Neil deGrasse Tyson: Be Yourself

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Neil deGrasse Tyson says "the greatest of people that have ever been in society, they were never versions of someone else. They were themselves."
chilaxesays...

Basically he's saying "Be yourself and somehow you'll become successful or something if you're lucky."

Better advice: "Hard work and perseverance beats talent and luck, and successful careers can be reduced down to an algorithm."

Boise_Libsays...

>> ^chilaxe:

Basically he's saying "Be yourself and somehow you'll become successful or something if you're lucky."
Better advice: "Hard work and perseverance beats talent and luck, and successful careers can be reduced down to an algorithm."


Success Algorithm:

Step #1 Have a Rich Daddy.
...

chilaxesays...

>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^chilaxe:
Basically he's saying "Be yourself and somehow you'll become successful or something if you're lucky."
Better advice: "Hard work and perseverance beats talent and luck, and successful careers can be reduced down to an algorithm."

Success Algorithm:
Step #1 Have a Rich Daddy.
...


Boise Lib:

Ha. As far as I can tell from the data, though, most millionaires are self-made.

I think everything we need to know about economic outcomes can be learned from this recent NYT article:

Asians' Success in High School Admissions Seen as Issue by Some.

EvilDeathBeesays...

Most of us will never be great men or women, most of us will never be recognised for any special achievement... and that's fine. Yeah, you have to be yourself, but mimicking aspects of the life of a hero of yours to help you be more successful or simply be happier with your life, there's nothing wrong with that. Don't set out to be great, set out to be content. And who knows? You may find greatness along the way

poolcleanersays...

Yeah, I am being myself. Sometimes it's cool. Most of the times it sucks. Cleaning pools, man. It's not a passion but it makes me cash and scores me some ass. Married ass, but, well, your average working American is under the boot heels of the man and doesn't have time for what I can provide. Thanks for the reassurance, Neil. Work hard, America.

Mookalsays...

I don't believe it's a matter of success or greatness defined by an economic model. It's about being a genuine, opinion forming individual rather than sheep herded by a marketing department or fragile social trend.

Greatness to me is defined by the individual, not their triumphs.

L0ckysays...

>> ^Mookal:

It's about being a genuine, opinion forming individual rather than sheep herded by a marketing department or fragile social trend.


Apologies in advance for the upcoming rant; it's not targeted at you - I think this every time I see someone calling other people sheep:

We're all sheep.

We all have a herd mentality. We're all influenced by marketing. We're especially influenced by marketing on things we don't really care about; which is most things.

We can pick a dozen things that lately, we personally have bothered to stop and think about; be critical about; research; object to; offer alternatives to; form opinions of; protest; debate or attempt to share our knowledge of.

We sometimes do this on one subject for 5 minutes of one day and then forget all about it 2 days later.

We can also stick to a cause and campaign on it for years of our lives, even our whole lives.

You're not special.

For 99% of things, we don't do any of this; instead we defer to one of the available concensuses. If we didn't do this then we would be unable to function from day to day.

When you think someone else is a sheep, they are just deferring to a concensus on the one arbitrary issue you happen to be thinking about at that moment in time. On another day and another subject - you are the sheep.

RFlaggsays...

I have to disagree a bit. Do you need to do hard work? Yes, but there are plenty of hard working people who struggle and never become financially successful. They may obtain some personal satisfaction, but the "rich people are rich because they work hard, and poor people are poor because they are lazy" mentality that is so popular in the US is flat out wrong. Not everyone working at your local restaurant, retailer or whatever is there because they are lazy, sometimes people get stuck in a rut and hard work alone won't get you out of it.

There is a great deal of talent and luck involved as well. Had Carnegie not worked for Scott, he very well may have never became the rich guy he became. He lucked out working for someone who mentored him and gave him a huge boost. Had Carnegie never gotten to where he did, then perhaps Frisk would have just been a hooligan and the Johnstown Flood never would have happened... had Carnegie been more himself, he probably never would have hired Frisk, which at least would probably have stopped the disaster of the Homestead Strike (of course then he may have never became the philanthropist he became). There were also plenty of hard working people in the early days of computers, there was a ton of luck involved for Apple and Micro-soft to break out and become what they would eventually become. In those two cases, it helped that Gates and Jobs were asshats in their early days, which gets back to being yourself. But for each Gates/Jobs there were many more equally hard working people who never became successful and faded back to obscurity. It's not like Romney became rich through hard work, he came from money and Bain Capital is named for Bill Bain who appointed Romney CEO... not to discount Romney's work there, or his work at school proving himself, but how likely would it be that he would have been CEO had he come from a poor family and didn't get to get to go to such a high end university? Likely no.

That all isn't to say hard work doesn't help, it is a key, but hard work alone counts for squat.

>> ^chilaxe:

Basically he's saying "Be yourself and somehow you'll become successful or something if you're lucky."
Better advice: "Hard work and perseverance beats talent and luck, and successful careers can be reduced down to an algorithm."

chilaxesays...

RFlagg said: "Not everyone working at your local restaurant, retailer or whatever is there because they are lazy..."

Part of doing hard work is committing ourselves to goals that will payoff years down the road.

Think back to our high school classes. In my high school class, there's been a 1 to 1 correlation between good decisions and life outcomes.

People need a culture that can give them good guidance.

messengersays...

Huge success is 95% hard work and 5% hard work. And that's why almost none of us will become super successful. The best model of this I've ever seen is the 2002 TV series "Driven" that told the story of music idols on their path to massive fame. The one common trait was that they were all fanatically driven to succeed, worked like hell, insisted on following their own vision.

I think this talk was a bit of a humblebrag.

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