His parents are Stanford law professors. I think this is a more impressive fact than the other items one could have observed about Sam prior to becoming extremely successful.
Thanks for pointing that out! I agree it’s notable and have added it to the list. I don’t have a strong opinion on how important this is relative to other things on there.
I think it’s less impressive than him going to MIT, at minimum. Parents being smart suggests kid is smart, but kid can still fail to live up to their potential in lots of ways, and Stanford law prof is not that impressive beyond what it says about intelligence.
I think it’s less impressive than him going to MIT, at minimum. Parents being smart suggests kid is smart, but kid can still fail to live up to their potential in lots of ways, and Stanford law prof is not that impressive beyond what it says about intelligence.
No, I think the proper take was not that the parent comment was talking about inheritability or anything like that.
(At the risk of triggering endless “dinner-party” style debates about intelligence/environment/political ideology), I think it’s a modest statement that most models of high success involve both high capability and high situational opportunity.
To make this really tangible, probably one reason that SBF ended up being one of the wealthiest crypto entrepreneurs, might be that he didn’t have to dilute, and was able to maintain his equity and control by getting capital at good terms. Few young people (or anyone really) can “bootstrap” like this.
As mathematically pivotal as it is, this equity advantage might not even be the biggest one he had.
An advantage that many people don’t see, is that if you’re born into, or highly trusted in certain situations and family networks, you sort of just “pick up the phone and have someone help work through really hard problems”.
Note that this doesn’t necessarily involve “pulling strings” or anything like that—it’s more that things like personal disputes, and almost every other snag or stressors that trip up every young person in a business, can be guided or even fixed ex-post by people in close and strong enough networks. This is such a huge advantage and it’s very hard to communicate.
So I think all this is suggested by the dual Stanford law professorships (which itself sort of needs a world of explanation).
For clarity, and be sort of brutal about it, if you somehow got enough data from a multiverse, and then wrote up a correct regressor/classifier on “impact”/”9-figure success”, the magnitude of the parameter on the feature “was an MIT or HYPS student” would be much much smaller than the feature “multiple close family members tenured at HYPS in a legal or institutional related discipline”, even after controlling for work hours, “intelligence”, etc.
Note this comment isn’t some leftist manifesto.
It’s that the truth and correct models of the world are a thing (e.g. understanding these factors might facilitate their provision for the purposes of the OP).
As someone who did not come from elite networks, I think most people vastly overrate the usefulness of being from that background, to their own detriment, and I think it’s really really important that others from non-elite backgrounds understand it doesn’t matter. You maybe have to take a little more initiative instead of just having it handed to you, but I’m not talking about backbreaking amounts. I’m talking like send a handful of cold emails, show up at a few professional events, that kind of thing. If you have the talent, people will help you use it.
There is some benefit to knowing elite manners more intuitively, and to having the confidence that comes from growing up in those circles, but that’s about it. I had some early career struggles because I had a chip on my shoulder about this stuff, but the moment I stopped being a combative little shit, people started opening doors for me.
As mentioned, there’s a risk someone starts pattern matching this to some “dinner-party” style talks and start jousting about left/right/opportunity/libertarian/woke/privilege, what have you.
What we’re talking about here is the reference class of creating 9-10 figures of wealth.
I think if you look at the actual class of very high net worth tech people, there’s evidence for the view in my parent comment.
Then let’s see it. I’m not pattern-matching to anything. You said a thing that is simply untrue about advantages you believe a person coming from a lower upper class background would have. I am directly challenging your purported method of action based on my own experience of how easy it is to acquire those same advantages. Maybe they have some other advantages you haven’t identified. But if so, let’s see it.
Charles is not saying is that having an elite background is the only thing that matters. He is saying that high success involves both high capability and high situational opportunity.
Sure, but the situational opportunity involved here is mostly being an American alive in the 21st century. If you are the type of person who is capable of starting the next FTX and making $10bn, and you are an American, you can get access to whatever help you need easily enough.
I strongly disagree that the situational opportunity is anywhere near as broad as “mostly being an American alive in the 21st century”. I’m not sure what you have in mind regarding “the type of person who is capable of starting the next FTX”, but I think that is a fairly narrow class, not a very wide one.
It’s a narrow class because the talent is rare, not because situational opportunities are. If you have the talent you can just go get the opportunities.
What advantages do you propose that having Stanford prof parents provides, beyond those already implied by going to MIT?
