4 ms·

> Canonically in the western world it's usually "gumption" or "intelligence".

• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Canonically in the western world it's usually "gumption" or "intelligence". reply Emphasis on natural inherence. Meritocracies work if everyone is statistically identical. They even work when everyone is perfectly identical. They don't if every action is independent and identically distributed, but it's not; being lucky in the past can make one more capable in the present even in an unbiased system. We should keep that randomness in mind to avoid being cruel. But systems that ignore this path dependence, or worse, try to stamp it out, underperform those that acknowledge it.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • delusional 4y ago
    You're just making the same argument you tried to disagree with. If there's some quality that means luck today implies luck tomorrow and it isn't just the compounding effect of capital that's exactly the western notion I'm talking about. Instead of calling it "gumption" you've just called it "luck".
    • somebodythere 4y ago
      Not really. You only have to believe that there are some complex actions which, if taken on an individual level, benefit society. For example, starting a business, or skilling into a highly demanded field such as medicine. Doing these things can be highly financially rewarding, and that means that people are more likely to attempt them than they would be otherwise. You don't have to believe the "luck begets luck", and there is certainly injustice in the way wealth lands around society, but not allowing people to become rich by taking socially-positive risks removes the marginal incentive to do so. That is, I believe, GP means by "the whole doesn't progress".