News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Don't bet on the most likely winner.

Re:Don't bet on the most likely winner by zuhayeer on Monday July 06, 2020 @05:22AM (#23746072)
Looking at everything as relative to each other is a slippery slope to zero sum mindset. Are things relative? Yes, absolutely (no pun intended haha), great to be aware of that. But focusing too much on your relative rank eats away from the edge that got you to wherever you are and pushes you towards groupthink. Once you start the measuring contest, you’ve already lost.

I think one of the Intel founders said something along the lines of “every new business sows the seeds for its own upheaval”. Yeah that’s true, but only once you start caring about the scoreboard.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't bet on the most likely winner by wiz21c on Monday July 06, 2020 @08:43AM (#23747266)
Had to look for it :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't bet on the most likely winner by quietbritishjim on Monday July 06, 2020 @12:17PM (#23749405)
Zero-sum game [1] is the root term. An example is playing poker or similar (without any outside sponsorship or the like) - no matter how well we all play, there's no way for our combined wealth to be greater (or lower) at the end than it was at the beginning. Zero-sum thinking or mind set or whatever is the assumption that a situation is a zero-sum game, which may or may not be true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Don't bet on the most likely winner by JackFr on Monday July 06, 2020 @09:23AM (#23747589)
Though Karl Marx said it first.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-l...

[ Parent | on HN ]