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People obviously have to take responsibility for themselves in order to be successful, but this kind of article is a valuable corrective to the notion that indi

by jgwil2 7y ago

People obviously have to take responsibility for themselves in order to be successful, but this kind of article is a valuable corrective to the notion that individuals are solely responsible for their successes and failures. This seems self-evident to me on reflection; we are all products of the families and societies in which we grew up.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
> This seems self-evident to me on reflection; we are all products of the families and societies in which we grew up. And luck. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-... (If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.)
- lanternslight 7y ago
  Not just chance. You have to see the opportunities AND work to take advantage of them. Worries the work, they wouldn't happen.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    You can still see the opportunity, attempt to succeed, and fail, through no fault of your own. And conversely, you can do everything wrong and still succeed. There's a reason we have the term "failing upwards", or businesses that succeed not because of their actions, but in spite of them. Chance is a substantial (but not the only) component to success.
- esotericn 7y ago
  The idea is about increasing expected value. I give you a machine, once per year say, and put it at the entrance to your home. It's broken. If you fix it, it will, with 5% probability, give you a ton of money. In the other 95% of cases you get nothing, it disappears, wait for next year. Is chance a major component? Of course. But not tinkering with that machine is lower EV than tinkering with it. If you stay in bed all day, ignore the machine and do something else instead, you're not going to get anything, ever. It will never spontaneously open by chance. You post below that "you can do everything wrong and still succeed". No, you actually can't. If you're picturing a startup founder that makes a lot of seemingly silly decisions - well, they still made the (high risk) decision to start that company. If you lay in bed all day, or work your corner shop job forever, then you are not increasing your EV. I work in a field that is very heavily based on probability; I literally bet for a living. Luck is a considerable component, but if you want to tell me skill is irrelevant, then I'd like to show you what happens if I just tweak this parameter here...
  - shkkmo 7y ago
    The point is that the variance in actual value based on chance is larger than the variance in the actual value based on skill/talent/intelligence/effort. This is not saying that there is no effect of skill/talent/intelligence/effort, but that the effect size is smaller than commonly thought and smaller than the variance due to luck.
    - esotericn 7y ago
      That's only the case if you make nonsensical comparisons. I wasn't born to an upper middle class family and I didn't get a ten million dollar trust fund. I don't have the correct muscle fibers to be an Olympian, etc. That's happened, it's done. That comparison is completely pointless and irrelevant for me. From the perspective of decision making, what matters is the difference in expected value of different decisions that I make now, from T=0, not some time in the past that I can't affect. (FWIW, 'skill/talent/intelligence/effort' are also part of that initial distribution). The idea that success is primarily random makes no sense at all, because there are certainly paths that an individual can take that will not under any circumstances result in outsized success. There are paths that an individual can take that will by definition result in failure, like if I went out and drove my car into a wall at 100mph.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - shkkmo 7y ago
        > From the perspective of decision making, what matters is the difference in expected value of different decisions that I make now, from T=0, not some time in the past that I can't affect. That still depends on the type of decision and context. If you are talking about "should I play video game or should I study" that is a type of decision where valuing individual effort is absolutely beneficial. If you are talking about making a decision based on evaluating other people/companies based on their life outcomes, then awareness of the role of luck is absolutely beneficial. You need to look beyond the results and also evaluate the decision making and luck that went into obtaining those results. It's not an either or sort of thing. When we over-estimate the role of decision making in producing outcomes, we end up with a worse model of the world that will lead to worse decision making.
- friendlybus 7y ago
  Pushing the idea of talent into a finite computer simulation like stats in an RPG can't replicate real life. The talent humans have doesn't neatly summarize as a one or a zero or a biological quantity. Pulling on the right conceptual thread in life simply isn't chance. It's a responsibility that can't be delegated to going with the flow or randomness.
mech1234 7y ago
Rich people skew right-leaning. We can imagine many reasons for this, but I'll break it into two groups: 1. The same moral leanings that are identified with right-leaning parties are moral leanings, that when applied to your own life, can help make you more wealthy. 2. Having these moral leanings have no impact on your future success. Considering that in absolute numbers the rich are more charitable and pay more taxes than the poor, and if you believe that the majority of the rich are strong value-creators (implying that they are generative, and are contributing positively to the economy rather than playing a zero-sum game), then for any portion of factor #1 above that is true, there is a moral argument to be made that adopting right-leaning values leads to a better world for both yourself, and for society as a whole. All of this is speculative and stated in broad generalizations, but it's an argument that I've worked into my mind as a Pascal's wager of sorts and that I've found very convincing.
- harimau777 7y ago
  I think you make an interesting point. However, I think there are some other considerations that should be factored in: - The good that left wing policies would have done if they had been implemented. - Situations where the economy is a zero sum game (e.g. desirable housing). - The possibility that the good that comes from the rich is not evenly distributed. (In this case I mean distribution different between different segments of the non-rich. I don't mean distribution between the rich and everyone else.) It seems to me that the logic that you present could act as a sort of social contract that basically say "in exchange for implementing right wing policies that make conservatives rich, you will benefit from their charity, taxes, and economic growth". In that case, I could see the increasing unrest and polarization in America being due to a growing segment of the population feeling that the contract has been broken.
- goto11 7y ago
  It could also be that right-wing policies protect the interest of the rich and provides the ideology that this is fair and just. So if your are rich, right-leaning morals will make you richer and make you feel better about it. But if you are not rich, it will do the opposite.

