Let’s imagine that you are an aspiring artist or writer. You work really hard on something. You feel proud of what you made. But it fails to find an audience. It just kind of disappears. What will your friends tell you? Maybe something like: well, look, what you made was challenging and good, and that means people don’t appreciate it because they just want slop.
You take this encouragement to heart and you go to work on your next thing. This one’s a hit! You are initially quite happy, but become aware that a small number of your peers are trash talking you as a “slop producer.” What will your friends tell you? Probably: look, some people just don’t have what it takes. They know they don’t succeed because they’re just not very good.
Which version of your friends do you trust?1
Some of us will probably trust both versions of our friends without thinking about i…