An excuse for success

I loved this post about “Carrot Problems” (if you’re wondering why it’s called that, read the post). Summary:

Any time someone achieves success in a way they don’t want to admit publicly, they have to come up with an excuse for their abilities. And that means misleading a bunch of people into (potentially) wasting their time, or worse.

An example from the post: steroid users will list a bunch of non-steroid reasons for their gains. And anyone who follows their advice will be disappointed.

Here’s another possible example that comes to mind:

All I'm saying is, if I were a billionaire, I'd tell all my aspiring rivals that the secret to success was getting up at 4am.

— Glenn Moore (Insta: @glennrogermoore) (@TheNewsAtGlenn) December 18, 2018

I love it both because “Carrot Problem” is a great name (and names are powerful), and because of the healthy skepticism behind it.

If someone is abnormally successful and says it’s because of X, there are three possibilities:

1. IT’S LEGIT: It really is because of X. This is almost never the case. If X is so powerful, why isn’t everyone doing X successful? Or why wasn’t X discovered long ago?
2. IT’S A CARROT PROBLEM: It’s because of Y, but Y is sketchy so they tell everyone it’s X so they don’t lose respect.
3. IT’S AN HONEST MISTAKE: It’s because of luck, but people like to think they earned it, so they honestly think it’s X. This is often a combination of survivor bias and confirmation bias.