No it's not. Gambler's fallacy is "I just flipped tails so heads is more likely now". I read this article as "heads has a 50% chance of coming up so I'll get one eventually" (which is true - law of large numbers).
I think none of those blanket statements here work.
Really it's just odds of finding success vs effort / time spent. And whether that's worth it.
Any of the blanket statements could be true depending on what the exact odds are.
There could be near 0% chance of finding success and it would be better idea to rethink and spend time elsewhere, or yes, there's 10% chance of finding success and it's significant enough that trying 20 times is enough.
If we are talking about e.g. finding a house, if you are not finding any it could very well be that your expectations vs budget is unlikely to find anything and you have to reconsider strategy.
Someone could be repeatedly trying to find work, and thinking it's just a matter of time, but really time would be better spent on improving their strategy, resume, or other means.
These statements to me seem like motivational non-sense which misrepresent how real world works or what the patterns really are like. At best they just give someone a false understanding of how the world works, at worst they make someone spend all their time in the wrong direction.
You lost something when every other person started doing the same thing. Now you have to write or review ten applications instead of one. Now you're going to get paid less because it cost $20k to hire you instead of $2k. Now your company is going to be filled with like-minded people, "hustlers", who do not know how to improve things themselves, just spray and pray until someone mistakenly rewards them.
The way I read this is that there are many "games" in life (applying for schools, jobs, dating, etc) where the odds of "winning" each instance are not in your favor, but you only need to win once to win overall. If you treat every absence of a positive outcome as a failure, then you're inevitably going to lose hope and give up.
This is in contrast to gambling where you actually do need to win more often than not to win overall.
Seems like a momumental waste of energy being pushed as "hustling". Applying to college should be cooperative between you and the admissions office: asking, are we a good fit? Applying in the hope they mess up and admit you when they're really better off rejecting you is so antisocial.
Admissions are sort-of Pareto distributed, so most people admitted were on the edge of being rejected. Since there is a bit of noise in the process, this is why any one individual applying to 10x as many places of a similar tier will be more likely to get into one. But then when everyone does it, no one is more or less likely to get in except those that are actually cooperating with the admissions office. You're burning down the commons for a fleeting bit of warmth. Might I suggest installing a furnace in your house instead?
All I can say is that the method works specifically because people like you exist. It kind of defeats the purpose if we try to change your mind about this.
Lol, yes. If you're a selfish egoist, you probably don't want to convert others to your philosophy.
I think it's possible to punish people who are taking these selfish actions, and I think universities should. Maybe they should make a secret database where they list the people who applied to their university, and subtract off points for every other university they applied to. Or, recruiting agencies can mark down candidates for every other job they are applying to. I don't think they do, and this isn't the startup I want to make or area I want to devote my life to, it just sucks that people are being rewarded for playing negative-sum games.
> Applying in the hope they mess up and admit you when they're really better off rejecting you is so antisocial.
What? That's not what I'm suggesting at all. I just found the post to be a helpful reminder of how to have a healthy mindset towards some uncertainties in life, but it seems like you took away something completely different.
What do you mean by "a healthy mindset"? It isn't healthy for society. It isn't healthy in the world where everyone has this mindset. It isn't healthy to treat your life as a lottery, hoping for a winning ticket instead of creating that ticket yourself. The fact that you consider applications to be uncertainties in life is very telling. You can make them much less uncertain, if you stop thinking of them like a lottery and start doing the things that prove you are valuable to others.
Did you know that USAMO qualifiers have >50% rate of admission to MIT? IMO gold medalists have >80% acceptance rate, and it's only so low because international admissions is limited to 10% of the student body. Life is only a lottery if you have an unhealthy mindset holding you back from improving yourself. Just because university admissions involve a lot of luck at the bottom does not mean you have to limit yourself to a bottom feeder spraying and praying to get in.
Interestingly I found my first job through a video game and I never went to uni. I got good at the game (to brag, top 0.1%) and met people in the game who referred me because of the "respect" from being good at that particular game got me. Might seem odd, but a lot of people in the industry played this game and ability to be good at the game did signal something.
I have never spam applied anywhere, and have hyperfocused on very specific positions, putting a lot of prep effort into what I have considered strong matches.
Indeed. "Just one more roll of the dice and I'll be ahead."
Worse, this guy isn't trying to get a job. He's just trying to get into grad school. Which is no longer a guarantee of a good career, but may be a guarantee of a big debt. Remember that "I did everything right" post on HN a few weeks ago? CS degree from a good school, but nobody wants junior CS people any more.