There are about a dozen people who want to be the next PotUS badly enough to put themselves forward as serious candidates. Exactly one of them will be. At most a few more ever will be. Most startups fail. How many of the refugees trying to enter Europe will succeed? Are the ones who fail just not trying hard enough?
The quote is inspirational, but the idea it is intended to evoke is not well expressed by the actual words. I mean, yay growth mindset and use the try harder, Luke, and ikigai, and tsuyoku naritai, but.
The clause “anything in this world” gives you an excuse: anything which I can’t have, you can just say “oh, that isn’t in this world, it doesn’t count”. This could make the statement trivially true. It would also exclude a lot of things that most people would think count; for instance, it excludes having a large bank account, because the large bank account doesn’t exist in the world at this moment.
Ignoring that, some things don’t exist. I can’t have a visit to the Colossus of Rhodes, because the Colossus of Rhodes was destroyed centuries ago.
Some things might not even in theory exist. I can’t have a proof that triangles have four sides. Depending on facts about the universe unknown to me, I might not be able to have a faster than light drive or a proof that P=NP.
Some things might be physically possible but there’s no known way to achieve them. It’s not impossible for me to have 150 IQ or a cure for cancer, but I can’t just get them by spending a lot.
Some things depend on other people’s mental states or decisions. Can I have person X’s love?
People’s idea of what counts as “things” is too narrow, eliminating qualifiers. If I say “well, I can’t have ISIS disband without killing lots of people”, you might reply that I didn’t ask for a “thing”, I asked for a thing and then added an extra condition, and the quote doesn’t apply to extra conditions. But whether something is phrased as an extra condition is purely semantics; it’s not impossible to have a single word which means “disbanding of ISIS without killing lots of people”.
Steelmanning this quote would lead me to a definition of “anything in this world” that is gerrymandered so that objections 2, 3, 4, and 5 don’t count. It would then be subject to objections 1 and 6.
definition of “anything in this world” that is gerrymandered
Not necessarily: a straightforward steelmanning would re-define “anything in this world” as “anything in this world I can get by paying an appropriate price (not necessarily in money)”. Of course, after that the quote sounds much less insightful :-/
Not necessarily: a straightforward steelmanning would re-define “anything in this world” as “anything in this world I can get by paying an appropriate price (not necessarily in money)”.
Even with that restriction, the quote would still be false. In terms of things priced financially, there are lots of objects which cost more than many peoples’ lifetime earnings (and good luck trying to raise those earnings by a large multiplier). In terms of things priced in terms of time or effort—there are limits on those too. If, for instance, a nonagenarian enrolled in a Ph.D. program which typically took a decade to complete—they might earn their degree, but the odds are against it.
-Mary Kay Ash
Continuing the tradition of quotes that will probably result in more downvotes than other post or comment I make...
There are about a dozen people who want to be the next PotUS badly enough to put themselves forward as serious candidates. Exactly one of them will be. At most a few more ever will be. Most startups fail. How many of the refugees trying to enter Europe will succeed? Are the ones who fail just not trying hard enough?
The quote is inspirational, but the idea it is intended to evoke is not well expressed by the actual words. I mean, yay growth mindset and use the try harder, Luke, and ikigai, and tsuyoku naritai, but.
Your quote is nonsense.
The clause “anything in this world” gives you an excuse: anything which I can’t have, you can just say “oh, that isn’t in this world, it doesn’t count”. This could make the statement trivially true. It would also exclude a lot of things that most people would think count; for instance, it excludes having a large bank account, because the large bank account doesn’t exist in the world at this moment.
Ignoring that, some things don’t exist. I can’t have a visit to the Colossus of Rhodes, because the Colossus of Rhodes was destroyed centuries ago.
Some things might not even in theory exist. I can’t have a proof that triangles have four sides. Depending on facts about the universe unknown to me, I might not be able to have a faster than light drive or a proof that P=NP.
Some things might be physically possible but there’s no known way to achieve them. It’s not impossible for me to have 150 IQ or a cure for cancer, but I can’t just get them by spending a lot.
Some things depend on other people’s mental states or decisions. Can I have person X’s love?
People’s idea of what counts as “things” is too narrow, eliminating qualifiers. If I say “well, I can’t have ISIS disband without killing lots of people”, you might reply that I didn’t ask for a “thing”, I asked for a thing and then added an extra condition, and the quote doesn’t apply to extra conditions. But whether something is phrased as an extra condition is purely semantics; it’s not impossible to have a single word which means “disbanding of ISIS without killing lots of people”.
Consider steelmanning instead of strawmanning.
Steelmanning this quote would lead me to a definition of “anything in this world” that is gerrymandered so that objections 2, 3, 4, and 5 don’t count. It would then be subject to objections 1 and 6.
Not necessarily: a straightforward steelmanning would re-define “anything in this world” as “anything in this world I can get by paying an appropriate price (not necessarily in money)”. Of course, after that the quote sounds much less insightful :-/
Even with that restriction, the quote would still be false. In terms of things priced financially, there are lots of objects which cost more than many peoples’ lifetime earnings (and good luck trying to raise those earnings by a large multiplier). In terms of things priced in terms of time or effort—there are limits on those too. If, for instance, a nonagenarian enrolled in a Ph.D. program which typically took a decade to complete—they might earn their degree, but the odds are against it.