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To make it on that list, you have to have succeeded at such an extreme outlier level that almost by definition almost everything had to have gone perfectly. Th

by eloff 6y ago

To make it on that list, you have to have succeeded at such an extreme outlier level that almost by definition almost everything had to have gone perfectly. That takes a lot of luck and advantages, such as family advantages. I'm not saying that detracts from what they accomplished, but they can't take all the credit either and it's not reproducible.

boringg 6y ago
I'd agree - I have seen a lot of wealthy family children completely underperform relative to this bar. I'd say it's the exception and far from the norm that wealthy families to produce exceptional children. Exception to the statement being wealth taken from your countries people through corruption (like Putin, Jinping etc).
- pc86 6y ago
  I'd be curious to see if the rate of "exceptional" children is higher for "exceptional" families than "unexceptional" families since by definition it's going to be far from the norm regardless. But the rate could still be 2x or 3x (I don't think it is, but it's a possibility). There's a lot of focus on the exceptional but I think where having a very rich or wealthy family helps is less in a much bigger upside, which certainly exists in some degree, but in a much higher floor. If you are born into a single-income, lower-middle class family, your floor is poverty and even literally starving to death. If you're born into a family of two high-income individuals, the odds of you living your adult life in poverty are vanishingly small and your floor is probably something closer to a ho-hum middle/upper-middle life. If you're born into a family where one of your parents is the CEO of a publicly traded company and makes tens of millions a year, your floor is probably a $150k/yr lower management job in some sector-adjacent company that your parents had to call in a bunch of favors to get you. It's not so much that coming from an exceptional family increases the "genetic" odds of exceptionality, but it provides safety and security that allows you to take risks someone waiting tables at night to pay for college wouldn't be able to, which coupled with the natural contacts and associations you'll have, gives you a huge advantage.
  - boringg 6y ago
    Oh completely agree -- wealth raises the floor, not the ceiling. I'm not discounting that at all (and I recognize all the advantages that that class receives), rather pointing that generational wealth is normally created once, not multiple times in a family. Probably as a function of environment and not having the same drive - but thats merely speculation.
VRay 6y ago
haha, this reminds me of World of Warcraft Third-party sites post rankings showing the best player performance on various metrics worldwide across thousands of boss fights There's often some choice you can make for your character where it works out like "10% chance of doing 5x as well, 90% chance of doing half as well", and the entire leaderboard is filled with people who lucked out
rapind 6y ago
It should detract from what their accomplishments appear to be though. Our society worships the ultra rich mostly without recognition of societies own contribution. Where would Amazon be without pre-existing innovation and infrastructure that the public paid for? Systems like roads, education, technologies, safe working environments, etc. We tend to regard these uber rich as though their success happened in a vacuum and all of those billions are justified. (I’m not accusing the rich themselves of necessarily promoting or having this view point. That would vary by case. Just that it’s society’s view in general.)

by eloff 6y ago

boringg 6y ago

I'd agree - I have seen a lot of wealthy family children completely underperform relative to this bar. I'd say it's the exception and far from the norm that wealthy families to produce exceptional children. Exception to the statement being wealth taken from your countries people through corruption (like Putin, Jinping etc).

pc86 6y ago
I'd be curious to see if the rate of "exceptional" children is higher for "exceptional" families than "unexceptional" families since by definition it's going to be far from the norm regardless. But the rate could still be 2x or 3x (I don't think it is, but it's a possibility). There's a lot of focus on the exceptional but I think where having a very rich or wealthy family helps is less in a much bigger upside, which certainly exists in some degree, but in a much higher floor. If you are born into a single-income, lower-middle class family, your floor is poverty and even literally starving to death. If you're born into a family of two high-income individuals, the odds of you living your adult life in poverty are vanishingly small and your floor is probably something closer to a ho-hum middle/upper-middle life. If you're born into a family where one of your parents is the CEO of a publicly traded company and makes tens of millions a year, your floor is probably a $150k/yr lower management job in some sector-adjacent company that your parents had to call in a bunch of favors to get you. It's not so much that coming from an exceptional family increases the "genetic" odds of exceptionality, but it provides safety and security that allows you to take risks someone waiting tables at night to pay for college wouldn't be able to, which coupled with the natural contacts and associations you'll have, gives you a huge advantage.
- boringg 6y ago
  Oh completely agree -- wealth raises the floor, not the ceiling. I'm not discounting that at all (and I recognize all the advantages that that class receives), rather pointing that generational wealth is normally created once, not multiple times in a family. Probably as a function of environment and not having the same drive - but thats merely speculation.

VRay 6y ago

haha, this reminds me of World of Warcraft Third-party sites post rankings showing the best player performance on various metrics worldwide across thousands of boss fights There's often some choice you can make for your character where it works out like "10% chance of doing 5x as well, 90% chance of doing half as well", and the entire leaderboard is filled with people who lucked out

rapind 6y ago

It should detract from what their accomplishments appear to be though. Our society worships the ultra rich mostly without recognition of societies own contribution. Where would Amazon be without pre-existing innovation and infrastructure that the public paid for? Systems like roads, education, technologies, safe working environments, etc. We tend to regard these uber rich as though their success happened in a vacuum and all of those billions are justified. (I’m not accusing the rich themselves of necessarily promoting or having this view point. That would vary by case. Just that it’s society’s view in general.)