pull down to refresh

Oh, you noticed that, too. Another funny thing about it is that it applies in lots of areas that you would think are non-economic or not even close to economic circumstances. I was thinking perhaps both Musk and Trump are a bit on the high time preference side!
There's some interesting survivor bias selection logic that would make you expect the most successful people to be super high time preference, even though most high time preference people end up being unsuccessful.
reply
No, I don’t think the survivor bias selection would make high time preference people highly successful! Patience is required to make a business go. You start with little to nothing, invest boatloads of time and energy into your enterprise and keep doing it until there is either a return on investment or you see the writing on the wall. It requires a lot of patience which, I surmise, is a low time preference property.
reply
Some small percentage of impatient risk takers will just happen to get a bunch of lucky breaks and they'll have outperformed more patient approaches.
Low time preference strategies are the reliable and replicable ones, but they won't usually be the top performer.
reply
BTW, there is a saying I picked up somewhere, “When a crazy person and a drunk are arguing, how do you tell which is which?” I think this applies here on SN, too. Just gotta avoid those crazy ones.
reply
In the economic sphere, being the absolute top performer may attract too much attention from undesirable sources; like the state. Being near the top of the heap is just fine.
reply