6 ms·

So you were lucky (to be smart enough) to out-compete your peers and a bunch of Americans. By definition not everyone can achieve this success (as it's based o

So you were lucky (to be smart enough) to out-compete your peers and a bunch of Americans. By definition not everyone can achieve this success (as it's based on competition), so it does nothing to alleviate inequality on a scale that matters.

rubicon33 9y ago
At what point do we reward human accomplishment instead of throwing it all away to "luck"? I hear this all too often nowadays that any kind of success can always be attributed to luck and therefor you have a moral obligation to those less "lucky" than you. Don't get me wrong - I agree with the moral obligation to help those less lucky than you. I don't always agree with the looseness in which the word "luck" is applied these days. The problem is if you look at basically anyone's life, there's always SOMETHING you can point to that was "lucky" compared to their peer(s). Yes, some more than others. But perhaps we can begin to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say they learned a difficult craft, and a new language, to lift themselves out of a shitty situation. It discounts his hard work to say it all came down to lucky brain genetics.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Why do we need to reward people just for being the winners of the cosmic lottery? If you outperform what would be expected given your parental income, early education, intellect, and various other factors that are the result of mere chance, then maybe you should get a cookie. Otherwise, why celebrate the predictable outputs of predictable inputs?
  - programmarchy 9y ago
    Why are basketball players tall? Because tall people typically provide more value to winning basketball games. Similarly, people with desirable traits like beauty and intelligence are rewarded (e.g. options for sexual reproduction, accumulation of wealth) because they have the best chance of advancing the fitness and survival of our species.
    - rayiner 9y ago
      That's clearly not the reason, because birth rates go down with income: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam....
      - harryh 9y ago
        Jinx!
      - programmarchy 9y ago
        Not sure what you're responding to. How are you arguing that people who are beautiful don't have more options for mate selection, or that intelligent people aren't more likely to accumulate wealth? I understand the difference between r vs K selection, but that seems like a non sequitur in response to my previous post.
        tptacek 9y ago
        Birth rates go down with income. You don't have to reason you way to that from first principles, because it's an empirically observable fact.
        programmarchy 9y ago
        Right... I'm not disputing that. But it does not relate to my point.
        tptacek 9y ago
        I think it refutes your point. You claimed that the ability to accumulate wealth is rewarded because those people have the best chance of improving the fitness of the species. But those people are the least likely to do anything to perpetuate the species.
        9y ago
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  > It discounts his hard work to say it all came down to lucky brain genetics. How many people work hard their entire life only to not be rewarded? It's not like everyone who doesn't see success is lazy or doesn't work hard. Labourers work hard, tradesmen work hard, and yes, programmers work hard too. I live in Alberta right now, which is in the midst of an economic recession/depression. In my city unemployment is at 10%, despite being probably the youngest, most educated city in the country. All of my peers have degrees (or better), and most don't have jobs in their fields. All have worked hard, all still work hard, most are underemployed. > At what point do we reward human accomplishment instead of throwing it all away to "luck"? I hear this all too often nowadays that any kind of success can always be attributed to luck and therefor you have a moral obligation to those less "lucky" than you. I personally hate the idea of a moral obligation to do anything. Shaming people into certain behaviours is shitty. But we do live in a society amongst other people. Poverty begets crime and social unrest, and it's not in anyone's interest for this to happen. So we attempt to construct the best society we can for all our benefit. Having a highly-stratified society, even if we feel it's 'fair', isn't a good thing.
  - programmarchy 9y ago
    > Poverty begets crime Does it, or is it the other way around? Crime in an area will cause businesses and capable people to leave, which causes an area to become poor. I'd concede that it may be a two way street, but also think it's worth considering how that cycle works in both directions. There have been many studies in criminology that strongly link crime and IQ. This is an unpopular viewpoint, because IQ is primarily genetic and seemingly fixed at birth. However, if it is true then it would explain why our current approaches of throwing money at the problem aren't working (e.g. welfare, increased spending in education). And in that case, instead of doubling down on failing policies, we need to think of new ways to address the issues at a genetic level. For example, what if instead of increasing welfare, the government subsidized IVF, allowing poor people to select embryos with genetic markers for high IQ or without markers for disease like diabetes or sickle cell anemia? Perhaps a tough sell, and maybe there are better ways. But I think we need to move beyond the reasoning that all our problems are socioeconomic, and start looking at the full picture which requires us to accept some unsettling evidence about biology, race, and IQ.