[throwaway0255]

It’s not at all difficult to imagine a scenario where his life is better after turning down Instagram. I wouldn’t even say it’s unlikely.

Just name one important relationship he formed in NYC. Done. (Or any of the other infinite ways events could have unfolded more favorably in NYC than in a hypothetical SF)

An engineer in America is wealthy, and has lots of opportunity to see and experience new and interesting things. The idea that his life is almost assuredly worse just because he forwent one unlikely opportunity to become wealthy 50x over instead of just 5x over is silly.

Of all the choices he’s made and will make, I doubt that was a very important one.

[confiscate]

Ya you can imagine any scenario you want. I can imagine a scenario where a homeless person's life is better than if he had a home. It's not hard to imagine. But if you had a choice, which would you choose?

I don't think the argument is conclusively "Done" after naming one important relationship he formed in NYC.

I can name one important relationship he would have formed if he stayed in SF. A relationship with the founders of Instagram. That relationship is valuable too.

What makes you doubt that this choice is less important than other choices he will make in the future?

You don't need to consider the infinite possibility of events that could have unfolded. You really only have to consider the origin event--if you had the chance to choose again, would you make the same choice.

[throwaway0255]

> Ya you can imagine any scenario you want. I can imagine a scenario where a homeless person's life is better than if he had a home. It's not hard to imagine. But if you had a choice, which would you choose?

Homelessness is a financial hardship that actually will ruin your quality of life, which stands in stark contrast to being a homeowner. Whereas making 150k/yr in NYC instead of 2m/yr in SF just means you have plenty of space on hardwood, instead of too much space on marble. The relationship between wealth and quality of life is logarithmic.

That's not the question being asked. Obviously being an early employee at Instagram is better than having an above-average engineering job in NYC, and more money is better than less money.

The question is, do all of the events that unfold throughout the rest of his life after he moves to NYC sum to a better life than the events that would have unfolded if he had taken that job and stayed in SF?

It can't be known, we can only speculate on the probabilities.

If we know for certain that Instagram will be the success that it is, that means NYC and SF present two radically different sets of human relationships and life experiences spanning decades, but in NYC he will make a lot of money and in SF he will make an excessive amount of money.

When I consider the infinite variation and possibility contained within those unforeseeable human relationships and life experiences, and think about the impact those factors have on a person's quality of life, I don't think there's even a comparison to be made between that and the difference between making lots of money and making tons of money. The relationships and life experiences will be the dominating factors in these outcomes. Since they're both unknowable, the relative probabilities of either NYC or SF resulting in a better life lie somewhere close to 50:50, even if we know he would have been successful at Instagram in SF.

I actually do think it was an important choice, just not because of Instagram. He was tired of SF and the contemporary startup scene, and Instagram's success was still very unlikely at that point. Staying would have been a bad decision.