I'm skeptical of the 'enormous amounts of noise' claim
Trivially, look at the wealth of Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs. Most of Peter Thiel's wealth relative to other past tech CEOs comes from one great hit at Facebook. Even entrepreneurs who have succeeded at past VC-backed startups are only moderately more likely to succeed (acquisition, IPO, large size) than new ones. Financiers vary hugely in lifetime career success based on market conditions on Wall Street when they finished school, on which product groups have ups and downs when, and which risky bets happen to blow up before or after they move on.
Within a given size of social circle and selective filter, happening to have the right friends with the right contacts (Jobs and Wozniak) at the right time is critical. Who else produces a similar startup at the same time and how good are they? Do key patents and lawsuits get decided in one's favor? What new scientific and technological innovations enhance or destroy the position of one's company?
At a smaller scale: when do you fall in love and get married? What geographical constraints does that place on you? Do you get hit by a car or infectious disease or cancer, and when? Do you get through noisy hiring processes in tight labor markets, e.g. tenure in academia, getting a first job on Wall Street? Do you click with the person deciding on your medical residency of choice?
We could quibble, but I'd leave it at that.
So Jobs ended up with what, $6.7 Billion, http://www.forbes.com/profile/steve-jobs/ making him the 99.99999th percentile among Americans, after not bothering to become the 99.999995th percentile by cashing some options. Meanwhile, Gates started at the 98th or 99th percentile instead of the 60th or 80th percentile and, with a much higher IQ and much greater strategic ability but somewhat lesser over-all talent, rose by the same factor. The idea that Jobs had unusual luck by having one highly technically skilled friend (given Jobs' social skills no less), ...
LW doesn't seem to have a discussion of the article Epiphany Addiction, by Chris at succeedsocially. First paragraph:
I like that article because it describes a dangerous failure mode of smart people. One example was the self-help blog of Phillip Eby (pjeby), where each new post seemed to bring new amazing insights, and after a while you became jaded. An even better, though controversial, example could be Eliezer's Sequences, if you view them as a series of epiphanies about AI research that didn't lead to much tangible progress. (Please don't make that statement the sole focus of discussion!)
The underlying problem seems to be that people get a rush of power from neat-sounding realizations, and mistake that feeling for actual power. I don't know any good remedy for that, but being aware of the problem could help.