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  At what point do we reward human accomplishment At the point where you start finding lots of nice houses and comfortable-looking cars. Lot so fo people already enjoy substantial rewards for accomplishment. That's great. The problem is that sometimes all the benefits are ascribed to accomplishment and luck is completely discounted. Look, you've played Monopoly, right? You take a bunch of players of about equal skill level, put them into a game, and who is doing well after 10 rounds of the board is a matter of both skill and luck. Eventually one player will end up with all the money and the others will go bankrupt, because that's the outcome the game is structured to produce. Now, Monopoly is just a game and so players could in a tournament play multiple games to minimize the luck factor and figure out which players have the greatest skill. But in the real world you don't get to try out a different life strategy every year and then reset on January 1 for a fresh round. If you start out with poor luck, then your disadvantages can accumulate just as your advantages can. Further, people don't all start out with the same beginning conditions as they do in a game of Monopoly. Nobody wants to come in and join a game of Monopoly already in progress because many of the strategic options have already become unavailable. Likewise it would be a less fun game to play if initial cash allocations were random and some players started out with much more or less than others.
Swizec 9y ago
> So you were lucky (to be smart enough) Sure didn't feel lucky when I was a troubled youth who failed most of his classes in high school and floundered around in college, ultimately not graduating. I guess one thing I did have that my American peers do not, is access to high quality free education and a cultural expectation that it's okay to be a student into your late 20s. I really lucked out on that one. That is true.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  For the record, I have no doubt you worked very hard and that you deserve all the success you have. I was only stating that it's impossible for all 7 billion people in the world to do what you did. The 'system' has its limits. There's a reason why in statistics you throw away outliers...
  - Swizec 9y ago
    > There's a reason why in statistics you throw away outliers... That's the thing. I'm not an outlier. It could be an effect of my social circle back home, but basically everyone has either moved out of the country, freelances for foreign companies, or works for foreign markets by proxy through a faux local startup/company whose investors and customers are abroad. It's very much a "The whole generation is doing it because it's the only thing you can do"
    - Mikeb85 9y ago
      You're not an outlier amongst your group of friends and acquaintances, but I'm willing to bet than even your circle, all combined, aren't statistically important.
bobjordan 9y ago
I spent quite some time in my younger years thinking about the logic you've presented here. But the fallacy is presenting that intelligence is wholly dependent on luck. Sure, luck is a factor, but the winners are never going to accept the argument that they won by luck. Further, they are correct. In the general case, life's result depends on decisions. No matter where you start, you have decisions to make. Those decisions decide your outcome. Decisions are a function of ideas, action, and luck. Outcome = Decisions(ideas, action, luck). If you try to ignore the ideas and action inputs, no winners will ever accept your argument.
- PatentTroll 9y ago
  Disagree. There certainly are large genetic and huge environmental factors in raw intelligence, and then a whole raft of environmental and cultural factors in how a person with that intelligence is able to use it. I'm a privileged, intelligent, educated white guy but I have an intellectual appreciation for what it must be like to be born to a poor minority family in a poor area. You will point to some example of some guy who made it out of the third world or the ghetto, but the reason that dude is a story is because he's an extreme outlier. Empathy man.
keeganmccallum 9y ago
I think this kind of speaks to the point made in this thread. Human progress is not a zero sum game. People constantly make it seem like you need to be "lucky" or just overall somehow smarter than other people to be able to make a proper living. But if we give everyone opportunity, in the forms of a reasonable standard of living and access to information, that doesn't have to displace others. There are so many directions for us to continue improving that grow the pie for everyone, and the more people we can set out in those directions, the more opportunities we can provide to more people to exponentially improve the standard of living for everyone. Globalism has already been doing this at the macro level: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts/ https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...
- zghst 9y ago
  But every culture lives differently, some people see the world that isn't represented in Western society or technologies. Just by introducing our technologies and economy, we bend these people towards our ideals and history, we erase whole languages and people, leaving a shell of economic contributors. These nations may be able to contribute from time to time, but with new immigration policies forming, we will suck up the best and brightest, leaving societies totally reliant on the Western powers for technology and economy.
  - keeganmccallum 9y ago
    I agree in a sense, but if this way of living is so attractive to the best and brightest that it takes them away from their own languages, cultures, home lands, families, etc. who can really say what is best for those people on an individual level. Are we supposed to keep these countries in the dark, and hide this way of living to essentially trick their top people into staying in the old ways for the sake of preserving the past? One solution that can help everybody is to remove some of the competitive nature and make sure that this system can actually support all the people involved in the spreading global system rather than funneling all the benefits to the best and brightest, another is to make it possible to participate in the global economy while preserving more of the old cultures, but at the end of the day the only constant is change, and these other cultures will continue evolve one way or another.

