Darius Kazemi, Tiny Subversions - XOXO Festival (2014)

XOXO Festival
14 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2014–2025
YouTube
82K views · 12 years ago · talk · evergreen

Darius Kazemi, the bot maker behind Reverse OCR, gives a satirical XOXO 2014 talk in the form of success advice from a lottery winner. The joke makes the point that advice from people who made it usually confuses luck with method, and it separates advice on how to win from advice on how to buy more tickets.

HN keeps linking it as the sharpest take on survivorship bias and luck in creative and startup success stories.

“brutally hilarious”
Design careers & craft
#xoxo#survivorshipbias#creativecareers#luck#satire

22 comments from Hacker News

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@psvv2023 · in ““Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice”
I'm surprised I don't see a reference yet to Darius Kazemi's iconic 2014[1] talk, which is basically riffing on this joke for 10 minutes: ▶ this video A key takeaway I've kept with me this whole time is the idea of there being two kinds of creative advice: (1) how to buy more lottery tickets, and (2) how to win the lottery. The former is useful, the latter not so much. [1] Wait, 9 years ago? That can't be right.
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l
@lanewinfield2019 · in “Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age”
Required watching: ▶ this video
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m
@mogigoma2016 · in “How Steve Jobs Became a Billionaire”
Quite right. The best description I've seen of this is Darius Kazemi's talk at XOXO 2014: ▶ this video
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m
@mprast2025 · in “How I Won the Lottery (XOXO Festival 2014) [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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d
@didntreadarticl2023 · in ““Here's the number I used to win the lottery“ –Entrepreneurs giving advice”
Darius Kazemi - "How I Won the Lottery" - a talk at XOXO Festival (2014) ▶ this video brutally hilarious
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@_ttg2022 · in “Success stories are propaganda (2017)”
Related classic - How I won the lottery by Darius Kazemi ▶ this video
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n
@nightpool2022 · in “How I Won the Lottery”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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m
@mikro2nd2021 · in “I Won the Lottery – Darius Kazemi, Tiny Subversions – XOXO Festival (2014)”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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M
@Ma8ee2019 · in “Most startup theory is ex-post, therefore bs”
I can't help thinking of this wonderful talk about how to win the lottery: ▶ this video
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n
@namuol2017 · in “A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k”
Here's a funny satirical antidote for "bet the farm" success-story fantasies like this one: ▶ this video
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@skrebbel2017 · in “Survivorship Bias”
If you like this comic, you'll appreciate Darius Kazemi's talk "How I Won The Lottery". ▶ this video
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w
@wmeredith2015 · in “How to Get a Job in the Tech Industry”
This falls under the category of "how I won the lottery" vs. "how to buy tickets". The former isn't useful, the latter is. You can see an excellent talk about the difference here: ▶ this video
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