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A comment on The Beginner's Guide to Believing in Yourself.

Re:The Beginner's Guide to Believing in Yourself by syllogism on Sunday February 09, 2014 @12:22PM (#7206157)
This is full of survivorship bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

There's not much indication that paying close attention to the outliers who "won" can really teach us much.

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Re:The Beginner's Guide to Believing in Yourself by danialtz on Sunday February 09, 2014 @12:46PM (#7206255)
Focusing on the two characters may sound like survivor bias; both being the extreme outliers. Nevertheless it is the message I hear it often here and outside. Start doing something, be it an itch or anything, and then just start working on it. If it is what you'll love to do for the rest of your life you will keep going on it even if you fail. Paul Graham wrote an inspiring assay on this [1].

[1] http://paulgraham.com/love.html

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