Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fruscica 6985 days ago
My takeaway from the Wikipedia excerpt is that being afflicted w/ confirmation bias equates to being in denial. Healthy denial seems oxymoronic, as denial precludes risk management...
2 comments

In that case, I'll say that denial has some role behind almost every big entrepreneur's success or business deal.
Hmmmm...

As best I can recall, relevant (meta-analyses of) studies of entrepreneurship concluded that successful entrepreneurs are typically very mindful of risk. Amar Bhide's book The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses may be a good source for a survey of the aforesaid scholarship.

Mindful but not necessarily dictated. In some ways the idea of "risk" itself is a form of denial, no?
Most startups fail, so anyone involved in a startup has to spend all of their waking time doing something that is probably not going to make them any money. If it's 2 AM and you haven't slept in a few days and the difference between working and not working is almost certainly $0, denial is a competitive advantage.