His parents are Stanford law professors. I think this is a more impressive fact than the other items one could have observed about Sam prior to becoming extremely successful.
Thanks for pointing that out! I agree it’s notable and have added it to the list. I don’t have a strong opinion on how important this is relative to other things on there.
I think it’s less impressive than him going to MIT, at minimum. Parents being smart suggests kid is smart, but kid can still fail to live up to their potential in lots of ways, and Stanford law prof is not that impressive beyond what it says about intelligence.
Now that it looks like SBF might personally be on the EA forum, it’s obviously really prudent and wise for me to write the following comment:
No, I think the proper take was not that the parent comment was talking about inheritability or anything like that.
(At the risk of triggering endless “dinner-party” style debates about intelligence/environment/political ideology), I think it’s a modest statement that most models of high success involve both high capability and high situational opportunity.
To make this really tangible, probably one reason that SBF ended up being one of the wealthiest crypto entrepreneurs, might be that he didn’t have to dilute, and was able to maintain his equity and control by getting capital at good terms. Few young people (or anyone really) can “bootstrap” like this.
As mathematically pivotal as it is, this equity advantage might not even be the biggest one he had.
An advantage that many people don’t see, is that if you’re born into, or highly trusted in certain situations and family networks, you sort of just “pick up the phone and have someone help work through really hard problems”.
Note that this doesn’t necessarily involve “pulling strings” or anything like that—it’s more that things like personal disputes, and almost every other snag or stressors that trip up every young person in a business, can be guided or even fixed ex-post by people in close and strong enough networks. This is such a huge advantage and it’s very hard to communicate.
So I think all this is suggested by the dual Stanford law professorships (which itself sort of needs a world of explanation).
For clarity, and be sort of brutal about it, if you somehow got enough data from a multiverse, and then wrote up a correct regressor/classifier on “impact”/”9-figure success”, the magnitude of the parameter on the feature “was an MIT or HYPS student” would be much much smaller than the feature “multiple close family members tenured at HYPS in a legal or institutional related discipline”, even after controlling for work hours, “intelligence”, etc.
Note this comment isn’t some leftist manifesto.
It’s that the truth and correct models of the world are a thing (e.g. understanding these factors might facilitate their provision for the purposes of the OP).
As someone who did not come from elite networks, I think most people vastly overrate the usefulness of being from that background, to their own detriment, and I think it’s really really important that others from non-elite backgrounds understand it doesn’t matter. You maybe have to take a little more initiative instead of just having it handed to you, but I’m not talking about backbreaking amounts. I’m talking like send a handful of cold emails, show up at a few professional events, that kind of thing. If you have the talent, people will help you use it.
There is some benefit to knowing elite manners more intuitively, and to having the confidence that comes from growing up in those circles, but that’s about it. I had some early career struggles because I had a chip on my shoulder about this stuff, but the moment I stopped being a combative little shit, people started opening doors for me.
No. You’re off topic.
As mentioned, there’s a risk someone starts pattern matching this to some “dinner-party” style talks and start jousting about left/right/opportunity/libertarian/woke/privilege, what have you.
What we’re talking about here is the reference class of creating 9-10 figures of wealth.
I think if you look at the actual class of very high net worth tech people, there’s evidence for the view in my parent comment.
Then let’s see it. I’m not pattern-matching to anything. You said a thing that is simply untrue about advantages you believe a person coming from a lower upper class background would have. I am directly challenging your purported method of action based on my own experience of how easy it is to acquire those same advantages. Maybe they have some other advantages you haven’t identified. But if so, let’s see it.
Charles is not saying is that having an elite background is the only thing that matters. He is saying that high success involves both high capability and high situational opportunity.
Sure, but the situational opportunity involved here is mostly being an American alive in the 21st century. If you are the type of person who is capable of starting the next FTX and making $10bn, and you are an American, you can get access to whatever help you need easily enough.
I strongly disagree that the situational opportunity is anywhere near as broad as “mostly being an American alive in the 21st century”. I’m not sure what you have in mind regarding “the type of person who is capable of starting the next FTX”, but I think that is a fairly narrow class, not a very wide one.
It’s a narrow class because the talent is rare, not because situational opportunities are. If you have the talent you can just go get the opportunities.
What advantages do you propose that having Stanford prof parents provides, beyond those already implied by going to MIT?
Sorry, I don’t have the capacity to engage further here.