rubicon33 9y ago

At what point do we reward human accomplishment instead of throwing it all away to "luck"? I hear this all too often nowadays that any kind of success can always be attributed to luck and therefor you have a moral obligation to those less "lucky" than you. Don't get me wrong - I agree with the moral obligation to help those less lucky than you. I don't always agree with the looseness in which the word "luck" is applied these days. The problem is if you look at basically anyone's life, there's always SOMETHING you can point to that was "lucky" compared to their peer(s). Yes, some more than others. But perhaps we can begin to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say they learned a difficult craft, and a new language, to lift themselves out of a shitty situation. It discounts his hard work to say it all came down to lucky brain genetics.

rayiner 9y ago
Why do we need to reward people just for being the winners of the cosmic lottery? If you outperform what would be expected given your parental income, early education, intellect, and various other factors that are the result of mere chance, then maybe you should get a cookie. Otherwise, why celebrate the predictable outputs of predictable inputs?
- programmarchy 9y ago
  Why are basketball players tall? Because tall people typically provide more value to winning basketball games. Similarly, people with desirable traits like beauty and intelligence are rewarded (e.g. options for sexual reproduction, accumulation of wealth) because they have the best chance of advancing the fitness and survival of our species.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    That's clearly not the reason, because birth rates go down with income: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam....
    - harryh 9y ago
      Jinx!
    - programmarchy 9y ago
      Not sure what you're responding to. How are you arguing that people who are beautiful don't have more options for mate selection, or that intelligent people aren't more likely to accumulate wealth? I understand the difference between r vs K selection, but that seems like a non sequitur in response to my previous post.
      - tptacek 9y ago
        Birth rates go down with income. You don't have to reason you way to that from first principles, because it's an empirically observable fact.
        programmarchy 9y ago
        Right... I'm not disputing that. But it does not relate to my point.
        tptacek 9y ago
        I think it refutes your point. You claimed that the ability to accumulate wealth is rewarded because those people have the best chance of improving the fitness of the species. But those people are the least likely to do anything to perpetuate the species.
        9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Mikeb85 9y ago
> It discounts his hard work to say it all came down to lucky brain genetics. How many people work hard their entire life only to not be rewarded? It's not like everyone who doesn't see success is lazy or doesn't work hard. Labourers work hard, tradesmen work hard, and yes, programmers work hard too. I live in Alberta right now, which is in the midst of an economic recession/depression. In my city unemployment is at 10%, despite being probably the youngest, most educated city in the country. All of my peers have degrees (or better), and most don't have jobs in their fields. All have worked hard, all still work hard, most are underemployed. > At what point do we reward human accomplishment instead of throwing it all away to "luck"? I hear this all too often nowadays that any kind of success can always be attributed to luck and therefor you have a moral obligation to those less "lucky" than you. I personally hate the idea of a moral obligation to do anything. Shaming people into certain behaviours is shitty. But we do live in a society amongst other people. Poverty begets crime and social unrest, and it's not in anyone's interest for this to happen. So we attempt to construct the best society we can for all our benefit. Having a highly-stratified society, even if we feel it's 'fair', isn't a good thing.
- programmarchy 9y ago
  > Poverty begets crime Does it, or is it the other way around? Crime in an area will cause businesses and capable people to leave, which causes an area to become poor. I'd concede that it may be a two way street, but also think it's worth considering how that cycle works in both directions. There have been many studies in criminology that strongly link crime and IQ. This is an unpopular viewpoint, because IQ is primarily genetic and seemingly fixed at birth. However, if it is true then it would explain why our current approaches of throwing money at the problem aren't working (e.g. welfare, increased spending in education). And in that case, instead of doubling down on failing policies, we need to think of new ways to address the issues at a genetic level. For example, what if instead of increasing welfare, the government subsidized IVF, allowing poor people to select embryos with genetic markers for high IQ or without markers for disease like diabetes or sickle cell anemia? Perhaps a tough sell, and maybe there are better ways. But I think we need to move beyond the reasoning that all our problems are socioeconomic, and start looking at the full picture which requires us to accept some unsettling evidence about biology, race, and IQ.
anigbrowl 9y ago
At what point do we reward human accomplishment At the point where you start finding lots of nice houses and comfortable-looking cars. Lot so fo people already enjoy substantial rewards for accomplishment. That's great. The problem is that sometimes all the benefits are ascribed to accomplishment and luck is completely discounted. Look, you've played Monopoly, right? You take a bunch of players of about equal skill level, put them into a game, and who is doing well after 10 rounds of the board is a matter of both skill and luck. Eventually one player will end up with all the money and the others will go bankrupt, because that's the outcome the game is structured to produce. Now, Monopoly is just a game and so players could in a tournament play multiple games to minimize the luck factor and figure out which players have the greatest skill. But in the real world you don't get to try out a different life strategy every year and then reset on January 1 for a fresh round. If you start out with poor luck, then your disadvantages can accumulate just as your advantages can. Further, people don't all start out with the same beginning conditions as they do in a game of Monopoly. Nobody wants to come in and join a game of Monopoly already in progress because many of the strategic options have already become unavailable. Likewise it would be a less fun game to play if initial cash allocations were random and some players started out with much more or less than others.

