Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
speaker
57 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Also dating, there's this Christian Rudder studied hundreds of thousands of couples on OkCupid, an online dating site. And he found that the most successful daters tend to be beautiful people. Think of Brad Pitt or Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio. Okay, yeah, we get it. Everybody wants to date them. They're beautiful, whatever. But then he found other people
who did really well, these are people who had extreme looks. So think of like heterosexual woman who shaved their heads or people who dye their hair blue or wear wacky glasses. And what happens with these unconventional daters is they polarize people. So some people think they're really, really unattractive, but some people think they're really attractive.
And in dating, that's kind of all that matters. So the data suggests that you can get 70% more matches. If you're not conventionally beautiful, you get 70% more matches by being an extreme version of yourself and kind of just appealing to a niche market who will be really into you. And yes, some people will think you're disgusting or hideous. Who cares about them?
A small group will really like you. So that really surprised me.
where it seems like the biggest decision that parents can make is where to raise their kids, and particularly the adult you expose your kids to. There's great evidence that kids are likely to follow in the footsteps of their neighbors. So putting your kids around adults you want them to turn out to like can be maybe the best thing you can do as a parent
even better than things you just do when you're one-on-one with them. Kids may rebel against you, may turn against your advice, but they're really likely to follow in the footsteps of the other adults that you expose them to. So little girls who are exposed to lots of adult female scientists, much more likely to become scientists themselves.
Black males who grow up around a lot of successful black males, even not their father, much more likely to have much more successful life outcomes.
Yeah, so luck definitely plays a big role in life. But as far as success goes, it's less about getting unusually lucky. There are things you can do that kind of allow you to get more lucky and take advantage of the luck you have. There have been studies that show the most successful artists released the most work in the world. So they just put more work out there.
And eventually, one of their pieces just got really, really lucky. Well, other artists didn't put as much work out there. They questioned themselves. They almost pre-rejected themselves. And they didn't allow luck to find them as much. I think that's true in dating as well.
And I think frequently what happened is the person who dates well out of their league just asked way more people out and was rejected more because, you know, you kind of, yeah, you eventually get lucky. For some reason, someone's going to be attracted to you who you wouldn't necessarily predict.
And too many people pre-reject themselves and don't allow for that lucky break that that person who you're really attracted to also is attracted to you back. So even applying for jobs, there have been studies that scientists who apply for more jobs are more likely to get more interviews. Too many people pre-reject themselves, don't allow themselves to get that lucky break.
Yeah, that's actually just not true. It's a myth. There are all these myths that data debunks. It's kind of a surprising idea, but it got a lot of airplay in part because it's so surprising where people say, you know, being outside a field can give you an edge that if you're too inside a field, you'll be too stuck in the ways of the field. You won't see kind of the
surprising idea that actually works. When you actually look at the data, for example, of businesses that have succeeded, the most successful businesses tend to be started by people very, very close in that field. People who had real experience, not just in the broad field, but in the very, very narrow field.
So if it's a soap manufacturing business, the most likely person to succeed in that business is not just someone who has experience in manufacturing, but someone who has experience in soap manufacturing. So, really, the outsider's edge is a myth that's gotten too much airplay, I think.
Oh, the myth of youth in entrepreneurship. There have been studies that have shown the average successful entrepreneur in their 40s and the chance of starting a business increase up until the age of 60, which, again, people think if you want to start a business, you need to be in your college dorm room. There have been all these...
examples of successful entrepreneurs, 19-year-old, 20-year-old, 21-year-old, that's really the exception. It's a myth. It's the exception that goes against the rule. There's a myth that entrepreneurs are failed employees because to be an entrepreneur, you need to think outside the box and you can't be a conventional working for the man and being a conventional employee. There's no way you would
rise up to the top of entrepreneurship. Total myth as well. The best entrepreneurs are great employees. And if you're thinking of starting a business, the fact that you've already succeeded as an employee is a great sign that you're ready to go out on your own and start your own business.
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