It particularly highlighted the reasons taking big risks with entrepreneurship might be the biggest way to make an impact on the lives of others. The main rationale for this is that even failing on a startup can potentially earn the entrepreneur a lot of money.
Over 90% of the wealth gained by founders came from the top 10% of firms, those which returned over $10 million, and almost half the wealth came from the top 2% of firms, returning over $100 million.
Kind of remarkable that they got the explanation exactly backwards.
Fortunately science is self-correcting; I’m sure that the authors will reverse their conclusion once they realize that they got the evidence backwards. I look forward to “the light side of EA entrepreneurship” in a forthcoming edition of Frontiers in Psychology.
Unfortunately, this methodology of “collect some texts; extract themes that we say are salient” seems very common in the social sciences. Fixing the method is unlikely, but pointing out concrete errors still seems prosocial.
I’d give you 100 epistemic hygiene points to contact the authors and point out this error.
The source they cite says:
Kind of remarkable that they got the explanation exactly backwards.
Alas, poor reading comprehension is common everywhere.
My guess is that it wouldn’t work, but I’ve been trying to figure out a technological solution.
Fortunately science is self-correcting; I’m sure that the authors will reverse their conclusion once they realize that they got the evidence backwards. I look forward to “the light side of EA entrepreneurship” in a forthcoming edition of Frontiers in Psychology.
Haha love this, always appreciate the sparse morsels of banter on the forum ;)
Ha, if only!
Unfortunately, this methodology of “collect some texts; extract themes that we say are salient” seems very common in the social sciences. Fixing the method is unlikely, but pointing out concrete errors still seems prosocial.
I’d give you 100 epistemic hygiene points to contact the authors and point out this error.