Scene from Moneyball - What is the problem?
Why Hacker News recommends it
Invoked as shorthand for hiring and investing by gut feel and appearances instead of what actually predicts results.
What it is
A scene from Moneyball in which Brad Pitt's character argues with scouts who pick players on intangible impressions instead of performance data. It is a four-minute clip.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2016 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Cites pchiusano · 2016-09 · on “I Am Sam Altman, President of YC Group. AMA”
People with families can certainly be successful entrepreneurs and create companies with "explosive growth that maybe change the world". (It kinda came across like you were implying that founders with families were mostly only interested in "lifestyle businesses".) There are so many factors that contribute to success, and they are never all equal, so any sort of up-front filtering based on some factor you think is correlated with success is going to miss out on people. And besides, I would strongly dispute any arguments that having a family is like some sort of handicap that must be overcome. In a lot of ways, I think having a family is a BETTER situation for starting a company! My impressio
Cites ryandrake · 2023-06 · on “Always the Same Warning Signs”
OP here. I guess rather than "smarter" I meant to convey: less gullible, less vulnerable to being influenced by silly signals like someone's mannerisms and confidence, less reliant on unexplainable gut feels. I guess when I think of professional investors picking some of these dogs, my mind imagines that scene in Moneyball[1] where the old timers are trying to pick baseball players by who "looks good," "has a good jaw," "how the ball sounds when it pops off his bat, and "what the player's girlfriend looks like." 1: [this video]