Comment by BobaFloutist
2 days ago
Yeah, not that I think I'm all that exceptional, but I've realized that truly astronomically successful people are separated from me as much by risk tolerance and a frankly short-sighted-seeming commitment to a single goal as by talent or skill. Survivorship bias sometimes makes me wish I was willing to risk it all on a bad bet too, but a sober look at the typical result of that approach makes me glad I'm not.
Charles Lindbergh was good enough- and lucky enough- to be the first person to fly New York to Paris and became the most famous man in the world when he won the Orteig Prize. Six other people weren't quite good or lucky enough, and died pursuing the Ortieg Prize. If you look it up on Wikipedia you can find their names, but I can only name one of them off the top of my head (Charles Nungasser was a famous French WWI ace), and I suspect that one makes me better than 99% of the people alive today at remembering these men.
Everyone would like to be Charles Lindbergh, but far more common to be Charles Clavier or Noel Davis, failing, dying, and forgotten.
More importantly, for every Charles Lindbergh, there are a hundred to a million people with just as much skill, talent, charisma, whatever, who just had slightly worse luck in some aspect.
For that reason, we shouldn't over-index our society around the Charles Lindberghs.
Bonus points: You are less likely to empower literal nazis.