A ridiculous and poorly written article which sets out to claim that success is largely a fluke and has not much to do with intrinsic talent, rather if you are initially successful this tends to produce even more success in some kind of gravitational effect. It fails to explore this idea in depth or prove the point. I contend that nearly the opposite is true.
Success certainly has an element of luck as well as initial advantages (rich parents, living in the right country ...). but I don't think that success can be maintained without ability, talent and hard work. So for Jobs, Dylan and Rowling, their first break may have been a fluke, (albeit one attained by hard work and persistence), but their continued success was due to talent rather than to some winner takes all effect.
" their first break may have been a fluke, (albeit one attained by hard work and persistence), but their continued success was due to talent rather than to some winner takes all effect."
As regularly and repeatedly demonstrated by the phenomenon of "one-hit-wonders".
While I agree that the article too easily discounts the weight of one's talent in achieving success I think the main point to take away is that the need for social conformance heavily skews our own perceptions. Imagine if a Youtube video was to start with 10k fake upvotes, I bet that video would be upvoted by the vast majority of users regardless of whether they liked it or not.
Buying a bunch of fake listens/votes on platforms like SoundCloud, Beatport etc. is actually a very common way of building an audience in the dance music genre nowadays. Nobody likes it but almost everyone does it, because it's the most effective marketing strategy on a small budget.
Comments
A ridiculous and poorly written article which sets out to claim that success is largely a fluke and has not much to do with intrinsic talent, rather if you are initially successful this tends to produce even more success in some kind of gravitational effect. It fails to explore this idea in depth or prove the point. I contend that nearly the opposite is true.
Success certainly has an element of luck as well as initial advantages (rich parents, living in the right country ...). but I don't think that success can be maintained without ability, talent and hard work. So for Jobs, Dylan and Rowling, their first break may have been a fluke, (albeit one attained by hard work and persistence), but their continued success was due to talent rather than to some winner takes all effect.
As regularly and repeatedly demonstrated by the phenomenon of "one-hit-wonders".
While I agree that the article too easily discounts the weight of one's talent in achieving success I think the main point to take away is that the need for social conformance heavily skews our own perceptions. Imagine if a Youtube video was to start with 10k fake upvotes, I bet that video would be upvoted by the vast majority of users regardless of whether they liked it or not.
Buying a bunch of fake listens/votes on platforms like SoundCloud, Beatport etc. is actually a very common way of building an audience in the dance music genre nowadays. Nobody likes it but almost everyone does it, because it's the most effective marketing strategy on a small budget.