Measuring how much better you're becoming is easier in some practices than in others. Assuming everybody wants to become great hackers, how can you practice deliberately such that you reach this "greatness?" Without some way of measuring how good you're becoming this is pretty difficult to do.
http://esposure.com recently launched. It hasn't quite failed, but nobody visits really. It's a place where you can post screencasts/demos of whatever it is you or your Web app does.
If you plan on being at startup school, maybe I can express in plain English to you face-to-face "how the hell" this story made top page...I'll be the guy in the Purdue t-shirt.
Although there's been a influx of new users, I would conjecture that there are still more veteran users than novices.
If this conjecture is the case, then the solution for the "problem" on HN would be for the veteran users to vote more aggressively on the "good" submissions. After you've been vectored off to an interesting Web page via a submission, don't forget to come back to HN and vote it up.
Veteran users can use their frustration with front page stories, and turn it into determination to find better stories. This way, everybody wins :o).
What's implied in the question is that the YC would still get some percentage of the company. I'm assuming that people aren't applying to the YC just get money to live for a few months. If this assumption is the case, then, theoretically, people would come, give up some part of their company, take no money, and be perfectly happy.
Many YC companies didn't need the money. We (Virtualmin) didn't (though it helped to offset the cost of my move from Austin where I had property to deal with and a car to sell--and the significant disparity in cost of living between there and here...I certainly didn't have any desire to turn down the money, but we signed on for the experience not the cash). pg has said about a third of companies don't need the money. The limiting factor is time for pg, tlb, and Jessica, not whether you need a measly 15 grand to survive long enough to launch.
But, frankly, nobody applies because of the money. There are cheaper sources of money.
Waiting for a "GOOD" hacker co-founder may have you waiting forever. If your ideas are good, somebody else is already working on it. So every day you wait, you're losing time.
As long as your idea isn't very complicated to implement, and you know what you want; by all means, use an elance or a rentacoder or a craigslist.
I'd say don't even worry about Google, because, frankly, Google could build a spaceship if it wanted to...who could stop it? Any company that can tell the U.S. government "no" has some power...so focus on what you can effect...your cutting-edge product
your absolute chance of becoming a millionaire isn't 2/3. 2/3 millionaires are entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial route to millions is at least double that of the non-entrepreneurial route (assuming there are no more entrepreneurs than there are non-entrepreneurs -- a reasonable assumption)...in the example game given at the post, the non-entrepreneurial route is assigned the chance of 1/3 (assuming 1 out 3 non-entrepreneurs are millionaires -- not so reasonable assumption)...so 2/3 is at least double of 1/3.
To be clear, if there are 30 millionaires and 3K non-entrepreneurs and 3K entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurial route obviously wouldn't be 2/3, but it will be double that of the non-entrepreneurial route.
Ok, I see your reasoning, but I think it would be better to word it like this: "You are (statistically) twice as likely to be a millionaire if you are an entrepreneur than if you are not an entrepreneur (assuming that less than two thirds of the total population are entrepreneurs)."
But this still leaves a correlation/causation problem if you want to use it to imply that choosing the entrepreneurial path makes one twice as likely to become rich.
Measuring how much better you're becoming is easier in some practices than in others. Assuming everybody wants to become great hackers, how can you practice deliberately such that you reach this "greatness?" Without some way of measuring how good you're becoming this is pretty difficult to do.