-me interaction.

We can't live in a world where every statement has citations, of course. So in practice, apparently-factual statements often have to stand on the authority of their speaker. As such, it's regrettable when people utter unfounded claims in the language of authority (like "the ugly truth is"). And so it's useful (to me), for people to call out when other people are doing this, in the hopes of eventually raising the conversation. "citation needed" means "This statement is phrased to sound authoritative, but has no evidence, and I think it's wrong, and I'm willing to be persuaded by evidence". I strongly disagree with the claim that it accomplishes nothing but being rude... unless, of course, the recipient (you, in this case) has no interest in discourse.

Why would fearless reason with your unjustified and implausible claim? And why would (s)he downvote your entire comment, just because the last sentence is silly? Upvotes for fearless!

I agree with the sentiment, but I find the actual text of "[citation needed]" too flippant. Instead, I just ask the person to provide a source or an argument.

This is a discussion forum, so the better way to ask for evidence is to present a contrary opinion backed by evidence. That will draw out a meatier response, or if not, still edify the reader. Fearless added absolutely nothing to the conversation in content or in style.

> "This statement is phrased to sound authoritative, but has no evidence, and I think it's wrong, and I'm willing to be persuaded by evidence".

That is just so damned smug. Why doesn't that person have any of these lofty responsibilities about making a perfectly articulated argument? It's acceptable for them to literally type two words as their contribution to the "discourse," and the onus is pushed back onto the person who actually put some effort into it? Discourse does not mean "you will go on at length, and I will offer a simple rejection until I am satisfied with your argument."

> Why would fearless reason with your unjustified and implausible claim?

Because it's a community, it's a two-way street. If he wants to push the conversation that way, he can help it get there with an actual contribution.

edit: On second thought, removed some unnecessary snark. Others have covered my point anyway, just got a bit riled.

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