by jgwil2 7y ago

toomuchtodo 7y ago

> This seems self-evident to me on reflection; we are all products of the families and societies in which we grew up. And luck. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-... (If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.)

lanternslight 7y ago
Not just chance. You have to see the opportunities AND work to take advantage of them. Worries the work, they wouldn't happen.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  You can still see the opportunity, attempt to succeed, and fail, through no fault of your own. And conversely, you can do everything wrong and still succeed. There's a reason we have the term "failing upwards", or businesses that succeed not because of their actions, but in spite of them. Chance is a substantial (but not the only) component to success.
esotericn 7y ago
The idea is about increasing expected value. I give you a machine, once per year say, and put it at the entrance to your home. It's broken. If you fix it, it will, with 5% probability, give you a ton of money. In the other 95% of cases you get nothing, it disappears, wait for next year. Is chance a major component? Of course. But not tinkering with that machine is lower EV than tinkering with it. If you stay in bed all day, ignore the machine and do something else instead, you're not going to get anything, ever. It will never spontaneously open by chance. You post below that "you can do everything wrong and still succeed". No, you actually can't. If you're picturing a startup founder that makes a lot of seemingly silly decisions - well, they still made the (high risk) decision to start that company. If you lay in bed all day, or work your corner shop job forever, then you are not increasing your EV. I work in a field that is very heavily based on probability; I literally bet for a living. Luck is a considerable component, but if you want to tell me skill is irrelevant, then I'd like to show you what happens if I just tweak this parameter here...
- shkkmo 7y ago
  The point is that the variance in actual value based on chance is larger than the variance in the actual value based on skill/talent/intelligence/effort. This is not saying that there is no effect of skill/talent/intelligence/effort, but that the effect size is smaller than commonly thought and smaller than the variance due to luck.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    That's only the case if you make nonsensical comparisons. I wasn't born to an upper middle class family and I didn't get a ten million dollar trust fund. I don't have the correct muscle fibers to be an Olympian, etc. That's happened, it's done. That comparison is completely pointless and irrelevant for me. From the perspective of decision making, what matters is the difference in expected value of different decisions that I make now, from T=0, not some time in the past that I can't affect. (FWIW, 'skill/talent/intelligence/effort' are also part of that initial distribution). The idea that success is primarily random makes no sense at all, because there are certainly paths that an individual can take that will not under any circumstances result in outsized success. There are paths that an individual can take that will by definition result in failure, like if I went out and drove my car into a wall at 100mph.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - shkkmo 7y ago
      > From the perspective of decision making, what matters is the difference in expected value of different decisions that I make now, from T=0, not some time in the past that I can't affect. That still depends on the type of decision and context. If you are talking about "should I play video game or should I study" that is a type of decision where valuing individual effort is absolutely beneficial. If you are talking about making a decision based on evaluating other people/companies based on their life outcomes, then awareness of the role of luck is absolutely beneficial. You need to look beyond the results and also evaluate the decision making and luck that went into obtaining those results. It's not an either or sort of thing. When we over-estimate the role of decision making in producing outcomes, we end up with a worse model of the world that will lead to worse decision making.
friendlybus 7y ago
Pushing the idea of talent into a finite computer simulation like stats in an RPG can't replicate real life. The talent humans have doesn't neatly summarize as a one or a zero or a biological quantity. Pulling on the right conceptual thread in life simply isn't chance. It's a responsibility that can't be delegated to going with the flow or randomness.

mech1234 7y ago

Rich people skew right-leaning. We can imagine many reasons for this, but I'll break it into two groups: 1. The same moral leanings that are identified with right-leaning parties are moral leanings, that when applied to your own life, can help make you more wealthy. 2. Having these moral leanings have no impact on your future success. Considering that in absolute numbers the rich are more charitable and pay more taxes than the poor, and if you believe that the majority of the rich are strong value-creators (implying that they are generative, and are contributing positively to the economy rather than playing a zero-sum game), then for any portion of factor #1 above that is true, there is a moral argument to be made that adopting right-leaning values leads to a better world for both yourself, and for society as a whole. All of this is speculative and stated in broad generalizations, but it's an argument that I've worked into my mind as a Pascal's wager of sorts and that I've found very convincing.

harimau777 7y ago
I think you make an interesting point. However, I think there are some other considerations that should be factored in: - The good that left wing policies would have done if they had been implemented. - Situations where the economy is a zero sum game (e.g. desirable housing). - The possibility that the good that comes from the rich is not evenly distributed. (In this case I mean distribution different between different segments of the non-rich. I don't mean distribution between the rich and everyone else.) It seems to me that the logic that you present could act as a sort of social contract that basically say "in exchange for implementing right wing policies that make conservatives rich, you will benefit from their charity, taxes, and economic growth". In that case, I could see the increasing unrest and polarization in America being due to a growing segment of the population feeling that the contract has been broken.
goto11 7y ago
It could also be that right-wing policies protect the interest of the rich and provides the ideology that this is fair and just. So if your are rich, right-leaning morals will make you richer and make you feel better about it. But if you are not rich, it will do the opposite.