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Is it discounting talent that results in success? Or is it success results in discounting talent? Or a third (overlapping) possibility: Maybe believing in hard
by akavi 10y ago
Is it discounting talent that results in success? Or is it success results in discounting talent?
Or a third (overlapping) possibility: Maybe believing in hard work results in "success", but only for a fraction of people. Is the expected value of the belief necessarily positive?
Ie, take a simplified hypothetical universe where "success" is a binary possibility, with "utility" of 1, and where "hard work" is something that requires a utility investment of -0.1. Even if only those who choose "hard work" become successful regardless of talent or resources, if P("success"|"hard work" && $some_level_of_talent && $some_level_of_prior_resources) < 0.1, then it's still can be suboptimal to pursue "hard work" for the subset of the population with $some_level_of_talent and $some_level_of_prior_resources.
- themartorana 10y agoI think this comment is good at pointing out (if not directly) that there's an assumption often made - success may or may not be correlated with hard work, but failure is very often assumed to be the result of a lack of hard work. In fact I'd argue the hardest working people you'll ever meet are blue-collar, and often struggle continuously in life. "Grit" has nothing to do with it. Edit: I am not saying @akavi holds this belief. Don't know if that was clear.