Unless you've built a billion dollar company yourself then you have no more experience that he has -- and no need to be condescending.
And EVEN if you HAD built a billion dollar company yourself, that wouldn't say much.
First, because the way you did it wouldn't necessarily be representative of how it generally happens.
Second, because you could be attributing all your success in doing it to your self, hard work etc, overlooking all the random and lucky elements (not to mention other people's work) that helped you to achieve that. That's a very common psychological fallacy ("no winner believes in luck"), and one can have it even for minor achievemnets.
So let's stick to observation on how many of those companies were made (as non-billion dollar company creators ), and arguments that appeal to logic, law, how society works, etc.
>Unless you've built a billion dollar company yourself then you have no more experience that he has -
This is what the person said.
>>Meetings absolutely will create a billion dollar company.
I questioned this absurd statement.
>Second, because you could be attributing all your success in doing it to your self, hard work etc, overlooking all the random and lucky elements (not to mention other people's work) that helped you to achieve that. That's a very common psychological fallacy ("no winner believes in luck"), and one can have it even for minor achievemnets.
That is your own projection, and actually shows flaws in your own thinking. I have never claimed this to be true. Also, since you're so interested in fallacies, you should be able to spot your own.
>So let's stick to observation on how many of those companies were made (as non-billion dollar company creators ), and arguments that appeal to logic, law, how society works, etc.
You are a severely confused person. Some humans, in some domains, some of the time, apply logical thought, and that sometimes produces results. You want a logical argument? Humans are not robots and they do not interact with the world simply using logic and no law describes how society works. Logic means nothing in the domain we're discussing. How a billion dollar company is made, is not some provable hypothesis.
>“Meetings absolutely will create a billion dollar company”.
I questioned this absurd statement.
What “absurd statement”?
Famously Bill Gates got lucky because Digital Research blew a meeting with IBM to licence their DOS.
Or consider YC Combinator: a successful meeting with PG/YC staff can mean further investor interest in your company and play a pivotal role in its success.
That doesn’t OBVIOUSLY mean that you don’t have to deliver anything or that you don’t need to work.
Just that a company who works as hard as you and has a product just as compelling but blew their meeting (because the founder had a flu, or is not a good talker, or got nervous, or something died during the demo etc) might go nowhere.
Meetings (not brainstorming meetings or discussions between your developers), meetings with people, partners, businesses, VCs are crucial to the success of a company.
>That is your own projection, and actually shows flaws in your own thinking. I have never claimed this to be true. Also, since you’re so interested in fallacies, you should be able to spot your own.
It’s a generic argument on a well known human behaviour — people attributing their success to “hard work” and forgetting things in their favour that others lack and/or their lucky breaks.
What “flaws in [my] own thinking” does that observation show, and what is the BS about "projection", as if we were in kindergarten ("back at you").
>I have never claimed this to be true.
And I never claimed that YOU claimed this to be true.
I didn’t write “you believe blah and blah”, but “it wouldn’t matter if you had made a billion dollar company, because even if you would, you could e.g. be an outlier in regards to how these companies are made, or you could misattribute your success to hard work as many do”.
It was a generic argument about why whether one has started a billion dollar company or not is not really important in this discussion.
Why? To repeat my argument: first because it’s a very limited experience of one personal story (so there’s no guarantee it’s representative for other billion dollar company makers) and second because it’s about them, so its highly probable that they won’t be objective (and it’s actually a common human trait not to be in cases of success, one studied by psychology).
>You are a severely confused person.
Again with the ad-hominens.
>You want a logical argument? Humans are not robots and they do not interact with the world simply using logic and no law describes how society works. Logic means nothing in the domain we’re discussing. How a billion dollar company is made, is not some provable hypothesis.
You say that, but you seem unable to take clues from context about what we’re discussing. I’m OBVIOUSLY not talking about using logic like robots or computers (or scholastic philosophers).
It was another counter-argument aimed at your sneering remarks that the other guy who commented haven’t built a “billion dollar company”, so what does he know...
And I meant, obviously, that we should discuss with logical arguments (avoid logical fallacies), looking at the role of the legal system (law), at how how society works, and observe how those companies were created, to understand their success.
Didn’t reading “let’s stick to observation on how many of those companies were made” [and] “how society works” make you see that I wasn’t referring to logic in the robotic sense (or Principia Mathematica) but in the sense of “let’s not have BS illogical arguments”?
>That doesn’t OBVIOUSLY mean that you don’t have to deliver anything or that you don’t need to work.
YOU said that all their success was due to some random meetings. If you don't mean what you say, then stop saying those things. Creating any successful business requires immense mental and physical resources. MZ is a genius (even though I personally dislike his personality-type) and FB is a result of him being awesome at what he does. You're trying to paint this picture that people have the raw ingredients within them to be a success, and all you need is to be in this right situation to take advantage of them. That kind of model is incongruent with reality.
> first because it’s a very limited experience of one personal story (so there’s no guarantee it’s representative for other billion dollar company makers) and second because it’s about them, so its highly probable that they won’t be objective (and it’s actually a common human trait not to be in cases of success, one studied by psychology).
'representative' doesn't mean anything because there are countless factors involved in being successful, and it is impossible to isolate them all. So let me ask you, why do you focus on success guarantees and objective success models? These things do not exist in the real world. There is simply no point in trying to establish ANY kind of logical reasoning behind success because it doesn't work that way. People look at what successful people do and they think "Hey it worked for X let me try and see if it might work for me". That is a perfectly normal way to approach these things - Which is the point the parent poster was making - "Business isn't exactly chess, but it's a lot closer to hold'em than it is to a lottery."
Before you comment next time, maybe consider whether you're actually interested in engaging in conversation or whether you're just going to stomp off in a hissy fit.
It's understandable to want to object to a commenter who is
being rude, but please don't do so in a way that makes the thread worse.
A gentle reminder of the rules is ok. It's also good to flag egregious comments. (To do that, click on a comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag'.) We monitor those flags.
Since we're handing out advice here's one for you - Before YOU comment next time, maybe consider whether you yourself are actually interested in engaging in conversation, or just passing off your own assumptions as fact.
Most of us slip up from time to time and we all read things on HN that unduly provoke us, but it's critical not to channel that into rudeness on the site.
Please don't be sneaky in phrasing it. Instead, edit it out. Sneaky rudeness is a worse problem on HN than outright rudeness is, because it's more insidious. Outright rudeness at least tends to get flagged.
> I was responding to rudeness in kind.
Maybe so. But most everyone feels that way, so it's not an ok reason to break the rules.
