Do you want to get more specific about what you mean by “tight feedback loops”? I spent a few years focusing on startup things, and I don’t think “tight feedback loops” are a good characterization. It can take a lot of work to figure out whether a startup idea is viable. That’s why it’s so valuable to gather advance data when possible (hence the lean startup movement). If you want “tight feedback loops”, it seems like trying to master some flash game would offer a much better opportunity.
As far as I can tell, what actual entrepreneurs have that wannabee entrepreneurs don’t is the ability to translate their ideas in to action. They’re bold enough to punch through unendorsed aversions, they’re not afraid to make fools of themselves, they don’t procrastinate, they actually try stuff out, and they push on without getting easily discouraged. You could think of these skills as being multipliers on rationality… if your ability to act on your ideas is 0, it doesn’t matter how good your ideas are and you should focus on improving your ability to act, not improving your ideas. It might help to start distrusting yourself whenever you say “I’ll do X” and think “hm… am I really going to do X? What’s the first step? When and how am I going to take that step? Why am I not taking it now? If I’m not going to take it now, will I ever take it?” (Relevant.)
BTW, one possible explanation for why some people are able to make good decisions in practice but not in theory could be the near/far thing Robin Hanson likes to bring up.
Lots of people are successful at many things, but that doesn’t mean that for any particular person, like Oprah, there will be generalizable insights about success to be gathered from their life. For example, maybe what caused Oprah to skyrocket to billionaire status (instead of being a regular old driven, fairly successful person) was that she came up with a great gimmick. I’m not sure studying her example would provide much insight in to how to be successful for non-talk show people. But if you think it would, there are lots of biographies of famous, successful people you could mine for success insights.
They’re bold enough to punch through unendorsed aversions, they’re not afraid to make fools of themselves, they don’t procrastinate, they actually try stuff out, and they push on without getting easily discouraged.
For what it’s worth, I’m a pretty successful entrepreneur and I’d say this more like:
They manage on the whole to punch through many of their unendorsed aversions (at least the big ones that look like they’re getting in the way), they’re just as afraid to make fools of themselves as you are but they have ways of making themselves act anyway most of the time, they keep their procrastination under control and manage to spend most of their time working, they actually try stuff out, and they have ways to push through their discouragement when it strikes.
(Your version scans better.)
I’m commenting mostly against a characterisation of this stuff being easy for successful entrepreneurs. If you try something entrepreneurial and find that it’s hard, that’s not very useful information and it doesn’t mean that you’re not one of the elect and should give up—it’s bloody hard for many successful people, but you can keep working on your own systems until they work (if you try to just keep working I think you’ll fail—go meta and work on both what’s not working to make it work better and on what is working to get more of it).
Thanks! Yes, I agree that it’s possible to get better at most of those things through deliberate effort, which includes system-building, and it’s a good point that people shouldn’t be dissuaded just ’cause it doesn’t seem to come to them naturally.
Here’s something I heard about Oprah which is consistent with the wikipedia article but not included in it. People had been talking about wanting more positive talk shows, so Oprah decided to have one. This is a rationality skill because she explored giving people what they said they wanted instead of being offended that they didn’t like what she was already doing.
It’s possible that her gimmick was the result of some thought about the question of how to do a positive talk show while keeping it interesting.
Seems plausible. “Figure out what people want and give it to them” is a widely repeated success principle for salespeople and entrepreneurs. See Paul Graham on making something people want.
Do you want to get more specific about what you mean by “tight feedback loops”? I spent a few years focusing on startup things, and I don’t think “tight feedback loops” are a good characterization. It can take a lot of work to figure out whether a startup idea is viable. That’s why it’s so valuable to gather advance data when possible (hence the lean startup movement). If you want “tight feedback loops”, it seems like trying to master some flash game would offer a much better opportunity.
As far as I can tell, what actual entrepreneurs have that wannabee entrepreneurs don’t is the ability to translate their ideas in to action. They’re bold enough to punch through unendorsed aversions, they’re not afraid to make fools of themselves, they don’t procrastinate, they actually try stuff out, and they push on without getting easily discouraged. You could think of these skills as being multipliers on rationality… if your ability to act on your ideas is 0, it doesn’t matter how good your ideas are and you should focus on improving your ability to act, not improving your ideas. It might help to start distrusting yourself whenever you say “I’ll do X” and think “hm… am I really going to do X? What’s the first step? When and how am I going to take that step? Why am I not taking it now? If I’m not going to take it now, will I ever take it?” (Relevant.)
BTW, one possible explanation for why some people are able to make good decisions in practice but not in theory could be the near/far thing Robin Hanson likes to bring up.
Lots of people are successful at many things, but that doesn’t mean that for any particular person, like Oprah, there will be generalizable insights about success to be gathered from their life. For example, maybe what caused Oprah to skyrocket to billionaire status (instead of being a regular old driven, fairly successful person) was that she came up with a great gimmick. I’m not sure studying her example would provide much insight in to how to be successful for non-talk show people. But if you think it would, there are lots of biographies of famous, successful people you could mine for success insights.
For what it’s worth, I’m a pretty successful entrepreneur and I’d say this more like:
(Your version scans better.)
I’m commenting mostly against a characterisation of this stuff being easy for successful entrepreneurs. If you try something entrepreneurial and find that it’s hard, that’s not very useful information and it doesn’t mean that you’re not one of the elect and should give up—it’s bloody hard for many successful people, but you can keep working on your own systems until they work (if you try to just keep working I think you’ll fail—go meta and work on both what’s not working to make it work better and on what is working to get more of it).
Thanks! Yes, I agree that it’s possible to get better at most of those things through deliberate effort, which includes system-building, and it’s a good point that people shouldn’t be dissuaded just ’cause it doesn’t seem to come to them naturally.
Here’s something I heard about Oprah which is consistent with the wikipedia article but not included in it. People had been talking about wanting more positive talk shows, so Oprah decided to have one. This is a rationality skill because she explored giving people what they said they wanted instead of being offended that they didn’t like what she was already doing.
It’s possible that her gimmick was the result of some thought about the question of how to do a positive talk show while keeping it interesting.
Seems plausible. “Figure out what people want and give it to them” is a widely repeated success principle for salespeople and entrepreneurs. See Paul Graham on making something people want.