[a_n]

lol why do so many people here have such a loser/average mindset, you can literally achieve anything, literally anything, just because you don’t want to work hard, you don’t gotta be so discouraging to other people, well I guess people who wanna achieve great things probably don’t care about the stupid lazy people, so it’s whatever But the fact is you can literally do anything, you just gotta give it your all…

[sarora27]

IMO most folks find it easier to point to the million reasons why something wont work/why someone is speaking from a point of affluence/how luck/finances/etc play a role in success than to just do the thing, learn from their mistakes, and grow. It's probably because doing the latter is hard and forces you to face ambiguity & hard personal growth on a daily basis.

[swader999]

I suffer from this at times. To be fair though, that's sort of my day job. Find holes and flaws in ideas and make them stronger. I don't do it with people anymore at least, I try hard to assume they have the best intent.

[paulpauper]

To say I can do literally anything means I can have a 5x body weight deadlift or run a 4 minute mile. There are limits.

[malthaus]

because most people have something called life experience or come from a culture not brainwashed by the american dream. of course YOU can do anything, but whether you are successful with that or not is up to a million factors you cannot control, no matter how much of your all you give.

go to a casino, throw your life savings on one number. if you win, tell everyone how you gave it all and you manifested it by pure will. if you lose, nobody will ever hear from it.

in addition, pg is so heavily biased on this and should never be taken as gospel.

[gizmo]

The belief that luck is the dominant factor in success is false and harmful to the extent that it keeps people from trying. I mean trying for real as opposed to giving up after a bunch of setbacks.

[antisthenes]

Yeah, those pesky setbacks like getting injured, working yourself to death and running out of money so you can't feed yourself.

If only people tried for real.

In my experience people most likely to write this are trust fund babies who neglect to mention they're getting essentially a stipend from their parents to take care of all their life necessities, so they can "try for real". Whatever that means.

[gizmo]

What I have seen is that people who don't quit eventually become pretty successful. Some people have to quit because of health reasons or other unfortunate circumstances. But in the overwhelming majority of cases people just get demoralized.

20 years ago I would have agreed with you, but today I don't.

[antisthenes]

> 20 years ago I would have agreed with you, but today I don't.

On that point, I'll agree with you. 20 years ago I would have said you're flat out wrong, but today, I'd say you have a valid point in that too many people give up after the first few failures (or never even try enough to get to a failure point)

[latentcall]

A lot of opportunities are locked behind a massive paywall and the system isn’t intended for your average Joe to get through that paywall. If it were, you’d have less people to serve you coffee or deliver your meals or advertise to in order to increase shareholder value which the ruling class do not want. Do not be dense.

Pretending like all 8 billion people have the same opportunity to be the next Jeff Bezos/Elon/Jobs is misleading.

My advice for the 99% is to the best you can and foster family and friend relationships, work less, and get out of the mindless consumerist game.

[therealdrag0]

I also don’t get why people care so much about what OTHER people do. Will some people fail? Yes of course. But it’s good for society to have a ton of people busting their ass and trying new things. And it’s good for society if bloggers encourage that.

If you personally want to be an employee, fine, but a cultural value for entrepreneurs is a good thing to have and should be supported.