Swizec 9y ago

> So you were lucky (to be smart enough) Sure didn't feel lucky when I was a troubled youth who failed most of his classes in high school and floundered around in college, ultimately not graduating. I guess one thing I did have that my American peers do not, is access to high quality free education and a cultural expectation that it's okay to be a student into your late 20s. I really lucked out on that one. That is true.

Mikeb85 9y ago
For the record, I have no doubt you worked very hard and that you deserve all the success you have. I was only stating that it's impossible for all 7 billion people in the world to do what you did. The 'system' has its limits. There's a reason why in statistics you throw away outliers...
- Swizec 9y ago
  > There's a reason why in statistics you throw away outliers... That's the thing. I'm not an outlier. It could be an effect of my social circle back home, but basically everyone has either moved out of the country, freelances for foreign companies, or works for foreign markets by proxy through a faux local startup/company whose investors and customers are abroad. It's very much a "The whole generation is doing it because it's the only thing you can do"
  - Mikeb85 9y ago
    You're not an outlier amongst your group of friends and acquaintances, but I'm willing to bet than even your circle, all combined, aren't statistically important.

bobjordan 9y ago

I spent quite some time in my younger years thinking about the logic you've presented here. But the fallacy is presenting that intelligence is wholly dependent on luck. Sure, luck is a factor, but the winners are never going to accept the argument that they won by luck. Further, they are correct. In the general case, life's result depends on decisions. No matter where you start, you have decisions to make. Those decisions decide your outcome. Decisions are a function of ideas, action, and luck. Outcome = Decisions(ideas, action, luck). If you try to ignore the ideas and action inputs, no winners will ever accept your argument.

PatentTroll 9y ago
Disagree. There certainly are large genetic and huge environmental factors in raw intelligence, and then a whole raft of environmental and cultural factors in how a person with that intelligence is able to use it. I'm a privileged, intelligent, educated white guy but I have an intellectual appreciation for what it must be like to be born to a poor minority family in a poor area. You will point to some example of some guy who made it out of the third world or the ghetto, but the reason that dude is a story is because he's an extreme outlier. Empathy man.

keeganmccallum 9y ago

I think this kind of speaks to the point made in this thread. Human progress is not a zero sum game. People constantly make it seem like you need to be "lucky" or just overall somehow smarter than other people to be able to make a proper living. But if we give everyone opportunity, in the forms of a reasonable standard of living and access to information, that doesn't have to displace others. There are so many directions for us to continue improving that grow the pie for everyone, and the more people we can set out in those directions, the more opportunities we can provide to more people to exponentially improve the standard of living for everyone. Globalism has already been doing this at the macro level: https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts/ https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...

zghst 9y ago
But every culture lives differently, some people see the world that isn't represented in Western society or technologies. Just by introducing our technologies and economy, we bend these people towards our ideals and history, we erase whole languages and people, leaving a shell of economic contributors. These nations may be able to contribute from time to time, but with new immigration policies forming, we will suck up the best and brightest, leaving societies totally reliant on the Western powers for technology and economy.
- keeganmccallum 9y ago
  I agree in a sense, but if this way of living is so attractive to the best and brightest that it takes them away from their own languages, cultures, home lands, families, etc. who can really say what is best for those people on an individual level. Are we supposed to keep these countries in the dark, and hide this way of living to essentially trick their top people into staying in the old ways for the sake of preserving the past? One solution that can help everybody is to remove some of the competitive nature and make sure that this system can actually support all the people involved in the spreading global system rather than funneling all the benefits to the best and brightest, another is to make it possible to participate in the global economy while preserving more of the old cultures, but at the end of the day the only constant is change, and these other cultures will continue evolve one way or another.